Complete Works of Frank Norris

by Frank Norris

  “This is funny, too,” he muttered, more and more uneasy. “There’s no other way out of the room, and how could any one go off and leave that water running, and lock the door from the inside.”

  He started up suddenly and looked about him, bewildered and excited, drawing his breath quickly.

  “Say, there’s something wrong; I’ve got to get into that room.”

  He worried the key in the door loose with the butt of his pencil, and pushed it till it fell from the lock on the inside of the room. Before he tried again to fit one of his own keys to the lock, he bent down and peered through the keyhole. Then, as he did so, his heart jumped to his throat with a great bound, and stuck there quivering, and he sprang up, beating his hands together, crying out again and again. He had seen nothing in the room, but through the narrow vent of the keyhole was streaming a strangling odor of escaping gas.

  For a moment in a frenzy of alarm and excitement he ran back in the front of the house, biting at the ends of his fingers and talking aloud to himself. A pair of disused Indian-clubs stood in one corner of the sitting-room. He caught up one of these and running back to the room splintered the door into long fragments in half a dozen blows.

  Inside it was like breathing a vaporous brass, the poisoned air closed around him, and filled his lungs and breast and throat till it seemed as though he must suffocate before he could even reach the window on the other side of the room. It was partly open; he flung it higher still, and turned to the interior of the room. But though there was evidence that she had been there but recently, it was now empty.

  He shut off the water and the escaping gas, and sat down on the window edge, bewildered, and gasping for air. Where could the girl have gone? What was the meaning of it all? He glanced around the room for an explanation. His eyes rested on a little table at the bed-side and on it he saw something that explained it all: a little silver pipe and a half-empty package of unboiled opium. That was it, then: unwittingly, she had contracted the dreadful habit, had struggled against it, no doubt, since her rescue, and had succumbed to it at last, had turned on the gas, perhaps accidentally, in the course of her stupor, perhaps with design in a moment of remorse and grief and conscious helplessness, and then drugged by the poisonous fumes and equally poisonous smoke had wandered away into the night. How? Through the window. It was not four feet above the level of the ground; and swinging himself out Bandy saw the print of her feet in the soil.

  And where now had she gone? What might not happen to her in her helpless condition?

  Lone Mountain is one of the most conspicuous landmarks in the city, because it rises very abruptly and very steeply from the surrounding streets and because there are no other hills or tall buildings near by to obscure it. Being thus steep and abrupt there are no houses upon it and no streets, nothing but goat-paths and scrubby bushes, all covered with the red dust of the streets which the trade-winds blow there. There is a great wooden cross upon the top. It was a pretty idea to place it there, because you may see the mountain from almost anywhere in the city, and the cross upon it stands there in its simple isolation, sometimes clear-cut and black against the sun going redly down through the Golden Gate, sometimes blurred and indistinct in the rains and in the fogs, or sometimes silvery with great black shadows in the moonlight; but always there, looking far out over the city, its great arms stretched wide as though in protection and benison.

  The house stood at the very foot of the mountain, and Bandy had not taken half a dozen steps into the night — for it was quite dark by this time — before he felt the slope rise under his feet.

  By a sudden unreasoned instinct he knew where the Girl had gone, and ran scrambling and panting up the side and paused on the summit.

  Below him, the city shrank away and spread out like an unrolled scroll, a blue-gray mass, pierced with many chimney-stacks, that were like the pipes of a great organ, on the unseen keys of which were forever sounded all the notes in the gamut of human happiness and human misery, that united in a single minor chord and rolled upward day and night toward the great and moveless cross with its outstretched arms.

  The Girl was lying in the shadow of the cross, her hands reaching toward it and spread out before her, and her face bowed upon the ground. She must have died where she had fallen.

  Bandy saw her as she lay thus, far above the turmoil and dirt of the city’s streets and in a better air — one that was purer and calmer. She seemed, as she lay, to be quieter and more content than ever before. Above her towered the great cross with its outstretched arms of protection and benison.

  Bandy told this story to me some time afterward, when its impressiveness had worn off and he could bear to talk about it. When he had finished telling it, he extended his remarks in comment:

  “I don’t know,” he said, reflectively, “I thought a good deal of that girl at the time, and I guess I made an awful fool of myself over her. And when she died, oh, you don’t know — it hurt. I tell you it hurt bad. I thought that I just naturally never would get over it. But I did get over it you see. Oh yes, I got over it, but just the same there is always something — when I think of it, somehow it makes my throat ache. It’s funny, ain’t it?”

  “But,” said I, “where do you come in? What was there in it for you? What have you got left out of it?”

  “Oh!” answered Bandy, “I got Miss McCleaverty.”

  HIS SISTER

  A SHORT STORY FROM THE WAVE OF NOVEMBER 28, 1896.

  “Confound the luck,” muttered young Strelitz in deep perplexity as he got up from the supper table and walked over to the mantelpiece, pulling at his lower lip as was his custom when thinking hard.

  Young Strelitz lived in a cheap New York flat with his mother, to whose support he contributed by writing for the papers.

  Just recently he had struck a vein of fiction that promised to be unusually successful. A series of short stories — mere sketches — which he had begun under the title “Dramas of the Curbstone,” had “caught on,” and his editor had promised to take as many more of them as he could write for the Sunday issue. Just now young Strelitz was perplexed because he had no idea for a new story. It was Wednesday evening already, and if his stuff was to go into the Sunday’s paper it should be sent to the editor by the next day’s noon at the latest.

  “Blessed if I can dig up anything,” he exclaimed as he leaned up against the mantelpiece, his forehead in a pucker.

  He and his mother were just finishing their supper. Mrs. Strelitz brushed the crumbs from her lap and pushed back her chair, looking up at her son.

  “I thought you were working on something this afternoon,” she hazarded.

  “It don’t come out at all,” he answered, as he drew a new box of cigarettes from his coat pocket. “It’s that ‘Condition of Servitude’ stuff, and I can’t make it sound natural.”

  “But that’s a true story,” exclaimed Mrs. Strelitz. “That really happened.”

  “That don’t help matters any if it don’t read like real life,” he returned, as he opened the box of cigarettes. “It’s not the things that have really happened that make good fiction, but the things that read as though they had.”

  “If I were you,” said his mother, “I would try an experiment. You’ve been writing these ‘Dramas of the Curbstone’ without hardly stirring from the house. You’ve just been trying to imagine things that you think are likely to happen on the streets of a big city after dark, and you’ve been working that way so long that you’ve sort of used up your material — exhausted your imagination. Why don’t you go right out — now — to-night, and keep your eyes open and watch what really happens, and see if you can’t find something to make a story out of, or at least something that would suggest one. You’re not listening, Conrad, what’s the matter?”

  It was true, young Strelitz was not listening. The box of cigarettes he had drawn from his pocket was a fresh one. While his mother was talking he had cut the green revenue stamp with his thumb nail, and had pushed open the
box, had taken out a cigarette and had put it between his lips.

  The box was one of those which contain, in addition to the cigarettes themselves the miniature photograph of some bouffe actress, and Strelitz had found in his box one that was especially debonnaire. But as he looked at the face of the girl it represented he suddenly shifted his position and turned a little pale. He thrust the box back into his pocket, but closed his fist over the photograph as though to hide it. He did not light his cigarette.

  “What’s the matter, Conrad; you are not listening?”

  “Oh, yes I am,” he answered. “I — nothing. I’m listening. Go on.”

  “Well, now, why don’t you try that?”

  “Try what?”

  “Go out and look for a story on the streets.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  Without attracting his mother’s attention, Strelitz looked again at the cigarette picture in his hand and then his glance went from it to a large crayon portrait that stood on a brass easel in the adjoining parlor. The crayon portrait was the head and bare shoulders of a young girl of seventeen or eighteen.

  The resemblance to Strelitz and his mother was unmistakable, but there was about the chin and the corners of the eyes a certain recklessness that neither of the others possessed. The mouth too was weak.

  “You get right down to your reality then,” continued Mrs. Strelitz. “Even if you do not find a story, you would find at least a background — a local color that you can observe much better than you can imagine.”

  “Yes, yes,” answered Strelitz. He lounged out of the dining-room, and going into the little parlor turned up the gas, and while his mother and the hired girl cleared away the table, fell to studying the two likenesses — the crayon portrait and the cigarette picture, comparing them with each other.

  There was no room for doubt. The two pictures were of the same girl.

  However, the name printed at the bottom of the cigarette picture was not that which young Strelitz expected to see.

  “Violet Ormonde,” he muttered, reading it. “That’s the stage-name she took. Poor Sabina, poor Sabina, to come to this.” He looked again at the photograph of the bouffe actress, in her false bull-fighter’s costume, with its low-necked, close-fitting bodice, its tights, its high-laced kid shoes, its short Spanish cloak and foolish inadequate sword — a sword opera comique. “Poor little girl,” he continued under his breath as he looked at it, “she could have returned to us if she’d wanted to before she came to this. She could come back now. But where could one find her? What’s become of her by this time?”

  He was roused by the entrance of his mother and faced about, hastily thrusting the little photograph into his pocket and moving away from the crayon portrait on the brass easel, lest his mother should see him musing over it.

  “Conrad,” said Mrs. Strelitz, “you don’t want to miss a week with your stories now that people have just begun to read them.”

  “I know,” he admitted, “but what can I do? I haven’t a single idea.”

  “Well, now, just do as I tell you. You try that. Go down town and keep your eyes open and see if you can’t see something you can make a story out of. Make the experiment, anyhow. You’ll have the satisfaction of having tried. Why, just think, in a great city like this, with thousands and thousands of people, all with wholly different lives and with wholly different interests — interests that clash. Just think of the stories that are making by themselves every hour, every minute. There must be hundreds and hundreds of stories better than anything ever yet written only waiting for some one to take them down. Think of how near you may have come to an interesting story and never know it.”

  “That’s a good saying, that last,” observed young Strelitz, smiling in approval. “I’ll make a note of that.” But his note-book was not about him, and rather than let his mother’s remark slip his memory he jotted it down upon the back of the cigarette picture.

  “Let’s see, how does that go?” he said, writing. “‘Think of how close one may come to an interesting story and never know it.’ Well,” added young Strelitz as he slipped the bit of cardboard back into his pocket. “I’ll try your idea, but I haven’t much faith in it. However, it won’t do any hurt to get in touch with the real thing once in a while. I may get a suggestion or two.”

  “You may have an adventure or two,” observed Mrs. Strelitz.

  “Do the Haroun-al-Raschid act, hey?” answered her son. “Well, don’t sit up for me,” he went on, shrugging himself into his overcoat, “‘cause if I get an idea I may go right up to the ‘Times’ office and work it up in the reporters’ room. Good night.”

  For more than two hours young Strelitz roamed idly from street to street. Now in the theater district, now in the slums and now in the Bowery. As a rule he avoided the aristocratic and formal neighborhoods, knowing by instinct that he would be more apt to find undisguised human nature along the poorer unconventional thoroughfares.

  Hundreds of people jostled him, each with a hidden story no doubt; but all such as varied from the indistinguishable herd, resolved themselves into types, hackneyed over-worked types, with nothing original about them. There was the Bowery boy; there was the tough girl; there was the young lady from the college settlement; there was the dude, the chippy, the bicycle girl, the tenement house Irish woman, the burn, the drunk, the policeman, the Chinese laundry man, the coon in his plaid vest and the Italian vegetable man in his velvet jacket.

  “I know you, I know you all,” muttered young Strelitz, as one after another passed him. “I know you, and you, and you. There’s Chimmie Fadden, there’s Cortlandt Van Bibber, there’s Rags Raegen, there’s George’s Mother, there’s Bedalia Herodsfoot, and Gervaise Coupeau and Eleanor Cuyler. I know you, every one; all the reading world knows you. You’re done to death; you won’t do, you won’t do. Nothing new can be got out of you, unless one should take a new point of view, and that couldn’t be done in a short story. Let’s go into some of their saloons.” He entered several of the wine shops in the Italian quarter, but beyond the advertisement of a public picnic and games, where the second prize was a ton of coal, found nothing extraordinary.

  “Now we’ll try the parks,” he said to himself. He turned about and started across town. As he went on the streets grew cleaner and gayer. The saloons became “elegant” bars. The dance halls, brilliantly lighted theaters. Here and there were cafes, with frosted glass, side doors, on which one read “Ladies’ Entrance.” Invariably there was a cab stand near by.

  “Ah, the Tenderloin,” murmured Strelitz slackening his pace. “I know you, too. I’ll have a cocktail in passing, with you.”

  A large cafe, whose second story was gayly lighted, attracted him. He entered the bar on the ground floor and asked for a mild cocktail.

  All at once he heard his name called. A party of men of his own age stood in the entrance of a little room that opened from the barroom, beckoning to him and laughing. Three of them he knew very well — Brunt of the “Times,” Jack Fremont, who had graduated with his class, and Angus McCloutsie, whom every one called “Scrubby.” The other men Strelitz knew to bow to. “Just the man we want,” cried Jack Fremont as Strelitz came up.

  “You’re right in time,” observed “Scrubby,” grinning and shaking his hand. “Come in, come in here with us.” They pulled young Strelitz into the little room, and Brunt made them all sit down while he ordered beer.

  “We’re having the greatest kind of a time,” Fremont began in an excited whisper. “All the crowd are upstairs — we got a room, we had supper — there’s Dryden and Billy Libbey, and the two Spaulding boys and the ‘Jay’ — and all the old crowd. Y’ought to see Dick Spaulding sitting on the floor trying to put gloves on his feet; he says there were seven good reasons why he should not get full and that he’s forgotten, every one. Oh, we’re going to have the time of our lives to-night. You’re just in time—”

  “Joe’s forgot the best part of it,” broke in “Scrubby.”

&nbs
p; “There are three girls.”

  “Three girls?”

  “Yes, sir, and one of them is the kind you read about. Just wait till you see her.”

  “I’m not going to wait,” said young Strelitz. “I must go, right away. I’m working to-night.” He finished his beer amongst their protests, and drew his handkerchief quickly out of his pocket and wiped his lips. But the others would not hear of his going.

  “Oh, come along up,” urged Brunt. “Just listen to that,” cocking his head toward the ceiling, “and see what you’re missing. That’s Dick trying to remember.” Strelitz hesitated. They certainly were having a glorious time up there — and the girls, too. He might at least go up and look in on them all. He began to reflect, pulling at his lower lip, his forehead in a pucker. If he went up there he would miss his story.

  “No, no, I can’t fellows,” he said decisively, rising from the table. “I’ve got to do some work to-night. Another time I’ll join you; you have your good time without me this once.” He pulled away from the retaining hands that would have held him, and ran out into the street, laughing over his shoulder at them, his hat on the back of his head.

  “Well, if he’s got to work, he’s got to work,” admitted “Scrubby,” as the swing doors flapped behind young Strelitz.

  “He’s going to miss the time of his life, though,” put in Fremont. “Come on, let’s go back to the crowd. What’s that you got?”

  “It’s something that flipped out of Con’s pocket, I think, as he pulled out his handkerchief. It’s a cigarette picture.”

  “Some one of Con’s fairies? Let’s have a look.” They crowded together, looking over each other’s shoulders. Suddenly there was an exclamation— “Why, that’s the girl that’s upstairs now, the queen — the one that’s so drunk. See the name; she said her name was Violet.”

  “Con must have known her.”

  “Too bad he had to shake the crowd.”