by Frank Norris
“Of course you know,” she cried, looking at him from over her crumpled handkerchief. “How could you have thought anything else? I told you, didn’t I? I made it plain enough, and you told me that you cared,” she flashed out, “again and again — you know what you made me think — what you gave me to understand, and I — and — oh, what is going to become of me now!” Suddenly she slid both her arms around his neck and turned her face close to his, as loving, as yielding, and yet as absolutely irresistible as when he had first known her. She was wonderfully pretty. He felt that he was weakening. There was something in him, some sensual second self, that the girl evoked at moments such as this; something that was of the animal and would not be gainsaid. He saw her in a false light, knowing that it was a false light, yet willing to be deceived, finding a certain abnormal pleasure in the trickery. The odour of the cheap little sachets and toilet water that she used, mingled with the delicate feminine smell of her hair and neck, was delicious to him.
“Well, now, that will be all right, little girl,” he said, taking her face in both his hands.
“How do you mean all right?” she demanded. “You told me that you loved me.”
“Well, I do love you.”
“As much as ever?”
He hesitated.
“Yes; as much as ever.”
“Say it after me, then.” She was so pretty and so pitiful as she looked at him through her tears, and he was so sorry for her, so loath to hurt her, that he said, half meaning the words:
“I love you.”
“More than anyone else?”
“More than anyone else.”
“Say it all together,” she insisted.
“Well, then, I love you more than anyone else.”
“And so—” she prompted.
“And so what?” he answered, fencing.
“And so you will — will. Oh, don’t make me do it all. When two people love each other more than anyone else, then what?”
He hesitated again. After all, she was very pretty, and she loved him, and he loved her — that is, he —— — But he had gone too far now. And, after all, why not?
“Little girl,” he said suddenly, “I think you’ll have to marry me.”
“Do you mean it — really?” she demanded.
He laughed a note, willing even then to draw back. “Guess I do or I wouldn’t say it.”
“You wouldn’t dare say that to my mother.”
“I’m afraid I wouldn’t take that dare.”
“Well, then,” she said suddenly, rising to her feet. “I dare you to say so right now. We’ll go up to the hotel right away.”
He was in for it now, and so rose with her, saying:
“Come along, then.”
They went up to the hotel and found her mother and father sitting on the porch in front of their rooms.
“Come inside, Ma,” she said as they came up. “I want to speak to you.”
He followed the girl and her mother into the little parlour of their suite. She turned to him:
“Now,” she said, “say it now, just what you said to me.” He smiled a bit, embarrassed. The girl stood to one side, glancing from one to the other. Then he spoke: “This little girl says she loves — me — and I — and — well — we think — we want — we want to be married.”
“Well, dear — me — suz,” exclaimed her mother, and sat down with a gasp. She got up again immediately, calling: “Popper, for the land’s sakes, just come in here and listen to all this.” Her father entered in his shirt sleeves. “If these two children haven’t gone an’ got engaged,” continued her mother. “Now, what have you got to say to that?”
“I got no kick comin’,” admitted the old man; “guess we know the young fellar well enough.”
“Kick! no, of course, we’ve got no kick,” answered his wife.
“But we don’t want any five-year-engagement business about it; sooner the better. Guess that’ll suit you,” she added, turning to him.
“The sooner the better,” he admitted, with a smile. “Well, now, look here,” said her mother. “My mouth is just as dry as a pocket; you go down to the bar and have ’em send up a couple of quart bottles of beer, and come up here and we’ll talk this thing over.”
He went out and started down the porch in the direction of the bar. On the steps that led down into the garden, he paused and looked at his watch, wondering if the barroom would be open as late as this.
Inside the case of his watch was pasted the photograph of the head of a girl. It was not the picture of the girl he had just left. Holding the watch in his hand, turned to the moonlight, he looked at it a long time, very thoughtful.
“I wonder—” he muttered to himself at length.
Then he shut the watch with a snap. “What kind of a mess have I got into now?” he said.
San Francisco Wave, June 27, 1896.
MAN PROPOSES — NO. V
IMMEDIATELY after the collision that night the stranger had backed off, and by the time that the party on board the yacht had pulled themselves together and had begun to look about them after the first blind rush of terror, her lights had disappeared. It was not possible that the steamer which had run them down had sunk. She was no doubt a tramp cattle boat, steel built, huge, well able to take care of herself. She had struck Trefethan’s little thousand-ton yacht a glancing blow under the bilge, and then sheered off into the night as silently and as mysteriously as she had come up. What made matters worse was that the great hawk-beaked clipper bow of the tramp had smashed into the Vikings only seaworthy boat. All this had happened some eighteen hours since. During that time the party aboard the Viking had regarded their situation from three distinct and different points of view. First had come the panic, that blind, dead fear of something terrible and unknown. Then as the day whitened and drew toward noon, and that menacing list to port grew no worse, a feeling of relief and ultimate safety began to spread among them, and Trefethan’s skipper, who had been down in the hold with the carpenter all the morning, came on deck at last and smiled at them and shook hands with Trefethan.
And then, after luncheon, with the wind shifting and coming in vast puffs out of the west and north, and the sea building up higher and higher over the port rail, the vague trouble and the sense of disaster returned and persisted, and they began to remember the smashed boat. This time, however, there was no panic. But there was something in the air, something in the very look of the yacht, and the feel of the rolling deck, and the queer labouring of the bows as she strained to right herself after each roll to port, that did not seem to need explanation. Then came the slow, cold clutch at the heart that tightened and persisted in spite of all effort at deception, first bewilderment, then an instant’s return of the unreasoning terror of the previous night, a moment’s hysterical protest against the inevitable, and last of all a certain grim calmness, an abandoning of all hope. The men and women aboard that pleasure yacht sinking in midocean turned about and faced, as best they might, the Death that reached upward toward them from the crest of every oncoming wave. The skipper had told them at last that it was but a matter of hours. If the sea went down with the sun, they might keep up until the next morning.
They two were under the lee of the wheel house. Some of the women were below in the cabin where Mrs. Trefethan was trying to read the services. Trefethan himself and the skipper were forward setting out rockets and roman candles against the coming of the night. She held on to the nickel hand rail of the house and looked vaguely out across the empty waste of tumbling green water, her hair whipping across her face. He stood close to her, sometimes watching her, and sometimes fixing his eyes upon the distress signal, with its ominous reversed flag that was flying from the peak. For a long time neither had spoken. Then at last:
“I suppose — this is the end,” she said.
“I suppose so,” he answered.
“What should one do?” she went on, looking at him. “There is a best way to meet it but I can’t think. I
t’s all so confused. Death — this kind is — is so huge and so very terrible that anything — yes, anything — one poor human being can do or say seems so pitiful, so inadequate. The last thing one does in life should be — at least, one wants it to be — a thing that is generous, noble, or kind. It may be a false idea, but one has that feeling just the same, and instead of being noble or kind I can only feel bewildered and stunned and confused.” He was looking at her, but he was hardly listening. “It is the end of everything,” he said. “That is why I want you to try and listen to what I am going to say. I know I could not choose a worse opportunity, but the power of choosing is beyond us now. Please listen. Nothing matters now, but — do I really need to tell you? Haven’t you understood? Haven’t you seen all the time how it was with me? How much I loved you? Do you know — it seems a poor thing to say — but if I thought that you cared — that you cared for me — in the least, I wouldn’t mind about this business if we were together and cared. What did I come with Trefethan for? You know it was just to be with you. I love you. Yes, I know it all sounds lame and poor, but I love you, and if things — if this had not happened, I would have asked you to be my wife. Of course, nothing matters now, but when I saw that there was no chance for the yacht I felt that I must let you know. No, not that either, for I am sure you know already, but I felt that I must be sure of you, must know your answer. Tell me. Suppose all had gone well, that we had got in safe and I had asked you. You can tell me now. What difference does anything make now? What would you have said?”
While he spoke, she had been trying to think rapidly. She knew what he was going to say, had been long expecting it. Even before she had sailed, Jack had joked her about this man, declaring that he was “The Other Fellow.” Jack had even wished their engagement should be announced before she had left him for that long summer’s cruise. But she had told him — what he knew already — that he was sure of her, that it could be easily put off until she got back. To reassure him, she had even promised that she would marry him within a month of her return. Dear old Jack, he had not been out of her thoughts once during all the dreadful tension of those last eighteen hours.
But now this man, this “Other Fellow,” who waited there for her answer upon this doomed wreck. What was she to say to him? She liked him, there was no doubt of that. After Jack there was no one else she cared for more. Two days ago she could have had the heart to tell him the bitter truth, almost as hard for her to utter as for him to hear. She had resolutely made up her mind to tell him that she did not care for him as soon as he should speak. There was a long silence.
“I know,” he said, at length, “that I take an unfair advantage of you at such a moment as this. But it is quite impossible for me to tell you how much it would mean for me even in the short time that is left.”
Never in all her life had she felt more pity and sorrow than she did for him at this moment. He was so fine and strong and virile, and she liked him so much in every other way. For her it was veritable anguish to hurt him in this the last moment of his life. In any other circumstances it would have been different.
At once an idea occurred to her. In the confused distorted condition of her mind it seemed as if she had arrived at a solution. Why not tell him that which he wanted to hear, even if she did not mean it? What difference would it make if they were all to die there within the next few hours? Would not this be the kind, noble deed that she had spoken about? Why not, if it would make him happier? Did anything matter now? There was little time to reflect.
“Tell me,” he insisted, “do you care? Would you have been my wife?” She did not answer at once, but put out her hand and laid it upon his as it was gripped whitely over the nickel handrail of the house. He caught it up suddenly in both his own.
“And you mean — ?” he exclaimed.
“If it would make you any happier to know,” she answered, “yes, I do care.”
He put his arm about her neck, and she let him kiss her on the cheek, all wet and cold with the flying spray.
Trefethan and the skipper came running down the deck together with one of the sailors.
The sailor swung himself to the shrouds and ran aloft. Then he paused, sweeping the horizon with a telescope.
“What do you make her out?” shouted the skipper.
“She’s truck down yet, sir,” answered the sailor, “but I think she’s a French liner. She’s heading towards us, by the way the smoke builds.”
San Francisco Wave, July 4, 1896.
LAUTH
I
THE barricade upon the Grand Pont was very silent. On either side of the bridge as in a street, stretched the houses and shops of the money changers, which gave the bridge the name of Pont-au-Change in a later day. They stood there empty and full of dormant echoes; their windows shivered, their doors crushed in, leaving in their place yawning openings like eyes and mouths agape with wonder. Around the piles, which buttressed up their rearward projections, the yellow Seine licked incessantly, with a quickly stilled gurgle at long intervals.
The barricade was drawn across the bridge some eight feet back from the keystone; directly in front of it, at the extremity of the bridge, squatted like a great toad the massive stunted structure of the Grand Chatelet. Its grate was down, its huge steel clamped gates were closed; it barred all advance into the Rue St. Dennis beyond. There held the enemy, to wit, the Prevot-des-Marchands, with the archers of the guard and eight hundred of the King’s gens d’armes. The two redoubts seemed to watch one another. Over the pavement, between the barricade and the Chatelet, all the fighting of the early morning had been done. It was now three o’clock in the afternoon. The vicinity was very still; the street was empty, for by mutual agreement each party had removed its dead of the night before, and no one had been killed in the sortie of the morning.
Lying upon the stones of the street midway between the barricade and the fortress was a red hat; somewhat nearer to the Chatelet lay a heavy white horse, his saddle turned under him, and his bridle in a tangle. A bolt had broken his back, and he was unable to rise, yet he kept lashing out with his hind legs with the monotonous regularity of a machine. His hoofs struck out sparks in the cobbles. He lay with his neck and head bent up against the side of a house, and when from time to time he snorted and threw himself about in violent struggle to get upon his feet, his head pounded against the woodwork; as often as he did this, fragments of glass in the broken windows just over him, loosened by the jar, detached themselves from the lead frames and rattled upon the bare floor within.
The whole neighbourhood was colourless. The sky, the street, the houses, the Chatelet, the river — all were variations of a dull, lifeless brown. The red hat upon the bridge was the only spot of colour that relieved the gray tones of the whole scene. The intermittent struggles of the white horse were the only sounds that broke the silence.
About four o’clock there was a stir. The insurgent leaders in the barricade went to and fro, marshalling their followers, giving them final instructions. The mob had several scaling ladders taken from the Little Chatelet, and picked men were told off for the manoeuvring of each. The rioters had no order, no system of discipline; they relied for success upon the suddenness of their attacks and their superior numbers. The excitement began to grow and spread like an infection. At first a low, hoarse murmur, it swelled by quick degrees to that peculiar and never-to-be-forgotten roar, the roar of an angry mob, than which nothing is more terrible and awe-inspiring in the whole gamut of human sounds. The crowd of men behind the barricade began to surge and fluctuate like seething water. When it would reach a certain pitch of determination it would boil over the wall and roll like a billow toward the towers of the Grand Chatelet.
Meanwhile, fighting had broken out upon the Pont-des-Juifs, a little lower down the river; the absence of houses upon this bridge permitted a full view of the struggle from the Grand Pont. They could see a confused brown mass of combatants swarming around a few central points, and the noise of shouts and
weapons reached their ears.
No command was given, but on a sudden, moved by some mysterious impulse, the insurgent tide reached its flood, poured out of and over the barricade, and halted, roaring and confused, before a solid, ranked, and orderly body of gens d’armes, which had been, as it were, vomited forth from the suddenly opened throat of the Chatelet. The two bodies, surging, bellowing, gesticulating, stood opposed. There was a moment of confusion and hesitation; some were struggling forward, some pushing back; each party could see the whites of their enemies’ eyes. Then someone from among the rioters, but with a movement so quick that Lauth could not see who it was, sprang forward, and as though into a body of water dove, head low and arms up, right into the throng of the soldiers.
In the twinkling of an eye Lauth found himself enveloped in a solid jam of men, wedged in together with a suffocating pressure; so closely packed that the drawing of a weapon or the striking of a blow was out of the question. Each man was pushing with all his might against the one immediately in front of him, as though by sheer force to thrust their enemies backward, and the whole body compressed into the narrow street moving forward like some single great ramming engine in its groove. Oh, the horror of falling now beneath those thousand trampling feet! Lauth could not stop, could not breathe, could not see. Of what was going on in the first ranks he was ignorant; yet, as long as he was moving forward he knew that it was well with his friends. Slowly the advance movement continued; suddenly it stopped; the pressure became appalling; red spots danced and quivered before his eyes. Then he felt a backward impulse, and in spite of himself and his fellows, they were forced back. A tremendous roar burst from the opposing side; but suddenly the pressure was loosened, and like a relaxed spring, the body of the insurgents again leaped forward and again came to a fearful deadlock. This last continued for some little time, and it was then at length that the real fighting began. Craning his neck upward, Lauth could see the flash and play of weapons above the heads of the crowd in the front ranks, like the going and coming of whitecaps on the surface of an angry ocean. At every moment now the pressure from the front was tightened or relaxed; at every moment the insurgent mob, by short oscillations, swayed forward or back.