by Frank Norris
“Well, I guess you are, Leander. But now look here: You say the girls would stop smoking if they knew how the men talked about ‘em?”
“Of course. Do you suppose a girl likes to smoke?”
“Well, now, listen here. These men that come to functions drunk — here’s a question for you — do the girls think less of them for it? How do the girls talk about them when they are among themselves?”
“That’s a point to be considered,” said Leander, as we rose to go.
“JUSTIN STURGIS”
III. ‘Falleth from grace and subsequently from a springboard
The other morning I went, rather early, to the “Lure-you-in” Baths for my accustomed plunge. It is really very pleasant to take a swim and a subsequent cup of coffee in this fashion before breakfast. There are but few in the baths at that hour, and the water is almost as fresh as at the beach. As I was coming out I bumped against Leander, who was just going in, dressed in a suit of pale salmon-pink, nearly flesh-colored, and quite flesh tight.
“Neptune rising from the waves,” he exclaimed, with a grin.
“Venus going to the bath,” I retaliated, staring significantly at his wondrous costume.
“Come, now — I say — really, you know,” he exclaimed, all in a breath.
“Wake up!” said I, “it’s morning.” At this, just as the heroine does in novels, he started and passed his hand over his brow.
“I’m a bit absent-minded this morning,” he pleaded.
“Huh!” I snorted; “I’ve often noticed that absence of mind.”
Then Leander said two bad words, and I was fain to punch his head. After this (some time after) we sat down on the end of the springboard, and Leander unburdened himself of his trouble.
“Well,” says he, “you see, it was like this—”
“There were two of us,” I interrupted, “and the other was a girl.”
“Well, as we were saying,” began Leander, “I called on this girl the other night, and—”
“Wait a minute. How well did you know her?”
“One dance, one tea, two functions, and a call.”
“Oh, intimately, then. Remember, this is San Francisco. First name?”
“Yep — at the tea.”
“Yours too?”
“Of course.”
“Fancy calling a man ‘Leander’!”
“Shut up — she says ‘Lee.’”
“Idyllic! and her’s — what’s her’s?”
Leander drew himself up.
“Mr. Sturgis!” frostily.
But Leander could not be effective in that bathing-suit and with those dangling calves. Yet I apologized. “I don’t want to know her confounded name, then.” said I; “but I thought you did not approve of this sort of thing, this — this — this too easy familiarity?”
“No more I do. But I told you I was in trouble.”
“It seems to me we don’t get far along in this story.”
“Well, I called on this girl.”
“You’ve said that three times. Did she let the maid open the door?”
“No, she opened it herself.”
“I thought so. Well, now, we’re inside the house. Do we go into the parlor?”
“Nope — small reception-room at back, one lamp, one chair—”
“What?”
“Wait till I finish — one sofa—”
“Ah, sofa!”
“One—”
“The rest of the inventory is immaterial, irrelevant, and incompetent. The stage is set for a drama. Was it comedy?”
“Tragedy!” said Leander in sepulchral tones.
“One thing more — had the girl come ‘out’?”
“She had — rather far. However, her ‘position is assured.’”
“Hum! But aren’t you rather caddish, Leander, to tell me all this?”
“You don’t know but what I’m lying.”
“I had forgotten that contingency.”
“And if it doesn’t apply to one case it applies to another?”
“True. Vorwartz!”
“Well, I shook hands with her, and—”
“Held her hand?”
“Um-hum.”
“How long?”
“For twenty heart-beats,” grinned Leander.
“Oh, a couple of seconds, then?”
“No; ‘heart hadn’t had time to get started that fast just yet.” Say ten seconds. Then she sat down on the sofa, and I took a seat—”
“Where?”
“I say I took a seat.”
“Where?”
“Well, I took a seat.”
“On the chair?”
“Well-no.”
“You said there was one chair in that small reception-room, and the sofa?”
“Um-hum.”
“Get on with the story.”
“That’s what I did with the girl — famously.”
“Let’s see — the two of you are now sitting on the sofa. The girl is on which side of you?”
“Left.”
“Hum! Leander, where is your left elbow?” Leander grinned.
“It is resting on the back of the sofa, and I am holding my head with my left hand.”
“Of course — and then?”
“Then — if ye have tears, prepare to shed them now — then the lamp began to go out.”
I gasped.
“I offered,” continued Leander, “to turn on the current, but she—”
“Said she loved to sit in the twilight.”
“Now, how did you know that?”
“Guessed it.”
“So we sat—”
“On the sofa.”
“In the twilight.”
“With your elbow on the back of the sofa; then?”
“Well, then, after a while I — I (Leander coughed slightly and crossed his legs) I let my left hand fall, straight.
“Along the sofa-back?”
“Yes.”
“Behind the girl?”
“And she?”
“Never noticed — pretended not to, I mean — and then I moved an eighth of an inch closer, and — well, it was twilight and she was pretty and never noticed — and — and — then — I don’t know how it happened, but somehow — confound it, you know the blooming lamp was out and a fellow’s only a man, y’know, after all, and I — so I — well, I —— —”
“Leander,” said I, in hollow tones, “Leander, you — kissed — that — girl!”
Leander covered his face with his hands.
“Well, that’s a sad case,” said I. Leander became animated at once.
“Hoh! You think that’s all. The worst is yet to come.”
I made as if to fly. Leander caught and pulled me down.
“You misunderstand,” he said, severely; “what do you suppose the girl did?”
“Pretended not to notice,” I suggested.
“No,” wailed Leander; “no, no! she jumped up as if worked by a spring, an’ shook all over an’ began to cry. I say, she did, an’ said I was no gentleman, an’ how dared I take such a liberty with her, an’ no man had ever kissed her before, an’ wasn’t I ashamed of myself, an’-I-don’t-know-what-all-else. Yes, she did, and there I sat like a lump on a log, an’ — well, that’s all, an’ I’ve felt as cheap as six bits ever since. Oh, Lord! what a fool a man is! That I should make such a break — I — I” (he smote his salmon-pink breast) “I of all men who have preached — but this settles it for good and all.”
“Here endeth the first lesson,” said I. “But the girl was to blame. She’s no one to thank but herself. You needn’t cut up rough, Leander.”
“The girl!” said Leander, blankly.
“Think it over now. This was only your second call. She allowed you to treat her with a certain amount of familiarity, opened the door for you herself, saw you alone and not in the parlor, called you — good Lord! — called you ‘Leander’!”
“Lee,” murmured Leander.
“
— let you use her first name, let you hold her hand, never stopped or discouraged your little advances from chair to sofa, and from sofa to sofa-back, and so on; gave you every reason to suppose that you might kiss her without fear and without reproach, and then, when you had—”
“It was awful the way she went on — actually cried!”
“I’m not in the least sorry for her. She was entirely to blame. You were just a beastly natural-born man, acting according to your lights. I’m afraid even the best of us, under similar circumstances—”
“Why, what a muff you’d be not to,” shouted Leander.
“All good girls draw their line somewhere, only some draw it later than others — this girl drew her’s too late.”
“When should she have drawn it, or where?”
“Between the chair and that sofa.”
There was a pause:
“Look here,” exclaimed Leander, turning upon me fiercely, “look here, you mealy-mouthed old grandma, what would you have done, if you had been there? Remember the girl was pretty as one o’clock.” I drew myself up proudly (my bathing-suit was sombre black).
“Ah, yah!” exclaimed Leander (whether he misunderstood me or not, judge you) “you’re too good, Just. There’s such a thing as being too rotten good. Do you know what I heard a girl say the other day, Just? ‘Look here,’ she said, ‘you know that Sturgis man. He’s like Aristides. I’m sick of hearing him called the Just’.”
There was only one thing to do at such a crisis. I did it. I pushed Leander into the water. His yell was drowned in a liquid gurgle, and the salmon-pink silk bathing-suit disappeared beneath the brown waters of the “Lure-you-in” Baths as Leander sank from sight.
Avis au lecteur — He came up again.
“JUSTIN STURGIS”
IV. Showing the plausible mistake of a misguided eastern man
Last night I went over into the Latin Quarter to play “Bocce” with an Italian friend of mine who works in a cigarette factory and is perhaps an anarchist. “Bocce” is a kind of game that involves much rolling of little balls in dirt alleys underneath “wineshops” — a sort of combination of tenpins and golf and marbles. It’s fairish exercise, and vin ordinaire in tin pint measures tastes very good thereafter; also a dish of salad with just a suspicion of garlic, and a quarter of black bread rubbed with an onion. I went to the “Red House” for this wine and salad and bread, and who should I meet there — there of all places — but Leander.
“Heigh-ho,” says he, with a great sigh as we settled ourselves to the barked and blackened table.
“This is a wicked world, Just’.”
“Many an Amen to that,” says I, rubbing onion on my black bread. “When did you find it out?”
“Twenty-three years seven months and ten days ago.”
“You surprise me. What happened twenty-three years seven months and ten days ago, to brand that hateful truth upon your conscience?”
“I was born.”
I had nothing more to say.
“And recent events,” sighed Leander, “have but confirmed my theory.”
“Ah, for instance?”
“A man and a girl—”
“There’s trouble coming.”
“Big trouble; I almost punched his head.”
“There would have been worse trouble if you had.”
“I know that, but noblesse oblige, you know.”
“What did the man do to awaken your nobility?”
“Said things about the girl.”
“Was she a nice girl?”
“Very — and he was a nice man, only—”
“Only what?”
“He misunderstood the girl.”
“San Francisco man?”
“No; Eastern.”
“San Francisco girl?”
“Yes — very much so.”
“That’s so, you said she was a nice girl. But if he was an Eastern man, why was his head to be punched, especially if he was nice?”
“Well, he didn’t know how to gauge a California girl — this girl, anyhow — thought she was fast.”
“Gracious! Did you enlighten him?”
“Tried to but failed.”
“Explain.”
“It was at the club.”
“Yes; well?”
“I had given the Eastern man a two weeks’ card. Some half dozen of us were sitting at the window watching the world go by.”
“You mean you were watching for girls.”
“Well, by and by this girl came along.”
“And?”
“Well, she came by; we all saw her; of course, all of us knew her, but we didn’t say anything, because—”
“Because why, Leander?”
“Well, there’s a certain crowd of fellows in that club — we’re pretty small, though — but somehow we don’t believe in mentioning a girl’s name indiscriminately amongst a lot of men.”
“Hear! Hear!” said I, rapping on the table, “Leander, you must put me up there.”
“Why, you’re one of the directors.”
“Oh, that club! Well, go on. Has the girl got by?”
“Not yet; we sat there looking at her and thinking what a pretty, stylish little girl — she’s very young — she was, and how very jolly and companionable, when this Eastern man ups and out with:
“‘Hello, there’s little so and so.’”
“I say, that was rough; what happened?”
“None of us said a word, and I began to talk about something else, but my Eastern man wouldn’t down; says he: ‘Jolly little piece, that.’
“Says I, mighty stiff, ‘I don’t think the young lady is under discussion!’
‘Well, let’s discuss her,’ says he; ‘she’s the gayest, chicest, jolliest little girl I’ve met between the two oceans; you got lot’s like that out here?”’
“Then what happened?”
“Well, then he rather saw that he’d put his foot in it, and he says, ‘Well — pardon me — but — but she’s fast, isn’t she?’ I say, Just’, you ought to have seen that crowd. Every one of the fellows was just getting ready to say something very politely noble and crushing, and I was wondering if I hadn’t better punch his head without saying anything, when my man says: ‘I’ve every reason to think that I am right’; and do you know what his reasons were, Just’?”
“Think I do; shall I guess?”
“Go ahead.”
“She was one of the kind of girls we spoke of once before — a little cigarette smoking, a little cocktail drinking, and perhaps the man had kissed her.”
“Several times.”
“And he had gauged her according to those things.”
“He’d only known the Eastern girl, you see.”
“I see. There are only two kinds of girl back there. The positively good and the positively bad, and he thought if this particular girl wasn’t one she was the other.”
“Exactly, and the worst of it is he will always be in doubt about her. He went away yesterday. He’d only seen the little girl a few times, and it never came to the point when she could show herself to be the good girl she really was. He never asked her to take supper with him, for instance, and so he’s gone away with the impression that she’s fast, and that we’ve got lots like that out here.”
“It’s rotten,” said I, exasperated.
“And was he altogether to blame?” said Leander, as he rapped for the check.
“JUSTIN STURGIS”
V. Opinions of Justin Sturgis by Leander
One day last week I went out to the park, early, before anyone else was there, and rowed a bit on Stow Lake. Thereafter, being very hungry, I sought out the Japanese tea garden in the clump of trees not far from the museum. It’s really delightful in this quaint, quiet, little tea garden early in the morning, and the beverage is of the very best. I fancied that a cup of very strong, hot tea, with crisp little Japanese cakes, would not be at all amiss. But as I came into the garden who should I find sipping his tea
, smoking his morning cigar and flirting the pages of a novel but my friend, Justin Sturgis.
“Well,” said he, as I dropped down beside him, “where do you come from?”
“Oh,” replied I, “from going to and fro upon the earth and walking up and down in it.”
“What a devil of a fellow you must be, Leander.”
“I’m seeking what I may devour, if you persist in being Biblical,” said I, and I ordered tea and cakes.
I was feeding my cakes to the carp and goldfish, when I noticed that Just’ was looking at me gravely and shaking his head.
“Leander,” says he, “it don’t pay to have opinions.”
“Pooh!” I answered. “Doctors and lawyers get rich on theirs.”
“Yes, but their opinions are asked for; yours are not.”
“Mine ought to be the more welcome, then. You must pay a lawyer for his opinions. I give mine away free, even put a chromo-lithograph in every package.”
“The people you have opinions about don’t like you any better though — drop ’em out, Leander. Just send ’em the chromo.”
“What, now — what makes you talk like this?”
“People — girls — answer you through the medium of the press.”
“Have you been getting any more letters?” said I, uneasily.
“Yes,” said he, “and worse; we have been parodied. Listen, my child, and you shall hear,” he quoted, unfolding a paper. “Listen, and see what you have brought upon yourself.”
This is what Just’ read:
The Opinions of Cassandra Last night I dropped into the C. E. meeting. I am not an active member, but a girl of my spirit naturally likes to see life. I settled myself in a chair, and pulling out a package of tutti-frutti I proceeded to make myself comfortable. I was dropping into a reverie when a rustle of silk skirts caused me to look up. “What,” said I, “you here, of all places, Cassandra?”