A month had passed since Kenwick became a member of the staff of the
"San Francisco Clarion." The work had been going well, and the perpetual
small excitement of a newspaper office brought back some of the old
thrill that he had known in his college days. But every emotion came in
subdued form now. There was a shadow across his sky, a soft pedal
applied to every emotion. And until this was lifted he resolved to deny
himself a sight of the house on Pine Street.
But during the beginning of his fifth week in the city desire overcame
pride and caution, and late one night he walked up the familiar hill and
looked into one of the lighted windows. There was no one in the room and
the furniture and floors were covered with heavy canvas sheeting
spattered with calcimine. An ugly step-ladder stood directly in front of
the window, partly obstructing his view. He was about to turn away in
bleak despair when the glitter of some small object in a far corner of
the room caught his eye. Peering more intently under the half-drawn
shade he saw that the gleaming thing was a small tinsel ball suspended
from the lowest branch of a tiny Christmas-tree. It was almost New
Year's day now, and the little fir with its brave showing of gilt and
silver had been relegated to a distant corner to make way for the
aggressive progress of the painters. The man at the window, staring in
from the darkness at the drooping glory of the little tree, felt for it
a sudden sense of kinship. And the Christmas-tree stared back at him
with an inarticulate sort of questioning. There was to Kenwick a
terrible sort of patience in its attitude. Torn away from its normal
environment, transplanted suddenly and without warning into surroundings
giddily artificial, and bereft of the roots with which to explore them,
the little fir-tree stood there, holding in its out-stretched arms the
baubles of an unfamiliar and irrelevant existence. He turned away,
maddened by a fury that he did not comprehend. "Anything but that!" he
cried savagely. "Anything but the patience of hopelessness!"
His thoughts were in a whirl, and he was unconscious of the fact that he
was almost running down the slanting pavement. When he became aware of
it he slackened his pace abruptly. He was a fool, he told himself.
"Anybody watching me would size me up for an escaped convict--prowling
around doorsteps at night; sneaking up to windows, like a professional
burglar looking over his territory."
He let himself into his room at the St. Germaine and snapped on the
light. The first thing his eyes fell upon in the bare, prim chamber was
a letter propped against his mirror. It was a yellow envelope and it
bore the dull black insignia of the dead-letter office. There was
something ominous-looking about it. There is always something ominous
about that pale yellow, unstamped envelope that issues, unheralded and
unwanted, from the cemetery of letters. Inside of it was a communication
written upon the St. Germaine stationery and addressed in his own
handwriting to his brother, Everett Kenwick. It had been opened and
sealed again, and across one end something was written. The single word
seemed to leap out at Kenwick with the brutal unexpectedness of a bomb.
He dropped the envelope as though it had stung him and stood gazing down
at it. It stared malignantly back at him, burning a fiery path to his
brain. Up and down the room he strode muttering over and over to himself
that one horrible word: "Deceased! Deceased!"
The walls of the room seemed to be coming closer and closer. He felt as
if he were being smothered. Taking his hat he went out into the hall,
and walked down the five flights of stairs rather than encounter the
elevator-boy. On the way down he decided to send a telegram of inquiry
to the family lawyer in New York. The indelible pencil handed to him by
the girl in the little hotel booth seemed to write the message quite of
its own accord. And there was a calming sort of comfort in the
impersonal manner of the telegraph-operator herself as she counted off
mechanically the frantic words of his query.
As he turned away he was conscious of only one impulse; to be with
somebody. He must have companionship of some sort, any sort, or he would
lose his reason. From the dining-room there drifted out to him the
pleasant din of human voices. He made his way inside and followed the
head-waiter to his accustomed seat beside one of the mirror walls.
The hotel dining-room was full that evening. There was an Elks'
convention in the city and the lobby swarmed with delegates. At his
table Kenwick found three other men, and was pathetically grateful for
their comradeship. Two of them were from Sacramento. The third
introduced himself as Granville Jarvis, late of New Orleans. Kenwick
remembered having seen him several times about the hotel. He had that
quiet, magnetic sort of personality that never comes quite halfway to
meet the casual acquaintance, but that possesses a subtle, indefinable
power that lures others across the intervening territory. "I have
something for you," Granville Jarvis seemed to say. "I have something
that I'll be glad to give you--if you care to come and get it."
The other men talked volubly, including the quartet in their random
conversation. Jarvis was an appreciative listener, an unmistakable
cosmopolite, whose occasional contributions to the table-talk were
keen-edged and subtly humorous. In his speech lingered only a faint
trace of the Southern drawl. Of the three men, his was the personality
which attracted Kenwick. The two Elks finished their dessert hurriedly
and left before the coffee was served. Then Granville Jarvis, glancing
at the haggard face of the young man across the table, ventured the
first personal remark of the hour. "You've scarcely eaten a thing, and
you look all in. I don't want to intrude into your affairs, but is there
anything I can do?"
It was that unexpected kindliness that always proves too much for
overstrung nerves. "I've just had bad news," Kenwick admitted. "It's
rather shaken me up. But you can't do anything, thanks."
"Better take a walk out in the fresh air," Jarvis suggested. "I know how
you feel. It's beastly--when a man is all alone."
"I am alone; that's the damnable part of it. And I've got to somehow get
through the night."
The other man nodded with silent comprehension. "I'll take a stroll with
you if you like, and you don't have to talk."
Kenwick accepted the offer eagerly, and for an hour he and his companion
walked almost in silence. Then Kenwick, still haunted by the specter of
solitude, invited the New Orleans man up to his room. There stretched
out comfortably in two deep chairs, with an ash-tray between them, they
discussed politics, books, and New York. "It's my home town," Kenwick
explained, "but I'm a Westerner by adoption. They say, 'Once a New
Yorker, always a New Yorker,' but it hasn't worked that way with me."
Jarvis smiled. "They say that about Emporia, Kansas, too, and about all
the other towns ranging in between. It's a world-wide colloquialism.
Don't you go back to visit, though?"
"I've been thinking of it," his host replied. And then, despite the
fact that his guest was a complete stranger, perhaps because of that
fact, he felt an overwhelming desire to tell him of his trouble. For
there is a certain security in confiding a sorrow to a casual stranger.
Every care-ridden person in the world has felt the impulse, has been
impelled to it by the realization that there is safety in remoteness.
You will never see the stranger again, or if you do, he will have
forgotten you and your trouble. A transitory interest has its
advantages. It demands nothing in the way of a sequel. It keeps no watch
upon your struggle; it demands no final reckoning. You and your agony
are to the chance acquaintance a short-story, not a serial.
Jarvis was leaning back in his deep chair, one leg dangling carelessly
over the broad arm. His eye-glasses, rimmed with the thinnest thread of
tortoise-shell, gave him a certain intellectuality. Although he was
still in the early thirties there were deep lines about his mouth. He
had lived, Kenwick decided. And having lived, he must know something
about life. Jarvis glanced up suddenly and met his gaze.
"Funny thing, my being here, isn't it?" he said. "Up here in your room,
smoking your cigars, sprawling over your furniture as though I'd known
you always instead of being the merest chance acquaintance."
Mashing the gray end of his cigar into the ash-tray Kenwick made
slow-toned response. "I don't think it's curious. I don't think it's
curious at all because as I look back on my life all the vital things in
it have had casual beginnings. I have a steadily increasing respect for
the small emergencies of life. Whenever I carefully set my stage for
some dramatic event it's sure to turn out a thin affair. The best scenes
are those which are impromptu and carry their own properties."
"That's flattering to a chance acquaintance, but a hard knock at your
friends."
"I'm all for chance acquaintances," Kenwick responded. "Friends have an
uncomfortable habit of failing to show up at the moment of crisis. Just
when you're terribly in need of them, they fall sick or get absorbed in
building a new house, or go to Argentina. And then, before you have time
to grow cynical, along comes somebody that you just bow to on the
street, and he sees you are in trouble and offers a lift. The people who
really owe you something, never pay. They pass the buck to the chance
acquaintance, and nine times out of ten he makes good. Makes things
more interesting that way. After all, life isn't merely a system of
bookkeeping."
Kenwick prided himself upon the fact that he had kept the bitterness out
of his voice, but when Jarvis spoke, this illusion was shattered. "Tough
luck, Mr. Kenwick. As I said before, I don't want to horn in, but I'd be
glad to score another point for the C. A. if it would be of any help to
you, and there's nobody else about."
Kenwick put down his cigar. "To tell the truth, there's nobody about at
all. It happens that during the past year every friend I had has gone,
figuratively speaking, to Argentina. Some of them used to be
particularly good at helping me out with my yarns. I'm a fiction-writer,
you know, and I'm under contract to finish a mystery-story for one of
the magazines. I'm stuck, and it's bothering me a lot. Can't move the
thing a peg. I know that the man who talks about his own stories is as
much of a pest as the man who tells his dreams but if----"
Jarvis had settled down into his chair with a sigh of luxurious content.
"Shoot," he commanded. "It's great stuff being talked to when I'm not
expected to make any replies. What's the name of it?"
"It hasn't any name just yet, but I'll let you be godfather at the
christening. This is just a scenario of the situation, with all the
color and atmosphere left out." He reached over and snapped off the
chandelier light, leaving only the soft glow from the little brass lamp
upon the table.
"The story," he began when he had resumed his seat, "hinges upon the
fortunes of two brothers--or rather the fortunes of one and the
misfortunes of the other. The parents die when the elder of the two is
thirty and the younger almost nineteen. The older brother has married,
and at the death of his mother comes back with his wife, to live at the
old home. But the sister-in-law and younger brother are not congenial,
and the boy, who has ambitions for a professional training decides to go
away from home to a distant university. There is very little opposition
to the plan. For the sister-in-law is in favor of it, and the elder
brother (who is guardian, of course, and a splendid fellow) consents on
the condition that the boy spend his summer vacations at home. He hopes
in this way to keep in touch with him and does.
"In the spring of his senior year, America enters the war, and the boy,
now a man of twenty-three, enlists and in the autumn gets across. He
sees more than six months of action at the front without getting a
scratch. But at the end of that time his nerves go to pieces and he is
sent first to a convalescent hospital in England and then home. There he
finds the old place completely changed under his sister-in-law's régime
and he is so obviously unhappy about it that his brother suggests that
he accept the invitation of an old family friend and spend the winter
with him in his California home. He complies with this plan, the more
eagerly because it gives him an excuse to get back to the environment
which he has grown to love and the associates that he knew in his
college days.
"Without adventure he arrives at the little southern California town,
and is met at the depot by his friend's chauffeur. But on the way out to
the house they meet with an automobile accident that shakes him up
pretty badly and, so far as he can determine from circumstantial
evidence, kills the driver. Stranded alone and injured in an unfamiliar
village, he applies at the first house he comes to for aid. It chances
to be one of those palatial country homes, so plentiful in that region,
which seems to have been built for the exclusive use of caretakers. For
although it is completely and elegantly furnished and bears every
evidence of being tenanted he stays there ill for more than twenty-four
hours, absolutely alone except for the presence of a mysterious woman
who is apparently locked into one of the bedrooms upstairs, and whom he
never sees.
"On the second night he makes a surreptitious escape from this uncanny
prison, without ever having encountered its owner, and by a happy stroke
of chance, makes his way up the coast to San Francisco. Here he plans to
establish himself permanently, look up some of his old associates, and
get in touch with life again. But this scheme is thwarted in a most
unexpected manner. For on the morning of his arrival something happens
that makes chaos of his plans and starts him upon a quest, not into the
future, but into the past. In the station depot he stops long enough to
purchase a newspaper, and----"
Kenwick paused for an instant and glanced at his auditor.
"Go on," Jarvis commanded with that impatient curtness that is the best
assurance of interest.
"He buys a newspaper," the narrator went on. "And from the date on it he
learns that instead of having lost connection with the world for two
days, he has been out of it for almost a year. There are ten months of
his life that he can't account for at all.
"At the library he reads up and discovers that the war is over. From the
newspapers and magazines he picks up the thread of world events and
orients himself with regard to national and local affairs. But to
connect his own past and present proves, as you may suspect, an almost
hopeless task. He sends several telegrams to his own home, all of which
are ignored. A letter to his brother brings, after long delay, the
startling information that he is dead. The message bowls him over
completely. And the more the thing preys upon his mind the more certain
he is that there has been foul play. He begins to be haunted by the
conviction that he is being watched. The only safe course open to him
seems to be to lead as normal and inconspicuous an existence as possible
until he can hear from the family lawyer."
Kenwick broke off suddenly and reached for the ash-tray. "Well," he
said, "what do you think of it?"
Jarvis stirred in his chair. When he spoke he appeared to be returning
rather breathlessly from a long distance. "Great stuff," he commented.
"It seems to have all the ingredients for a best-seller, except one."
"What's that?"
"Well, I don't pose as a critic of literature. But judging from the
novels I've read I should say that the thing it lacks is romance. The
poor devil ought to be in love with somebody, or somebody ought to be in
love with him."
Kenwick's face stiffened. It was apparent that he had not expected this
criticism. And he found himself envying those people who can discuss
their love affairs. But not to his best friend could he have mentioned
Marcreta Morgan's name. "I told you I was just giving you a scenario of
this thing," he reminded his critic. "I'll work up that part of it
later. As a matter of fact there is a woman in it. He proposed to her
before he went into the service and she rejected him."
"And he didn't look her up afterward?"
"Well, he could hardly do that, not until he had accounted for himself.
And especially as she had shown no interest in him whatever while he was
away."
"You never can tell about a woman, though. The fact that he had come
back a pariah and was in trouble might arouse her love."
"No, not her love; her pity perhaps."
"Well, I won't argue with an author. They are supposed to be authorities
on such questions. Go on with the thing. Where _had_ the chap been
during those ten months?"
"I haven't the least idea."
Jarvis brought himself upright. "Why, you outrageous devil!" he cried.
"Getting me all worked up over a story that you can't see the end of
yourself! And how about the family estate? What became of that?"
"I haven't finished plotting the thing yet. That's why I told it to you.
If I had solved all its problems it wouldn't have been necessary to
inflict it upon you."
His guest rose and stretched himself. "Well, I'm afraid I wasn't much
help," he said ruefully. "Fact is, I haven't any creative imagination at
all. I'm the kind of reader that writers of detective yarns love. I'll
swallow anything that's got a little salt on it, and I never guess right
about the ending."
He fumbled in an inside pocket of his coat and drew out a card. "I'd
like to have you return this call some time, Mr. Kenwick. I'm not far
away from you, just two blocks around the corner in the Hartshire
Building. If you care anything for photography, drop around some time
and I'll show you some interesting pictures. They are a harmless hobby
of mine. I fuss around in a laboratory over there most of the time, and
when I'm not there I'm in the dark room."
Kenwick promised to come, and a moment later Granville Jarvis was gone.
Bereft of his sympathetic presence the room seemed overpowering in its
gaunt emptiness. The last two hours of genial companionship were swept
aside as ruthlessly as though they had never been, and Kenwick found
himself back again at that ghastly moment when he had torn open the
yellow envelope. For he was to learn, in the crucial school of
experience, that the sorrow of bereavement is not a permanently
engulfing flood, but that it comes in waves, ebbing away under the
pressure of objective living only to gather volume for a renewed attack.
And in the moment that its victim recovers a staggering strength, it is
upon him again, sweeping aside in one crashing moment the pitiful
defenses of philosophy and faith which the soul has constructed to save
itself from shipwreck.
Until after midnight Kenwick sat at the window waiting for a summons
from the telephone. Then he went to bed and fell into a listening sort
of sleep. But not during that night nor in the days that followed was
there any response to his telegram.