In the beginning he was Christopher Bellew. By the time he was at
college he had become Chris Bellew. Later, in the Bohemian crowd of
San Francisco, he was called Kit Bellew. And in the end he was known
by no other name than Smoke Bellew. And this history of the evolution
of his name is the history of his evolution. Nor would it have
happened had he not had a fond mother and an iron uncle, and had he not
received a letter from Gillet Bellamy.
"I have just seen a copy of the Billow," Gillet wrote from Paris. "Of
course O'Hara will succeed with it. But he's missing some plays."
(Here followed details in the improvement of the budding society
weekly.) "Go down and see him. Let him think they're your own
suggestions. Don't let him know they're from me. If he does, he'll
make me Paris correspondent, which I can't afford, because I'm getting
real money for my stuff from the big magazines. Above all, don't
forget to make him fire that dub who's doing the musical and art
criticism. Another thing, San Francisco has always had a literature of
her own. But she hasn't any now. Tell him to kick around and get some
gink to turn out a live serial, and to put into it the real romance and
glamour and colour of San Francisco."
And down to the office of the Billow went Kit Bellew faithfully to
instruct. O'Hara listened. O'Hara debated. O'Hara agreed. O'Hara
fired the dub who wrote criticism. Further, O'Hara had a way with
him--the very way that was feared by Gillet in distant Paris. When
O'Hara wanted anything, no friend could deny him. He was sweetly and
compellingly irresistible. Before Kit Bellew could escape from the
office he had become an associate editor, had agreed to write weekly
columns of criticism till some decent pen was found, and had pledged
himself to write a weekly instalment of ten thousand words on the San
Francisco serial--and all this without pay. The Billow wasn't paying
yet, O'Hara explained; and just as convincingly had he exposited that
there was only one man in San Francisco capable of writing the serial,
and that man Kit Bellew.
"Oh, Lord, I'm the gink!" Kit had groaned to himself afterwards on the
narrow stairway.
And thereat had begun his servitude to O'Hara and the insatiable
columns of the Billow. Week after week he held down an office chair,
stood off creditors, wrangled with printers, and turned out twenty-five
thousand words of all sorts weekly. Nor did his labours lighten. The
Billow was ambitious. It went in for illustration. The processes were
expensive. It never had any money to pay Kit Bellew, and by the same
token it was unable to pay for any additions to the office staff.
"This is what comes of being a good fellow," Kit grumbled one day.
"Thank God for good fellows then," O'Hara cried, with tears in his eyes
as he gripped Kit's hand. "You're all that's saved me, Kit. But for
you I'd have gone bust. Just a little longer, old man, and things will
be easier."
"Never," was Kit's plaint. "I see my fate clearly. I shall be here
always."
A little later he thought he saw his way out. Watching his chance, in
O'Hara's presence, he fell over a chair. A few minutes afterwards he
bumped into the corner of the desk, and, with fumbling fingers,
capsized a paste pot.
"Out late?" O'Hara queried.
Kit brushed his eyes with his hands and peered about him anxiously
before replying.
"No, it's not that. It's my eyes. They seem to be going back on me,
that's all."
For several days he continued to fall over and bump into the office
furniture. But O'Hara's heart was not softened.
"I tell you what, Kit," he said one day, "you've got to see an oculist.
There's Doctor Hassdapple. He's a crackerjack. And it won't cost you
anything. We can get it for advertizing. I'll see him myself."
And, true to his word, he dispatched Kit to the oculist.
"There's nothing the matter with your eyes," was the doctor's verdict,
after a lengthy examination. "In fact, your eyes are magnificent--a
pair in a million."
"Don't tell O'Hara," Kit pleaded. "And give me a pair of black
glasses."
The result of this was that O'Hara sympathized and talked glowingly of
the time when the Billow would be on its feet.
Luckily for Kit Bellew, he had his own income. Small it was, compared
with some, yet it was large enough to enable him to belong to several
clubs and maintain a studio in the Latin Quarter. In point of fact,
since his associate editorship, his expenses had decreased
prodigiously. He had no time to spend money. He never saw the studio
any more, nor entertained the local Bohemians with his famous
chafing-dish suppers. Yet he was always broke, for the Billow, in
perennial distress, absorbed his cash as well as his brains. There
were the illustrators who periodically refused to illustrate, the
printers who periodically refused to print, and the office boy who
frequently refused to officiate. At such times O'Hara looked at Kit,
and Kit did the rest.
When the steamship Excelsior arrived from Alaska, bringing the news of
the Klondike strike that set the country mad, Kit made a purely
frivolous proposition.
"Look here, O'Hara," he said. "This gold rush is going to be big--the
days of '49 over again. Suppose I cover it for the Billow? I'll pay my
own expenses."
O'Hara shook his head.
"Can't spare you from the office, Kit. Then there's that serial.
Besides, I saw Jackson not an hour ago. He's starting for the Klondike
to-morrow, and he's agreed to send a weekly letter and photos. I
wouldn't let him get away till he promised. And the beauty of it is,
that it doesn't cost us anything."
The next Kit heard of the Klondike was when he dropped into the club
that afternoon, and, in an alcove off the library, encountered his
uncle.
"Hello, avuncular relative," Kit greeted, sliding into a leather chair
and spreading out his legs. "Won't you join me?"
He ordered a cocktail, but the uncle contented himself with the thin
native claret he invariably drank. He glanced with irritated
disapproval at the cocktail, and on to his nephew's face. Kit saw a
lecture gathering.
"I've only a minute," he announced hastily. "I've got to run and take
in that Keith exhibition at Ellery's and do half a column on it."
"What's the matter with you?" the other demanded. "You're pale. You're
a wreck."
Kit's only answer was a groan.
"I'll have the pleasure of burying you, I can see that."
Kit shook his head sadly.
"No destroying worm, thank you. Cremation for mine."
John Bellew came of the old hard and hardy stock that had crossed the
plains by ox-team in the fifties, and in him was this same hardness and
the hardness of a childhood spent in the conquering of a new land.
"You're not living right, Christopher. I'm ashamed of you."
"Primrose path, eh?" Kit chuckled.
The older man shrugged his shoulders.
"Shake not your gory locks at me, avuncular. I wish it were the
primrose path. But that's all cut out. I have no time."
"Then what in-?"
"Overwork."
John Bellew laughed harshly and incredulously.
"Honest?"
Again came the laughter.
"Men are the products of their environment," Kit proclaimed, pointing
at the other's glass. "Your mirth is thin and bitter as your drink."
"Overwork!" was the sneer. "You never earned a cent in your life."
"You bet I have--only I never got it. I'm earning five hundred a week
right now, and doing four men's work."
"Pictures that won't sell? Or--er--fancy work of some sort? Can you
swim?"
"I used to."
"Sit a horse?"
"I have essayed that adventure."
John Bellew snorted his disgust.
"I'm glad your father didn't live to see you in all the glory of your
gracelessness," he said. "Your father was a man, every inch of him.
Do you get it? A Man. I think he'd have whaled all this musical and
artistic tomfoolery out of you."
"Alas! these degenerate days," Kit sighed.
"I could understand it, and tolerate it," the other went on savagely,
"if you succeeded at it. You've never earned a cent in your life, nor
done a tap of man's work."
"Etchings, and pictures, and fans," Kit contributed unsoothingly.
"You're a dabbler and a failure. What pictures have you painted? Dinky
water-colours and nightmare posters. You've never had one exhibited,
even here in San Francisco-"
"Ah, you forget. There is one in the jinks room of this very club."
"A gross cartoon. Music? Your dear fool of a mother spent hundreds on
lessons. You've dabbled and failed. You've never even earned a
five-dollar piece by accompanying some one at a concert. Your
songs?--rag-time rot that's never printed and that's sung only by a
pack of fake Bohemians."
"I had a book published once--those sonnets, you remember," Kit
interposed meekly.
"What did it cost you?"
"Only a couple of hundred."
"Any other achievements?"
"I had a forest play acted at the summer jinks."
"What did you get for it?"
"Glory."
"And you used to swim, and you have essayed to sit a horse!" John
Bellew set his glass down with unnecessary violence. "What earthly
good are you anyway? You were well put up, yet even at university you
didn't play football. You didn't row. You didn't-"
"I boxed and fenced--some."
"When did you last box?"
"Not since; but I was considered an excellent judge of time and
distance, only I was--er-"
"Go on."
"Considered desultory."
"Lazy, you mean."
"I always imagined it was an euphemism."
"My father, sir, your grandfather, old Isaac Bellew, killed a man with
a blow of his fist when he was sixty-nine years old."
"The man?"
"No, your--you graceless scamp! But you'll never kill a mosquito at
sixty-nine."
"The times have changed, oh, my avuncular. They send men to state
prisons for homicide now."
"Your father rode one hundred and eighty-five miles, without sleeping,
and killed three horses."
"Had he lived to-day, he'd have snored over the course in a Pullman."
The older man was on the verge of choking with wrath, but swallowed it
down and managed to articulate:
"How old are you?"
"I have reason to believe-"
"I know. Twenty-seven. You finished college at twenty-two. You've
dabbled and played and frilled for five years. Before God and man, of
what use are you? When I was your age I had one suit of underclothes.
I was riding with the cattle in Colusa. I was hard as rocks, and I
could sleep on a rock. I lived on jerked beef and bear-meat. I am a
better man physically right now than you are. You weigh about one
hundred and sixty-five. I can throw you right now, or thrash you with
my fists."
"It doesn't take a physical prodigy to mop up cocktails or pink tea,"
Kit murmured deprecatingly. "Don't you see, my avuncular, the times
have changed. Besides, I wasn't brought up right. My dear fool of a
mother-"
John Bellew started angrily.
"-As you described her, was too good to me; kept me in cotton wool and
all the rest. Now, if when I was a youngster I had taken some of those
intensely masculine vacations you go in for--I wonder why you didn't
invite me sometimes? You took Hal and Robbie all over the Sierras and
on that Mexico trip."
"I guess you were too Lord Fauntleroyish."
"Your fault, avuncular, and my dear--er--mother's. How was I to know
the hard? I was only a chee-ild. What was there left but etchings and
pictures and fans? Was it my fault that I never had to sweat?"
The older man looked at his nephew with unconcealed disgust. He had no
patience with levity from the lips of softness.
"Well, I'm going to take another one of those what-you-call masculine
vacations. Suppose I asked you to come along?"
"Rather belated, I must say. Where is it?"
"Hal and Robert are going in to Klondike, and I'm going to see them
across the Pass and down to the Lakes, then return-"
He got no further, for the young man had sprung forward and gripped his
hand.
"My preserver!"
John Bellew was immediately suspicious. He had not dreamed the
invitation would be accepted.
"You don't mean it," he said.
"When do we start?"
"It will be a hard trip. You'll be in the way."
"No, I won't. I'll work. I've learned to work since I went on the
Billow."
"Each man has to take a year's supplies in with him. There'll be such
a jam the Indian packers won't be able to handle it. Hal and Robert
will have to pack their outfits across themselves. That's what I'm
going along for--to help them pack. It you come you'll have to do the
same."
"Watch me."
"You can't pack," was the objection.
"When do we start?"
"To-morrow."
"You needn't take it to yourself that your lecture on the hard has done
it," Kit said, at parting. "I just had to get away, somewhere,
anywhere, from O'Hara."
"Who is O'Hara? A Jap?"
"No; he's an Irishman, and a slave-driver, and my best friend. He's
the editor and proprietor and all-around big squeeze of the Billow.
What he says goes. He can make ghosts walk."
That night Kit Bellew wrote a note to O'Hara.
"It's only a several weeks' vacation," he explained. "You'll have to
get some gink to dope out instalments for that serial. Sorry, old man,
but my health demands it. I'll kick in twice as hard when I get back."