Condy began his week's work for the supplement behindhand. Naturally
he overslept himself Tuesday morning, and, not having any change in his
pockets, was obliged to walk down to the office. He arrived late, to
find the compositors already fretting for copy. His editor promptly
asked for the whaleback stuff, and Condy was forced into promising it
within a half-hour. It was out of the question to write the article
according to his own idea in so short a time; so Condy faked the stuff
from the exchange clipping, after all. His description of the boat and
his comments upon her mission--taken largely at second hand--served
only to fill space in the paper. They were lacking both in interest
and in point. There were no illustrations. The article was a failure.
But Condy redeemed himself by a witty interview later in the week with
an emotional actress, and by a solemn article compiled after an hour's
reading in Lafcadio Hearn and the Encyclopedia--on the "Industrial
Renaissance in Japan."
But the idea of the diver's story came back to him again and again, and
Thursday night after supper he went down to his club, and hid himself
at a corner desk in the library, and, in a burst of enthusiasm, wrote
out some two thousand words of it. In order to get the "technical
details," upon which he set such store, he consulted the Encyclopedias
again, and "worked in" a number of unfamiliar phrases and odd-sounding
names. He was so proud of the result that he felt he could not wait
until the tale was finished and in print to try its effect. He wanted
appreciation and encouragement upon the instant. He thought of Blix.
"She saw the point in Morrowbie Jukes' description of the slope of the
sandhill," he told himself; and the next moment had resolved to go up
and see her the next evening, and read to her what he had written.
This was on Thursday. All through that week Blix had kept much to
herself, and for the first time in two years had begun to spend every
evening at home. In the morning of each day she helped Victorine with
the upstairs work, making the beds, putting the rooms to rights; or
consulted with the butcher's and grocer's boys at the head of the back
stairs, or chaffered with urbane and smiling Chinamen with their
balanced vegetable baskets. She knew the house and its management at
her fingers' ends, and supervised everything that went forward. Laurie
Flagg coming to call upon her, on Wednesday afternoon, to remonstrate
upon her sudden defection, found her in the act of tacking up a curtain
across the pantry window.
But Blix had the afternoons and evenings almost entirely to herself.
These hours, heretofore taken up with functions and the discharge of
obligations, dragged not a little during the week that followed upon
her declaration of independence. Wednesday afternoon, however, was
warm and fine, and she went to the Park with Snooky. Without looking
for it or even expecting it, Blix came across a little Japanese
tea-house, or rather a tiny Japanese garden, set with almost toy
Japanese houses and pavilions, where tea was served and thin sweetish
wafers for five cents. Blix and Snooky went in. There was nobody
about but the Japanese serving woman. Snooky was in raptures, and Blix
spent a delightful half-hour there, drinking Japanese tea, and feeding
the wafers to the carp and gold-fish in the tiny pond immediately below
where she sat. A Chinaman, evidently of the merchant class, came in,
with a Chinese woman following. As he took his place and the Japanese
girl came up to get his order, Blix overheard him say in English:
"Bring tea for-um leddy."
"He had to speak in English to her," she whispered; "isn't that
splendid! Did you notice that, Snooky?"
On the way home Blix was wondering how she should pass her evening.
She was to have made one of a theatre party where Jack Carter was to be
present. Then she suddenly remembered "Morrowbie Jukes," "The Return
of Imri," and "Krishna Mulvaney." She continued on past her home,
downtown, and returned late for supper with "Plain Tales" and "Many
Inventions."
Toward half-past eight there came a titter of the electric bell. At
the moment Blix was in the upper chamber of the house of Suddhoo,
quaking with exquisite horror at the Seal-cutter's magic. She looked
up quickly as the bell rang. It was not Condy Rivers' touch. She
swiftly reflected that it was Wednesday night, and that she might
probably expect Frank Catlin. He was a fair specimen of the Younger
Set, a sort of modified Jack Carter, and called upon her about once a
fortnight. No doubt he would hint darkly as to his riotous living
during the past few days and refer to his diet of bromo-seltzers. He
would be slangy, familiar, call her by her first name as many times as
he dared, discuss the last dance of the Saturday cotillion, and try to
make her laugh over Carter's drunkenness. Blix knew the type. Catlin
was hardly out of college; but the older girls, even the young women of
twenty-five or six, encouraged and petted these youngsters, driven to
the alternative by the absolute dearth of older men.
"I'm not at home, Victorine," announced Blix, intercepting the maid in
the hall. It chanced that it was not Frank Catlin, but another boy of
precisely the same breed; and Blix returned to Suddhoo, Mrs. Hawksbee,
and Mulvaney with a little cuddling movement of satisfaction.
"There is only one thing I regret about this," she said to Condy Rivers
on the Friday night of that week; "that is, that I never thought of
doing it before." Then suddenly she put up her hand to shield her eyes,
as though from an intense light, turning away her head abruptly.
"I say, what is it? What--what's the matter?" he exclaimed.
Blix peeped at him fearfully from between her fingers. "He's got it
on," she whispered--"that awful crimson scarf."
"Hoh!" said Condy, touching his scarf nervously, "it's--it's very
swell. Is it too loud?" he asked uneasily.
Blix put her fingers in her ears; then:
"Condy, you're a nice, amiable young man, and, if you're not brilliant,
you're good and kind to your aged mother; but your scarfs and neckties
are simply impossible."
"Well, look at this room!" he shouted--they were in the parlor. "You
needn't talk about bad taste. Those drapes--oh-h! those drapes!!
Yellow, s'help me! And those bisque figures that you get with every
pound of tea you buy; and this, this, THIS," he whimpered, waving his
hands at the decorated sewer-pipe with its gilded cat-tails. "Oh,
speak to me of this; speak to me of art; speak to me of aesthetics.
Cat-tails, GILDED. Of course, why not GILDED!" He wrung his hands.
"'Somewhere people are happy. Somewhere little children are at play--'"
"Oh, hush!" she interrupted. "I know it's bad; but we've always had it
so, and I won't have it abused. Let's go into the dining-room, anyway.
We'll sit in there after this. We've always been stiff and constrained
in here."
They went out into the dining-room, and drew up a couple of armchairs
into the bay window, and sat there looking out. Blix had not yet
lighted the gas--it was hardly dark enough for that; and for upward of
ten minutes they sat and watched the evening dropping into night.
Below them the hill fell away so abruptly that the roofs of the nearest
houses were almost at their feet; and beyond these the city tumbled
raggedly down to meet the bay in a confused, vague mass of roofs,
cornices, cupolas, and chimneys, blurred and indistinct in the
twilight, but here and there pierced by a new-lighted street lamp.
Then came the bay. To the east they could see Goat Island, and the
fleet of sailing-ships anchored off the water-front; while directly in
their line of vision the island of Alcatraz, with its triple crown of
forts, started from the surface of the water. Beyond was the Contra
Costa shore, a vast streak of purple against the sky. The eye followed
its sky-line westward till it climbed, climbed, climbed up a long slope
that suddenly leaped heavenward with the crest of Tamalpais, purple and
still, looking always to the sunset like a great watching sphinx.
Then, further on, the slope seemed to break like the breaking of an
advancing billow, and go tumbling, crumbling downward to meet the
Golden Gate--the narrow inlet of green tide-water with its flanking
Presidio. But, further than this, the eye was stayed. Further than
this there was nothing, nothing but a vast, illimitable plain of
green--the open Pacific. But at this hour the color of the scene was
its greatest charm. It glowed with all the sombre radiance of a
cathedral. Everything was seen through a haze of purple--from the low
green hills in the Presidio Reservation to the faint red mass of Mount
Diablo shrugging its rugged shoulder over the Contra Costa foot-hills.
As the evening faded, the west burned down to a dull red glow that
overlaid the blue of the bay with a sheen of ruddy gold. The
foot-hills of the opposite shore, Diablo, and at last even Tamalpais,
resolved themselves in the velvet gray of the sky. Outlines were lost.
Only the masses remained, and these soon began to blend into one
another. The sky, and land, and the city's huddled roofs were one.
Only the sheen of dull gold remained, piercing the single vast mass of
purple like the blade of a golden sword.
"There's a ship!" said Blix in a low tone.
A four-master was dropping quietly through the Golden Gate, swimming on
that sheen of gold, a mere shadow, specked with lights red and green.
In a few moments her bows were shut from sight by the old fort at the
Gate. Then her red light vanished, then the mainmast. She was gone.
By midnight she would be out of sight of land, rolling on the swell of
the lonely ocean under the moon's white eye.
Condy and Blix sat quiet and without speech, not caring to break the
charm of the evening. For quite five minutes they sat thus, watching
the stars light one by one, and the immense gray night settle and
broaden and widen from mountain-top to horizon. They did not feel the
necessity of making conversation. There was no constraint in their
silence now.
Gently, and a little at a time, Condy turned his head and looked at
Blix. There was just light enough to see. She was leaning back in her
chair, her hands fallen into her lap, her head back and a little to one
side. As usual, she was in black; but now it was some sort of
dinner-gown that left her arms and neck bare. The line of the chin and
the throat and the sweet round curve of the shoulder had in it
something indescribable--something that was related to music, and that
eluded speech. Her hair was nothing more than a warm colored mist
without form or outline. The sloe-brown of her little eyes and the
flush of her cheek were mere inferences--like the faintest stars that
are never visible when looked at directly; and it seemed to him that
there was disengaged from her something for which there was no name;
something that appealed to a mysterious sixth sense--a sense that only
stirred at such quiet moments as this; something that was now a dim,
sweet radiance, now a faint aroma, and now again a mere essence, an
influence, an impression--nothing more. It seemed to him as if her
sweet, clean purity and womanliness took a form of its own which his
accustomed senses were too gross to perceive. Only a certain vague
tenderness in him went out to meet and receive this impalpable
presence; a tenderness not for her only, but for all the good things of
the world. Often he had experienced the same feeling when listening to
music. Her sweetness, her goodness, appealed to what he guessed must
be the noblest in him. And she was only nineteen. Suddenly his heart
swelled, the ache came to his throat and the smart to his eyes.
"Blixy," he said, just above a whisper; "Blixy, wish I was a better
sort of chap."
"That's the beginning of being better, isn't it, Condy?" she answered,
turning toward him, her chin on her hand.
"It does seem a pity," he went on, "that when you WANT to do the right,
straight thing, and be clean and fine, that you can't just BE it, and
have it over with. It's the keeping it up that's the grind."
"But it's the keeping it up, Condy, that makes you WORTH BEING GOOD
when you finally get to be good; don't you think? It's the keeping it
up that makes you strong; and then when you get to be good you can make
your goodness count. What's a good man if he's weak?--if his goodness
is better than he is himself? It's the good man who is strong--as
strong as his goodness, and who can make his goodness count--who is the
right kind of man. That's what I think."
"There's something in that, there's something in that." Then, after a
pause: "I played Monday night, after all, Blix, after promising I
wouldn't."
For a time she did not answer, and when she spoke, she spoke quietly:
"Well--I'm glad you told me"; and after a little she added, "Can't you
stop, Condy?"
"Why, yes--yes, of course--I--oh, Blix, sometimes I don't know! You
can't understand! How could a girl understand the power of it? Other
things, I don't say; but when it comes to gambling, there seems to be
another me that does precisely as he chooses, whether I will or not.
But I'm going to do my best. I haven't played since, although there
was plenty of chance. You see, this card business is only a part of
this club life, this city life--like drinking and--other vices of men.
If I didn't have to lead the life, or if I didn't go with that
crowd--Sargeant and the rest of those men--it would be different;
easier, maybe."
"But a man ought to be strong enough to be himself and master of
himself anywhere. Condy, IS there anything in the world better or
finer than a strong man?"
"Not unless it is a good woman, Blix."
"I suppose I look at it from a woman's point of view; but for me a
STRONG man--strong in everything--is the grandest thing in the world.
Women love strong men, Condy. They can forgive a strong man almost
anything."
Condy did not immediately answer, and in the interval an idea occurred
to Blix that at once hardened into a determination. But she said
nothing at the moment. The spell of the sunset was gone and they had
evidently reached the end of that subject of their talk. Blix rose to
light the gas. "Will you promise me one thing, Condy?" she said.
"Don't if you don't want to. But will you promise me that you will
tell me whenever you do play?"
"That I'll promise you!" exclaimed Condy; "and I'll keep that, too."
"And now, let's hear the story--or what you've done of it."
They drew up to the dining-room table with its cover of blue denim
edged with white cord, and Condy unrolled his manuscript and read
through what he had written. She approved, and, as he had foreseen,
"caught on" to every one of his points. He was almost ready to burst
into cheers when she said:
"Any one reading that would almost believe you had been a diver
yourself, or at least had lived with divers. Those little details
count, don't they? Condy, I've an idea. See what you think of it.
Instead of having the story end with his leaving her down there and
going away, do it this way. Let him leave her there, and then go back
after a long time when he gets to be an old man. Fix it up some way to
make it natural. Have him go down to see her and never come up again,
see? And leave the reader in doubt as to whether it was an accident or
whether he did it on purpose."
Condy choked back a whoop and smote his knee. "Blix, you're the eighth
wonder! Magnificent--glorious! Say!"--he fixed her with a glance of
curiosity--"you ought to take to story-writing yourself."
"No, no," she retorted significantly. "I'll just stay with my singing
and be content with that. But remember that story don't go to 'The
Times' supplement. At least not until you have tried it East--with the
Centennial Company, at any rate."
"Well, I guess NOT!" snorted Condy. "Why, this is going to be one of
the best yarns I ever wrote."
A little later on he inquired with sudden concern: "Have you got
anything to eat in the house?"
"I never saw such a man!" declared Blix; "you are always hungry."
"I love to eat," he protested.
"Well, we'll make some creamed oysters; how would that do?" suggested
Blix.
Condy rolled his eyes. "Oh, speak to me of creamed oysters!" Then,
with abrupt solemnity: "Blix, I never in my life had as many oysters as
I could eat."
She made the creamed oysters in the kitchen over the gas-stove, and
they ate them there--Condy sitting on the washboard of the sink, his
plate in his lap.
Condy had a way of catching up in his hands whatever happened to be
nearest him, and, while still continuing to talk, examining it with
apparent deep interest. Just now it happened to be the morning's paper
that Victorine had left on the table. For five minutes Condy had been
picking it up and laying it down, frowning abstractedly at it during
the pauses in the conversation. Suddenly he became aware of what it
was, and instantly read aloud the first item that caught his glance:
"'Personal.--Young woman, thirty-one, good housekeeper, desires
acquaintance respectable middle-aged gentleman. Object, matrimony.
Address K. D. B., this office.'--Hum!" he commented, "nothing equivocal
about K. D. B.; has the heroism to call herself young at thirty-one.
I'll bet she IS a good housekeeper. Right to the point. If K. D. B.
don't see what she wants, she asks for it."
"I wonder," mused Blix, "what kind of people they are who put personals
in the papers. K. D. B., for instance; who is she, and what is she
like?"
"They're not tough," Condy assured her. "I see 'em often down at 'The
Times' office. They are usually a plain, matter-of-fact sort, quite
conscientious, you know; generally middle-aged--or thirty-one; outgrown
their youthful follies and illusions, and want to settle down."
"Read some more," urged Blix. Condy went on.
"'Bachelor, good habits, twenty-five, affectionate disposition,
accomplishments, money, desires acquaintance pretty, refined girl.
Object, matrimony. McB., this office.'"
"No, I don't like McB.," said Blix. "He's too--ornamental, somehow."
"He wouldn't do for K. D. B., would he?"
"Oh, my, no! He'd make her very unhappy."
"'Widower, two children, home-loving disposition, desires introduction
to good, honest woman to make home for his children. Matrimony, if
suitable. B. P. T., Box A, this office.'"
"He's not for K. D. B., that's flat," declared Blix; "the idea,
'matrimony if suitable'--patronizing enough! I know just what kind of
an old man B. P. T. is. I know he would want K. D. B. to warm his
slippers, and would be fretful and grumpy. B. P. T., just an
abbreviation of bumptious. No, he can't have her."
Condy read the next two or three to himself, despite her protests.
"Condy, don't be mean! Read them to--"
"Ah!" he exclaimed, "here's one for K. D. B. Behold, the bridegroom
cometh! Listen."
"'Bachelor, thirty-nine, sober and industrious, retired sea captain,
desires acquaintance respectable young woman, good housekeeper and
manager. Object, matrimony. Address Captain Jack, office this paper."
"I know he's got a wooden leg!" cried Blix. "Can't you just see it
sticking out between the lines? And he lives all alone somewhere down
near the bay with a parrot--"
"And makes a glass of grog every night."
"And smokes a long clay pipe."
"But he chews tobacco."
"Yes, isn't it a pity he will chew that nasty, smelly tobacco? But K.
D. B. will break him of that."
"Oh, is he for K. D. B.?"
"Sent by Providence!" declared Blix. "They were born for each other.
Just see, K. D. B. is a good housekeeper, and wants a respectable
middle-aged gentleman. Captain Jack is a respectable middle-aged
gentleman, and wants a good housekeeper. Oh, and besides, I can read
between the lines! I just feel they would be congenial. If they know
what's best for themselves, they would write to each other right away."
"But wouldn't you love to be there and see them meet!" exclaimed Condy.
"Can't we fix it up some way," said Blix, "to bring these two
together--to help them out in some way?"
Condy smote the table and jumped to his feet.
"Write to 'em!" he shouted. "Write to K. D. B. and sign it Captain
Jack, and write to Captain Jack--"
"And sign it K. D. B.," she interrupted, catching his idea.
"And have him tell her, and her tell him," he added, "to meet at some
place; and then we can go to that place and hide, and watch."
"But how will we know them? How would they know each other? They've
never met."
"We'll tell them both to wear a kind of flower. Then we can know them,
and they can know each other. Of course as soon as they began to talk
they would find out they hadn't written."
"But they wouldn't care."
"No--they want to meet each other. They would be thankful to us for
bringing them together."
"Won't it be the greatest fun?"
"Fun! Why, it will be a regular drama. Only we are running the show,
and everything is real. Let's get at it!"
Blix ran into her room and returned with writing material. Condy
looked at the note-paper critically. "This kind's too swell. K. D. B.
wouldn't use Irish linen--never! Here, this is better, glazed with blue
lines and a flying bird stamped in the corner. Now I'll write for the
Captain, and you write for K. D. B."
"But where will we have them meet?"
This was a point. They considered the Chinese restaurant, the Plaza,
Lotta's fountain, the Mechanics' Library, and even the cathedral over
in the Mexican quarter, but arrived at no decision.
"Did you ever hear of Luna's restaurant?" said Condy. "By Jove, it's
just the place! It's the restaurant where you get Mexican dinners;
right in the heart of the Latin quarter; quiet little old-fashioned
place, below the level of the street, respectable as a tomb. I was
there just once. We'll have 'em meet there at seven in the evening.
No one is there at that hour. The place isn't patronized much, and it
shuts up at eight. You and I can go there and have dinner at six, say,
and watch for them to come."
Then they set to work at their letters.
"Now," said Condy, "we must have these sound perfectly natural, because
if either of these people smell the smallest kind of a rat, you won't
catch 'em. You must write not as YOU would write, but as you think
THEY would. This is an art, a kind of fiction, don't you see? We must
imagine a certain character, and write a letter consistent with that
character. Then it'll sound natural. Now, K. D. B. Well, K. D. B.,
she's prim. Let's have her prim, and proud of using correct, precise,
'elegant' language. I guess she wears mits, and believes in cremation.
Let's have her believe in cremation. And Captain Jack; oh! he's got a
terrible voice, like this, ROW-ROW-ROW see? and whiskers, very fierce;
and he says, 'Belay there!' and 'Avast!' and is very grandiloquent and
orotund and gallant when it comes to women. Oh, he's the devil of a
man when it comes to women, is Captain Jack!"
After countless trials and failures, they evolved the two following
missives, which Condy posted that night:
"Captain Jack.
"SIR:--I have perused with entire satisfaction your personal in 'The
Times.' I should like to know more of you. I read between the lines,
and my perception ineradicably convinces me that you are honest and
respectable. I do not believe I should compromise my self-esteem at
all in granting you an interview. I shall be at Luna's restaurant at
seven precisely, next Monday eve, and will bear a bunch of white
marguerites. Will you likewise, and wear a marguerite in your lapel?
"Trusting this will find you in health, I am
"Respectfully yours,
"K. D. B."
"Miss K. D. B.
"DEAR MISS:--From the modest and retiring description of your qualities
and character, I am led to believe that I will find in you an agreeable
life companion. Will you not accord me the great favor of a personal
interview? I shall esteem it a high honor. I will be at Luna's Mexican
restaurant at seven of the clock P.M. on Monday evening next. May I
express the fervent hope that you also will be there? I name the
locality because it is quiet and respectable. I shall wear a white
marguerite in my buttonhole. Will you also carry a bunch of the same
flower?
"Yours to command,
"CAPTAIN JACK."
So great was her interest in the affair that Blix even went out with
Condy while he mailed the letters in the nearest box, for he was quite
capable of forgetting the whole matter as soon as he was out of the
house.
"Now let it work!" she exclaimed as the iron flap clanked down upon the
disappearing envelopes. But Condy was suddenly smitten with nameless
misgiving. "Now we've done it! now we've done it!" he cried aghast.
"I wish we hadn't. We're in a fine fix now."
Still uneasy, he saw Blix back to the flat, and bade her good-by at the
door.
But before she went to bed that night, Blix sought out her father, who
was still sitting up tinkering with the cuckoo clock, which he had
taken all to pieces under the pretext that it was out of order and went
too fast.
"Papum," said Blix, sitting down on the rug before him, "did you
ever--when you were a pioneer, when you first came out here in the
fifties--did you ever play poker?"
"I--oh, well! it was the only amusement the miners had for a long time."
"I want you to teach me."
The old man let the clock fall into his lap and stared. But Blix
explained her reasons.