"But," she added, as they started to walk, "we will never know which
one spoke first."
But Condy was already worrying.
"I don't know, I don't know!" he murmured anxiously. "Perhaps we've
done an awful thing. Suppose they aren't happy together after they're
married? I wish we hadn't; I wish we hadn't now. We've been playing a
game of checkers with human souls. We've an awful responsibility.
Suppose he kills her some time?"
"Fiddlesticks, Condy! And, besides, if we've done wrong with our
matrimonial objects, we've offset it by doing well with our red-headed
coincidence. How do you know, you may have 'foiled a villain' with
that telegram--prevented a crime?"
Condy grinned at the recollection of the incident.
"'Fly at once,'" he repeated. "I guess he's flying yet. 'All is
discovered.' I'd give a dollar and a half--"
"If you had it?"
"Oh, well, if I had it--to know just what it was we have discovered."
Suddenly Blix caught his arm.
"Condy, here they come!"
"Who? Who?"
"Our objects, Captain Jack and K. D. B."
"Of course, of course. They couldn't stay. The restaurant shuts up at
eight."
Blix and Condy had been walking slowly in the direction of Pacific
Street, and K. D. B. and her escort soon overtook them going in the
same direction. As they passed, the captain was saying:
"--jumped on my hatches, and says we'll make it an international
affair. That didn't--"
A passing wagon drowned the sound of his voice.
"He was telling her of his adventures!" cried Blix. "Splendid!
Othello and Desdemona. They're getting on."
"Let's follow them!" exclaimed Condy.
"Should we? Wouldn't it be indiscreet?"
"No. We are the arbiters of their fate; we MUST take an interest."
They allowed their objects to get ahead some half a block and then fell
in behind. There was little danger of their being detected. The
captain and K. D. B. were absorbed in each other. She had even taken
his arm.
"They make a fine-looking couple, really," said Blix. "Where do you
suppose they are going? To another restaurant?"
But this was not the case. Blix and Condy followed them as far as
Washington Square, where the Geodetic Survey stone stands, and the
enormous flagstaff; and there in front of a commonplace little house,
two doors above the Russian church with its minarets like inverted
balloons K. D. B. and the captain halted. For a few moments they
conversed in low tones at the gate, then said good-night, K. D. B.
entering the house, the captain bowing with great deference, his hat in
his hand. Then he turned about, glanced once or twice at the house,
set his hat at an angle, and disappeared across the square, whistling a
tune, his chin in the air.
"Very good, excellent, highly respectable," approved Blix; and Condy
himself fetched a sigh of relief.
"Yes, yes, it might have been worse."
"We'll never see them again, our 'Matrimonial Objects,'" said Blix,
"and they'll never know about us; but we have brought them together.
We've started a romance. Yes, I think we've done a good day's work.
And now, Condy, I think we had best be thinking of home ourselves. I'm
just beginning to get most awfully sleepy. What a day we've had!"
A sea fog, or rather THE sea fog--San Francisco's old and inseparable
companion--had gathered by the time they reached the top of the
Washington Street hill. Everything was wet with it. The asphalt was
like varnished ebony. Indistinct masses and huge dim shadows stood for
the houses on either side. From the eucalyptus trees and the palms the
water dripped like rain. Far off oceanward, the fog-horn was lowing
like a lost gigantic bull. The gray bulk of a policeman--the light
from the street lamp reflected in his star--loomed up on the corner as
they descended from the car.
* * * * * * * * * *
Condy had intended to call his diver's story "A Submarine Romance," but
Blix had disapproved.
"It's too 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,'" she had said. "You
want something much more dignified. There is that about you, Condy,
you like to be too showy; you don't know when to stop. But you have
left off red-and-white scarfs, and I am very glad to see you wearing
white shirt-fronts instead of pink ones."
"Yes, yes, I thought it would be quieter," he had answered, as though
the idea had come from him. Blix allowed him to think so.
But "A Victory Over Death," as the story was finally called, was a
success. Condy was too much of a born story-teller not to know when he
had done something distinctly good. When the story came back from the
typewriter's, with the additional strength that print lends to fiction,
and he had read it over, he could not repress a sense of jubilation.
The story rang true.
"Bully, bully!" he muttered between his teeth as he finished the last
paragraph. "It's a corker! If it's rejected everywhere, it's an
out-of-sight yarn just the same."
And there Condy's enthusiasm in the matter began to dwindle. The fine
fire which had sustained him during the story's composition had died
out. He was satisfied with his work. He had written a good story, and
that was the end of it. No doubt he would send it East--to the
Centennial Company--to-morrow or the day after--some time that week.
To mail the manuscript meant quite half an hour's effort. He would
have to buy stamps for return postage; a letter would have to be
written, a large envelope procured, the accurate address ascertained.
For the moment his supplement work demanded his attention. He put off
sending the story from day to day. His interest in it had abated. And
for that matter he soon discovered he had other things to think of.
It had been easy to promise Blix that he would no longer gamble at his
club with the other men of his acquaintance; but it was "death and the
devil," as he told himself, to abide by that promise. More than once
in the fortnight following upon his resolution he had come up to the
little flat on the Washington Street hill as to a place of refuge; and
Blix, always pretending that it was all a huge joke and part of their
good times, had brought out the cards and played with him. But she
knew very well the fight he was making against the enemy, and how hard
it was for him to keep from the round green tables and group of silent
shirt-sleeved men in the card-rooms of his club. She looked forward to
the time when Condy would cease to play even with her. But she was too
sensible and practical a girl to expect him to break a habit of years'
standing in a couple of weeks. The thing would have to be accomplished
little by little. At times she had misgivings as to the honesty of the
course she had adopted. But nowadays, playing as he did with her only,
Condy gambled but two or three evenings in the week, and then not for
more than two hours at a time. Heretofore hardly an evening that had
not seen him at the round table in his club's card-room, whence he had
not risen until long after midnight.
Condy had told young Sargeant that he had "reformed" in the matter of
gambling, and intended to swear off for a few months. Sargeant, like
the thoroughbred he was, never urged him to play after that, and never
spoke of the previous night's game when Condy was about. The other men
of his "set" were no less thoughtful, and, though they rallied him a
little at first upon his defection, soon let the matter drop. Condy
told himself that there were plenty of good people in the world, after
all. Every one seemed conspiring to make it easy for him, and he swore
at himself for a weak-kneed cad.
On a certain Tuesday, about a week after the fishing excursion and the
affair of the "Matrimonial Objects," toward half-past six in the
evening, Condy was in his room, dressing for a dinner engagement.
Young Sargeant's sister had invited him to be one of a party who were
to dine at the University Club, and later on fill a box at a charity
play, given by amateurs at one of the downtown theatres. But as he was
washing his linen shirt-studs with his tooth-brush his eye fell upon a
note, in Laurie Flagg's handwriting, that lay on his writing-desk, and
that he had received some ten days previous. Condy turned cold upon
the instant, hurled the tooth-brush across the room, and dropped into a
chair with a groan of despair. Miss Flagg was giving a theatre party
for the same affair, and he remembered now that he had promised to join
her party as well, forgetting all about the engagement he had made with
Miss Sargeant. It was impossible at this late hour to accept either
one of the young women's invitations without offending the other.
"Well, I won't go to EITHER, that's all," he vociferated aloud to the
opposite wall. "I'll send 'em each a wire, and say that I'm sick or
have got to go down to the office, and--and, by George! I'll go up and
see Blix, and we'll read and make things to eat."
And no sooner had this alternative occurred to him than it appeared too
fascinating to be resisted. A weight seemed removed from his mind.
When it came to that, what amusement would he have at either affair?
"Sit up there with your shirt-front starched like a board," he
blustered, "and your collar throttling you, and smile till your face is
sore, and reel off small talk to a girl whose last name you can't
remember! Do I have any fun, does it do me any good, do I get ideas for
yarns? What do I do it for? I don't know."
While speaking he had been kicking off his tight shoes and such of his
full dress as he had already put on, and with a feeling of enormous
relief turned again to his sack suit of tweed. "Lord, these feel
better!" he exclaimed, as he substituted the loose business suit for
the formal rigidity of his evening dress. It was with a sensation of
positive luxury that he put on a "soft" shirt of blue cheviot and his
tan walking-shoes.
"But no more red scarfs," he declared, as he knotted his black satin
"club" before the mirror. "She WAS right there." He put his cigarettes
in his pocket, caught up his gloves and stick, clapped on his hat, and
started for the Bessemers' flat with a feeling of joyous expectancy he
had not known for days.
Evidently Blix had seen him coming, for she opened the door herself;
and it suited her humor for the moment to treat him as a peddler or
book-agent.
"No, no," she said airily, her head in the air as she held the door.
"No, we don't want any to-day. We HAVE the biography of Abraham
Lincoln. Don't want to subscribe to any Home Book of Art. We're not
artistic; we use drapes in our parlors. Don't want 'The Wives and
Mothers of Great Men.'"
But Condy had noticed a couple of young women on the lower steps of the
adjacent flat, quite within ear-shot, and at once he began in a loud,
harsh voice:
"Well, y' know, we can't wait for our rent forever; I'm only the
collector, and I've nothing to do with repairs. Pay your rent that's
three months overdue, and then--"
But Blix pulled him within the house and clapped to the door.
"Condy RIVERS!" she exclaimed, her cheeks flaming, "those are our
neighbors. They heard every word. What do you suppose they think?"
"Huh! I'd rather have 'em think I was a rent-collector than a
book-agent. You began it. 'Evenin', Miss Lady."
"'Evenin', Mister Man."
But Condy's visit, begun thus gayly, soon developed along much more
serious lines. After supper, while the light still lasted, Blix read
stories to him while he smoked cigarettes in the bay window of the
dining-room. But as soon as the light began to go she put the book
aside, and the two took their accustomed places in the window, and
watched the evening burning itself out over the Golden Gate.
It was just warm enough to have one of the windows opened, and for a
long time after the dusk they sat listening to the vague clamor of the
city, lapsing by degrees, till it settled into a measured, soothing
murmur, like the breathing of some vast monster asleep. Condy's
cigarette was a mere red point in the half-darkness. The smoke drifted
out of the open window in long, blue strata. At his elbow Blix was
leaning forward, looking down upon the darkening, drowsing city, her
round, strong chin propped upon her hand. She was just close enough for
Candy to catch the sweet, delicious feminine perfume that came
indefinitely from her clothes, her hair, her neck. From where Condy
sat he could see the silhouette of her head and shoulders against the
dull golden blur of the open window; her round, high forehead, with the
thick yellow hair rolling back from her temples and ears, her pink,
clean cheeks, her little dark-brown, scintillating eyes, and her firm
red mouth, made all the firmer by the position of her chin upon her
hand. As ever, her round, strong neck was swathed high and tight in
white satin; but between the topmost fold of the satin and the rose of
one small ear-lobe was a little triangle of white skin, that was partly
her neck and partly her cheek, and that Condy knew should be softer
than down, smoother than satin, warm and sweet and redolent as new
apples. Condy imagined himself having the right to lean toward her
there and kiss that little spot upon her neck or her cheek; and as he
fancied it, was surprised to find his breath come suddenly quick, and a
barely perceptible qualm, as of a certain faintness, thrill him to his
finger-tips; and then, he thought, how would it be if he could, without
fear of rebuff, reach out his arm and put it about her trim, firm
waist, and draw her very close to him, till he should feel the satiny
coolness of her smooth cheek against his; till he could sink his face
in the delicious, fragrant confusion of her hair, then turn that face
to his--that face with its strong, calm mouth and sweet, full lips--
the face of this dear young girl of nineteen, and then--
"I say--I--shall we--let's read again. Let's--let's do something."
"Condy, how you frightened me!" exclaimed Blix, with a great start.
"No, listen: I want to talk to you, to tell you something. Papum and I
have been having some very long and serious talks since you were last
here. What do you think, I may go away."
"The deuce you say!" exclaimed Condy, sitting suddenly upright. "Where
to, in Heaven's name?" he added--"and when? and what for?"
"To New York, to study medicine."
There was a silence; then Condy exclaimed, waving his hands at her:
"Oh, go right on! Don't mind me. Little thing like going to New
York--to study medicine. Of course, that happens every day, a mere
detail. I presume you'll go back and forth for your meals?"
Then Blix began to explain. It appeared that she had two aunts, both
sisters of her father--one a widow, the other unmarried. The widow, a
certain Mrs. Kihm, lived in New York, and was wealthy, and had views on
"women's sphere of usefulness." The other, Miss Bessemer, a little old
maid of fifty, Condy had on rare occasions seen at the flat, where
every one called her Aunt Dodd. She lived in that vague region of the
city known as the Mission, where she owned a little property.
From what Blix told him that evening, Condy learned that Mrs. Kihm had
visited the coast a few winters previous and had taken a great fancy to
Blix. Even then she had proposed to Mr. Bessemer to take Blix back to
New York with her, and educate her to some woman's profession; but at
that time the old man would not listen to it. Now it seemed that the
opportunity had again presented itself.
"She's a dear old lady," Blix said; "not a bit strong-minded, as you
would think, and ever so much cleverer than most men. She manages all
her property herself. For the last month she's been writing again to
Papum for me to come on and stay with her three, or four years. She
hasn't a chick nor a child, and she don't entertain or go out any, so
maybe she feels lonesome. Of course if I studied there, Papum wouldn't
think of Aunt Kihm--don't you know--paying for it all. I wouldn't go
if it was that way. But I could stay with her and she could make a
home for me while I was there--if I should study--anything--study
medicine."
"But why!" he exclaimed. "What do you want to study to be a doctor
for? It isn't as though you had to support yourself."
"I know, I know I've not got to support myself. But why shouldn't I
have a profession just like a man--just like you, Condy? You stop and
think. It seemed strange to me when I first thought of it; but I got
thinking about it and talking it over with Papum, and I should LOVE it.
I'd do it, not because I would have to do it, but because it would
interest me. Condy, you know that I'm not a bit strong-minded, and
that I hate a masculine, unfeminine girl as much as you do."
"But a medical college, Blix! You don't know what you are talking
about."
"Yes, I do. There's a college in New York just for women. Aunt Kihm
sent me the prospectus, and it's one of the best in the country. I
don't dream of practicing, you know; at least, I don't think about that
now. But one must have some occupation; and isn't studying medicine,
Condy, better than piano-playing, or French courses, or literary
classes and Browning circles? Oh, I've no patience with that kind of
girl! And look at the chance I have now; and Aunt Kihm is such a dear!
Think, she writes, I could go to and from the college in her coupe
every day, and I would see New York; and just being in a big city like
that is an education."
"You're right, it would be a big thing for you," assented Condy, "and I
like the idea of you studying something. It would be the making of
such a girl as you, Blix."
And then Blix, seeing him thus acquiescent, said:
"Well, it's all settled; Papum and I both wrote last night."
"When are you going?"
"The first week in January."
"Well, that's not so AWFULLY soon. But who will take your place here?
However in the world would your father get along without you--and
Snooky and Howard?"
"Aunt Dodd is going to come."
"Sudden enough," said Condy, "but it IS a great thing for you, Blix,
and I'm mighty glad for you. Your future is all cut out for you now.
Of course your aunt, if she's so fond of you and hasn't any children,
will leave you everything--maybe settle something on you right away;
and you'll marry some one of those New York chaps, and be great big
people before you know it."
"The idea, Condy!" she protested. "No; I'm going there to study
medicine. Oh, you don't know how enthusiastic I am over the idea!
I've bought some of the first-year books already, and have been reading
them. Really, Condy, they are even better than 'Many Inventions.'"
"Wish I could get East," muttered Condy gloomily. Blix forgot her own
good fortune upon the instant.
"I do so wish you COULD, Condy!" she exclaimed. "You are too good for
a Sunday supplement. I know it and YOU know it, and I've heard ever so
many people who have read your stories say the same thing. You could
spend twenty years working as you are now, and at the end what would
you be? Just an assistant editor of a Sunday supplement, and still in
the same place; and worse, you'd come to be contented with that, and
think you were only good for that and nothing better. You've got it in
you, Condy, to be a great story-teller. I believe in you, and I've
every confidence in you. But just so long as you stay here and are
willing to do hack work, just so long you will be a hack writer. You
must break from it; you MUST get away. I know you have a good time
here; but there are so many things better than that and more worth
while. You ought to make up your mind to get East, and work for that
and nothing else. I know you want to go, but wanting isn't enough.
Enthusiasm without energy isn't enough. You have enthusiasm, Condy;
but you MUST have energy. You must be willing to give up things; you
must make up your mind that you will go East, and then set your teeth
together and do it. Oh, I LOVE a man that can do that--make up his
mind to a thing and then put it through!"
Condy watched her as she talked, her brown-black eyes coruscating, her
cheeks glowing, her small hands curled into round pink fists.
"Blix, you're splendid!" he exclaimed; "you're fine! You could put life
into a dead man. You're the kind of girl that are the making of men.
By Jove, you'd back a man up, wouldn't you? You'd stand by him till the
last ditch. Of course," he went on after a pause--"of course I ought
to go to New York. But, Blix, suppose I went--well, then what? It
isn't as though I had any income of my own, or rich aunt. Suppose I
didn't find something to do--and the chances are that I wouldn't for
three or four months--what would I live on in the meanwhile? 'What
would the robin do then, poor thing?' I'm a poor young man, Miss
Bessemer, and I've got to eat. No; my only chance is 'to be
discovered' by a magazine or a publishing house or somebody, and get a
bid of some kind."
"Well, there is the Centennial Company. They have taken an interest in
you, Condy. You must follow that right up and keep your name before
them all the time. Have you sent them 'A Victory Over Death' yet?"
Condy sat down to his eggs and coffee the next morning in the hotel,
harried with a certain sense of depression and disappointment for which
he could assign no cause. Nothing seemed to interest him. The
newspaper was dull. He could look forward to no pleasure in his day's
work; and what was the matter with the sun that morning? As he walked
down to the office he noted no cloud in the sky, but the brightness was
gone from the day. He sat down to his desk and attacked his work, but
"copy" would not come. The sporting editor and his inane jokes
harassed him beyond expression. Just the sight of the clipping
editor's back was an irritation. The office boy was a mere incentive
to profanity. There was no spring in Condy that morning, no
elasticity, none of his natural buoyancy. As the day wore on, his
ennui increased; his luncheon at the club was tasteless, tobacco had
lost its charm. He ordered a cocktail in the wine-room, and put it
aside with a wry face.
The afternoon was one long tedium. At every hour he flung his pencil
down, utterly unable to formulate the next sentence of his article,
and, his hands in his pockets, gazed gloomily out of the window over
the wilderness of roofs--grimy, dirty, ugly roofs that spread out
below. He craved diversion, amusement, excitement. Something there
was that he wanted with all his heart and soul; yet he was quite unable
to say what it was. Something was gone from him to-day that he had
possessed yesterday, and he knew he would not regain it on the morrow,
nor the next day, nor the day after that. What was it? He could not
say. For half an hour he imagined he was going to be sick. His mother
was not to be at home that evening, and Condy dined at his club in the
hopes of finding some one with whom he could go to the theatre later on
in the evening. Sargeant joined him over his coffee and cigarette, but
declined to go with him to the theatre.
"Another game on to-night?" asked Condy.
"I suppose so," admitted the other.
"I guess I'll join you to-night," said Condy. "I've had the blue devils
since morning, and I've got to have something to drive them off."
"Don't let me urge you, you know," returned Sargeant.
"Oh, that's all right!" Condy assured him. "My time's about up,
anyways."
An hour later, just as he, Sargeant, and the other men of their "set"
were in the act of going upstairs to the card-rooms, a hall-boy gave
Condy a note, at that moment brought by a messenger, who was waiting
for an answer. It was from Blix. She wrote:
"Don't you want to come up and play cards with me to-night? We haven't
had a game in over a week?"
"How did she know?" thought Condy to himself--"how could she tell?"
Aloud, he said:
"I can't join you fellows, after all. 'Despatch from the managing
editor.' Some special detail or other."
For the first time since the previous evening Condy felt his spirits
rise as he set off toward the Washington Street hill. But though he
and Blix spent as merry an evening as they remembered in a long time,
his nameless, formless irritation returned upon him almost as soon as
he had bidden her good-night. It stayed with him all through the week,
and told upon his work. As a result, three of his articles were thrown
out by the editor.
"We can't run such rot as that in the paper," the chief had said.
"Can't you give us a story?"
"Oh, I've got a kind of a yarn you can run if you like," answered
Condy, his week's depression at its very lowest.
"A Victory Over Death" was published in the following Sunday's
supplement of the "Times," with illustrations by one of the staff
artists. It attracted not the least attention.
Just before he went to bed the Sunday evening of its appearance, Condy
read it over again for the last time.
"It's a rotten failure," he muttered gloomily as he cast the paper from
him. "Simple drivel. I wonder what Blix will think of it. I wonder
if I amount to a hill of beans. I wonder WHAT she wants to go East
for, anyway."