Blix and Condy went on; on along the narrow road upon the edge of the
salt marshes and tules that lay between the station and the Golden
Gate; on to the Golden Gate itself, and around the old grime-incrusted
fort to the ocean shore, with its reaches of hard, white sand, where
the bowlders lay tumbled and the surf grumbled incessantly.
The world seemed very far away from them here on the shores of the
Pacific, on that first afternoon of the New Year. They were supremely
happy, and they sufficed to themselves. Condy had forgotten all about
the next day, when he must say good-by to Blix.
It did not seem possible, it was not within the bounds of possibility,
that she was to go away--that they two were to be separated. And for
that matter, to-morrow was to-morrow. It was twenty-four hours away.
The present moment was sufficient.
The persistence with which they clung to the immediate moment, their
happiness in living only in the present, had brought about a rather
curious condition of things between them.
In their love for each other there was no thought of marriage; they
were too much occupied with the joy of being together at that
particular instant to think of the future. They loved each other, and
that was enough. They did not look ahead further than the following
day, and then but furtively, and only in order that their morrow's
parting might intensify their happiness of to-day. That New Year's Day
was to be the end of everything. Blix was going; she and Condy would
never see each other again. The thought of marriage--with its certain
responsibilities, its duties, its gravity, its vague, troublous
seriousness, its inevitable disappointments--was even a little
distasteful to them. Their romance had been hitherto without a flaw;
they had been genuinely happy in little things. It was as well that it
should end that day, in all its pristine sweetness, unsullied by a
single bitter moment, undimmed by the cloud of a single disillusion or
disappointment. Whatever chanced to them in later years, they could at
least cherish this one memory of a pure, unselfish affection, young and
unstained and almost without thought of sex, come and gone on the very
threshold of their lives. This was the end, they both understood.
They were glad that it was to be so. They did not even speak again of
writing to each other.
They found once more the little semicircle of blackberry bushes and the
fallen log, half-way up the hill above the shore, and sat there a
while, looking down upon the long green rollers, marching incessantly
toward the beach, and there breaking in a prolonged explosion of solid
green water and flying spume. And their glance followed their
succeeding ranks further and further out to sea, till the multitude
blended into the mass--the vast, green, shifting mass that drew the eye
on and on, to the abrupt, fine line of the horizon.
There was no detail in the scene. There was nothing but the great
reach of the ocean floor, the unbroken plane of blue sky, and the bare
green slope of land--three immensities, gigantic, vast, primordial. It
was no place for trivial ideas and thoughts of little things. The mind
harked back unconsciously to the broad, simpler, basic emotions, the
fundamental instincts of the race. The huge spaces of earth and air
and water carried with them a feeling of kindly but enormous
force--elemental force, fresh, untutored, new, and young. There was
buoyancy in it; a fine, breathless sense of uplifting and exhilaration;
a sensation as of bigness and a return to the homely, human, natural
life, to the primitive old impulses, irresistible, changeless, and
unhampered; old as the ocean, stable as the hills, vast as the
unplumbed depths of the sky.
Condy and Blix sat still, listening, looking, and watching--the
intellect drowsy and numb; the emotions, the senses, all alive and
brimming to the surface. Vaguely they felt the influence of the
moment. Something was preparing for them. From the lowest, untouched
depths in the hearts of each of them something was rising steadily to
consciousness and the light of day. There is no name for such things,
no name for the mystery that spans the interval between man and
woman--the mystery that bears no relation to their love for each other,
but that is something better than love, and whose coming savors of the
miraculous.
The afternoon had waned and the sun had begun to set when Blix rose.
"We should be going, Condy," she told him.
They started up the hill, and Condy said: "I feel as though I had been
somehow asleep with my eyes wide open. What a glorious sunset! It
seems to me as though I were living double every minute; and oh! Blix,
isn't it the greatest thing in the world to love each other as we do?"
They had come to the top of the hill by now, and went on across the
open, breezy downs, all starred with blue iris and wild heliotrope.
Blix drew his arm about her waist, and laid her cheek upon his shoulder
with a little caressing motion.
"And I do love you, dear," she said--"love you with all my heart. And
it's for always, too; I know that. I've been a girl until within the
last three or four days--just a girl, dearest; not very serious, I'm
afraid, and not caring for anything else beyond, what was happening
close around me--don't you understand? But since I've found out how
much I loved you and knew that you loved me--why, everything is changed
for me. I'm not the same, I enjoy things that I never thought of
enjoying before, and I feel so--oh, LARGER, don't you know?--and
stronger, and so much more serious. Just a little while ago I was only
nineteen, but I think, dear, that by loving you I have become--all of a
sudden and without knowing it--a woman."
A little trembling ran through her with the words. She stopped and put
both arms around his neck, her head tipped back, her eyes half closed,
her sweet yellow hair rolling from her forehead. Her whole dear being
radiated with that sweet, clean perfume that seemed to come alike from
her clothes, her neck, her arms, her hair, and mouth--the delicious,
almost divine, feminine aroma that was part of herself.
"You do love me, Condy, don't you, just as I love you?"
Such words as he could think of seemed pitifully inadequate. For
answer he could only hold her the closer. She understood. Her eyes
closed slowly, and her face drew nearer to his. Just above a whisper,
she said:
"I love you, dear!"
"I love you, Blix!"
And they kissed each other then upon the mouth.
Meanwhile the sun had been setting. Such a sunset! The whole world,
the three great spaces of sea and land and sky, were incarnadined with
the glory of it. The ocean floor was a blinding red radiance, the
hills were amethyst, the sky one gigantic opal, and they two seemed
poised in the midst of all the chaotic glory of a primitive world. It
was New Year's Day; the earth was new, the year was new, and their love
was new and strong. Everything was before them. There was no longer
any past, no longer any present. Regrets and memories had no place in
their new world. It was Hope, Hope, Hope, that sang to them and called
to them and smote into life the new keen blood of them.
Then suddenly came the miracle, like the flashing out of a new star,
whose radiance they felt but could not see, like a burst of music whose
harmony they felt but could not hear. And as they stood there alone in
all that simple glory of sky and earth and sea, they knew all in an
instant that THEY WERE FOR EACH OTHER, forever and forever, for better
or for worse, till death should them part. Into their romance, into
their world of little things, their joys of the moment, their happiness
of the hour, had suddenly descended a great and lasting joy, the
happiness of the great, grave issues of life--a happiness so deep, so
intense, as to thrill them with a sense of solemnity and wonder.
Instead of being the end, that New Year's Day was but the
beginning--the beginning of their real romance. All the fine, virile,
masculine energy of him was aroused and rampant. All her sweet, strong
womanliness had been suddenly deepened and broadened. In fine, he had
become a man, and she woman. Youth, life, and the love of man and
woman, the strength of the hills, the depth of the ocean, and the
beauty of the sky at sunset; that was what the New Year had brought to
them.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"It's good-by, dear, isn't it?" said Blix.
But Condy would not have it so.
"No, no," he told her; "no, Blix; no matter how often we separate after
this wonderful New Year's Day, no matter how far we are apart, WE two
shall never, never say good-by."
"Oh, you're right, you're right!" she answered, the tears beginning to
shine in her little dark-brown eyes. "No; so long as we love each
other, nothing matters. There's no such thing as distance for us, is
there? Just think, you will be here on the shores of the Pacific, and I
on the shores of the Atlantic, but the whole continent can't come
between US."
"And we'll be together again, Blix," he said; "and it won't be very
long now. Just give me time--a few years now."
"But so long as we love each other, TIME won't matter either."
"What are the tears for, Blixy?" he asked, pressing his handkerchief to
her cheek.
"Because this is the saddest and happiest day of my life," she
answered. Then she pulled from him with a little laugh, adding: "Look,
Condy, you've dropped your letter. You pulled it out just now with
your handkerchief."
As Condy picked it up, she noted the name of the Centennial Company
upon the corner.
"It's the letter I got with the manuscript of the novel when they sent
it back," he explained.
"What did they say?"
"Oh, the usual thing. I haven't read it yet. Here's what they say."
He opened it and read:
"We return to you herewith the MS. of your novel, 'In Defiance of
Authority,' and regret that our reader does not recommend it as
available for publication at present. We have, however, followed your
work with considerable interest, and have read a story by you, copied
in one of our exchanges, under the title, 'A Victory Over Death,' which
we would have been glad to publish ourselves, had you given us the
chance.
"Would you consider the offer of the assistant editorship of our
QUARTERLY, a literary and critical pamphlet, that we publish in New
York, and with which we presume you are familiar? We do not believe
there would be any difficulty in the matter of financial arrangements.
In case you should decide to come on, we inclose R. R. passes via the
A. T. & S. F., C. & A., and New York Central.
"Very truly,
"THE CENTENNIAL PUBLISHING COMPANY,
"NEW YORK."
The two exchanged glances. But Blix was too excited to speak, and
could only give vent to a little, quivering, choking sigh. The letter
was a veritable god from the machine, the one thing lacking to complete
their happiness.
"I don't know how this looks to you," Condy began, trying to be calm,
"but it seems to me that this is--that this--this--"
But what they said then they could never afterward remember. The
golden haze of the sunset somehow got into their recollection of the
moment, and they could only recall the fact that they had been gayer in
that moment than ever before in all their lives.
Perhaps as gay as they ever were to be again. They began to know the
difference between gayety and happiness. That New Year's Day, that
sunset, marked for them an end and a beginning. It was the end of
their gay, irresponsible, hour-to-hour life of the past three months;
and it was the beginning of a new life, whose possibilities of sorrow
and of trouble, of pleasure and of happiness, were greater than aught
they had yet experienced. They knew this--they felt it instinctively,
as with a common impulse they turned and looked back upon the glowing
earth and sea and sky, the breaking surf, the beach, the distant,
rime-incrusted, ancient fort--all that scene that to their eyes stood
for the dear, free, careless companionship of those last few months.
Their new-found happiness was not without its sadness already. All was
over now; their solitary walks, the long, still evenings in the little
dining-room overlooking the sleeping city, their excursions to Luna's,
their afternoons spent in the golden Chinese balcony, their mornings on
the lake, calm and still and hot. Forever and forever they had said
good-by to that life. Already the sunset was losing its glory.
Then, with one last look, they turned about and set their faces from it
to the new life, to the East, where lay the Nation. Out beyond the
purple bulwarks of the Sierras, far off, the great, grim world went
clashing through its grooves--the world that now they were to know, the
world that called to them, and woke them, and roused them. Their
little gayeties were done; the life of little things was all behind.
Now for the future. The sterner note had struck--work was to be done;
that, too, the New Year had brought to them--work for each of them,
work and the world of men.
For a moment they shrank from it, loth to take the first step beyond
the confines of the garden wherein they had lived so joyously and
learned to love each other; and as they stood there, facing the gray
and darkening Eastern sky, their backs forever turned to the sunset,
Blix drew closer to him, putting her hand in his, looking a little
timidly into his eyes. But his arm was around her, and the strong
young force that looked into her eyes from his gave her courage.
"A happy New Year, dear," she said.
"A very, very happy New Year, Blix," he answered.
[The End]