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,
“CaptainJack.”
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.