by Frank Norris
“Well,” said the mate, getting up and rubbing his knee, “that’s the story. Now you know all about that picture. Will you have a glass of Madeira, miss?”
He got out a bottle of wine bearing the genuine Funchal label and filled three tiny glasses. Travis pushed up her veil, and she and Condy rose.
“This is to HER,” said Travis gravely.
“Thank you, miss,” answered the mate, and the three drank in silence.
As Travis and Condy were going down the gangplank they met the captain of the whaleback coming up.
“I saw you in there talking to old McPherson,” he explained. “Did you get what you wanted from him?”
“More, more!” exclaimed Condy.
“My hand in the fire, he told you that yarn about the girl who was drowned off Trincomalee. Of course, I knew it. The old boy’s wits are turned on that subject. He WILL have it that the body hasn’t decomposed in all this time. Good seaman enough, and a first-class navigator, but he’s soft in that one spot.”
Chapter IV
“Oh, but the STORY of it!” exclaimed Condy as he and Travis regained the wharf— “the story of it! Isn’t it a ripper. Isn’t it a corker! His leaving her that way, and never caring for any other girl afterward.”
“And so original,” she commented, quite as enthusiastic as he.
“Original? — why, it’s new as paint! It’s — it’s — Travis, I’ll make a story out of this that will be copied in every paper between the two oceans.”
They were so interested in the mate’s story that they forgot to take a car, and walked up Clay Street talking it over, suggesting, rearranging, and embellishing; and Condy was astonished and delighted to note that she “caught on” to the idea as quickly as he, and knew the telling points and what details to leave out.
“And I’ll make a bang-up article out of the whaleback herself,” declared Condy. The “idea” of the article had returned to him, and all his enthusiasm with it.
“And look here,” he said, showing her the letter from the Centennial Company. “They turned down my book, but see what they say.
“Quite an unusual order of merit!” cried Travis. “Why, that’s fine! Why didn’t you show this to me before? — and asking you like this to write them a novel of adventure! What MORE can you want? Oh!” she exclaimed impatiently, “that’s so like you; you would tell everybody about your reverses, and carry on about them yourself, but never say a word when you get a little boom. Have you an idea for a thirty-thousand-word novel? Wouldn’t that diver’s story do?”
“No, there’s not enough in that for thirty thousand words. I haven’t any idea at all — never wrote a story of adventure — never wrote anything longer than six thousand words. But I’ll keep my eye open for something that will do. By the way — by Jove! Travis, where are we?”
They looked briskly around them, and the bustling, breezy waterfront faded from their recollections. They were in a world of narrow streets, of galleries and overhanging balconies. Craziest structures, riddled and honeycombed with stairways and passages, shut out the sky, though here and there rose a building of extraordinary richness and most elaborate ornamentation. Color was everywhere. A thousand little notes of green and yellow, of vermilion and sky blue, assaulted the eye. Here it was a doorway, here a vivid glint of cloth or hanging, here a huge scarlet sign lettered with gold, and here a kaleidoscopic effect in the garments of a passer-by. Directly opposite, and two stories above their heads, a sort of huge “loggia,” one blaze of gilding and crude vermilions, opened in the gray cement of a crumbling facade, like a sudden burst of flame. Gigantic pot-bellied lanterns of red and gold swung from its ceiling, while along its railing stood a row of pots — brass, ruddy bronze, and blue porcelain — from which were growing red saffron, purple, pink, and golden tulips without number. The air was vibrant with unfamiliar noises. From one of the balconies near at hand, though unseen, a gong, a pipe, and some kind of stringed instrument wailed and thundered in unison. There was a vast shuffling of padded soles and a continuous interchange of singsong monosyllables, high-pitched and staccato, while from every hand rose the strange aromas of the East — sandalwood, punk, incense, oil, and the smell of mysterious cookery.
“Chinatown!” exclaimed Travis. “I hadn’t the faintest idea we had come up so far. Condy Rivers, do you know what time it is?” She pointed a white kid finger through the doorway of a drug-store, where, amid lacquer boxes and bronze urns of herbs and dried seeds, a round Seth Thomas marked half-past two.
“And your lunch?” cried Condy. “Great heavens! I never thought.”
“It’s too late to get any at home. Never mind; I’ll go somewhere and have a cup of tea.”
“Why not get a package of Chinese tea, now that you’re down here, and take it home with you?”
“Or drink it here.”
“Where?”
“In one of the restaurants. There wouldn’t be a soul there at this hour. I know they serve tea any time. Condy, let’s try it. Wouldn’t it be fun?”
Condy smote his thigh. “Fun!” he vociferated; “fun! It is — by Jove — it would be HEAVENLY! Wait a moment. I’ll tell you what we will do. Tea won’t be enough. We’ll go down to Kearney Street, or to the market, and get some crackers to go with it.”
They hurried back to the California market, a few blocks distant, and bought some crackers and a wedge of new cheese. On the way back to Chinatown Travis stopped at a music store on Kearney Street to get her banjo, which she had left to have its head tightened; and thus burdened they regained the “town,” Condy grieving audibly at having to carry “brown-paper bundles through the street.”
“First catch your restaurant,” said Travis as they turned into Dupont Street with its thronging coolies and swarming, gayly clad children. But they had not far to seek.
“Here you are!” suddenly exclaimed Condy, halting in front of a wholesale tea-house bearing a sign in Chinese and English. “Come on, Travis!”
They ascended two flights of a broad, brass-bound staircase leading up from the ground floor, and gained the restaurant on the top story of the building. As Travis had foretold, it was deserted. She clasped her gloved hands gayly, crying: “Isn’t it delightful! We’ve the whole place to ourselves.”
The restaurant ran the whole depth of the building, and was finished off at either extremity with a gilded balcony, one overlooking Dupont Street and the other the old Plaza. Enormous screens of gilded ebony, intricately carved and set with colored glass panes, divided the room into three, and one of these divisions, in the rear part, from which they could step out upon the balcony that commanded the view of the Plaza, they elected as their own.
It was charming. At their backs they had the huge, fantastic screen, brave and fine with its coat of gold. In front, through the glass-paned valves of a pair of folding doors, they could see the roofs of the houses beyond the Plaza, and beyond these the blue of the bay with its anchored ships, and even beyond this the faint purple of the Oakland shore. On either side of these doors, in deep alcoves, were divans with mattings and head-rests for opium smokers. The walls were painted blue and hung with vertical Cantonese legends in red and silver, while all around the sides of the room small ebony tables alternated with ebony stools, each inlaid with a slab of mottled marble. A chandelier, all a-glitter with tinsel, swung from the centre of the ceiling over a huge round table of mahogany.
And not a soul was there to disturb them. Below them, out there around the old Plaza, the city drummed through its work with a lazy, soothing rumble. Nearer at hand, Chinatown sent up the vague murmur of the life of the Orient. In the direction of the Mexican quarter, the bell of the cathedral knolled at intervals. The sky was without a cloud and the afternoon was warm.
Condy was inarticulate with the joy of what he called their “discovery.” He got up and sat down. He went out into the other room and came back again. He dragged up a couple of the marble-seated stools to the table. He took off his hat, lighted a cigare
tte, let it go out, lighted it again, and burned his fingers. He opened and closed the folding-doors, pushed the table into a better light, and finally brought Travis out upon the balcony to show her the “points of historical interest” in and around the Plaza.
“There’s the Stevenson memorial ship in the centre, see; and right there, where the flagstaff is, General Baker made the funeral oration over the body of Terry. Broderick killed him in a duel — or was it Terry killed Broderick? I forget which. Anyhow, right opposite, where that pawnshop is, is where the Overland stages used to start in ‘49. And every other building that fronts on the Plaza, even this one we’re in now, used to be a gambling-house in bonanza times; and, see, over yonder is the Morgue and the City Prison.”
They turned back into the room, and a great, fat Chinaman brought them tea on Condy’s order. But besides tea, he brought dried almonds, pickled watermelon rinds, candied quince, and “China nuts.”
Travis cut the cheese into cubes with Condy’s penknife, and arranged the cubes in geometric figures upon the crackers.
“But, Condy,” she complained, “why in the world did you get so many crackers? There’s hundreds of them here — enough to feed a regiment. Why didn’t you ask me?”
“Huh! what? what? I don’t know. What’s the matter with the crackers? You were dickering with the cheese, and the man said, ‘How many crackers?’ I didn’t know. I said, ‘Oh, give me a quarter’s worth!’”
“And we couldn’t possibly have eaten ten cents’ worth! Oh, Condy, you are — you are — But never mind, here’s your tea. I wonder if this green, pasty stuff is good.”
They found that it was, but so sweet that it made their tea taste bitter. The watermelon rinds were flat to their Western palates, but the dried almonds were a great success. Then Condy promptly got the hiccoughs from drinking his tea too fast, and fretted up and down the room like a chicken with the pip till Travis grew faint and weak with laughter.
“Oh, well,” he exclaimed aggrievedly— “laugh, that’s right! I don’t laugh. It isn’t such fun when you’ve got ’em yoursel’ — HULP.”
“But sit down, for goodness’ sake! You make me so nervous. You can’t walk them off. Sit down and hold your breath while you count nine. Condy, I’m going to take off my gloves and veil. What do you think?”
“Sure, of course; and I’ll have a cigarette. Do you mind if I smoke?”
“Well, what’s that in your hand now?”
“By Jove, I have been smoking! I — I beg your pardon. I’m a regular stable boy. I’ll throw it away.”
Travis caught his wrist. “What nonsense! I would have told you before if I’d minded.”
“But it’s gone out!” he exclaimed. “I’ll have another.”
As he reached into his pocket for his case, his hand encountered a paper-covered volume, and he drew it out in some perplexity.
“Now, how in the wide world did that book come in my pocket?” he muttered, frowning. “What have I been carrying it around for? I’ve forgotten. I declare I have.”
“What book is it?”
“Hey? book?… h’m,” he murmured, staring.
Travis pounded on the table. “Wake up, Condy, I’m talking to you,” she called.
“It’s ‘Life’s Handicap,’” he answered, with a start; “but why and but why have I—”
“What’s it about? I never heard of it,” she declared.
“You never heard of ‘Life’s Handicap’?” he shouted; “you never heard — you never — you mean to say you never heard — but here, this won’t do. Sit right still, and I’ll read you one of these yarns before you’re another minute older. Any one of them — open the book at random. Here we are— ‘The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes’; and it’s a stem-winder, too.”
And then for the first time in her life, there in that airy, golden Chinese restaurant, in the city from which he hasted to flee, Travis Bessemer fell under the charm of the little spectacled colonial, to whose song we all must listen and to whose pipe we all must dance.
There was one “point” in the story of Jukes’ strange ride that Condy prided himself upon having discovered. So far as he knew, all critics had overlooked it. It is where Jukes is describing the man-trap of the City of the Dead who are alive, and mentions that the slope of the inclosing sandhills was “about forty-five degrees.” Jukes was a civil engineer, and Condy held that it was a capital bit of realism on the part of the author to have him speak of the pitch of the hills in just such technical terms. At first he thought he would call Travis’ attention to this bit of cleverness; but as he read he abruptly changed his mind. He would see if she would find it out for herself. It would be a test of her quickness, he told himself; almost an unfair test, because the point was extremely subtle and could easily be ignored by the most experienced of fiction readers. He read steadily on, working himself into a positive excitement as he approached the passage. He came to it and read it through without any emphasis, almost slurring over it in his eagerness to be perfectly fair. But as he began to read the next paragraph, Travis, her little eyes sparkling with interest and attention, exclaimed:
“Just as an engineer would describe it. Isn’t that good!”
“Glory hallelujah!” cried Condy, slamming down the book joyfully. “Travis, you are one in a thousand!”
“What — what is it?’ she inquired blankly.
“Never mind, never mind; you’re a wonder, that’s all” — and he finished the tale without further explanation. Then, while he smoked another cigarette and she drank another cup of tea, he read to her “The Return of Imri” and the “Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney.” He found her an easy and enrapt convert to the little Englishman’s creed, and for himself tasted the intense delight of revealing to another an appreciation of a literature hitherto ignored.
“Isn’t he strong!” cried Travis. “Just a LITTLE better than Marie Corelli and the Duchess!”
“And to think of having all those stories to read! You haven’t read any of them yet?”
“Not a one. I’ve been reading only the novels we take up in the Wednesday class.”
“Lord!” muttered Condy.
Condy’s spirits had been steadily rising since the incident aboard the whaleback. The exhilaration of the water-front, his delight over the story he was to make out of the old mate’s yarn, Chinatown, the charming unconventionality of their lunch in the Chinese restaurant, the sparkling serenity of the afternoon, and the joy of discovering Travis’ appreciation of his adored and venerated author, had put him into a mood bordering close upon hilarity.
“The next event upon our interesting programme,” he announced, “will be a banjosephine obligato in A-sia minor, by that justly renowned impresario, Signor Conde Tin-pani Rivers, specially engaged for this performance; with a pleasing and pan-hellenic song-and-dance turn by Miss Travis Bessemer, the infant phenomenon, otherwise known as ‘Babby Bessie.’”
“You’re not going to play that banjo here?” said Travis, as he stripped away the canvas covering.
“Order in the gallery!” cried Condy, beginning to tune up. Then in a rapid, professional monotone: “Ladies-and-gentlemen - with - your - kind - permission - I - will - endeavor - to - give - you - an - imitation - of - a - Carolina - coon - song” — and without more ado, singing the words to a rattling, catchy accompaniment, swung off into —
“F — or MY gal’s a high-born leddy,
SHE’S brack, but not too shady.”
He did not sing loud, and the clack and snarl of the banjo carried hardly further than the adjoining room; but there was no one to hear, and, as he went along, even Travis began to hum the words, but at that, Condy stopped abruptly, laid the instrument across his knees with exaggerated solicitude, and said deliberately:
“Travis, you are a good, sweet girl, and what you lack in beauty you make up in amiability, and I’ve no doubt you are kind to your aged father; but you — can — not — sing.”
Travis was cross in a moment,
all the more so because Condy had spoken the exact truth. It was quite impossible for her to carry a tune half a dozen bars without entangling herself in as many different keys. What voice she had was not absolutely bad; but as she persisted in singing in spite of Condy’s guying, he put back his head and began a mournful and lugubrious howling.
“Ho!” she exclaimed, grabbing the banjo from his knees, “if I can’t sing, I can play better than some smart people.”
“Yes, by note,” rallied Condy, as Travis executed a banjo “piece” of no little intricacy. “That’s just like a machine — like a hand-piano.
“Order in the gallery!” she retorted, without pausing in her playing. She finished with a great flourish and gazed at him in triumph, only to find him pretending a profound slumber. “O — o — o!” she remarked between her teeth, “I just hate you, Condy Rivers.”
“There are others,” he returned airily.
“Talk about slang.”
“NOW what will we do?” he cried. “Let’s DO something. Suppose we break something — just for fun.”
Then suddenly the gayety went out of his face, and he started up and clapped his hand to his head with a gasp of dismay. “Great Heavens!” he exclaimed.
“Condy,” cried Travis in alarm, “what is it”’
“The Tea!” he vociferated. “Laurie Flagg’s Tea. I ought to be there — right this minute.”
Travis fetched a sigh of relief. “Is that all?”
“All!” he retorted. “All! Why, it’s past four now — and I’d forgotten every last thing.” Then suddenly falling calm again, and quietly resuming his seat: “I don’t see as it makes any difference. I won’t go, that’s all. Push those almonds here, will you, Miss Lady? — But we aren’t DOING anything,” he exclaimed, with a brusque return of exuberance. “Let’s do things. What’ll we do? Think of something. Is there anything we can break?” Then, without any transition, he vaulted upon the table and began to declaim, with tremendous gestures:
“There once was a beast called an Ounce,
