Fifty Candles (2 page)

Twenty years later, toward the close of 1918, I stepped from the gangplank of a China boat and for the first time in my life set foot in San Francisco. If you have always thought of San Francisco as the bonny merry city, the gay light-hearted city, I advise you not to enter it first when it is wrapped in the gloom of fog. You will suffer a sad disappointment, such as I knew on landing that dark December afternoon.

Heaven knows I ought to have been a happy man that day, fog or no fog, for I was coming back to my own land after four dreary years in China. Birds should have been singing, as the Chinese say, is the topmost branches of my heart; I should have walked with a brisk, elated tread. Instead I crossed the dimly lighted pier shed, where yellow lamps burned wanly overhead, with lagging step, dragging my battered old bags after me. The injustice of the world lay heavy on my heart. For I was young, and I had been unfairly treated. Four years earlier, just graduated from the engineering department of a big technical institution in the East, I had set sail from Vancouver to take charge of a mine in China for Henry Drew. In Shanghai I met the old San Francisco millionaire , a little yellow-faced man with snapping black eyes and long thin hands that must have begun, even in the cradle, to reach and seize and hold.

The mine, he told me frankly, was little better than a joke so far. Its future was up to me. I would encounter many obstacles—inadequate pumping machinery, bribe-hunting officials, superstitious workmen fearful of disturbing the earth dragon as our shaft sank deeper. If I could conquer in spite of everything, accomplish a miracle, and make the mine pay, then in addition to my salary I was to receive a third interest in the property. I suppose he really meant it at the time. He said it more than once. I was very young, with boundless faith. I did not get that part of it in writing.

Through four awful years I labored for Henry Drew down there in Yunnan, the province of the cloudy south. One by one the obstacles gave way and copper began to come from the mine. Now and then ugly disquieting rumors as to the sense of honor of old Drew drifted to me, but I put them resolutely out of my thoughts.

I might seem guilty of boasting if I went into details regarding the results of my work. It is enough to say that I succeeded. Again I met Henry Drew in Shanghai, and he told me he was proud of me. I ventured to remind him of his promise of an interest in the property. He said I must be dreaming. He recalled no such promise. I was appalled. Could such things be? Angrily and at length I told him what I thought of him. He listened in silence.

“I'll accept it,” he said when I paused for breath.

“Accept what?” I asked.

“Your resignation.”

He got it, along with further comments on his character. I went back to my hotel to take up the difficult task of securing accommodations on a homebound boat.

All liners were crowded to suffocation in those days, but I finally managed to get a November sailing. I was informed that I, along with another male passenger, would be put into the cabin of the ship's doctor. Rumor had told me that old Henry Drew was sailing on the same boat, but I was hardly prepared, when I went on board and entered my stateroom, to find him bending over an open bag. Fate in playful mood had selected him as the third member of our party.

He was more upset than I and made a strenuous effort to be assigned to some other room. But with all his money he could not manage it, and we set out on our homeward journey together. I would see him when I came in late at night, lying there in his berth with the light from the deck outside on his yellow face, his eyes closed—but wide awake. I think he was afraid of me. He had reason to be.

Anyhow, I was rid of his slimy presence now, there in that dim pier shed. It was one thing to be thankful for. And already the memory of what he had done to me was fading—for I had suffered a later and deeper wound. In the midst of the trouble with Drew, I had met the most wonderful girl in the world, and only a moment before, on the deck of the China boat, I had said good-bye to her forever.

I left the pier shed and stepped to the sidewalk outside. The air was heavy and wet with fog, the walk damp and slippery; water dripped down from telegraph wires overhead. I saw the blurred lights of the city, heard its ceaseless grumble, the clang of street-cars, the clatter of wheels on cobblestones. Weird mysterious figures slipped by me; strange faces peered into mine and were gone. This was the Embarcadero, the old Barbary Coast famed round the world. Somewhere there, lost in the fog, were its dance-halls, where rovers of the broad Pacific had, in the vanished past, made merry after a sodden fashion. I stood, straining to see.

“Want a taxi, mister?” asked a dim figure at my side.

“If you can find one,” I answered. “Things seem a bit thick.”

“It's the tule-fog,” he told me. “Drifts down every year about this time from the tule-fields between here and Sacramento. Never knew one to stick around so late in the day before. Yes, sir—this is sure unusual.”

In reply to my query he told me that the tule was a sort of bulrush. And little Moses amid his bulrushes could have felt no more lost than I did at that moment.

“See what you can dig up,” I ordered.

“You just wait here,” he said. “It'll take time. Don't go away.”

Again I stood alone amid the strange shadow-shapes that came and went. Somewhere, behind that fog-curtain, the business of the town went on as usual. I made a neat pile of my luggage close to a telegraph pole and sat down to wait. My mind went back to the deck of the boat I had left, to Mary Will Tellfair, that wonderful girl.

And she was wonderful—in courage and in charm. I had met her three weeks before in Shanghai; and it was her dark hour, as it was mine. For Mary Will had come five thousand miles to marry Jack Paige, her sweetheart from a sleepy southern town. She had not seen him for six years, but there had been many letters, and life at home was dull. Then, too, she had been very fond of him once, I judge. So there had been parties, and jokes, and tears, and Mary Will had sailed for Shanghai and her wedding.

It has happened to other girls, no doubt. Young Paige met her boat. He was very drunk, and there was in his face evidence of a fall to depths unspeakable. Poor Mary Will saw at the first frightened look that the boy she had known and loved was gone forever. Many of the other girls—helpless, without money, alone—marry the men and make the best of it. Not Mary Will. Helpless, without money, alone, she was still brave enough to hold her head high and refuse.

Henry Drew had heard of her plight and, whatever his motive, had done a kind act for once. He engaged Mary, Will as companion for his wife, and on the boat coming over the girl and Mrs. Drew had occupied a cabin with a frail little missionary woman. For husbands and wives were ruthlessly torn apart, that each stateroom might have its full quota of three. As I sat there with the fog dripping down upon me I pictured again our good-bye on the deck, where we had been lined up to await the port doctor and be frisked, as a frivolous ship's officer put it, for symptoms of yellow fever. By chance—more or less—I was waiting beside Mary Will.

“Too bad you can't see the harbor,” said Mary Will. “Only six weeks ago I sailed away, and the sun was on it. It's beautiful. But this silly old fog—”

“Never mind the fog,” I told her. “Please listen to me. What are you going to do? Where are you going? Home?”

“Home!” A bitter look came into her clear blue eyes. “I can't go home.”

“Why not?”

“Don't you understand? There were showers—showers for the bride-to-be. And I kissed everybody good-bye and hurried away to be married. Can I go back husbandless?”

“You don't have to. I told you last night—”

“I know. In the moonlight, with the band on the boat deck playing a waltz. You said you loved me—”

“And I do.”

She shook her head.

“You pity me. And it seems like love to you. But pity—pity isn't love.”

Confound the girl! This was her story, and she seemed determined to stick to it.

“Ah, yes,” said I scornfully. “What pearls of wisdom fall from youthful lips.”

“You'll discover how very wise I was in time.”

“Perhaps. But you haven't answered my question. What are you going to do? You can't stay on with the Drews—that little rotter—”

“I know. He hasn't been nice to you. But he has been nice to me—very.”

“No man could help but be. And it hasn't done that young wife of his any harm to have a companion like you for a change. But it's not a job I care to see held by the girl I mean to marry.”

“If you mean me—I shan't go on being a companion. Mr. Drew has promised to find me a position in San Francisco. They say it's a charming city.”

“I don't like to see you mixed up with Drew and his kind,” I protested. “I'll not leave San Francisco until you do.”

“Then you're going to settle down here. How nice!”

I could have slapped her. She was that sort of stubborn delightful child, and loving her was often that sort of emotion. The port doctor had reached her now in his passage down the line, and he stared firmly into her eyes, hunting symptoms. As he stared his hard face softened into a rather happy smile. I could have told him that looking into Mary Will's eyes had always that effect.

“You're all right,” he laughed, then turned and glared at me as though he dared me to make public his lapse into a human being. He went on down the line. After him came Parker, the ship's doctor, with a wink at me, as much as to say: “Red tape. What a bore!”

The foghorn was making a frightful din, and the scene was all confusion, impatience. It was no moment for what I was about to say. But I was desperate; this was my last chance.

“Turn round, Mary Will.” I swung her about and pointed off into the fog. “Over there—don't you see?”

“See what?” she gasped.

“How I love you,” I said in her ear, triumphing over the foghorn and the curiosity of the woman just beyond her: “With all my heart and soul, my dear. I'm an engineer—not up on sentimental stuff—can't talk it—just feel it. Give me a chance to prove how much I care. Don't you think that in time—”

She shook her head.

“What is it? Are you still fond of that other boy—the poor fellow in Shanghai?”

“No,” she answered seriously. “It isn't that. I've just sort of buried him away off in a corner of my heart. And I'm not sure that I ever did care as much as I should. On the boat coming out—I had doubts of myself—but—”

“But what?”

“Oh—can't you see? It's just as that old dowager said it would be.”

“What old dowager?”

“That sharp-tongued Englishwoman who gave the dinner in Shanghai. She saw you talking and laughing with me, and she said: ‘I fancy he'll be just like all the other boys who are shut up in China for a few years. They think themselves madly in love with the first white girl they meet who isn't positively deformed.'”

“The old cat!”

“It was catty—but it was true. It's exactly what has happened. That's why I couldn't be so frightfully unfair to you as to seize you when this madness is on you and bind you to me for life—before you have seen your own country again, where there are millions of girls nicer than I am.”

“Rot.”

“No, it isn't. Go ashore and look them over. The streets of San Francisco are filled with them. Look them over from the Golden Gate to Fifth Avenue.”

“And if, after I've looked them all over, I still come back to you? Then what?”

“Then you will be a fool,” laughed Mary Will.

The voice of the ship's doctor announced the end of inspection, and at once the deck was alive with an excited throng, all seeking to get somewhere else immediately. Carlotta Drew passed and called to Mary Will.

The girl held out her hand. “Good-bye,” she said.

“Good-bye?” I took her hand perplexed. “Why do you say that? Surely we're to meet again soon.”

“Why should we?” she asked.

That hurt me. I dropped her hand. “Ah, yes, why should we?” I repeated coldly.

“No reason at all. Good-bye and good luck!” And Mary Will was gone.

As I sat now on my battered bags, leaning against a very damp pole in the middle of a very damp fog, it occurred to me that I had been wrong in permitting myself that moment of annoyance. I should have taken, instead, a firm uncompromising attitude. Too late now, however. She had gone from me, into the mystery of the fog. I would never see her again.

A tall slender figure loaded with baggage came and stood on the curb not two feet from where I waited. The light that struggled down from a lamp overhead revealed in blurred but unmistakable outline the flat expressionless face of Hung Chin-chung, old Henry Drew's faithful body servant. I turned, for the master could not be far behind, and sure enough the fog disgorged the dapper figure of the little millionaire. He ran smack into me.

“Why, it's young Winthrop,” he cried, peering into my face. “Hello, son—I was looking for you. We've had some pretty harsh words—but there's no real reason why we shouldn't part as friends. Now, is there?”

His tone was wistful, but it made no appeal to me. No real reason? The presumptuous rascal! However, I was in no mood to quarrel.

“I'm waiting for a taxi,” I said inanely,

“A taxi? You'll never get one in this fog.” I suppose it was the truth. “Let us give you a lift to your hotel, my boy. We'll be delighted.”

I was naturally averse to accepting favors of this man, but at that instant his wife and Mary Will emerged into our little circle of light, and I smiled at the idea of riding uptown with Mary Will, who had just dismissed me for all time. A big limousine with a light burning faintly inside slipped up to the curb, and Hung was helping the women to enter.

“Come on, my boy,” pleaded old Drew.

“All right,” I answered rather ungraciously, and jumped in.

Drew followed, Hung piled my bags somewhere in back, and we crept off into the fog.

“Taking Mr. Winthrop to his hotel,” explained Drew.

“How nice,” his wife said in her cold hard voice. I looked toward Mary Will. She seemed unaware of my presence.