Fifty Candles (1926)/Chapter 3
III
A few minutes before seven I came down-stairs into the bright lobby of my hotel. Parker, the ship’s doctor, whose cabin Drew and I had shared on the way across, was lolling in a chair. He rose and came toward me, a handsome devil in evening clothes—indubitably handsome, indubitably a devil.
“All dolled up,” he said.
“Going to a birthday party,” I answered.
“Great Scott! You don’t mean you’re invited to old Drew’s shindig?”
“Why shouldn’t I be invited?” I asked.
“I know—but you and the old man—deadly enemies.”
“Not at all. He rather likes me. Found me so easy to flimflam—my type appeals tohim. He pleaded with me to come.”
“But you? You don’t like him? Yet you accept. Ah, yes—I was forgetting—the little southern girl”
“My reasons,” I said hotly, “happen to be my own affair.”
“Naturally.” His tone was conciliatory. “Come and have a drink. No? I am going to the party myself.”
I had been wondering—his fame as a philanderer was international. Was this affair with Carlotta Drew anything more than a passing flurry to relieve the tedium of another trip across? Here was the answer. Evidently it was.
“Fearful bore,” he went on. “But Carlotta insisted. I’d do anything for Carlotta Drew. Wonderful woman!”
“Think so?” said I.
“Don’t you?” he asked.
“In the presence of an expert,” said I, “I would hesitate to express an opinion.”
He laughed.
“Er—you know something of old Drew’s affairs,” he ventured. “Must be a very rich man?”
“Must be,” said I.
“That mine you worked in? Big money maker?”
“Big money maker.” I repeated his words intentionally. He was frank, at any rate. What cruel thoughts were stirring behind those green eyes? Henry Drew out of the way, Carlotta with the added charm of millions———
“But he’s only fifty,” I said as unkindly as I could.
“Only fifty?”
“Sure—the party,” I explained.
Parker shook his head.
“Looks more than fifty to me,” he said quite hopefully.
Hung Chin-chung, a strange figure in that Occidental lobby, stood suddenly before me, bowing low. Drew’s car was waiting, he said.
“Want to ride up with me?” I inquired of Parker.
“Er—no, thanks. I’ll drop in later. Have some matters to attend to. So long!”
He headed for the bar, where the matters no doubt awaited his attention. I accompanied the Chinaman out of the lobby and once more entered the Drew limousine. Followed the faint whir of an expensive motor, and again we were abroad in the fog-bound street.
The traffic so much in evidence at five o’clock was no more, the grumbling symphony was stilled, and only the doubtful honk-honk of an occasional automobile broke the silence. Inside the car the light was no longer on, and I sat in a most oppressive darkness. Almost immediately we began to ascend a very steep incline. Nob Hill, no doubt, famous in the history of this romantic, climbing town. Eagerly I pressed my face against the pane beside me, but the tule-fog still blotted out the city of my dreams.
At one corner we grazed the side of some passing vehicle, and loud curses filled the air. I found the switch and flooded the interior of the car with light. It fell on the gray upholstery, on the silver handles of the doors. I was reminded of something—something unpleasant. Ah, yes—a coffin. I switched off the light again.
After a ride of some twenty minutes we drew up beside the curb, and Hung stood waiting for me at the door. Back of him was vaguely outlined a monster of a house, with yellow lights fighting their way through the tule-fog from many windows.
“The end of our journey,” said Hung. “If you will deign to come, please.”
I followed him up many steps. Henry Drew must have heard us, for he was waiting in the doorway.
“Fine! Fine!” cried the old man. “Delighted to see you. Come right in. The house is a bit musty—been closed for a long time.”
It was musty. Though I came from the clammy gloom of a tule-fog, though many lights were blazing inside, I was struck at once with a feeling of chill and staleness and age. Open or closed, I thought, this house would always be musty, with the accumulation of many years. For it was very old, it had escaped the fire, and here it stood with its memories, waiting for the wrecker, Time, to write Finis to its history.
“Hung—take Mr. Winthrop’s hat and coat.” Old Drew seized me almost affectionately by the arm. “You come with me.” He was like a small boy celebrating his first real birthday party. He led me into a library lined with dusty books. From the walls, San Francisco Drews, blond and brunette, lean and fat, old and young, looked down on us. “Take that chair by the fire, my boy.”
I sat down. There was something depressing in the air, there was much that was pathetic about Henry Drew. His birthday! Who gave a hang? Certainly not his wife, who looked at him through eyes that seemed to be counting his years with ever-increasing hate; nor, probably, the son by his first marriage, whom I had never seen, but who, according to report, hated him too.
He went over and held those cold transparent hands of his up to the fire. I noticed that they trembled slightly.
“The girls will be down soon,” he said. “Before they come I want to tell you that I’ve been thinking over our little matter———”
“Please,” I interrupted. “I’m sure your party will go off much more pleasantly if there is no mention of that.” I paused. “My lawyer will call on you to-morrow.”
The shadow of a smile crossed his face. And well he might smile, for he knew that I was bluffing; I had no lawyer; I had, in fact, no case against him.
“You’re quite right, my boy,” he said. “To-night is no time for.business. Let us eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow—to-morrow I see your lawyer.”
He laughed outright now, an unkind sneering laugh, and once more hatred of him blazed in my heart. Why had I been such a fool as to come?
The door-bell rang, a loud peal, and Drew ran to the hall, where Hung Chin-chung was already opening the outer door. Through the curtains I saw a huge rosy-cheeked policeman outlined against the fog.
“Hello, Mr. Drew,” he said cheerily.
“Hello, Riley,” cried the old man. Running forward he seized the policeman’s hand. “I’m back again.”
“And glad I am to see you,” said Riley. “I knew the house was closed, and seein’ all the lights I thought Id look in and make sure was everything O. K.”
“We landed late to-day,” replied Drew. “Everything is certainly O. K. You’ll see plenty of lights here from now on.”
He stood on the threshold, chatting gaily with the patrolman. Hung Chin-chung came into the library where I sat, and taking up a log stooped to put it on the fire. The flicker of light played on his face, old, lined, yellow like a lemon left too long in the ice-chest, and glinted in those dark inscrutable little eyes.
Drew sent Riley on his way with a genial word and returned to the library. Hung stood awaiting him, evidently about to speak.
“Yes, yes—what is it?” Drew asked.
“With your permission,” said Hung, “I will go to my room.”
“All right,” Drew answered. “But be back here in half an hour. You’re to serve dinner, you know.”
“I will serve it,” said Hung, and went noiselessly out.
“What was I saying?” Drew turned to me. “Ah, yes—the girls—the girls will be down in a minute. Bless them! That little Mary Will—like a breath of springtime from her own mountains. Ah, youth—youth! All I have gained, all that I have—I’d swap it to-night for youth. My boy, you don’t know what you’ve got.” .
I stared at him. “He’ll steal your shirt, and you’ll beg him to take the pants too.” Thus inelegantly had old Drew been described to me in China, and there was some truth in it, surely. Where was my hatred of a moment ago? Confound it, there was something likable about him after all.
I stared at him no longer, for now outside the curtains I could see Mary Will coming down the stairs. Many beautiful women had come down those stairs in the days when social history was making in that old house on Nob Hill—women whose loveliness was now but a fast-fading memory on peeling canvas. But none, I felt quite certain, was fairer than Mary Will. The lights shone softly on her red-brown hair and on those white shoulders that were youth incarnate. She was wearing—well, I can’t describe it, but it was unquestionably the very dress she should have worn. Thank God she had it and had put it on! She came into the library, and the gloom and staleness fled, conquered, from the room.
“My dear—my dear!” Henry Drew met her, his eyes alight with admiration. “You are a picture, and no mistake. You carry me back—indeed you do—back to the time when these rooms were alive with youth and beauty.” He waved a hand to the portrait of a woman in the post of honor above the fireplace. “You are very like her. My first wife, you know.” He stood for a moment, pathetic, unhappy, weighed down by the years, more human than I had ever seen him before. “I don’t imagine you two will object to being left alone,” he said finally, attempting a smile. “I’m going to have a look at the table. Want everything just right.” He crossed the hall and disappeared.
“Well, Mary Will—here I am,” I announced.
“Sure enough,” smiled Mary Will.
“This afternoon,” said I, “at four o’clock, you put me out of your life forever. Twice since then I’ve popped back. And I’ll go on popping, and popping, until you’re a sweet gray-haired old lady, so you might as well take me and have done.”
“Too bad,” mused Mary Will, “about the fog. If you could have seen all those other girls———”
“Don’t want to see them,” I said firmly. “Tell me, how do you like it here in the family vault?”
She shuddered.
“It’s a bit oppressive. I’m going to strike out for myself to-morrow. Mr. Drew gave me a check to-night—I can live on that until I get a job.”
“The cost of living is frightfully high.”
“But worth it—don’t you think?” she asked.
“With you—undoubtedly.”
“You just keep going round in circles,” she complained.
“You’ve got me going round in circles,” I laughed. I came close to her before the fire. “Mary Will—I’ve never been in San Francisco before. And I’ve never been married. Two new experiences. I’d like to tackle them together. To-morrow, after the fog lifts, and I’ve seen and rejected all the other girls, I’ll meet you with a license in my pocket.”
“Oh, dear—you are so sudden.”
“It’s girls like you that make men sudden.”
“I never gave you any encouragement, I’m sure,” she protested.
“You let me look at you. Encouragement enough.”
“Look at me—and pity me.”
“Now don’t start that. It’s love!”
“No—pity.”
“Love, I tell you.”
This might have gone on indefinitely, but suddenly Carlotta Drew’s voice broke in, calling, and Mary Will fled, just as I had nearly got her hand. She fled, and that dim room was instantly old and stale again.
I stood alone with the past. My thoughts were most jumbled, chaotic. Drews—Drews innumerable—were looking down at me, wondering, perhaps, about this stranger who dared make love in the very room where they themselves had laughed and loved in the old far days. Wonderful days that glittered with the gold men were extracting from California’s soil. Gone now, forever. And lovely ladies, turned to dust. Ugh—unpleasant thought! Look at the windows. Need washing, don’t they? Or is it the heavy yellow fog from the tule-fields, pressing close against the panes, trying to get in? Quict—oppressively quiet—what has become of everybody? No sound save the slow deliberate clicking of the big clock in the hallway. The voice of Time, who had conquered all these people on the wall. “I’ll-get—you-too. “I’ll-get—you-too.” Was the clock really saying that? All right—some day, perhaps—but not yet. Now I had youth. “My boy, you don’t know what you’ve got.” Oh, yes, I do. Youth—and Mary Will. She, too, must be mine. She had looked wonderful. Where was she? Was I to be left alone forever with the confounded clock?
Suddenly from across the hall came a cry, sharp, uncanny, terrible. I ran out in the direction from which it had come and stood on the threshold of the Drew dining-room. Another room of many memories, of stern faces on the wall. A table was set with gleaming silver and white linen, and in its center stood a cake, on which fifty absurd pink candles flickered bravely.
There appeared to be no one in the room. On the other side of the table a French window stood open to the fog, and I went around to investigate. I had taken perhaps a dozen steps when I stopped, appalled.
Old Drew was lying on the carpet, and one yellow lean hand, always so adept at reaching out and seizing, held a corner of the white table-cloth. There was a dark stain on the left side of his dress coat; and when I pulled the coat back I saw on the otherwise spotless linen underneath a great red circle that grew and grew. He was quite dead.
I stood erect, and for a dazed uncertain moment I stared about the room. Beside me, on the table, fifty yellow points of flame trembled like human things terrified at what they had seen.