Fifty Candles (Expanded Edition). Earl Derr Biggers
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.
Like a living thing, the car felt its way cautiously through the mist. About us sounded a constant symphony of automobile horns, truckmen’s repartee, the clank of hoofs, the rattle of wheels. From where I sat I could see the clear-cut beautiful silhouette of Carlotta Drew’s face, shrouded in fog, against the window. I wondered what she was thinking—this woman whose exploits had furnished the gossips of the China coast with a serial story running through many mad years. Of her first husband, perhaps; that gallant army man whose heart she had soon broken as she leapt to the arms of another. They had come and gone, the men, until, her beauty fading, she had accepted the offer of old Drew’s millions, though she hated him in her heart. What a fool the old man had been! On our trip across the gossips had played once more with her rather frail reputation, linking her name with that of the ship’s doctor, handsome hero of many a fleeting romance.
“Home again,” chuckled old Drew. An unaccustomed gaiety seemed to have taken hold of him. “I tell you, it’s good. This is my town. This is where I belong. The history of our family, my boy, is woven into the story of San Francisco. By the way—what I wanted to see you about. Er—I want to ask a favor.”
He stopped. I said nothing. A favor of me! One had to admire his nerve.
“It is nothing much,” he went on. “Only—I’m giving a little dinner party tonight. A birthday party, as a matter of fact. I’d like to have you come. One of my guests will be my partner in the mine. We can talk over that little matter of business.”
“Hardly the time or the place,” I suggested.
This was like him. A gay party—plenty to eat and drink—and my affair hastily disposed of amid the general conviviality. I was not to be trapped like that.
“Well, perhaps not,” he admitted. “We won’t talk business, then. Just a gay little party—to brighten up the old house—to get things going in a friendly way again. Eh, Carlotta?”
“Oh, of course,” said Carlotta Drew wearily.
“You’ll come?” the old man insisted. I have often wondered since why he was so eager. He had wronged me, he knew, but he was that type of man who wishes to be on friendly terms with his victim. A plentiful type.
“I’m sure Miss Mary Will wishes you to accept,” he added.
“She hasn’t said so,” I said.
“It’s not my birthday,” said Mary Will, “nor my party.”
“Not your birthday,” cackled old Drew. “I should say not. But your party, I hope. Everybody’s party. What do you say, my boy?”
Mary Will’s indifference had maddened me, and nothing could keep me from that party now.
“I’ll be delighted to come,” I said firmly. It was to Drew I spoke, but my gaze was on Mary Will’s scornful profile.
“That’s fine!” cried the old man. He peered out the window. “Where are we? Ah, yes—Post and Grant—there’s a shop near here.” He ordered his chauffeur to stop. “I’ll be only a minute,” he said as the car drew up to the curb. “Must have candles—candles for my party.” And he hopped out. We stood there in the fog with the Wagnerian symphony fierce about us. It was after five now, and all San Francisco, to say nothing of Oakland and Berkeley, was stumbling home through the murk.
“Your husband seems in a gay humor tonight,” I remarked to Carlotta Drew. She nodded, but said nothing. “Probably the effect of San Francisco,” I went on. “I’ve always heard of it as a merry town. Life and color and romance—”
“And dozens of beautiful girls,” put in Mary Will.
“I don’t see them.”
“Wait till the fog lifts,” she answered.
Henry Drew was again at the door. He ordered the driver to stop at my hotel, then popped back into his seat. In his hand he carried a small package.
“Candles for the party,” he laughed. “Fifty little pink candles.”
Fifty! I stared at him there in that dim-lit car. Fifty—why, the old boy must be seventy if he was a day. Did he hope by this silly ruse to win back his middle age, in our eyes at least? Or wait a minute! Was he only fifty, after all? If rumor were true, he had lived a wild, reckless life. Perhaps that life had played a trick upon him—had made his fifty look like seventy.
We drew up before my hotel, and Hung Chin-chung was instantly on the sidewalk with my bags.
“I’ll send the car for you at seven,” Drew said. “We’ll have a merry party. Don’t fail me.”
I thanked him, and amid muttered au revoirs the car went on its way. Standing on the curb, I stared after it. This was incredible! My first night back on American soil, the night I had been dreaming of for four years—and I was to spend it celebrating the birthday of my bitterest enemy! But there was Mary Will. She had dismissed me forever, and I was bound to show her she could not do that.
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