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Title: Linda Condon
Author: Joseph Hergesheimer
Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7171]

[Date last updated: December 1, 2004]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LINDA CONDON ***

THE WORKS OF JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER
THE LAY ANTHONY
MOUNTAIN BLOOD
THE THREE BLACK PENNYS

GOLD AND IRON
JAVA HEAD
THE HAPPY END
LINDA CONDON

LINDA CONDON
BY
JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER

her uncommon personality--straight and severe and dense across her
clear pale brow and eyes. Her eyes were the last thing to remember
and wonder about; in shade blue, they had a velvet richness, a
poignant intensity of lovely color, that surprised the heart. Aside
from that she was slim, perhaps ten years old, and graver than gay.

Her mother was gay for them both, and, therefore, for the entire
family. No father was in evidence; he was dead and never spoken of,
and Linda was the only child. Linda's dresses, those significant
trivialities, plainly showed two tendencies--the gaiety of her
mother and her own always formal gravity. If Linda appeared at dinner,
in the massive Renaissance materialism of the hotel dining-room, with
a preposterous magenta hair-ribbon on her shapely head, her mother
had succeeded in expressing her sense of the appropriately decorative;
while if Linda wore an unornamented but equally "unsuitable" frock of
dark velvet, she, in her turn, had been vindicated.

Again, but far more rarely, the child's selection was evident on the woman. As a rule Mrs. Condon garbed her flamboyant body in large and expensive patterns or extremely tailored suits; and of the two, the

She was not dark in color but brightly golden; a gold, it must be
said in all honesty, her own, a metallic gold crisply and solidly
marcelled; with hazel-brown eyes, and a mouth which, set against her
daughter's deep-blue gaze, was her particular attraction. It was
rouged to a nicety, the under lip a little full and never quite
against the upper. If Linda's effect was cool and remote, Mrs.
Condon, thanks to her mouth, was reassuringly imminent. She was,
too, friendly; she talked to women--in her not overfrequent
opportunities--in a rapid warm inaccurate confession of almost
everything they desired to hear. The women, of course, were
continually hampered by the unfortunate fact that the questions
nearest their hearts, or curiosity, were entirely inadmissible.

Viewed objectively, they all, with the exception of Linda, seemed
alike; but that might have been due to their common impressive
setting. The Boscombe, in its way, was as lavish as Mrs. Condon's
dresses. The main place of congregation, for instance, was a great
space of white marble columns, Turkey-red carpet and growing palms.
It was lighted at night indirectly by alabaster bowls hanging on
gilded chains--a soft bright flood of radiance falling on the seated
or slowly promenading women with bare shoulders.

Usually they were going with a restrained sharp eagerness toward the
dining-room or leaving it in a more languid flushed repletion. There
were, among them, men; but somehow the men never seemed to be of the
least account. It was a women's paradise. The glow from above always
emphasized the gowns, the gowns like orchids and tea-roses and the
leaves of magnolias. It sparkled in the red and green and crystal
jewels like exotic dew scattered over the exotic human flowers. Very
occasionally there was a complacent or irritable masculine utterance,
and then it was immediately lost in the dominant feminine sibilance.

Other children than Linda sped in the manner of brilliant fretful
tops literally on the elaborate outskirts of the throng; but they
were as different from her as she was from the elders. Indeed Linda
resembled the latter, rather than her proper age, remarkably. She
had an air of responsibility, sometimes expressed in a troubled
frown, and again by the way she hurried sedately through drifting
figures toward a definite purpose and end.

Usually it was in the service of one of her mother's small
innumerable requests or necessities; if the latter were sitting with
a gentleman on the open hotel promenade that overlooked the sea and
needed a heavier wrap, Linda returned immediately with a furred
cloak on her arm; if the elder, going out after dinner, had brought
down the wrong gloves, Linda knew the exact wanted pair in the long
perfumed box; while countless trifles were needed from the
convenient drug-store.

The latter was a place of white mosaic floor and glittering glass,
with a marble counter heaped with vivid fruit and silver-covered
bowls of sirups and creams with chopped nuts. Linda often found time
to stop here for a delectable glass of assorted sweet compounds. She
was on terms of intimacy with the colored man in a crisp linen coat
who presided over the refreshments, and he invariably gave her an