 | Tales of the jazz age |  |
THE JELLY-BEAN
Jim Powell was a Jelly-bean. Much as I desire to
make him an appealing character, I feel that it would
be unscrupulous to deceive you on that point. He was
a bred-in-the-bone, dyed-in-the-wool, ninety-nine three-quarters
per cent Jelly-bean and he grew lazily all during
Jelly-bean season, which is every season, down in the
land of the Jelly-beans well below the Mason-Dixon line.
Now if you call a Memphis man a Jelly-bean he will
quite possibly pull a long sinewy rope from his hip
pocket and hang you to a convenient telegraph-pole.
If you call a New Orleans man a Jelly-bean he will probably
grin and ask you who is taking your girl to the
Mardi Gras ball. The particular Jelly-bean patch
which produced the protagonist of this history lies
somewhere between the two—a little city of forty thousand
that has dozed sleepily for forty thousand years in
southern Georgia, occasionally stirring in its slumbers
and muttering something about a war that took place
sometime, somewhere, and that everyone else has forgotten
long ago.
Jim was a Jelly-bean. I write that again because it
has such a pleasant sound—rather like the beginning of
a fairy story—as if Jim were nice. It somehow gives
me a picture of him with a round, appetizing face and
all sorts of leaves and vegetables growing out of his cap.
But Jim was long and thin and bent at the waist from
stooping over pool-tables, and he was what might have
been known in the indiscriminating North as a corner
loafer. "Jelly-bean" is the name throughout the undissolved
Confederacy for one who spends his life conjugating
am idling, I have idled, I will idle.
Jim was born in a white house on a green corner. It
had four weather-beaten pillars in front and a great
amount of lattice-work in the rear that made a cheerful
criss-cross background for a flowery sun-drenched lawn.
Originally the dwellers in the white house had owned
the ground next door and next door to that and next
door to that, but this had been so long ago that even
Jim's father scarcely remembered it. He had, in fact,
thought it a matter of so little moment that when he
was dying from a pistol wound got in a brawl he neglected
even to tell little Jim, who was five years old and miserably
frightened. The white house became a boardinghouse
run by a tight-lipped lady from Macon, whom
Jim called Aunt Mamie and detested with all his soul.
He became fifteen, went to high school, wore his hair
in black snarls, and was afraid of girls. He hated his
home where four women and one old man prolonged
an interminable chatter from summer to summer about
what lots the Powell place had originally included and
what sort of flowers would be out next. Sometimes
the parents of little girls in town, remembering Jim's
mother and fancying a resemblance in the dark eyes
and hair, invited him to parties, but parties made
him shy and he much preferred sitting on a disconnected
axle in Tilly's Garage, rolling the bones or
exploring his mouth endlessly with a long straw. For
pocket money, he picked up odd jobs, and it was due to
this that he stopped going to parties. At his third
party little Marjorie Haight had whispered indiscreetly
and within hearing distance that he was a boy who
brought the groceries sometimes. So instead of the
two-step and polka, Jim had learned to throw any
number he desired on the dice and had listened to spicy
country during the past fifty years.
He became eighteen. The war broke out and he
enlisted as a gob and polished brass in the Charleston
Navy-yard for a year. Then, by way of variety, he
went North and polished brass in the Brooklyn Navy-yard
for a year.
When the war was over he came home. He was
twenty-one, his trousers were too short and too tight.
His buttoned shoes were long and narrow. His tie was
an alarming conspiracy of purple and pink marvellously
scrolled, and over it were two blue eyes faded like a
piece of very good old cloth long exposed to the sun.
In the twilight of one April evening when a soft
gray had drifted down along the cottonfields and over
the sultry town, he was a vague figure leaning against
a board fence, whistling and gazing at the moon's rim
above the lights of Jackson Street. His mind was working
persistently on a problem that had held his attention
for an hour. The Jelly-bean had been invited to a
party.
Back in the days when all the boys had detested all
the girls, Clark Darrow and Jim had sat side by side in
school. But, while Jim's social aspirations had died
in the oily air of the garage, Clark had alternately fallen
in and out of love, gone to college, taken to drink, given
it up, and, in short, become one of the best beaux of the
town. Nevertheless Clark and Jim had retained a friendship
that, though casual, was perfectly definite. That
afternoon Clark's ancient Ford had slowed up beside
Jim, who was on the sidewalk and, out of a clear sky,
Clark had invited him to a party at the country club.
The impulse that made him do this was no stranger
than the impulse which made Jim accept. The latter
was probably an unconscious ennui, a half-frightened
it over.
He began to sing, drumming his long foot idly on a
stone block in the sidewalk till it wobbled up and down
in time to the low throaty tune:
Lives Jeanne, the Jelly-bean Queen.
She loves her dice and treats 'em nice;
No dice would treat her mean."
He broke off and agitated the sidewalk to a bumpy
gallop.
"Daggone!" he muttered, half aloud.
They would all be there—the old crowd, the crowd
to which, by right of the white house, sold long
since, and the portrait of the officer in gray over the
mantel, Jim should have belonged. But that crowd
had grown up together into a tight little set as gradually
as the girls' dresses had lengthened inch by inch,
as definitely as the boys' trousers had dropped suddenly
to their ankles. And to that society of first names and
dead puppy-loves Jim was an outsider—a running mate
of poor whites. Most of the men knew him, condescendingly;
he tipped his hat to three or four girls.
That was all.
When the dusk had thickened into a blue setting for
the moon, he walked through the hot, pleasantly
pungent town to Jackson Street. The stores were closing
and the last shoppers were drifting homeward, as if borne
on the dreamy revolution of a slow merry-go-round. A
street-fair farther down made a brilliant alley of varicolored
booths and contributed a blend of music to the
night—an oriental dance on a calliope, a melancholy
bugle in front of a freak show, a cheerful rendition of
"Back Home in Tennessee" on a hand-organ.
The Jelly-bean stopped in a store and bought a collar.
Then he sauntered along toward Soda Sam's, where he
found the usual three or four cars of a summer evening
parked in front and the little darkies running back and
forth with sundaes and lemonades.
"Hello, Jim."
It was a voice at his elbow—Joe Ewing sitting in
an automobile with Marylyn Wade. Nancy Lamar and
a strange man were in the back seat.
The Jelly-bean tipped his hat quickly.
"Hi, Ben—" then, after an almost imperceptible
pause—"How y' all?"
Passing, he ambled on toward the garage where he
had a room up-stairs. His "How y' all" had been said to
Nancy Lamar, to whom he had not spoken in fifteen years.
Nancy had a mouth like a remembered kiss and
shadowy eyes and blue-black hair inherited from her
mother who had been born in Budapest. Jim passed
her often in the street, walking small-boy fashion with
her hands in her pockets and he knew that with her
inseparable Sally Carrol Hopper she had left a trail of
broken hearts from Atlanta to New Orleans.
For a few fleeting moments Jim wished he could
dance. Then he laughed and as he reached his door
began to sing softly to himself:
Her eyes are big and brown,
She's the Queen of the Queens of the Jelly-beans—
My Jeanne of Jelly-bean Town."
II
At nine-thirty Jim and Clark met in front of Soda
Sam's and started for the Country Club in Clark's
Ford.
"Jim," asked Clark casually, as they rattled through
the jasmine-scented night, "how do you keep alive?"
The Jelly-bean paused, considered.
"Well," he said finally, "I got a room over Tilly's
garage. I help him some with the cars in the afternoon
an' he gives it to me free. Sometimes I drive one of
his taxies and pick up a little thataway. I get fed up
doin' that regular though."
"That all?"
"Well, when there's a lot of work I help him by the
day—Saturdays usually—and then there's one main
source of revenue I don't generally mention. Maybe
you don't recollect I'm about the champion crap-shooter
of this town. They make me shoot from a cup now
because once I get the feel of a pair of dice they just roll
for me."
Clark grinned appreciatively.
"I never could learn to set 'em so's they'd do what I
wanted. Wish you'd shoot with Nancy Lamar some
day and take all her money away from her. She will roll
'em with the boys and she loses more than her daddy can
afford to give her. I happen to know she sold a good
ring last month to pay a debt."
The Jelly-bean was non-committal.
"The white house on Elm Street still belong to you?"
Jim shook his head.
"Sold. Got a pretty good price, seein' it wasn't
in a good part of town no more. Lawyer told me to
put it into Liberty bonds. But Aunt Mamie got so she
didn't have no sense, so it takes all the interest to keep
her up at Great Farms Sanitarium.
"Hm."
"I got an old uncle up-state an' I reckin I kin go up
there if ever I get sure enough pore. Nice farm, but
not enough niggers around to work it. He's asked me
much to it. Too doggone lonesome—" He broke off
suddenly. "Clark, I want to tell you I'm much obliged
to you for askin' me out, but I'd be a lot happier if you'd
just stop the car right here an' let me walk back into
town."
"Shucks!" Clark grunted. "Do you good to step
out. You don't have to dance—just get out there on
the floor and shake."
"Hold on," exclaimed Jim uneasily, "Don't you go
leadin' me up to any girls and leavin' me there so I'll
have to dance with 'em."
Clark laughed.
"'Cause," continued Jim desperately, "without you
swear you won't do that I'm agoin' to get out right
here an' my good legs goin' carry me back to Jackson
Street."
They agreed after some argument that Jim, unmolested
by females, was to view the spectacle from a
secluded settee in the corner where Clark would join
him whenever he wasn't dancing.
So ten o'clock found the Jelly-bean with his legs
crossed and his arms conservatively folded, trying to
look casually at home and politely uninterested in the
dancers. At heart he was torn between overwhelming
self-consciousness and an intense curiosity as to all
that went on around him. He saw the girls emerge
one by one from the dressing-room, stretching and pluming
themselves like bright birds, smiling over their
powdered shoulders at the chaperones, casting a quick
glance around to take in the room and, simultaneously,
the room's reaction to their entrance—and then, again
like birds, alighting and nestling in the sober arms of
their waiting escorts. Sally Carrol Hopper, blonde and
lazy-eyed, appeared clad in her favorite pink and blinking
Wade, Harriet Cary, all the girls he had seen loitering
down Jackson Street by noon, now, curled and brilliantined
and delicately tinted for the overhead lights,
were miraculously strange Dresden figures of pink and
blue and red and gold, fresh from the shop and not yet
fully dried.
He had been there half an hour, totally uncheered
by Clark's jovial visits which were each one accompanied
by a "Hello, old boy, how you making out?"
and a slap at his knee. A dozen males had spoken to
him or stopped for a moment beside him, but he knew
that they were each one surprised at finding him there
and fancied that one or two were even slightly resentful.
But at half past ten his embarrassment suddenly
left him and a pull of breathless interest took him completely
out of himself—Nancy Lamar had come out of
the dressing-room.
She was dressed in yellow organdie, a costume of a
hundred cool corners, with three tiers of ruffles and a
big bow in back until she shed black and yellow around
her in a sort of phosphorescent lustre. The Jelly-bean's
eyes opened wide and a lump arose in his throat. For
a minute she stood beside the door until her partner
hurried up. Jim recognized him as the stranger who
had been with her in Joe Ewing's car that afternoon.
He saw her set her arms akimbo and say something in
a low voice, and laugh. The man laughed too and Jim
experienced the quick pang of a weird new kind of pain.
Some ray had passed between the pair, a shaft of
beauty from that sun that had warmed him a moment
since. The Jelly-bean felt suddenly like a weed in a
shadow.
A minute later Clark approached him, bright-eyed
and glowing.
"Hi, old man," he cried with some lack of originality.
"How you making out?"
Jim replied that he was making out as well as could
be expected.
"You come along with me," commanded Clark.
"I've got something that'll put an edge on the evening."
Jim followed him awkwardly across the floor and up
the stairs to the locker-room where Clark produced a
flask of nameless yellow liquid.
"Good old corn."
Ginger ale arrived on a tray. Such potent nectar
as "good old corn" needed some disguise beyond seltzer.
"Say, boy," exclaimed Clark breathlessly, "doesn't
Nancy Lamar look beautiful?"
Jim nodded.
"Mighty beautiful," he agreed.
"She's all dolled up to a fare-you-well to-night,"
continued Clark. "Notice that fellow she's with?"
"Big fella? White pants?"
"Yeah. Well, that's Ogden Merritt from Savannah.
Old man Merritt makes the Merritt safety razors.
This fella's crazy about her. Been chasing after her
all year.
"She's a wild baby," continued Clark, "but I like
her. So does everybody. But she sure does do crazy
stunts. She usually gets out alive, but she's got scars
all over her reputation from one thing or another she's
done."
"That so?" Jim passed over his glass. "That's
good corn."
"Not so bad. Oh, she's a wild one. Shoots craps,
say, boy! And she do like her high-balls. Promised
I'd give her one later on."
"She in love with this—Merritt?"
"Damned if I know. Seems like all the best girls
around here marry fellas and go off somewhere."
He poured himself one more drink and carefully
corked the bottle.
"Listen, Jim, I got to go dance and I'd be much
obliged if you just stick this corn right on your hip as
long as you're not dancing. If a man notices I've had
a drink he'll come up and ask me and before I know it
it's all gone and somebody else is having my good time."
So Nancy Lamar was going to marry. This toast of
a town was to become the private property of an individual
in white trousers—and all because white trousers'
father had made a better razor than his neighbor. As
they descended the stairs Jim found the idea inexplicably
depressing. For the first time in his life
he felt a vague and romantic yearning. A picture of
her began to form in his imagination—Nancy walking
boylike and debonnaire along the street, taking an
orange as tithe from a worshipful fruit-dealer, charging
a dope on a mythical account at Soda Sam's, assembling
a convoy of beaux and then driving off in triumphal
state for an afternoon of splashing and singing.
The Jelly-bean walked out on the porch to a deserted
corner, dark between the moon on the lawn and the
single lighted door of the ballroom. There he found a
chair and, lighting a cigarette, drifted into the thoughtless
reverie that was his usual mood. Yet now it was a
reverie made sensuous by the night and by the hot smell
of damp powder puffs, tucked in the fronts of low dresses
and distilling a thousand rich scents to float out through
the open door. The music itself, blurred by a loud
trombone, became hot and shadowy, a languorous overtone
to the scraping of many shoes and slippers.
Suddenly the square of yellow light that fell through
the door was obscured by a dark figure. A girl had
porch not more than ten feet away. Jim heard a low-breathed
"doggone" and then she turned and saw him.
It was Nancy Lamar.
Jim rose to his feet.
"Howdy?"
"Hello—" she paused, hesitated and then approached.
"Oh, it's—Jim Powell."
He bowed slightly, tried to think of a casual remark.
"Do you suppose," she began quickly, "I mean—do
you know anything about gum?"
"What?"
"I've got gum on my shoe. Some utter ass left his
or her gum on the floor and of course I stepped in it."
Jim blushed, inappropriately.
"Do you know how to get it off?" she demanded
petulantly. "I've tried a knife. I've tried every damn
thing in the dressing-room. I've tried soap and water—
and even perfume and I've ruined my powder-puff trying
to make it stick to that."
Jim considered the question in some agitation.
"Why—I think maybe gasolene—"
The words had scarcely left his lips when she grasped
his hand and pulled him at a run off the low veranda,
over a flower bed and at a gallop toward a group of
cars parked in the moonlight by the first hole of the
golf course.
"Turn on the gasolene," she commanded breathlessly.
"What?"
"For the gum of course. I've got to get it off. I
can't dance with gum on."
Obediently Jim turned to the cars and began inspecting
them with a view to obtaining the desired solvent.
Had she demanded a cylinder he would have done his
best to wrench one out.
"Here," he said after a moment's search. "Here's
one that's easy. Got a handkerchief?"
"It's up-stairs wet. I used it for the soap and water."
Jim laboriously explored his pockets.
"Don't believe I got one either."
"Doggone it! Well, we can turn it on and let it
run on the ground."
He turned the spout; a dripping began.
"More!"
He turned it on fuller. The dripping became a flow
and formed an oily pool that glistened brightly, reflecting
a dozen tremulous moons on its quivering bosom.
"Ah," she sighed contentedly, "let it all out. The
only thing to do is to wade in it."
In desperation he turned on the tap full and the pool
suddenly widened sending tiny rivers and trickles in
all directions.
"That's fine. That's something like."
Raising her skirts she stepped gracefully in.
"I know this'll take it off," she murmured.
Jim smiled.
"There's lots more cars."
She stepped daintily out of the gasolene and began
scraping her slippers, side and bottom, on the running-board
of the automobile. The Jelly-bean contained himself
no longer. He bent double with explosive laughter
and after a second she joined in.
"You're here with Clark Darrow, aren't you?" she
asked as they walked back toward the veranda.
"Yes."
"You know where he is now?"
"Out dancin', I reckin."
"The deuce. He promised me a highball."
"Well," said Jim, "I guess that'll be all right. I got
his bottle right here in my pocket."
She smiled at him radiantly.
"I guess maybe you'll need ginger ale though,"
he added.
"Not me. Just the bottle."
"Sure enough?"
She laughed scornfully.
"Try me. I can drink anything any man can. Let's
sit down."
She perched herself on the side of a table and he
dropped into one of the wicker chairs beside her.
Taking out the cork she held the flask to her lips and
took a long drink. He watched her fascinated.
"Like it?"
She shook her head breathlessly.
"No, but I like the way it makes me feel. I think
most people are that way."
Jim agreed.
"My daddy liked it too well. It got him."
"American men," said Nancy gravely, "don't know
how to drink."
"What?" Jim was startled.
"In fact," she went on carelessly, "they don't know
how to do anything very well. The one thing I regret
in my life is that I wasn't born in England."
"In England?"
"Yes. It's the one regret of my life that I wasn't."
"Do you like it over there."
"Yes. Immensely. I've never been there in person,
but I've met a lot of Englishmen who were over here in
the army, Oxford and Cambridge men—you know,
that's like Sewanee and University of Georgia are here
—and of course I've read a lot of English novels."
Jim was interested, amazed.
"D' you ever hear of Lady Diana Manners?" she
asked earnestly.
No, Jim had not.
"Well, she's what I'd like to be. Dark, you know,
like me, and wild as sin. She's the girl who rode her
horse up the steps of some cathedral or church or something
and all the novelists made their heroines do it
afterwards."
Jim nodded politely. He was out of his depths.
"Pass the bottle," suggested Nancy. "I'm going to
take another little one. A little drink wouldn't hurt a
baby.
"You see," she continued, again breathless after a
draught. "People over there have style. Nobody has
style here. I mean the boys here aren't really worth
dressing up for or doing sensational things for. Don't
you know?"
"I suppose so—I mean I suppose not," murmured
Jim.
"And I'd like to do 'em an' all. I'm really the only
girl in town that has style."
She stretched out her arms and yawned pleasantly.
"Pretty evening."
"Sure is," agreed Jim.
"Like to have boat," she suggested dreamily. "Like
to sail out on a silver lake, say the Thames, for instance.
Have champagne and caviare sandwiches along. Have
about eight people. And one of the men would jump
overboard to amuse the party and get drowned like a
man did with Lady Diana Manners once."
"Did he do it to please her?"
"Didn't mean drown himself to please her. He just
meant to jump overboard and make everybody laugh."
"I reckin they just died laughin' when he drowned."
"Oh, I suppose they laughed a little," she admitted. "I imagine she did, anyway. She's pretty hard, I
guess—like I am."
"You hard?"
"Like nails." She yawned again and added, "Give
me a little more from that bottle."
Jim hesitated but she held out her hand defiantly.
"Don't treat me like a girl," she warned him. "I'm
not like any girl you ever saw." She considered. "Still,
perhaps you're right. You got—you got old head on
young shoulders."
She jumped to her feet and moved toward the door.
The Jelly-bean rose also.
"Good-bye," she said politely, "good-bye. Thanks,
Jelly-bean."
Then she stepped inside and left him wide-eyed upon
the porch.
III
At twelve o'clock a procession of cloaks issued single
file from the women's dressing-room and, each one pairing
with a coated beau like dancers meeting in a cotillion
figure, drifted through the door with sleepy happy
laughter—through the door into the dark where autos
backed and snorted and parties called to one another
and gathered around the water-cooler.
Jim, sitting in his corner, rose to look for Clark.
They had met at eleven; then Clark had gone in to
dance. So, seeking him, Jim wandered into the soft-drink
stand that had once been a bar. The room was
deserted except for a sleepy negro dozing behind the
counter and two boys lazily fingering a pair of dice at
one of the tables. Jim was about to leave when he saw
Clark coming in. At the same moment Clark looked up.
"Hi, Jim!" he commanded. "C'mon over and help us
with this bottle. I guess there's not much left, but
there's one all around."
Nancy, the man from Savannah, Marylyn Wade, and
Nancy caught Jim's eye and winked at him humorously.
They drifted over to a table and arranging themselves
around it waited for the waiter to bring ginger ale.
Jim, faintly ill at ease, turned his eyes on Nancy, who
had drifted into a nickel crap game with the two boys
at the next table.
"Bring them over here," suggested Clark.
Joe looked around.
"We don't want to draw a crowd. It's against club
rules."
"Nobody's around," insisted Clark, "except Mr. Taylor.
He's walking up and down like a wild-man trying
to find out who let all the gasolene out of his car."
There was a general laugh.
"I bet a million Nancy got something on her shoe
again. You can't park when she's around."
"O Nancy, Mr. Taylor's looking for you!"
Nancy's cheeks were glowing with excitement over
the game. "I haven't seen his silly little flivver in
two weeks."
Jim felt a sudden silence. He turned and saw an
individual of uncertain age standing in the doorway.
Clark's voice punctuated the embarrassment.
"Won't you join us, Mr. Taylor?"
"Thanks."
Mr. Taylor spread his unwelcome presence over a
chair. "Have to, I guess. I'm waiting till they dig
me up some gasolene. Somebody got funny with my
car."
His eyes narrowed and he looked quickly from one
to the other. Jim wondered what he had heard from
the doorway—tried to remember what had been said.
"I'm right to-night," Nancy sang out, "and my four
bits is in the ring."
"Faded!" snapped Taylor suddenly.
"Why, Mr. Taylor, I didn't know you shot craps!"
Nancy was overjoyed to find that he had seated himself
and instantly covered her bet. They had openly disliked
each other since the night she had definitely discouraged
a series of rather pointed advances.
"All right, babies, do it for your mamma. Just one
little seven." Nancy was cooing to the dice. She
rattled them with a brave underhand flourish, and
rolled them out on the table.
"Ah-h! I suspected it. And now again with the
dollar up."
Five passes to her credit found Taylor a bad
loser. She was making it personal, and after each success
Jim watched triumph flutter across her face. She
was doubling with each throw—such luck could scarcely
last.
"Better go easy," he cautioned her timidly.
"Ah, but watch this one," she whispered. It was
eight on the dice and she called her number.
"Little Ada, this time we're going South."
Ada from Decatur rolled over the table. Nancy
was flushed and half-hysterical, but her luck was holding.
She drove the pot up and up, refusing to drag.
Taylor was drumming with his fingers on the table, but
he was in to stay.
Then Nancy tried for a ten and lost the dice. Taylor
seized them avidly. He shot in silence, and in the
hush of excitement the clatter of one pass after another
on the table was the only sound.
Now Nancy had the dice again, but her luck had
broken. An hour passed. Back and forth it went.
Taylor had been at it again—and again and again.
They were even at last—Nancy lost her ultimate five
dollars.
"Will you take my check," she said quickly, "for
fifty, and we'll shoot it all?" Her voice was a little
unsteady and her hand shook as she reached to the
money.
Clark exchanged an uncertain but alarmed glance
with Joe Ewing. Taylor shot again. He had Nancy's
check.
"How 'bout another?" she said wildly. "Jes' any
bank'll do—money everywhere as a matter of fact."
Jim understood—the "good old corn" he had given
her—the "good old corn" she had taken since. He
wished he dared interfere—a girl of that age and position
would hardly have two bank accounts. When the
clock struck two he contained himself no longer.
"May I—can't you let me roll 'em for you?" he suggested,
his low, lazy voice a little strained.
Suddenly sleepy and listless, Nancy flung the dice
down before him.
"All right—old boy! As Lady Diana Manners says,
`Shoot 'em, Jelly-bean'—My luck's gone."
"Mr. Taylor," said Jim, carelessly, "we'll shoot for
one of those there checks against the cash."
Half an hour later Nancy swayed forward and clapped
him on the back.
"Stole my luck, you did." She was nodding her head
sagely.
Jim swept up the last check and putting it with the
others tore them into confetti and scattered them on
the floor. Someone started singing, and Nancy kicking
her chair backward rose to her feet.
"Ladies and gentlemen," she announced. "Ladies
—that's you Marylyn. I want to tell the world that
Mr. Jim Powell, who is a well-known Jelly-bean of this
city, is an exception to a great rule—`lucky in dice—
unlucky in love.' He's lucky in dice, and as matter
famous dark-haired beauty often featured in the
Herald as one th' most popular members of younger set
as other girls are often featured in this particular case.
Wish to announce—wish to announce, anyway, Gentlemen—"
She tipped suddenly. Clark caught her and
restored her balance.
"My error," she laughed, "she stoops to—stoops to—
anyways— We'll drink to Jelly-bean . . . Mr. Jim
Powell, King of the Jelly-beans."
And a few minutes later as Jim waited hat in hand
for Clark in the darkness of that same corner of the
porch where she had come searching for gasolene, she
appeared suddenly beside him.
"Jelly-bean," she said, "are you here, Jelly-bean?
I think—" and her slight unsteadiness seemed part
of an enchanted dream—"I think you deserve one of my
sweetest kisses for that, Jelly-bean."
For an instant her arms were around his neck—her
lips were pressed to his.
"I'm a wild part of the world, Jelly-bean, but you did
me a good turn."
Then she was gone, down the porch, over the cricket-loud
lawn. Jim saw Merritt come out the front door
and say something to her angrily—saw her laugh and,
turning away, walk with averted eyes to his car.
Marylyn and Joe followed, singing a drowsy song about
a Jazz baby.
Clark came out and joined Jim on the steps. "All
pretty lit, I guess," he yawned. "Merritt's in a mean
mood. He's certainly off Nancy."
Over east along the golf course a faint rug of gray
spread itself across the feet of the night. The party in
the car began to chant a chorus as the engine warmed up.
"Good-night everybody," called Clark.
"Good-night, Clark."
"Good-night."
There was a pause, and then a soft, happy voice
added,
"Good-night, Jelly-bean."
The car drove off to a burst of singing. A rooster on
a farm across the way took up a solitary mournful crow,
and behind them a last negro waiter turned out the
porch light. Jim and Clark strolled over toward the
Ford, their shoes crunching raucously on the gravel
drive.
"Oh boy!" sighed Clark softly, "how you can set
those dice!"
It was still too dark for him to see the flush on Jim's
thin cheeks—or to know that it was a flush of unfamiliar
shame.
IV
Over Tilly's garage a bleak room echoed all day to
the rumble and snorting down-stairs and the singing of
the negro washers as they turned the hose on the cars
outside. It was a cheerless square of a room, punctuated
with a bed and a battered table on which lay half a
dozen books—Joe Miller's "Slow Train thru Arkansas,"
"Lucille," in an old edition very much annotated in an
old-fashioned hand; "The Eyes of the World," by Harold
Bell Wright, and an ancient prayer-book of the Church
of England with the name Alice Powell and the date 1831
written on the fly-leaf.
The East, gray when the Jelly-bean entered the garage,
became a rich and vivid blue as he turned on his solitary
electric light. He snapped it out again, and going
to the window rested his elbows on the sill and stared
into the deepening morning. With the awakening of his
ache at the utter grayness of his life. A wall had sprung
up suddenly around him hedging him in, a wall as definite
and tangible as the white wall of his bare room. And
with his perception of this wall all that had been the
romance of his existence, the casualness, the lighthearted
improvidence, the miraculous open-handedness
of life faded out. The Jelly-bean strolling up Jackson
Street humming a lazy song, known at every shop and
street stand, cropful of easy greeting and local wit,
sad sometimes for only the sake of sadness and the
flight of time—that Jelly-bean was suddenly vanished.
The very name was a reproach, a triviality. With a
flood of insight he knew that Merritt must despise him,
that even Nancy's kiss in the dawn would have awakened
not jealousy but only a contempt for Nancy's so
lowering herself. And on his part the Jelly-bean had
used for her a dingy subterfuge learned from the garage.
He had been her moral laundry; the stains were his.
As the gray became blue, brightened and filled the
room, he crossed to his bed and threw himself down on
it, gripping the edges fiercely.
"I love her," he cried aloud, "God!"
As he said this something gave way within him like
a lump melting in his throat. The air cleared and became
radiant with dawn, and turning over on his face
he began to sob dully into the pillow.
In the sunshine of three o'clock Clark Darrow chugging
painfully along Jackson Street was hailed by the
Jelly-bean, who stood on the curb with his fingers in
his vest pockets.
"Hi!" called Clark, bringing his Ford to an astonishing
stop alongside. "Just get up?"
The Jelly-bean shook his head.
"Never did go to bed. Felt sorta restless, so I took a
long walk this morning out in the country. Just got
into town this minute."
"Should think you would feel restless. I been feeling
thataway all day—"
"I'm thinkin' of leavin' town," continued the Jelly-bean,
absorbed by his own thoughts. "Been thinkin'
of goin' up on the farm, and takin' a little that work off
Uncle Dun. Reckin I been bummin' too long."
Clark was silent and the Jelly-bean continued:
"I reckin maybe after Aunt Mamie dies I could sink
that money of mine in the farm and make somethin'
out of it. All my people originally came from that
part up there. Had a big place."
Clark looked at him curiously.
"That's funny," he said. "This—this sort of affected
me the same way."
The Jelly-bean hesitated.
"I don't know," he began slowly, "somethin' about—
about that girl last night talkin' about a lady named
Diana Manners—an English lady, sorta got me thinkin'!"
He drew himself up and looked oddly at Clark,
"I had a family once," he said defiantly.
Clark nodded.
"I know."
"And I'm the last of 'em," continued the Jelly-bean,
his voice rising slightly, "and I ain't worth shucks.
Name they call me by means jelly—weak and wobbly
like. People who weren't nothin' when my folks was
a lot turn up their noses when they pass me on the
street."
Again Clark was silent.
"So I'm through. I'm goin' to-day. And when I
come back to this town it's going to be like a gentleman."
Clark took out his handkerchief and wiped his damp
brow.
"Reckon you're not the only one it shook up," he
admitted gloomily. "All this thing of girls going round
like they do is going to stop right quick. Too bad,
too, but everybody'll have to see it thataway."
"Do you mean," demanded Jim in surprise, "that
all that's leaked out?"
"Leaked out? How on earth could they keep it
secret. It'll be announced in the papers to-night.
Doctor Lamar's got to save his name somehow."
Jim put his hands on the sides of the car and tightened
his long fingers on the metal.
"Do you mean Taylor investigated those checks?"
It was Clark's turn to be surprised.
"Haven't you heard what happened?"
Jim's startled eyes were answer enough.
"Why," announced Clark dramatically, "those four
got another bottle of corn, got tight and decided to shock
the town—so Nancy and that fella Merritt were married
in Rockville at seven o'clock this morning."
A tiny indentation appeared in the metal under the
Jelly-bean's fingers.
"Married?"
"Sure enough. Nancy sobered up and rushed back
into town, crying and frightened to death—claimed
it'd all been a mistake. First Doctor Lamar went
wild and was going to kill Merritt, but finally they got
it patched up some way, and Nancy and Merritt went to
Savannah on the two-thirty train."
Jim closed his eyes and with an effort overcame a
sudden sickness.
"It's too bad," said Clark philosophically. "I don't
mean the wedding—reckon that's all right, though I
don't guess Nancy cared a darn about him. But it's
way."
The Jelly-bean let go the car and turned away. Again
something was going on inside him, some inexplicable
but almost chemical change.
"Where you going?" asked Clark.
The Jelly-bean turned and looked dully back over
his shoulder.
"Got to go," he muttered. "Been up too long; feelin'
right sick."
"Oh."
The street was hot at three and hotter still at four,
the April dust seeming to enmesh the sun and give it
forth again as a world-old joke forever played on an
eternity of afternoons. But at half past four a first
layer of quiet fell and the shades lengthened under the
awnings and heavy foliaged trees. In this heat nothing
mattered. All life was weather, a waiting through the
hot where events had no significance for the cool that
was soft and caressing like a woman's hand on a tired
forehead. Down in Georgia there is a feeling—perhaps
inarticulate—that this is the greatest wisdom of the
South—so after a while the Jelly-bean turned into a pool-hall
on Jackson Street where he was sure to find a congenial
crowd who would make all the old jokes—the
ones he knew.
| Tales of the jazz age | |