 | Tales of the jazz age |  |
MY LAST FLAPPERS
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.
THE CAMEL'S BACK
The glazed eye of the tired reader resting for a second
on the above title will presume it to be merely metaphorical.
Stories about the cup and the lip and the
bad penny and the new broom rarely have anything to
do with cups or lips or pennies or brooms. This story
is the exception. It has to do with a material, visible and
large-as-life camel's back.
Starting from the neck we shall work toward the tail.
I want you to meet Mr. Perry Parkhurst, twenty-eight,
lawyer, native of Toledo. Perry has nice teeth, a Harvard
diploma, parts his hair in the middle. You have
met him before—in Cleveland, Portland, St. Paul, Indianapolis,
Kansas City, and so forth. Baker Brothers,
New York, pause on their semi-annual trip through the
West to clothe him; Montmorency & Co. dispatch a
young man post-haste every three months to see that he
has the correct number of little punctures on his shoes.
He has a domestic roadster now, will have a French
roadster if he lives long enough, and doubtless a Chinese
tank if it comes into fashion. He looks like the advertisement
of the young man rubbing his sunset-colored
chest with liniment and goes East every other
year to his class reunion.
I want you to meet his Love. Her name is Betty Medill,
and she would take well in the movies. Her father
gives her three hundred a month to dress on, and she has
tawny eyes and hair and feather fans of five colors. I
shall also introduce her father, Cyrus Medill. Though
he is to all appearances flesh and blood, he is, strange to
say, commonly known in Toledo as the Aluminum Man.
Iron Men, and the White Pine Man, and the Brass Man,
they look very much as you and I do, only more so, if
you know what I mean.
Now during the Christmas holidays of 1919 there took
place in Toledo, counting only the people with the italicized
the, forty-one dinner parties, sixteen dances, six
luncheons, male and female, twelve teas, four stag dinners,
two weddings, and thirteen bridge parties. It
was the cumulative effect of all this that moved Perry
Parkhurst on the twenty-ninth day of December to a
decision.
This Medill girl would marry him and she wouldn't
marry him. She was having such a good time that she
hated to take such a definite step. Meanwhile, their
secret engagement had got so long that it seemed as if
any day it might break off of its own weight. A little
man named Warburton, who knew it all, persuaded
Perry to superman her, to get a marriage license and go
up to the Medill house and tell her she'd have to marry
him at once or call it off forever. So he presented himself,
his heart, his license, and his ultimatum, and within
five minutes they were in the midst of a violent quarrel,
a burst of sporadic open fighting such as occurs near the
end of all long wars and engagements. It brought about
one of those ghastly lapses in which two people who are
in love pull up sharp, look at each other coolly and think
it's all been a mistake. Afterward they usually kiss
wholesomely and assure the other person it was all their
fault. Say it all was my fault! Say it was! I want to
hear you say it!
But while reconciliation was trembling in the air,
while each was, in a measure, stalling it off, so that they
might the more voluptuously and sentimentally enjoy
it when it came, they were permanently interrupted by
aunt. At the end of eighteen minutes Perry Parkhurst,
urged on by pride and suspicion and injured dignity,
put on his long fur coat, picked up his light brown soft
hat, and stalked out the door.
"It's all over," he muttered brokenly as he tried to
jam his car into first. "It's all over—if I have to choke
you for an hour, damn you!" This last to the car,
which had been standing some time and was quite cold.
He drove downtown—that is, he got into a snow rut
that led him downtown. He sat slouched down very
low in his seat, much too dispirited to care where he
went.
In front of the Clarendon Hotel he was hailed from
the sidewalk by a bad man named Baily, who had big
teeth and lived at the hotel and had never been in
love.
"Perry," said the bad man softly when the roadster
drew up beside him at the curb, "I've got six quarts of
the doggonedest still champagne you ever tasted. A
third of it's yours, Perry, if you'll come up-stairs and help
Martin Macy and me drink it."
"Baily," said Perry tensely, "I'll drink your champagne.
I'll drink every drop of it. I don't care if it
kills me."
"Shut up, you nut!" said the bad man gently. "They
don't put wood alcohol in champagne. This is the stuff
that proves the world is more than six thousand years
old. It's so ancient that the cork is petrified. You
have to pull it with a stone drill."
"Take me up-stairs," said Perry moodily. "If that
cork sees my heart it'll fall out from pure mortification."
The room up-stairs was full of those innocent hotel
pictures of little girls eating apples and sitting in swings
and a pink man reading a pink paper devoted to
ladies in pink tights.
"When you have to go into the highways and byways—"
said the pink man, looking reproachfully at
Baily and Perry.
"Hello, Martin Macy," said Perry shortly, "where's
this stone-age champagne?"
"What's the rush? This isn't an operation, understand.
This is a party."
Perry sat down dully and looked disapprovingly at
all the neckties.
Baily leisurely opened the door of a wardrobe and
brought out six handsome bottles.
"Take off that darn fur coat!" said Martin Macy to
Perry. "Or maybe you'd like to have us open all the
windows."
"Give me champagne," said Perry.
"Going to the Townsends' circus ball to-night?"
"Am not!"
"'Vited?"
"Uh-huh."
"Why not go?"
"Oh, I'm sick of parties," exclaimed Perry. "I'm
sick of 'em. I've been to so many that I'm sick of
'em."
"Maybe you're going to the Howard Tates' party?"
"No, I tell you; I'm sick of 'em."
"Well," said Macy consolingly, "the Tates' is just for
college kids anyways."
"I tell you—"
"I thought you'd be going to one of 'em anyways. I
see by the papers you haven't missed a one this Christmas."
"Hm," grunted Perry morosely.
He would never go to any more parties. Classical
phrases played in his mind—that side of his life was
closed, closed. Now when a man says "closed, closed"
like that, you can be pretty sure that some woman has
double-closed him, so to speak. Perry was also thinking
that other classical thought, about how cowardly
suicide is. A noble thought that one—warm and inspiring.
Think of all the fine men we should lose if
suicide were not so cowardly!
An hour later was six o'clock, and Perry had lost all
resemblance to the young man in the liniment advertisement.
He looked like a rough draft for a riotous
cartoon. They were singing—an impromptu song of
Baily's improvisation:
Famous through the city for the way he drinks his tea;
Plays with it, toys with it,
Makes no noise with it,
Balanced on a napkin on his well-trained knee—"
"Trouble is," said Perry, who had just banged his
hair with Baily's comb and was tying an orange tie
round it to get the effect of Julius Cæsar, "that you
fellas can't sing worth a damn. Soon's I leave th' air
and start singin' tenor you start singin' tenor too."
"'M a natural tenor," said Macy gravely. "Voice
lacks cultivation, tha's all. Gotta natural voice, m'aunt
used say. Naturally good singer."
"Singers, singers, all good singers," remarked Baily,
who was at the telephone. "No, not the cabaret; I
want night egg. I mean some dog-gone clerk 'at's got
food—food! I want—"
"Julius Cæsar," announced Perry, turning round from
the mirror. "Man of iron will and stern 'termination."
"Shut up!" yelled Baily. "Say, iss Mr. Baily.
away."
He connected the receiver and the hook with some
difficulty, and then with his lips closed and an expression
of solemn intensity in his eyes went to the lower
drawer of his dresser and pulled it open.
"Lookit!" he commanded. In his hands he held a
truncated garment of pink gingham.
"Pants," he exclaimed gravely. "Lookit!"
This was a pink blouse, a red tie, and a Buster Brown
collar.
"Lookit!" he repeated. "Costume for the Townsends'
circus ball. I'm li'l' boy carries water for the
elephants."
Perry was impressed in spite of himself.
"I'm going to be Julius Cæsar," he announced after
a moment of concentration.
"Thought you weren't going!" said Macy.
"Me? Sure, I'm goin'. Never miss a party. Good
for the nerves—like celery."
"Cæsar!" scoffed Baily. "Can't be Cæsar! He is
not about a circus. Cæsar's Shakespeare. Go as a
clown."
Perry shook his head.
"Nope; Cæsar."
"Cæsar?"
"Sure. Chariot."
Light dawned on Baily.
"That's right. Good idea."
Perry looked round the room searchingly.
"You lend me a bathrobe and this tie," he said finally.
Baily considered.
"No good."
"Sure, tha's all I need. Cæsar was a savage. They
can't kick if I come as Cæsar, if he was a savage."
"No," said Baily, shaking his head slowly. "Get a
costume over at a costumer's. Over at Nolak's."
"Closed up."
"Find out."
After a puzzling five minutes at the phone a small,
weary voice managed to convince Perry that it was Mr.
Nolak speaking, and that they would remain open until
eight because of the Townsends' ball. Thus assured,
Perry ate a great amount of filet mignon and drank his
third of the last bottle of champagne. At eight-fifteen
the man in the tall hat who stands in front of the Clarendon
found him trying to start his roadster.
"Froze up," said Perry wisely. "The cold froze it.
The cold air."
"Froze, eh?"
"Yes. Cold air froze it."
"Can't start it?"
"Nope. Let it stand here till summer. One those
hot ole August days'll thaw it out awright."
"Goin' let it stand?"
"Sure. Let 'er stand. Take a hot thief to steal it.
Gemme taxi."
The man in the tall hat summoned a taxi.
"Where to, mister?"
"Go to Nolak's—costume fella."
II
Mrs. Nolak was short and ineffectual looking, and on
the cessation of the world war had belonged for a while
to one of the new nationalities. Owing to unsettled
European conditions she had never since been quite
sure what she was. The shop in which she and her
husband performed their daily stint was dim and ghostly,
and peopled with suits of armor and Chinese mandarins,
ceiling. In a vague background many rows of masks
glared eyelessly at the visitor, and there were glass
cases full of crowns and scepters, and jewels and enormous
stomachers, and paints, and crape hair, and wigs of
all colors.
When Perry ambled into the shop Mrs. Nolak was
folding up the last troubles of a strenuous day, so she
thought, in a drawer full of pink silk stockings.
"Something for you?" she queried pessimistically.
"Want costume of Julius Hur, the charioteer."
Mrs. Nolak was sorry, but every stitch of charioteer
had been rented long ago. Was it for the Townsends'
circus ball?
It was.
"Sorry," she said, "but I don't think there's anything
left that's really circus."
This was an obstacle.
"Hm," said Perry. An idea struck him suddenly.
"If you've got a piece of canvas I could go's a tent."
"Sorry, but we haven't anything like that. A hardware
store is where you'd have to go to. We have some
very nice Confederate soldiers."
"No. No soldiers."
"And I have a very handsome king."
He shook his head.
"Several of the gentlemen," she continued hopefully,
"are wearing stovepipe hats and swallow-tail coats and
going as ringmasters—but we're all out of tall hats. I
can let you have some crape hair for a mustache."
"Want somep'n 'stinctive."
"Something—let's see. Well, we have a lion's head,
and a goose, and a camel—"
"Camel?" The idea seized Perry's imagination,
gripped it fiercely.
"Yes, but it needs two people."
"Camel. That's the idea. Lemme see it."
The camel was produced from his resting place on a
top shelf. At first glance he appeared to consist entirely
of a very gaunt, cadaverous head and a sizable
hump, but on being spread out he was found to possess
a dark brown, unwholesome-looking body made of thick,
cottony cloth.
"You see it takes two people," explained Mrs. Nolak,
holding the camel in frank admiration. "If you have
a friend he could be part of it. You see there's sorta
pants for two people. One pair is for the fella in front,
and the other pair for the fella in back. The fella in
front does the lookin' out through these here eyes, an'
the fella in back he's just gotta stoop over an' folla the
front fella round."
"Put it on," commanded Perry.
Obediently Mrs. Nolak put her tabby-cat face inside
the camel's head and turned it from side to side ferociously.
Perry was fascinated.
"What noise does a camel make?"
"What?" asked Mrs. Nolak as her face emerged,
somewhat smudgy. "Oh, what noise? Why, he sorta
brays."
"Lemme see it in a mirror."
Before a wide mirror Perry tried on the head and
turned from side to side appraisingly. In the dim light
the effect was distinctly pleasing. The camel's face
was a study in pessimism, decorated with numerous
abrasions, and it must be admitted that his coat was in
that state of general negligence peculiar to camels—in
fact, he needed to be cleaned and pressed—but distinctive
he certainly was. He was majestic. He would
have attracted attention in any gathering, if only by his
round his shadowy eyes.
"You see you have to have two people," said Mrs.
Nolak again.
Perry tentatively gathered up the body and legs and
wrapped them about him, tying the hind legs as a girdle
round his waist. The effect on the whole was bad. It
was even irreverent—like one of those mediæval pictures
of a monk changed into a beast by the ministrations of
Satan. At the very best the ensemble resembled a
humpbacked cow sitting on her haunches among blankets.
"Don't look like anything at all," objected Perry
gloomily.
"No," said Mrs. Nolak; "you see you got to have
two people."
A solution flashed upon Perry.
"You got a date to-night?"
"Oh, I couldn't possibly—"
"Oh, come on," said Perry encouragingly. "Sure
you can! Here! Be good sport, and climb into these
hind legs."
With difficulty he located them, and extended their
yawning depths ingratiatingly. But Mrs. Nolak seemed
loath. She backed perversely away.
"Oh, no—"
"C'm on! You can be the front if you want to. Or
we'll flip a coin."
"Oh, no—"
"Make it worth your while."
Mrs. Nolak set her lips firmly together.
"Now you just stop!" she said with no coyness implied.
"None of the gentlemen ever acted up this
way before. My husband—"
"You got a husband?" demanded Perry. "Where
is he?"
"He's home."
"Wha's telephone number?"
After considerable parley he obtained the telephone
number pertaining to the Nolak penates and got into
communication with that small, weary voice he had
heard once before that day. But Mr. Nolak, though
taken off his guard and somewhat confused by Perry's
brilliant flow of logic, stuck staunchly to his point. He
refused firmly, but with dignity, to help out Mr. Parkhurst
in the capacity of back part of a camel.
Having rung off, or rather having been rung off on,
Perry sat down on a three-legged stool to think it over.
He named over to himself those friends on whom he
might call, and then his mind paused as Betty Medill's
name hazily and sorrowfully occurred to him. He had
a sentimental thought. He would ask her. Their love
affair was over, but she could not refuse this last request.
Surely it was not much to ask—to help him
keep up his end of social obligation for one short night.
And if she insisted, she could be the front part of the
camel and he would go as the back. His magnanimity
pleased him. His mind even turned to rosy-colored
dreams of a tender reconciliation inside the camel—
there hidden away from all the world. . . .
"Now you'd better decide right off."
The bourgeois voice of Mrs. Nolak broke in upon his
mellow fancies and roused him to action. He went to
the phone and called up the Medill house. Miss Betty
was out; had gone out to dinner.
Then, when all seemed lost, the camel's back wandered
curiously into the store. He was a dilapidated individual
with a cold in his head and a general trend about
him of downwardness. His cap was pulled down low
on his head, and his chin was pulled down low on his
chest, his coat hung down to his shoes, he looked rundown,
contrary—down and out. He said that he was the
taxicab-driver that the gentleman had hired at the
Clarendon Hotel. He had been instructed to wait
outside, but he had waited some time, and a suspicion
had grown upon him that the gentleman had gone out
the back way with purpose to defraud him—gentlemen
sometimes did—so he had come in. He sank down
onto the three-legged stool.
"Wanta go to a party?" demanded Perry sternly.
"I gotta work," answered the taxi-driver lugubriously.
"I gotta keep my job."
"It's a very good party."
"'S a very good job."
"Come on!" urged Perry. "Be a good fella. See—
it's pretty!" He held the camel up and the taxi-driver
looked at it cynically.
"Huh!"
Perry searched feverishly among the folds of the cloth.
"See!" he cried enthusiastically, holding up a selection
of folds. "This is your part. You don't even
have to talk. All you have to do is to walk—and sit
down occasionally. You do all the sitting down.
Think of it. I'm on my feet all the time and you can
sit down some of the time. The only time I can sit
down is when we're lying down, and you can sit down
when—oh, any time. See?"
"What's 'at thing?" demanded the individual dubiously.
"A shroud?"
"Not at all," said Perry indignantly. "It's a camel."
"Huh?"
Then Perry mentioned a sum of money, and the conversation
left the land of grunts and assumed a practical
tinge. Perry and the taxi-driver tried on the camel in
front of the mirror.
"You can't see it," explained Perry, peering anxiously
out through the eyeholes, "but honestly, ole man, you
look sim'ly great! Honestly!"
A grunt from the hump acknowledged this somewhat
dubious compliment.
"Honestly, you look great!" repeated Perry enthusiastically.
"Move round a little."
The hind legs moved forward, giving the effect of
a huge cat-camel hunching his back preparatory to a
spring.
"No; move sideways."
The camel's hips went neatly out of joint; a hula
dancer would have writhed in envy.
"Good, isn't it?" demanded Perry, turning to Mrs.
Nolak for approval.
"It looks lovely," agreed Mrs. Nolak.
"We'll take it," said Perry.
The bundle was stowed under Perry's arm and they
left the shop.
"Go to the party!" he commanded as he took his
seat in the back.
"What party?"
"Fanzy-dress party."
"Where'bouts is it?"
This presented a new problem. Perry tried to remember,
but the names of all those who had given
parties during the holidays danced confusedly before
his eyes. He could ask Mrs. Nolak, but on looking
out the window he saw that the shop was dark. Mrs.
Nolak had already faded out, a little black smudge far
down the snowy street.
"Drive uptown," directed Perry with fine confidence.
"If you see a party, stop. Otherwise I'll tell you when
we get there."
He fell into a hazy daydream and his thoughts wandered
had had a disagreement because she refused to go to the
party as the back part of the camel. He was just
slipping off into a chilly doze when he was wakened by
the taxi-driver opening the door and shaking him by the
arm.
"Here we are, maybe."
Perry looked out sleepily. A striped awning led from
the curb up to a spreading gray stone house, from
which issued the low drummy whine of expensive
jazz. He recognized the Howard Tate house.
"Sure," he said emphatically; "'at's it! Tate's
party to-night. Sure, everybody's goin'."
"Say," said the individual anxiously after another
look at the awning, "you sure these people ain't gonna
romp on me for comin' here?"
Perry drew himself up with dignity.
"'F anybody says anything to you, just tell'em you're
part of my costume."
The visualization of himself as a thing rather than a
person seemed to reassure the individual.
"All right," he said reluctantly.
Perry stepped out under the shelter of the awning
and began unrolling the camel.
"Let's go," he commanded.
Several minutes later a melancholy, hungry-looking
camel, emitting clouds of smoke from his mouth and
from the tip of his noble hump, might have been seen
crossing the threshhold of the Howard Tate residence,
passing a startled footman without so much as a snort,
and heading directly for the main stairs that led up to
the ballroom. The beast walked with a peculiar gait
which varied between an uncertain lockstep and a
stampede—but can best be described by the word
walked he alternately elongated and contracted like a
gigantic concertina.
III
The Howard Tates are, as every one who lives in Toledo
knows, the most formidable people in town. Mrs.
Howard Tate was a Chicago Todd before she became a
Toledo Tate, and the family generally affect that conscious
simplicity which has begun to be the earmark of
American aristocracy. The Tates have reached the
stage where they talk about pigs and farms and look at
you icy-eyed if you are not amused. They have begun
to prefer retainers rather than friends as dinner guests,
spend a lot of money in a quiet way, and, having lost
all sense of competition, are in process of growing quite
dull.
The dance this evening was for little Millicent
Tate, and though all ages were represented, the dancers
were mostly from school and college—the younger
married crowd was at the Townsends' circus ball
up at the Tallyho Club. Mrs. Tate was standing
just inside the ballroom, following Millicent round
with her eyes, and beaming whenever she caught her
eye. Beside her were two middle-aged sycophants,
who were saying what a perfectly exquisite child Millicent
was. It was at this moment that Mrs. Tate was
grasped firmly by the skirt and her youngest daughter,
Emily, aged eleven, hurled herself with an "Oof!" into
her mother's arms.
"Why, Emily, what's the trouble?"
"Mamma," said Emily, wild-eyed but voluble,
"there's something out on the stairs."
"What?"
"There's a thing out on the stairs, mamma. I think
it's a big dog, mamma, but it doesn't look like a dog."
"What do you mean, Emily?"
The sycophants waved their heads sympathetically.
"Mamma, it looks like a—like a camel."
Mrs. Tate laughed.
"You saw a mean old shadow, dear, that's all."
"No, I didn't. No, it was some kind of thing, mamma
—big. I was going down-stairs to see if there were any
more people, and this dog or something, he was coming
up-stairs. Kinda funny, mamma, like he was lame.
And then he saw me and gave a sort of growl, and then
he slipped at the top of the landing, and I ran."
Mrs. Tate's laugh faded.
"The child must have seen something," she said.
The sycophants agreed that the child must have seen
something—and suddenly all three women took an instinctive
step away from the door as the sounds of
muffled steps were audible just outside.
And then three startled gasps rang out as a dark
brown form rounded the corner, and they saw what
was apparently a huge beast looking down at them
hungrily.
"Oof!" cried Mrs. Tate.
"O-o-oh!" cried the ladies in a chorus.
The camel suddenly humped his back, and the gasps
turned to shrieks.
"Oh—look!"
"What is it?"
The dancing stopped, but the dancers hurrying
over got quite a different impression of the invader;
in fact, the young people immediately suspected that
the party. .The boys in long trousers looked at it
rather disdainfully, and sauntered over with their
hands in their pockets, feeling that their intelligence
was being insulted. But the girls uttered little shouts
of glee.
"It's a camel!"
"Well, if he isn't the funniest!"
The camel stood there uncertainly, swaying slightly
from side to side, and seeming to take in the room in a
careful, appraising glance; then as if he had come to an
abrupt decision he turned and ambled swiftly out the
door.
Mr. Howard Tate had just come out of the library on
the lower floor, and was standing chatting with a young
man in the hall. Suddenly they heard the noise of
shouting up-stairs, and almost immediately a succession
of bumping sounds, followed by the precipitous appearance
at the foot of the stairway of a large brown beast
that seemed to be going somewhere in a great hurry.
"Now what the devil!" said Mr. Tate, starting.
The beast picked itself up not without dignity and,
affecting an air of extreme nonchalance, as if he had
just remembered an important engagement, started at
a mixed gait toward the front door. In fact, his front
legs began casually to run.
"See here now," said Mr. Tate sternly. "Here!
Grab it, Butterfield! Grab it!"
The young man enveloped the rear of the camel
in a pair of compelling arms, and, realizing that
further locomotion was impossible, the front end submitted
to capture and stood resignedly in a state of
some agitation. By this time a flood of young people
was pouring down-stairs, and Mr. Tate, suspecting
lunatic, gave crisp directions to the young man:
"Hold him! Lead him in here; we'll soon see."
The camel consented to be led into the library, and Mr.
Tate, after locking the door, took a revolver from a table
drawer and instructed the young man to take the thing's
head off. Then he gasped and returned the revolver
to its hiding-place.
"Well, Perry Parkhurst!" he exclaimed in amazement.
"Got the wrong party, Mr. Tate," said Perry sheepishly.
"Hope I didn't scare you."
"Well—you gave us a thrill, Perry." Realization
dawned on him. "You're bound for the Townsends'
circus ball."
"That's the general idea."
"Let me introduce Mr. Butterfield, Mr. Parkhurst."
Then turning to Perry: "Butterfield is staying with us
for a few days."
"I got a little mixed up," mumbled Perry. "I'm
very sorry."
"Perfectly all right; most natural mistake in the
world. I've got a clown rig and I'm going down
there myself after a while." He turned to Butterfield.
"Better change your mind and come down with
us."
The young man demurred. He was going to bed.
"Have a drink, Perry?" suggested Mr. Tate.
"Thanks, I will."
"And, say," continued Tate quickly, "I'd forgotten all
about your—friend here." He indicated the rear part
of the camel. "I didn't mean to seem discourteous. Is
it any one I know? Bring him out."
"It's not a friend," explained Perry hurriedly. "I
just rented him."
"Does he drink?"
"Do you?" demanded Perry, twisting himself tortuously
round.
There was a faint sound of assent.
"Sure he does!" said Mr. Tate heartily. "A really
efficient camel ought to be able to drink enough so it'd
last him three days."
"Tell you," said Perry anxiously, "he isn't exactly
dressed up enough to come out. If you give me the
bottle I can hand it back to him and he can take his
inside."
From under the cloth was audible the enthusiastic
smacking sound inspired by this suggestion. When a
butler had appeared with bottles, glasses, and siphon
one of the bottles was handed back; thereafter the silent
partner could be heard imbibing long potations at
frequent intervals.
Thus passed a benign hour. At ten o'clock Mr. Tate
decided that they'd better be starting. He donned his
clown's costume; Perry replaced the camel's head, and
side by side they traversed on foot the single block between
the Tate house and the Tallyho Club.
The circus ball was in full swing. A great tent fly
had been put up inside the ballroom and round the walls
had been built rows of booths representing the various
attractions of a circus side show, but these were now
vacated and over the floor swarmed a shouting, laughing
medley of youth and color—clowns, bearded ladies,
acrobats, bareback riders, ringmasters, tattooed men,
and charioteers. The Townsends had determined to
assure their party of success, so a great quantity of
liquor had been surreptitiously brought over from
their house and was now flowing freely. A green
ribbon ran along the wall completely round the ballroom,
with pointing arrows alongside and signs which
The green line led down to the bar, where waited
pure punch and wicked punch and plain dark-green
bottles.
On the wall above the bar was another arrow, red
and very wavy, and under it the slogan: "Now follow
this!"
But even amid the luxury of costume and high spirits
represented there, the entrance of the camel created
something of a stir, and Perry was immediately surrounded
by a curious, laughing crowd attempting to
penetrate the identity of this beast that stood by the
wide doorway eying the dancers with his hungry, melancholy
gaze.
And then Perry saw Betty standing in front of a
booth, talking to a comic policeman. She was dressed
in the costume of an Egyptian snake-charmer: her
tawny hair was braided and drawn through brass
rings, the effect crowned with a glittering Oriental tiara.
Her fair face was stained to a warm olive glow and on
her arms and the half moon of her back writhed
painted serpents with single eyes of venomous green.
Her feet were in sandals and her skirt was slit to the
knees, so that when she walked one caught a glimpse
of other slim serpents painted just above her bare ankles.
Wound about her neck was a glittering cobra.
Altogether a charming costume—one that caused the
more nervous among the older women to shrink away
from her when she passed, and the more troublesome
ones to make great talk about "shouldn't be allowed"
and "perfectly disgraceful."
But Perry, peering through the uncertain eyes of
the camel, saw only her face, radiant, animated, and
glowing with excitement, and her arms and shoulders,
whose mobile, expressive gestures made her always the
outstanding figure in any group. He was fascinated
With a growing clarity the events of the day came back
—rage rose within him, and with a half-formed intention
of taking her away from the crowd he started toward
her—or rather he elongated slightly, for he had neglected
to issue the preparatory command necessary to locomotion.
But at this point fickle Kismet, who for a day had
played with him bitterly and sardonically, decided to
reward him in full for the amusement he had afforded
her. Kismet turned the tawny eyes of the snake-charmer
to the camel. Kismet led her to lean toward
the man beside her and say, "Who's that? That
camel?"
"Darned if I know."
But a little man named Warburton, who knew it all,
found it necessary to hazard an opinion:
"It came in with Mr. Tate. I think part of it's
probably Warren Butterfield, the architect from New
York, who's visiting the Tates."
Something stirred in Betty Medill—that age-old interest
of the provincial girl in the visiting man.
"Oh," she said casually after a slight pause.
At the end of the next dance Betty and her partner
finished up within a few feet of the camel. With
the informal audacity that was the key-note of the
evening she reached out and gently rubbed the camel's
nose.
"Hello, old camel."
The camel stirred uneasily.
"You 'fraid of me?" said Betty, lifting her eyebrows
in reproof. "Don't be. You see I'm a snake-charmer,
but I'm pretty good at camels too."
The camel bowed very low and some one made the
obvious remark about beauty and the beast.
Mrs. Townsend approached the group.
"Well, Mr. Butterfield," she said helpfully, "I wouldn't
have recognized you."
Perry bowed again and smiled gleefully behind his
mask.
"And who is this with you?" she inquired.
"Oh," said Perry, his voice muffled by the thick cloth
and quite unrecognizable, "he isn't a fellow, Mrs.
Townsend. He's just part of my costume."
Mrs. Townsend laughed and moved away. Perry
turned again to Betty.
"So," he thought, "this is how much she cares!
On the very day of our final rupture she starts a flirtation
with another man—an absolute stranger."
On an impulse he gave her a soft nudge with his
shoulder and waved his head suggestively toward the
hall, making it clear that he desired her to leave her
partner and accompany him.
"By-by, Rus," she called to her partner. "This old
camel's got me. Where we going, Prince of Beasts?"
The noble animal made no rejoinder, but stalked
gravely along in the direction of a secluded nook on the
side stairs.
There she seated herself, and the camel, after some
seconds of confusion which included gruff orders and
sounds of a heated dispute going on in his interior,
placed himself beside her—his hind legs stretching out
uncomfortably across two steps.
"Well, old egg," said Betty cheerfully, "how do you
like our happy party?"
The old egg indicated that he liked it by rolling his
head ecstatically and executing a gleeful kick with his
hoofs.
"This is the first time that I ever had a tête-à-tête
with a man's valet 'round"—she pointed to the hind
legs—"or whatever that is."
"Oh," mumbled Perry, "he's deaf and blind."
"I should think you'd feel rather handicapped—you
can't very well toddle, even if you want to."
The camel hung his head lugubriously.
"I wish you'd say something," continued Betty
sweetly. "Say you like me, camel. Say you think
I'm beautiful. Say you'd like to belong to a pretty
snake-charmer."
The camel would.
"Will you dance with me, camel?"
The camel would try.
Betty devoted half an hour to the camel. She devoted
at least half an hour to all visiting men. It was
usually sufficient. When she approached a new man
the current débutantes were accustomed to scatter
right and left like a close column deploying before a
machine-gun. And so to Perry Parkhurst was awarded
the unique privilege of seeing his love as others saw her.
He was flirted with violently!
IV
This paradise of frail foundation was broken into by
the sounds of a general ingress to the ballroom; the
cotillion was beginning. Betty and the camel joined
the crowd, her brown hand resting lightly on his
shoulder, defiantly symbolizing her complete adoption
of him.
When they entered the couples were already seating
themselves at tables round the walls, and Mrs. Townsend,
resplendent as a super bareback rider with
rather too rotund calves, was standing in the centre
with the ringmaster in charge of arrangements. At
a signal to the band every one rose and began to
dance.
"Isn't it just slick!" sighed Betty. "Do you think
you can possibly dance?"
Perry nodded enthusiastically. He felt suddenly
exuberant. After all, he was here incognito talking to
his love—he could wink patronizingly at the world.
So Perry danced the cotillion. I say danced, but that
is stretching the word far beyond the wildest dreams of
the jazziest terpsichorean. He suffered his partner to
put her hands on his helpless shoulders and pull him
here and there over the floor while he hung his huge
head docilely over her shoulder and made futile dummy
motions with his feet. His hind legs danced in a manner
all their own, chiefly by hopping first on one foot and
then on the other. Never being sure whether dancing
was going on or not, the hind legs played safe by going
through a series of steps whenever the music started
playing. So the spectacle was frequently presented of
the front part of the camel standing at ease and the rear
keeping up a constant energetic motion calculated to
rouse a sympathetic perspiration in any soft-hearted
observer.
He was frequently favored. He danced first with a
tall lady covered with straw who announced jovially
that she was a bale of hay and coyly begged him not to
eat her.
"I'd like to; you're so sweet," said the camel gallantly.
Each time the ringmaster shouted his call of "Men
up!" he lumbered ferociously for Betty with the cardboard
wienerwurst or the photograph of the bearded
lady or whatever the favor chanced to be. Sometimes
he reached her first, but usually his rushes were unsuccessful
and resulted in intense interior arguments.
"For Heaven's sake," Perry would snarl fiercely between
his clenched teeth, "get a little pep! I could
up."
"Well, gimme a little warnin' !"
"I did, darn you."
"I can't see a dog-gone thing in here."
"All you have to do is follow me. It's just like dragging
a load of sand round to walk with you."
"Maybe you wanta try back here."
"You shut up! If these people found you in this
room they'd give you the worst beating you ever had.
They'd take your taxi license away from you!"
Perry surprised himself by the ease with which he
made this monstrous threat, but it seemed to have a
soporific influence on his companion, for he gave out an
"aw gwan" and subsided into abashed silence.
The ringmaster mounted to the top of the piano and
waved his hand for silence.
"Prizes!" he cried. "Gather round!"
"Yea! Prizes!"
Self-consciously the circle swayed forward. The
rather pretty girl who had mustered the nerve to come
as a bearded lady trembled with excitement, thinking
to be rewarded for an evening's hideousness. The man
who had spent the afternoon having tattoo marks painted
on him skulked on the edge of the crowd, blushing furiously
when any one told him he was sure to get it.
"Lady and gent performers of this circus," announced
the ringmaster jovially, "I am sure we will all agree
that a good time has been had by all. We will now bestow
honor where honor is due by bestowing the prizes.
Mrs. Townsend has asked me to bestow the prizes.
Now, fellow performers, the first prize is for that lady
who has displayed this evening the most striking, becoming"—at
this point the bearded lady sighed resignedly—"and
original costume." Here the bale of
decision which has been agreed upon will be unanimous
with all here present. The first prize goes to Miss Betty
Medill, the charming Egyptian snake-charmer."
There was a burst of applause, chiefly masculine,
and Miss Betty Medill, blushing beautifully through her
olive paint, was passed up to receive her award. With
a tender glance the ringmaster handed down to her a
huge bouquet of orchids.
"And now," he continued, looking round him, "the
other prize is for that man who has the most amusing
and original costume. This prize goes without dispute
to a guest in our midst, a gentleman who is visiting here
but whose stay we all hope will be long and merry—in
short, to the noble camel who has entertained us all by
his hungry look and his brilliant dancing throughout
the evening."
He ceased and there was a violent clapping and yeaing,
for it was a popular choice. The prize, a large box
of cigars, was put aside for the camel, as he was anatomically
unable to accept it in person.
"And now," continued the ringmaster, "we will
wind up the cotillion with the marriage of Mirth to
Folly!
"Form for the grand wedding march, the beautiful
snake-charmer and the noble camel in front!"
Betty skipped forward cheerily and wound an olive
arm round the camel's neck. Behind them formed the
procession of little boys, little girls, country jakes, fat
ladies, thin men, sword-swallowers, wild men of Borneo,
and armless wonders, many of them well in their cups,
all of them excited and happy and dazzled by the flow
of light and color round them, and by the familiar faces,
strangely unfamiliar under bizarre wigs and barbaric
paint. The voluptuous chords of the wedding march
blend from the trombones and saxophones—and the
march began.
"Aren't you glad, camel?" demanded Betty sweetly
as they stepped off. "Aren't you glad we're going to
be married and you're going to belong to the nice snake-charmer
ever afterward?"
The camel's front legs pranced, expressing excessive
joy.
"Minister! Minister! Where's the minister?" cried
voices out of the revel. "Who's going to be the clergyman?"
The head of Jumbo, obese negro, waiter at the Tallyho
Club for many years, appeared rashly through a half-opened
pantry door.
"Oh, Jumbo!"
"Get old Jumbo. He's the fella!"
"Come on, Jumbo. How'bout marrying us a couple?"
"Yea!"
Jumbo was seized by four comedians, stripped of his
apron, and escorted to a raised daïs at the head of the
ball. There his collar was removed and replaced back
side forward with ecclesiastical effect. The parade separated
into two lines, leaving an aisle for the bride and
groom.
"Lawdy, man," roared Jumbo, "Ah got ole Bible 'n'
ev'ythin', sho nuff."
He produced a battered Bible from an interior pocket.
"Yea! Jumbo's got a Bible!"
"Razor, too, I'll bet!"
Together the snake-charmer and the camel ascended
the cheering aisle and stopped in front of Jumbo.
"Where's yo license, camel?"
A man near by prodded Perry.
"Give him a piece of paper. Anything'll do."
Perry fumbled confusedly in his pocket, found a
folded paper, and pushed it out through the camel's
mouth. Holding it upside down Jumbo pretended to
scan it earnestly.
"Dis yeah's a special camel's license," he said. "Get
you ring ready, camel."
Inside the camel Perry turned round and addressed
his worse half.
"Gimme a ring, for Heaven's sake!"
"I ain't got none," protested a weary voice.
"You have. I saw it."
"I ain't goin' to take it offen my hand."
"If you don't I'll kill you."
There was a gasp and Perry felt a huge affair of
rhinestone and brass inserted into his hand.
Again he was nudged from the outside.
"Speak up!"
"I do!" cried Perry quickly.
He heard Betty's responses given in a debonair tone,
and even in this burlesque the sound thrilled him.
Then he had pushed the rhinestone through a tear
in the camel's coat and was slipping it on her finger,
muttering ancient and historic words after Jumbo.
He didn't want any one to know about this ever. His
one idea was to slip away without having to disclose
his identity, for Mr. Tate had so far kept his secret
well. A dignified young man, Perry—and this might
injure his infant law practice.
"Embrace the bride!"
"Unmask, camel, and kiss her!"
Instinctively his heart beat high as Betty turned to
him laughingly and began to stroke the card-board
muzzle. He felt his self-control giving way, he
longed to surround her with his arms and declare his
identity and kiss those lips that smiled only a foot
them died off and a curious hush fell over the hall.
Perry and Betty looked up in surprise. Jumbo had
given vent to a huge "Hello!" in such a startled
voice that all eyes were bent on him.
"Hello!" he said again. He had turned round the
camel's marriage license, which he had been holding upside
down, produced spectacles, and was studying it
agonizingly.
"Why," he exclaimed, and in the pervading silence
his words were heard plainly by every one in the room,
"this yeah's a sho-nuff marriage permit."
"What?"
"Huh?"
"Say it again, Jumbo!"
"Sure you can read?"
Jumbo waved them to silence and Perry's blood
burned to fire in his veins as he realized the break he
had made.
"Yassuh!" repeated Jumbo. "This yeah's a sho-nuff
license, and the pa'ties concerned one of 'em is dis
yeah young lady, Miz Betty Medill, and th' other's
Mistah Perry Pa'khurst."
There was a general gasp, and a low rumble broke out
as all eyes fell on the camel. Betty shrank away
from him quickly, her tawny eyes giving out sparks
of fury.
"Is you Mistah Pa'khurst, you camel?"
Perry made no answer. The crowd pressed up closer
and stared at him. He stood frozen rigid with embarrassment,
his cardboard face still hungry and sardonic
as he regarded the ominous Jumbo.
"Y'all bettah speak up!" said Jumbo slowly,
"this yeah's a mighty serious mattah. Outside mah
duties at this club ah happens to be a sho-nuff minister
as though y'all is gone an' got married."
V
The scene that followed will go down forever in the
annals of the Tallyho Club. Stout matrons fainted, one
hundred per cent Americans swore, wild-eyed débutantes
babbled in lightning groups instantly formed and instantly
dissolved, and a great buzz of chatter, virulent yet
oddly subdued, hummed through the chaotic ballroom.
Feverish youths swore they would kill Perry or Jumbo
or themselves or some one, and the Baptis' preacheh
was besieged by a tempestuous covey of clamorous
amateur lawyers, asking questions, making threats, demanding
precedents, ordering the bonds annulled, and
especially trying to ferret out any hint of prearrangement
in what had occurred.
In the corner Mrs. Townsend was crying softly on
the shoulder of Mr. Howard Tate, who was trying
vainly to comfort her; they were exchanging "all my
fault's" volubly and voluminously. Outside on a snow-covered
walk Mr. Cyrus Medill, the Aluminum Man,
was being paced slowly up and down between two
brawny charioteers, giving vent now to a string of
unrepeatables, now to wild pleadings that they'd just
let him get at Jumbo. He was facetiously attired for
the evening as a wild man of Borneo, and the most
exacting stage-manager would have acknowledged any
improvement in casting the part to be quite impossible.
Meanwhile the two principals held the real centre of
the stage. Betty Medill—or was it Betty Parkhurst?—
storming furiously, was surrounded by the plainer girls
—the prettier ones were too busy talking about her to
of the hall stood the camel, still intact except for his
headpiece, which dangled pathetically on his chest.
Perry was earnestly engaged in making protestations of
his innocence to a ring of angry, puzzled men. Every
few minutes, just as he had apparently proved his case,
some one would mention the marriage certificate, and
the inquisition would begin again.
A girl named Marion Cloud, considered the second
best belle of Toledo, changed the gist of the situation
by a remark she made to Betty.
"Well," she said maliciously, "it'll all blow over,
dear. The courts will annul it without question."
Betty's angry tears dried miraculously in her eyes,
her lips shut tight together, and she looked stonily at
Marion. Then she rose and, scattering her sympathizers
right and left, walked directly across the room to Perry,
who stared at her in terror. Again silence crept down
upon the room.
"Will you have the decency to grant me five minutes"
conversation—or wasn't that included in your plans?"
He nodded, his mouth unable to form words.
Indicating coldly that he was to follow her she walked
out into the hall with her chin uptilted and headed for
the privacy of one of the little card-rooms.
Perry started after her, but was brought to a jerky
halt by the failure of his hind legs to function.
"You stay here!" he commanded savagely.
"I can't," whined a voice from the hump, "unless
you get out first and let me get out."
Perry hesitated, but unable any longer to tolerate
the eyes of the curious crowd he muttered a command
and the camel moved carefully from the room on its
four legs.
Betty was waiting for him.
"Well," she began furiously, "you see what you've
done! You and that crazy license! I told you you
shouldn't have gotten it!"
"My dear girl, I—"
"Don't say `dear girl' to me! Save that for your
real wife if you ever get one after this disgraceful performance.
And don't try to pretend it wasn't all arranged.
You know you gave that colored waiter money!
You know you did! Do you mean to say you didn't
try to marry me?"
"No—of course—"
"Yes, you'd better admit it! You tried it, and now
what are you going to do? Do you know my father's
nearly crazy? It'll serve you right if he tries to kill
you. He'll take his gun and put some cold steel in you.
Even if this wed—this thing can be annulled it'll hang
over me all the rest of my life!"
Perry could not resist quoting softly: " `Oh, camel,
wouldn't you like to belong to the pretty snake-charmer
for all your—' "
"Shut up!" cried Betty.
There was a pause.
"Betty," said Perry finally, "there's only one thing
to do that will really get us out clear. That's for you
to marry me."
"Marry you!"
"Yes. Really it's the only—"
"You shut up! I wouldn't marry you if—if—"
"I know. If I were the last man on earth. But if
you care anything about your reputation—"
"Reputation!" she cried. "You're a nice one to
think about my reputation now. Why didn't you think
about my reputation before you hired that horrible
Jumbo to—to—"
Perry tossed up his hands hopelessly.
"Very well. I'll do anything you want. Lord knows
I renounce all claims!"
"But," said a new voice, "I don't."
Perry and Betty started, and she put her hand to her
heart.
"For Heaven's sake, what was that?"
"It's me," said the camel's back.
In a minute Perry had whipped off the camel's skin,
and a lax, limp object, his clothes hanging on him
damply, his hand clenched tightly on an almost empty
bottle, stood defiantly before them.
"Oh," cried Betty, "you brought that object in here
to frighten me! You told me he was deaf—that awful
person!"
The camel's back sat down on a chair with a sigh of
satisfaction.
"Don't talk 'at way about me, lady. I ain't no person.
I'm your husband."
"Husband!"
The cry was wrung simultaneously from Betty and
Perry.
"Why, sure. I'm as much your husband as that gink
is. The smoke didn't marry you to the camel's front.
He married you to the whole camel. Why, that's my
ring you got on your finger!"
With a little yelp she snatched the ring from her finger
and flung it passionately at the floor.
"What's all this?" demanded Perry dazedly.
"Jes' that you better fix me an' fix me right. If you
don't I'm a-gonna have the same claim you got to bein'
married to her!"
"That's bigamy," said Perry, turning gravely to
Betty.
Then came the supreme moment of Perry's evening,
the ultimate chance on which he risked his fortunes. He
aghast at this new complication, and then at the individual
who swayed from side to side on his chair, uncertainly,
menacingly.
"Very well," said Perry slowly to the individual,
"you can have her. Betty, I'm going to prove to you
that as far as I'm concerned our marriage was entirely
accidental. I'm going to renounce utterly my rights to
have you as my wife, and give you to—to the man
whose ring you wear—your lawful husband."
There was a pause and four horror-stricken eyes
were turned on him.
"Good-by, Betty," he said brokenly. "Don't forget
me in your new-found happiness. I'm going to
leave for the Far West on the morning train. Think of
me kindly, Betty."
With a last glance at them he turned and his head
rested on his chest as his hand touched the door-knob.
"Good-by," he repeated. He turned the door-knob.
But at this sound the snakes and silk and tawny hair
precipitated themselves violently toward him.
"Oh, Perry, don't leave me! Perry, Perry, take me
with you!"
Her tears flowed damply on his neck. Calmly he
folded his arms about her.
"I don't care," she cried. "I love you and if you can
wake up a minister at this hour and have it done over
again I'll go West with you."
Over her shoulder the front part of the camel looked
at the back part of the camel—and they exchanged a
particularly subtle, esoteric sort of wink that only true
camels can understand.
MAY DAY
THERE had been a war fought and won and the great
city of the conquering people was crossed with triumphal
arches and vivid with thrown flowers of white,
red, and rose. All through the long spring days the returning
soldiers marched up the chief highway behind
the strump of drums and the joyous, resonant wind of
the brasses, while merchants and clerks left their bickerings
and figurings and, crowding to the windows,
turned their white-bunched faces gravely upon the passing
battalions.
Never had there been such splendor in the great city,
for the victorious war had brought plenty in its train,
and the merchants had flocked thither from the South
and West with their households to taste of all the luscious
feasts and witness the lavish entertainments prepared—and
to buy for their women furs against the next
winter and bags of golden mesh and varicolored slippers
of silk and silver and rose satin and cloth of gold.
So gaily and noisily were the peace and prosperity
impending hymned by the scribes and poets of the conquering
people that more and more spenders had gathered
from the provinces to drink the wine of excitement,
and faster and faster did the merchants dispose of their
trinkets and slippers until they sent up a mighty cry
for more trinkets and more slippers in order that they
might give in barter what was demanded of them.
Some even of them flung up their hands helplessly,
shouting:
"Alas! I have no more slippers! and alas! I have no
what I shall do!"
But no one listened to their great outcry, for the
throngs were far too busy—day by day, the foot-soldiers
trod jauntily the highway and all exulted because the
young men returning were pure and brave, sound of
tooth and pink of cheek, and the young women of the
land were virgins and comely both of face and of figure.
So during all this time there were many adventures
that happened in the great city, and, of these, several—
or perhaps one—are here set down.
I
At nine o'clock on the morning of the first of May,
1919, a young man spoke to the room clerk at the Biltmore
Hotel, asking if Mr. Philip Dean were registered
there, and if so, could he be connected with Mr. Dean's
rooms. The inquirer was dressed in a well-cut, shabby
suit. He was small, slender, and darkly handsome;
his eyes were framed above with unusually long eyelashes
and below with the blue semicircle of ill health,
this latter effect heightened by an unnatural glow which
colored his face like a low, incessant fever.
Mr. Dean was staying there. The young man was
directed to a telephone at the side.
After a second his connection was made; a sleepy
voice hello'd from somewhere above.
"Mr. Dean?"—this very eagerly—"it's Gordon,
Phil. It's Gordon Sterrett. I'm down-stairs. I heard
you were in New York and I had a hunch you'd be here."
The sleepy voice became gradually enthusiastic. Well,
how was Gordy, old boy! Well, he certainly was surprised
and tickled! Would Gordy come right up, for
Pete's sake!
A few minutes later Philip Dean, dressed in blue silk
pajamas, opened his door and the two young men greeted
each other with a half-embarrassed exuberance. They
were both about twenty-four, Yale graduates of the year
before the war; but there the resemblance stopped
abruptly. Dean was blond, ruddy, and rugged under his
thin pajamas. Everything about him radiated fitness
and bodily comfort. He smiled frequently, showing
large and prominent teeth.
"I was going to look you up," he cried enthusiastically.
"I'm taking a couple of weeks off. If you'll sit
down a sec I'll be right with you. Going to take a
shower."
As he vanished into the bathroom his visitor's dark
eyes roved nervously around the room, resting for a
moment on a great English travelling bag in the corner
and on a family of thick silk shirts littered on the chairs
amid impressive neckties and soft woollen socks.
Gordon rose and, picking up one of the shirts, gave it
a minute examination. It was of very heavy silk, yellow,
with a pale blue stripe—and there were nearly a
dozen of them. He stared involuntarily at his own
shirt-cuffs—they were ragged and linty at the edges and
soiled to a faint gray. Dropping the silk shirt, he held
his coat-sleeves down and worked the frayed shirt-cuffs
up till they were out of sight. Then he went to the
mirror and looked at himself with listless, unhappy
interest. His tie, of former glory, was faded and thumbcreased—it
served no longer to hide the jagged buttonholes
of his collar. He thought, quite without amusement,
that only three years before he had received a
scattering vote in the senior elections at college for being
the best-dressed man in his class.
Dean emerged from the bathroom polishing his body.
"Saw an old friend of yours last night," he remarked.
to save my neck. That girl you brought up to New
Haven senior year."
Gordon started.
"Edith Bradin? That whom you mean?"
"'At's the one. Damn good looking. She's still
sort of a pretty doll—you know what I mean: as if you
touched her she'd smear."
He surveyed his shining self complacently in the
mirror, smiled faintly, exposing a section of teeth.
"She must be twenty-three anyway," he continued.
"Twenty-two last month," said Gordon absently.
"What? Oh, last month. Well, I imagine she's
down for the Gamma Psi dance. Did you know we're
having a Yale Gamma Psi dance to-night at Delmonico's?
You better come up, Gordy. Half of New
Haven'll probably be there. I can get you an invitation."
Draping himself reluctantly in fresh underwear, Dean
lit a cigarette and sat down by the open window, inspecting
his calves and knees under the morning sunshine
which poured into the room.
"Sit down, Gordy," he suggested, "and tell me all
about what you've been doing and what you're doing
now and everything."
Gordon collapsed unexpectedly upon the bed; lay
there inert and spiritless. His mouth, which habitually
dropped a little open when his face was in repose, became
suddenly helpless and pathetic.
"What's the matter?" asked Dean quickly.
"Oh, God!"
"What's the matter?"
"Every God damn thing in the world," he said miserably.
"I've absolutely gone to pieces, Phil. I'm all
in."
"Huh?"
"I'm all in." His voice was shaking.
Dean scrutinized him more closely with appraising
blue eyes.
"You certainly look all shot."
"I am. I've made a hell of a mess of everything."
He paused. "I'd better start at the beginning—or will
it bore you?"
"Not at all; go on." There was, however, a hesitant
note in Dean's voice. This trip East had been planned
for a holiday—to find Gordon Sterrett in trouble exasperated
him a little.
"Go on," he repeated, and then added half under his
breath, "Get it over with."
"Well," began Gordon unsteadily, "I got back from
France in February, went home to Harrisburg for a
month, and then came down to New York to get a job.
I got one—with an export company. They fired me
yesterday."
"Fired you?"
"I'm coming to that, Phil. I want to tell you frankly.
You're about the only man I can turn to in a matter like
this. You won't mind if I just tell you frankly, will
you, Phil?"
Dean stiffened a bit more. The pats he was bestowing
on his knees grew perfunctory. He felt vaguely that
he was being unfairly saddled with responsibility; he
was not even sure he wanted to be told. Though
never surprised at finding Gordon Sterrett in mild
difficulty, there was something in this present misery
that repelled him and hardened him, even though it
excited his curiosity.
"Go on."
"It's a girl."
"Hm." Dean resolved that nothing was going to
then he'd have to see less of Gordon.
"Her name is Jewel Hudson," went on the distressed
voice from the bed. "She used to be `pure,' I guess,
up to about a year ago. Lived here in New York—
poor family. Her people are dead now and she lives
with an old aunt. You see it was just about the time
I met her that everybody began to come back from
France in droves—and all I did was to welcome the
newly arrived and go on parties with 'em. That's the
way it started, Phil, just from being glad to see everybody
and having them glad to see me."
"You ought to've had more sense."
"I know," Gordon paused, and then continued listlessly.
"I'm on my own now, you know, and Phil, I
can't stand being poor. Then came this darn girl.
She sort of fell in love with me for a while and, though I
never intended to get so involved, I'd always seem to
run into her somewhere. You can imagine the sort
of work I was doing for those exporting people—of
course, I always intended to draw; do illustrating for
magazines; there's a pile of money in it."
"Why didn't you? You've got to buckle down if
you want to make good," suggested Dean with cold
formalism.
"I tried, a little, but my stuff's crude. I've got talent,
Phil; I can draw—but I just don't know how. I
ought to go to art school and I can't afford it. Well,
things came to a crisis about a week ago. Just as I
was down to about my last dollar this girl began bothering
me. She wants some money; claims she can make
trouble for me if she doesn't get it."
"Can she?"
"I'm afraid she can. That's one reason I lost my
job—she kept calling up the office all the time, and that
letter all written to send to my family. Oh, she's got
me, all right. I've got to have some money for her."
There was an awkward pause. Gordon lay very still,
his hands clenched by his side.
"I'm all in," he continued, his voice trembling. "I'm
half crazy, Phil. If I hadn't known you were coming
East, I think I'd have killed myself. I want you to
lend me three hundred dollars."
Dean's hands, which had been patting his bare ankles,
were suddenly quiet—and the curious uncertainty playing
between the two became taut and strained.
After a second Gordon continued:
"I've bled the family until I'm ashamed to ask for
another nickel."
Still Dean made no answer.
"Jewel says she's got to have two hundred dollars."
"Tell her where she can go."
"Yes, that sounds easy, but she's got a couple of
drunken letters I wrote her. Unfortunately she's not
at all the flabby sort of person you'd expect."
Dean made an expression of distaste.
"I can't stand that sort of woman. You ought to
have kept away."
"I know," admitted Gordon wearily.
"You've got to look at things as they are. If you
haven't got money you've got to work and stay away
from women."
"That's easy for you to say," began Gordon, his eyes
narrowing. "You've got all the money in the world."
"I most certainly have not. My family keep darn
close tab on what I spend. Just because I have a little
leeway I have to be extra careful not to abuse it."
He raised the blind and let in a further flood of sunshine.
"I'm no prig, Lord knows," he went on deliberately.
"I like pleasure—and I like a lot of it on a vacation
like this, but you're—you're in awful shape. I never
heard you talk just this way before. You seem to be
sort of bankrupt—morally as well as financially."
"Don't they usually go together?"
Dean shook his head impatiently.
"There's a regular aura about you that I don't understand.
It's a sort of evil."
"It's an air of worry and poverty and sleepless
nights," said Gordon, rather defiantly.
"I don't know."
"Oh, I admit I'm depressing. I depress myself. But,
my God, Phil, a week's rest and a new suit and some
ready money and I'd be like—like I was. Phil, I can
draw like a streak, and you know it. But half the time
I haven't had the money to buy decent drawing materials—and
I can't draw when I'm tired and discouraged
and all in. With a little ready money I can take
a few weeks off and get started."
"How do I know you wouldn't use it on some other
woman?"
"Why rub it in?" said Gordon quietly.
"I'm not rubbing it in. I hate to see you this way."
"Will you lend me the money, Phil?"
"I can't decide right off. That's a lot of money and
it'll be darn inconvenient for me."
"It'll be hell for me if you can't—I know I'm whining,
and it's all my own fault but—that doesn't change it."
"When could you pay it back?"
This was encouraging. Gordon considered. It was
probably wisest to be frank.
"Of course, I could promise to send it back next
month, but—I'd better say three months. Just as
soon as I start to sell drawings."
"How do I know you'll sell any drawings?"
A new hardness in Dean's voice sent a faint chill of
doubt over Gordon. Was it possible that he wouldn't
get the money?
"I supposed you had a little confidence in me."
"I did have—but when I see you like this I begin to
wonder."
"Do you suppose if I wasn't at the end of my rope
I'd come to you like this? Do you think I'm enjoying
it?" He broke off and bit his lip, feeling that he had
better subdue the rising anger in his voice. After all,
he was the suppliant.
"You seem to manage it pretty easily," said Dean
angrily. "You put me in the position where, if I don't
lend it to you, I'm a sucker—oh, yes, you do. And let
me tell you it's no easy thing for me to get hold of three
hundred dollars. My income isn't so big but that a
slice like that won't play the deuce with it."
He left his chair and began to dress, choosing his
clothes carefully. Gordon stretched out his arms and
clenched the edges of the bed, fighting back a desire
to cry out. His head was splitting and whirring,
his mouth was dry and bitter and he could feel the fever
in his blood resolving itself into innumerable regular
counts like a slow dripping from a roof.
Dean tied his tie precisely, brushed his eyebrows, and
removed a piece of tobacco from his teeth with solemnity.
Next he filled his cigarette case, tossed the empty box
thoughtfully into the waste basket, and settled the case
in his vest pocket.
"Had breakfast?" he demanded.
"No; I don't eat it any more."
"Well, we'll go out and have some. We'll decide
about that money later. I'm sick of the subject. I
came East to have a good time.
"Let's go over to the Yale Club," he continued
moodily, and then added with an implied reproof:
"You've given up your job. You've got nothing else
to do."
"I'd have a lot to do if I had a little money," said
Gordon pointedly.
"Oh, for Heaven's sake drop the subject for a while!
No point in glooming on my whole trip. Here, here's
some money."
He took a five-dollar bill from his wallet and tossed
it over to Gordon, who folded it carefully and put it
in his pocket. There was an added spot of color in
his cheeks, an added glow that was not fever. For
an instant before they turned to go out their eyes met
and in that instant each found something that made
him lower his own glance quickly. For in that instant
they quite suddenly and definitely hated each other.
II
Fifth Avenue and Forty-fourth Street swarmed with
the noon crowd. The wealthy, happy sun glittered in
transient gold through the thick windows of the smart
shops, lighting upon mesh bags and purses and strings
of pearls in gray velvet cases; upon gaudy feather fans of
many colors; upon the laces and silks of expensive
dresses; upon the bad paintings and the fine period
furniture in the elaborate show rooms of interior decorators.
Working-girls, in pairs and groups and swarms,
loitered by these windows, choosing their future boudoirs
from some resplendent display which included even a
man's silk pajamas laid domestically across the bed.
They stood in front of the jewelry stores and picked
and their platinum wrist watches, and then drifted on
to inspect the feather fans and opera cloaks; meanwhile
digesting the sandwiches and sundaes they had eaten
for lunch.
All through the crowd were men in uniform, sailors
from the great fleet anchored in the Hudson, soldiers
with divisional insignia from Massachusetts to California,
wanting fearfully to be noticed, and finding the
great city thoroughly fed up with soldiers unless they
were nicely massed into pretty formations and uncomfortable
under the weight of a pack and rifle.
Through this medley Dean and Gordon wandered;
the former interested, made alert by the display of humanity
at its frothiest and gaudiest; the latter reminded
of how often he had been one of the crowd, tired, casually
fed, overworked, and dissipated. To Dean the
struggle was significant, young, cheerful; to Gordon it
was dismal, meaningless, endless.
In the Yale Club they met a group of their former
classmates who greeted the visiting Dean vociferously.
Sitting in a semicircle of lounges and great chairs, they
had a highball all around.
Gordon found the conversation tiresome and interminable.
They lunched together en masse, warmed with
liquor as the afternoon began. They were all going to
the Gamma Psi dance that night—it promised to be the
best party since the war.
"Edith Bradin's coming," said some one to Gordon.
"Didn't she used to be an old flame of yours? Aren't
you both from Harrisburg?"
"Yes." He tried to change the subject. "I see her
brother occasionally. He's sort of a socialistic nut.
Runs a paper or something here in New York."
"Not like his gay sister, eh?" continued his eager
informant. "Well, she's coming to-night with a junior
named Peter Himmel."
Gordon was to meet Jewel Hudson at eight o'clock—
he had promised to have some money for her. Several
times he glanced nervously at his wrist watch. At four,
to his relief, Dean rose and announced that he was going
over to Rivers Brothers to buy some collars and ties.
But as they left the Club another of the party joined
them, to Gordon's great dismay. Dean was in a jovial
mood now, happy, expectant of the evening's party,
faintly hilarious. Over in Rivers' he chose a dozen
neckties, selecting each one after long consultations with
the other man. Did he think narrow ties were coming
back? And wasn't it a shame that Rivers couldn't
get any more Welsh Margotson collars? There never
was a collar like the "Covington."
Gordon was in something of a panic. He wanted
the money immediately. And he was now inspired
also with a vague idea of attending the Gamma Psi
dance. He wanted to see Edith—Edith whom he hadn't
met since one romantic night at the Harrisburg Country
Club just before he went to France. The affair had died,
drowned in the turmoil of the war and quite forgotten
in the arabesque of these three months, but a picture
of her, poignant, debonnaire, immersed in her own inconsequential
chatter, recurred to him unexpectedly
and brought a hundred memories with it. It was
Edith's face that he had cherished through college with
a sort of detached yet affectionate admiration. He
had loved to draw her—around his room had been a
dozen sketches of her—playing golf, swimming—he
could draw her pert, arresting profile with his eyes shut.
They left Rivers' at five-thirty and paused for a moment
on the sidewalk.
"Well," said Dean genially, "I'm all set now. Think
I'll go back to the hotel and get a shave, haircut, and
massage."
"Good enough," said the other man, "I think I'll
join you."
Gordon wondered if he was to be beaten after all.
With difficulty he restrained himself from turning to
the man and snarling out, "Go on away, damn you!"
In despair he suspected that perhaps Dean had spoken
to him, was keeping him along in order to avoid a dispute
about the money.
They went into the Biltmore—a Biltmore alive with
girls—mostly from the West and South, the stellar débutantes
of many cities gathered for the dance of a famous
fraternity of a famous university. But to Gordon
they were faces in a dream. He gathered together his
forces for a last appeal, was about to come out with he
knew not what, when Dean suddenly excused himself
to the other man and taking Gordon's arm led him
aside.
"Gordy," he said quickly, "I've thought the whole
thing over carefully and I've decided that I can't lend
you that money. I'd like to oblige you, but I don't
feel I ought to—it'd put a crimp in me for a month."
Gordon, watching him dully, wondered why he had
never before noticed how much those upper teeth projected.
"—I'm mighty sorry, Gordon," continued Dean,
"but that's the way it is."
He took out his wallet and deliberately counted out
seventy-five dollars in bills.
"Here," he said, holding them out, "here's seventy-five;
that makes eighty all together. That's all the
actual cash I have with me, besides what I'll actually
spend on the trip."
Gordon raised his clenched hand automatically,
opened it as though it were a tongs he was holding,
and clenched it again on the money.
"I'll see you at the dance," continued Dean. "I've
got to get along to the barber shop."
"So-long," said Gordon in a strained and husky
voice.
"So-long."
Dean began to smile, but seemed to change his mind.
He nodded briskly and disappeared.
But Gordon stood there, his handsome face awry
with distress, the roll of bills clenched tightly in his
hand. Then, blinded by sudden tears, he stumbled
clumsily down the Biltmore steps.
III
About nine o'clock of the same night two human
beings came out of a cheap restaurant in Sixth Avenue.
They were ugly, ill-nourished, devoid of all except the
very lowest form of intelligence, and without even that
animal exuberance that in itself brings color into life;
they were lately vermin-ridden, cold, and hungry in a
dirty town of a strange land; they were poor, friendless;
tossed as driftwood from their births, they would be
tossed as driftwood to their deaths. They were dressed
in the uniform of the United States Army, and on the
shoulder of each was the insignia of a drafted division
from New Jersey, landed three days before.
The taller of the two was named Carrol Key, a name
hinting that in his veins, however thinly diluted by
generations of degeneration, ran blood of some potentiality.
But one could stare endlessly at the long, chinless
face, the dull, watery eyes, and high cheek-bones,
without finding a suggestion of either ancestral worth
or native resourcefulness.
His companion was swart and bandy-legged, with
rat-eyes and a much-broken hooked nose. His defiant
air was obviously a pretense, a weapon of protection
borrowed from that world of snarl and snap, of physical
bluff and physical menace, in which he had always
lived. His name was Gus Rose.
Leaving the café they sauntered down Sixth Avenue,
wielding toothpicks with great gusto and complete detachment.
"Where to?" asked Rose, in a tone which implied
that he would not be surprised if Key suggested the
South Sea Islands.
"What you say we see if we can getta holda some
liquor?" Prohibition was not yet. The ginger in the
suggestion was caused by the law forbidding the selling
of liquor to soldiers.
Rose agreed enthusiastically.
"I got an idea," continued Key, after a moment's
thought, "I got a brother somewhere."
"In New York?"
"Yeah. He's an old fella." He meant that he was
an elder brother. "He's a waiter in a hash joint."
"Maybe he can get us some."
"I'll say he can!"
"B'lieve me, I'm goin' to get this darn uniform off
me to-morra. Never get me in it again, neither. I'm
goin' to get me some regular clothes."
"Say, maybe I'm not."
As their combined finances were something less than
five dollars, this intention can be taken largely as a
pleasant game of words, harmless and consoling. It
seemed to please both of them, however, for they reinforced
it with chuckling and mention of personages
high in biblical circles, adding such further emphasis
as "Oh, boy!" "You know!" and "I'll say so!" repeated
many times over.
The entire mental pabulum of these two men consisted
of an offended nasal comment extended through
the years upon the institution—army, business, or poorhouse—which
kept them alive, and toward their immediate
superior in that institution. Until that very
morning the institution had been the "government"
and the immediate superior had been the "Cap'n"—
from these two they had glided out and were now in the
vaguely uncomfortable state before they should adopt
their next bondage. They were uncertain, resentful,
and somewhat ill at ease. This they hid by pretending
an elaborate relief at being out of the army, and by
assuring each other that military discipline should never
again rule their stubborn, liberty-loving wills. Yet,
as a matter of fact, they would have felt more at home
in a prison than in this new-found and unquestionable
freedom.
Suddenly Key increased his gait. Rose, looking up
and following his glance, discovered a crowd that was
collecting fifty yards down the street. Key chuckled
and began to run in the direction of the crowd; Rose
thereupon also chuckled and his short bandy legs
twinkled beside the long, awkward strides of his companion.
Reaching the outskirts of the crowd they immediately
became an indistinguishable part of it. It was composed
of ragged civilians somewhat the worse for liquor,
and of soldiers representing many divisions and many
stages of sobriety, all clustered around a gesticulating
little Jew with long black whiskers, who was waving his
arms and delivering an excited but succinct harangue.
Key and Rose, having wedged themselves into the
approximate parquet, scrutinized him with acute suspicion,
as his words penetrated their common consciousness.
"—What have you got outa the war?" he was crying
fiercely. "Look arounja, look arounja! Are you rich?
Have you got a lot of money offered you?—no; you're
lucky if you're alive and got both your legs; you're
lucky if you came back an' find your wife ain't gone
off with some other fella that had the money to buy
himself out of the war! That's when you're lucky!
Who got anything out of it except J. P. Morgan an'
John D. Rockerfeller?"
At this point the little Jew's oration was interrupted
by the hostile impact of a fist upon the point of his
bearded chin and he toppled backward to a sprawl on
the pavement.
"God damn Bolsheviki!" cried the big soldier-blacksmith
who had delivered the blow. There was a
rumble of approval, the crowd closed in nearer.
The Jew staggered to his feet, and immediately went
down again before a half-dozen reaching-in fists. This
time he stayed down, breathing heavily, blood oozing
from his lip where it was cut within and without.
There was a riot of voices, and in a minute Rose and
Key found themselves flowing with the jumbled crowd
down Sixth Avenue under the leadership of a thin civilian
in a slouch hat and the brawny soldier who had summarily
ended the oration. The crowd had marvellously
swollen to formidable proportions and a stream of more
non-committal citizens followed it along the sidewalks
lending their moral support by intermittent huzzas.
"Where we goin'?" yelled Key to the man nearest
him.
His neighbor pointed up to the leader in the slouch
hat.
"That guy knows where there's a lot of 'em! We're
goin' to show 'em!"
"We're goin' to show 'em!" whispered Key delightedly
a man on the other side.
Down Sixth Avenue swept the procession, joined here
and there by soldiers and marines, and now and then by
civilians, who came up with the inevitable cry that
they were just out of the army themselves, as if presenting
it as a card of admission to a newly formed Sporting
and Amusement Club.
Then the procession swerved down a cross street and
headed for Fifth Avenue and the word filtered here and
there that they were bound for a Red meeting at Tolliver
Hall.
"Where is it?"
The question went up the line and a moment later
the answer floated back. Tolliver Hall was down on
Tenth Street. There was a bunch of other sojers who
was goin' to break it up and was down there now!
But Tenth Street had a faraway sound and at the
word a general groan went up and a score of the procession
dropped out. Among these were Rose and Key,
who slowed down to a saunter and let the more enthusiastic
sweep on by.
"I'd rather get some liquor," said Key as they halted
and made their way to the sidewalk amid cries of "Shell
hole!" and "Quitters!"
"Does your brother work around here?" asked Rose,
assuming the air of one passing from the superficial to
the eternal.
"He oughta," replied Key. "I ain't seen him for
a coupla years. I been out to Pennsylvania since.
Maybe he don't work at night anyhow. It's right along
here. He can get us some o'right if he ain't gone."
They found the place after a few minutes' patrol of
the street—a shoddy tablecloth restaurant between Fifth
Avenue and Broadway. Here Key went inside to inquire
"He ain't here no more," said Key emerging. "He's
a waiter up to Delmonico's."
Rose nodded wisely, as if he'd expected as much. One
should not be surprised at a capable man changing jobs
occasionally. He knew a waiter once—there ensued a
long conversation as they walked as to whether waiters
made more in actual wages than in tips—it was decided
that it depended on the social tone of the joint wherein
the waiter labored. After having given each other
vivid pictures of millionaires dining at Delmonico's
and throwing away fifty-dollar bills after their first
quart of champagne, both men thought privately of
becoming waiters. In fact, Key's narrow brow was secreting
a resolution to ask his brother to get him a
job.
"A waiter can drink up all the champagne those
fellas leave in bottles," suggested Rose with some relish,
and then added as an afterthought, "Oh, boy!"
By the time they reached Delmonico's it was half
past ten, and they were surprised to see a stream of taxis
driving up to the door one after the other and emitting
marvelous, hatless young ladies, each one attended by a
stiff young gentleman in evening clothes.
"It's a party," said Rose with some awe. "Maybe
we better not go in. He'll be busy."
"No, he won't. He'll be o'right."
After some hesitation they entered what appeared to
them to be the least elaborate door and, indecision
falling upon them immediately, stationed themselves
nervously in an inconspicuous corner of the small dining-room
in which they found themselves. They took
off their caps and held them in their hands. A cloud
of gloom fell upon them and both started when a
comet-like waiter who streaked across the floor and
vanished through another door on the other side.
There had been three of these lightning passages before
the seekers mustered the acumen to hail a waiter.
He turned, looked at them suspiciously, and then approached
with soft, catlike steps, as if prepared at any
moment to turn and flee.
"Say," began Key, "say, do you know my brother?
He's a waiter here."
"His name is Key," annotated Rose.
Yes, the waiter knew Key. He was up-stairs, he
thought. There was a big dance going on in the main
ballroom. He'd tell him.
Ten minutes later George Key appeared and greeted
his brother with the utmost suspicion; his first and
most natural thought being that he was going to be
asked for money.
George was tall and weak chinned, but there his resemblance
to his brother ceased. The waiter's eyes
were not dull, they were alert and twinkling, and his
manner was suave, in-door, and faintly superior. They
exchanged formalities. George was married and had
three children. He seemed fairly interested, but not
impressed by the news that Carrol had been abroad in
the army. This disappointed Carrol.
"George," said the younger brother, these amenities
having been disposed of, "we want to get some
booze, and they won't sell us none. Can you get
us some?"
George considered.
"Sure. Maybe I can. It may be half an hour,
though."
"All right," agreed Carrol, "we'll wait."
At this Rose started to sit down in a convenient chair,
but was hailed to his feet by the indignant George.
"Hey! Watch out, you! Can't sit down here!
This room's all set for a twelve o'clock banquet."
"I ain't goin' to hurt it," said Rose resentfully.
"I been through the delouser."
"Never mind," said George sternly, "if the head
waiter seen me here talkin' he'd romp all over me."
"Oh."
The mention of the head waiter was full explanation
to the other two; they fingered their overseas caps nervously
and waited for a suggestion.
"I tell you," said George, after a pause, "I got a
place you can wait; you just come here with me."
They followed him out the far door, through a deserted
pantry and up a pair of dark winding stairs,
emerging finally into a small room chiefly furnished by
piles of pails and stacks of scrubbing brushes, and illuminated
by a single dim electric light. There he left
them, after soliciting two dollars and agreeing to return
in half an hour with a quart of whiskey.
"George is makin' money, I bet," said Key gloomily
as he seated himself on an inverted pail. "I bet he's
making fifty dollars a week."
Rose nodded his head and spat.
"I bet he is, too."
"What'd he say the dance was of?"
"A lot of college fellas. Yale College."
They both nodded solemnly at each other.
"Wonder where that crowda sojers is now?"
"I don't know. I know that's too damn long to walk
for me."
"Me too. You don't catch me walkin' that far."
Ten minutes later restlessness seized them.
"I'm goin' to see what's out here," said Rose, stepping
cautiously toward the other door.
It was a swinging door of green baize and he pushed
it open a cautious inch.
"See anything?"
For answer Rose drew in his breath sharply.
"Doggone! Here's some liquor I'll say!"
"Liquor?"
Key joined Rose at the door, and I ked eagerly.
"I'll tell the world that's liquor," he aid, after a moment
of concentrated gazing.
It was a room about twice as large as the one they
were in—and in it was prepared a radi nt f a t of spirits.
There were long walls of alternating bottl s set along
two white covered tables; whiskey, gin, brandy, French
and Italian vermouths, and orange juice, not to mention
an array of syphons and two great empty pun h bowls.
The room was as yet uninhabited.
"It's for this dance they're just starting," whispered
Key; "hear the violins playin'? Say, boy, I wouldn't
mind havin' a dance."
They closed the door softly and exchanged a glance of
mutual comprehension. There was no need of feeling
each other out.
"I'd like to get my hands on a coupla those bottles,"
said Rose emphatically.
"Me too."
"Do you suppose we'd get seen?"
Key considered.
"Maybe we better wait till they start drinkin' 'em.
They got 'em all laid out now, and they know how many
of them there are."
They debated this point for several minutes. Rose
was all for getting his hands on a bottle now and tucking
it under his coat before any one came into the room.
Key, however, advocated caution. He was afraid he
might get his brother in trouble. If they waited till
some of the bottles were opened it'd be all right to take
fellas.
While they were still engaged in argument George
Key hurried through the room and, barely grunting at
them, disappeared by way of the green baize door. A
minute later they heard several corks pop, and then the
sound of cracking ice and splashing liquid. George was
mixing the punch.
The soldiers exchanged delighted grins.
"Oh, boy!" whispered Rose.
George reappeared.
"Just keep low, boys," he said quickly. "I'll have
your stuff for you in five minutes."
He disappeared through the door by which he had come.
As soon as his footsteps receded down the stairs, Rose,
after a cautious look, darted into the room of delights
and reappeared with a bottle in his hand.
"Here's what I say," he said, as they sat radiantly
digesting their first drink. "We'll wait till he comes up,
and we'll ask him if we can't just stay here and drink
what he brings us—see. We'll tell him we haven't got
any place to drink it—see. Then we can sneak in
there whenever there ain't nobody in that there room
and tuck a bottle under our coats. We'll have enough
to last us a coupla days—see?"
"Sure," agreed Rose enthusiastically. "Oh, boy!
And if we want to we can sell it to sojers any time we
want to."
They were silent for a moment thinking rosily of
this idea. Then Key reached up and unhooked the
collar of his O. D. coat.
"It's hot in here, ain't it?"
Rose agreed earnestly.
"Hot as hell."
IV
She was still quite angry when she came out of the
dressing-room and crossed the intervening parlor of politeness
that opened onto the hall—angry not so much
at the actual happening which was, after all, the merest
commonplace of her social existence, but because it
had occurred on this particular night. She had no
quarrel with herself. She had acted with that correct
mixture of dignity and reticent pity which she always
employed. She had succinctly and deftly snubbed
him.
It had happened when their taxi was leaving the Biltmore—hadn't
gone half a block. He had lifted his right
arm awkwardly—she was on his right side—and attempted
to settle it snugly around the crimson fur-trimmed
opera cloak she wore. This in itself had been
a mistake. It was inevitably more graceful for a young
man attempting to embrace a young lady of whose
acquiescence he was not certain, to first put his far arm
around her. It avoided that awkward movement of
raising the near arm.
His second faux pas was unconscious. She had spent
the afternoon at the hairdresser's; the idea of any calamity
overtaking her hair was extremely repugnant—
yet as Peter made his unfortunate attempt the point of
his elbow had just faintly brushed it. That was his
second faux pas. Two were quite enough.
He had begun to murmur. At the first murmur she
had decided that he was nothing but a college boy—
Edith was twenty-two, and anyhow, this dance, first
of its kind since the war, was reminding her, with the
accelerating rhythm of its associations, of something
else—of another dance and another man, a man for
whom her feelings had been little more than a sad-eyed,
love with her recollection of Gordon Sterrett.
So she came out of the dressing-room at Delmonico's
and stood for a second in the doorway looking over the
shoulders of a black dress in front of her at the groups
of Yale men who flitted like dignified black moths
around the head of the stairs. From the room she had
left drifted out the heavy fragrance left by the passage
to and fro of many scented young beauties—rich perfumes
and the fragile memory-laden dust of fragrant
powders. This odor drifting out acquired the tang of
cigarette smoke in the hall, and then settled sensuously
down the stairs and permeated the ballroom where the
Gamma Psi dance was to be held. It was an odor she
knew well, exciting, stimulating, restlessly sweet—the
odor of a fashionable dance.
She thought of her own appearance. Her bare arms
and shoulders were powdered to a creamy white. She
knew they looked very soft and would gleam like milk
against the black backs that were to silhouette them tonight.
The hairdressing had been a success; her reddish
mass of hair was piled and crushed and creased to
an arrogant marvel of mobile curves. Her lips were
finely made of deep carmine; the irises of her eyes were
delicate, breakable blue, like china eyes. She was a
complete, infinitely delicate, quite perfect thing of
beauty, flowing in an even line from a complex coiffure
to two small slim feet.
She thought of what she would say to-night at this
revel, faintly prestiged already by the sounds of high and
low laughter and slippered footsteps, and movements of
couples up and down the stairs. She would talk the
language she had talked for many years—her line—made
up of the current expressions, bits of journalese and college
slang strung together into an intrinsic whole, careless,
smiled faintly as she heard a girl sitting on the stairs
near her say: "You don't know the half of it, dearie!"
And as she smiled her anger melted for a moment,
and closing her eyes she drew in a deep breath of pleasure.
She dropped her arms to her side until they were
faintly touching the sleek sheath that covered and suggested
her figure. She had never felt her own softness
so much nor so enjoyed the whiteness of her own arms.
"I smell sweet," she said to herself simply, and then
came another thought—"I'm made for love."
She liked the sound of this and thought it again; then
in inevitable succession came her new-born riot of dreams
about Gordon. The twist of her imagination which, two
months before, had disclosed to her her unguessed
desire to see him again, seemed now to have been leading
up to this dance, this hour.
For all her sleek beauty, Edith was a grave, slow-thinking
girl. There was a streak in her of that same
desire to ponder, of that adolescent idealism that had
turned her brother socialist and pacifist. Henry Bradin
had left Cornell, where he had been an instructor in
economics, and had come to New York to pour the latest
cures for incurable evils into the columns of a radical
weekly newspaper.
Edith, less fatuously, would have been content to cure
Gordon Sterrett. There was a quality of weakness in
Gordon that she wanted to take care of; there was a
helplessness in him that she wanted to protect. And
she wanted someone she had known a long while, someone
who had loved her a long while. She was a little
tired; she wanted to get married. Out of a pile of letters,
half a dozen pictures and as many memories, and
this weariness, she had decided that next time she saw
Gordon their relations were going to be changed. She
was this evening. This was her evening. All evenings
were her evenings.
Then her thoughts were interrupted by a solemn
undergraduate with a hurt look and an air of strained
formality who presented himself before her and bowed
unusually low. It was the man she had come with,
Peter Himmel. He was tall and humorous, with horned-rimmed
glasses and an air of attractive whimsicality.
She suddenly rather disliked him—probably because he
had not succeeded in kissing her.
"Well," she began, "are you still furious at me?"
"Not at all."
She stepped forward and took his arm.
"I'm sorry," she said softly. "I don't know why I
snapped out that way. I'm in a bum humor to-night
for some strange reason. I'm sorry."
"S'all right," he mumbled, "don't mention it."
He felt disagreeably embarrassed. Was she rubbing
in the fact of his late failure?
"It was a mistake," she continued, on the same consciously
gentle key. "We'll both forget it." For this
he hated her.
A few minutes later they drifted out on the floor while
the dozen swaying, sighing members of the specially
hired jazz orchestra informed the crowded ballroom
that "if a saxophone and me are left alone why then two
is com-pan-ee!"
A man with a mustache cut in.
"Hello," he began reprovingly. "You don't remember
me."
"I can't just think of your name," she said lightly—
"and I know you so well."
"I met you up at—" His voice trailed disconsolately
off as a man with very fair hair cut in. Edith
to the inconnu.
The very fair man insisted on shaking hands enthusiastically.
She placed him as one of the numerous Jims
of her acquaintance—last name a mystery. She remembered
even that he had a peculiar rhythm in dancing
and found as they started that she was right.
"Going to be here long?" he breathed confidentially.
She leaned back and looked up at him.
"Couple of weeks."
"Where are you?"
"Biltmore. Call me up some day."
"I mean it," he assured her. "I will. We'll go to
tea."
"So do I—Do."
A dark man cut in with intense formality.
"You don't remember me, do you?" he said gravely.
"I should say I do. Your name's Harlan."
"No-ope. Barlow."
"Well, I knew there were two syllables anyway.
You're the boy that played the ukulele so well up at
Howard Marshall's house party.
"I played—but not—"
A man with prominent teeth cut in. Edith inhaled
a slight cloud of whiskey. She liked men to have had
something to drink; they were so much more cheerful,
and appreciative and complimentary—much easier to
talk to.
"My name's Dean, Philip Dean," he said cheerfully.
"You don't remember me, I know, but you used
to come up to New Haven with a fellow I roomed with
senior year, Gordon Sterrett."
Edith looked up quickly.
"Yes, I went up with him twice—to the Pump and
Slipper and the Junior prom."
"You've seen him, of course," said Dean carelessly.
"He's here to-night. I saw him just a minute ago."
Edith started. Yet she had felt quite sure he would
be here.
"Why, no, I haven't—"
A fat man with red hair cut in.
"Hello, Edith," he began.
"Why—hello there—"
She slipped, stumbled lightly.
"I'm sorry, dear," she murmured mechanically.
She had seen Gordon—Gordon very white and listless,
leaning against the side of a doorway, smoking and
looking into the ballroom. Edith could see that his
face was thin and wan—that the hand he raised to
his lips with a cigarette was trembling. They were
dancing quite close to him now.
"—They invite so darn many extra fellas that you—"
the short man was saying.
"Hello, Gordon," called Edith over her partner's
shoulder. Her heart was pounding wildly.
His large dark eyes were fixed on her. He took a
step in her direction. Her partner turned her away—
she heard his voice bleating—
"—but half the stags get lit and leave before long,
so—"
Then a low tone at her side.
"May I, please?"
She was dancing suddenly with Gordon; one of his
arms was around her; she felt it tighten spasmodically;
felt his hand on her back with the fingers spread. Her
hand holding the little lace handkerchief was crushed
in his.
"Why Gordon," she began breathlessly.
"Hello, Edith."
She slipped again—was tossed forward by her recovery
coat. She loved him—she knew she loved him—then
for a minute there was silence while a strange feeling
of uneasiness crept over her. Something was wrong.
Of a sudden her heart wrenched, and turned over as
she realized what it was. He was pitiful and wretched,
a little drunk, and miserably tired.
"Oh—" she cried involuntarily.
His eyes looked down at her. She saw suddenly that
they were blood-streaked and rolling uncontrollably.
"Gordon," she murmured, "we'll sit down; I want to
sit down."
They were nearly in mid-floor, but she had seen two
men start toward her from opposite sides of the room,
so she halted, seized Gordon's limp hand and led him
bumping through the crowd, her mouth tight shut, her
face a little pale under her rouge, her eyes trembling
with tears.
She found a place high up on the soft-carpeted stairs,
and he sat down heavily beside her.
"Well," he began, staring at her unsteadily, "I certainly
am glad to see you, Edith."
She looked at him without answering. The effect of
this on her was immeasurable. For years she had seen
men in various stages of intoxication, from uncles all
the way down to chauffeurs, and her feelings had varied
from amusement to disgust, but here for the first time
she was seized with a new feeling—an unutterable
horror.
"Gordon," she said accusingly and almost crying,
"you look like the devil."
He nodded. "I've had trouble, Edith."
"Trouble?"
"All sorts of trouble. Don't you say anything to the
family, but I'm all gone to pieces. I'm a mess, Edith."
His lower lip was sagging. He seemed scarcely to see
her.
"Can't you—can't you," she hesitated, "can't you
tell me about it, Gordon? You know I'm always interested
in you."
She bit her lip—she had intended to say something
stronger, but found at the end that she couldn't bring
it out.
Gordon shook his head dully. "I can't tell you.
You're a good woman. I can't tell a good woman the
story."
"Rot," she said, defiantly. "I think it's a perfect
insult to call any one a good woman in that way. It's a
slam. You've been drinking, Gordon."
"Thanks." He inclined his head gravely. "Thanks
for the information."
"Why do you drink?"
"Because I'm so damn miserable."
"Do you think drinking's going to make it any better?"
"What you doing—trying to reform me?"
"No; I'm trying to help you, Gordon. Can't you
tell me about it?"
"I'm in an awful mess. Best thing you can do is to
pretend not to know me."
"Why, Gordon?"
"I'm sorry I cut in on you—its unfair to you. You're
pure woman—and all that sort of thing. Here, I'll get
some one else to dance with you."
He rose clumsily to his feet, but she reached up and
pulled him down beside her on the stairs.
"Here, Gordon. You're ridiculous. You're hurting
me. You're acting like a—like a crazy man—"
"I admit it. I'm a little crazy. Something's wrong
with me, Edith. There's something left me. It
doesn't matter."
"It does, tell me."
"Just that. I was always queer—little bit different
from other boys. All right in college, but now it's all
wrong. Things have been snapping inside me for four
months like little hooks on a dress, and it's about to
come off when a few more hooks go. I'm very gradually
going loony."
He turned his eyes full on her and began to laugh,
and she shrank away from him.
"What is the matter?"
"Just me," he repeated. "I'm going loony. This
whole place is like a dream to me—this Delmonico's—"
As he talked she saw he had changed utterly. He
wasn't at all light and gay and careless—a great lethargy
and discouragement had come over him. Revulsion
seized her, followed by a faint, surprising boredom.
His voice seemed to come out of a great void.
"Edith," he said, "I used to think I was clever,
talented, an artist. Now I know I'm nothing.
Can't draw, Edith. Don't know why I'm telling you
this."
She nodded absently.
"I can't draw, I can't do anything. I'm poor as a
church mouse." He laughed, bitterly and rather too
loud. "I've become a damn beggar, a leech on my
friends. I'm a failure. I'm poor as hell."
Her distaste was growing. She barely nodded this
time, waiting for her first possible cue to rise.
Suddenly Gordon's eyes filled with tears.
"Edith," he said, turning to her with what was evidently
a strong effort at self-control, "I can't tell you
what it means to me to know there's one person left
who's interested in me."
He reached out and patted her hand, and involuntarily
she drew it away.
"It's mighty fine of you," he repeated.
"Well," she said slowly, looking him in the eye,
"any one's always glad to see an old friend—but I'm
sorry to see you like this, Gordon."
There was a pause while they looked at each other,
and the momentary eagerness in his eyes wavered. She
rose and stood looking at him, her face quite expressionless.
"Shall we dance?" she suggested, coolly.
—Love is fragile—she was thinking—but perhaps the
pieces are saved, the things that hovered on lips, that
might have been said. The new love words, the tendernesses
learned, are treasured up for the next lover.
V
Peter Himmel, escort to the lovely Edith, was unaccustomed
to being snubbed; having been snubbed, he
was hurt and embarrassed, and ashamed of himself. For
a matter of two months he had been on special delivery
terms with Edith Bradin, and knowing that the
one excuse and explanation of the special delivery letter
is its value in sentimental correspondence, he had believed
himself quite sure of his ground. He searched
in vain for any reason why she should have taken this
attitude in the matter of a simple kiss.
Therefore when he was cut in on by the man with the
mustache he went out into the hall and, making up a
sentence, said it over to himself several times. Considerably
deleted, this was it:
"Well, if any girl ever led a man on and then jolted
him, she did—and she has no kick coming if I go out and
get beautifully boiled."
So he walked through the supper room into a small
room adjoining it, which he had located earlier in the
large bowls of punch flanked by many bottles. He
took a seat beside the table which held the bottles.
At the second highball, boredom, disgust, the monotony
of time, the turbidity of events, sank into a vague
background before which glittering cobwebs formed.
Things became reconciled to themselves, things lay
quietly on their shelves; the troubles of the day arranged
themselves in trim formation and at his curt
wish of dismissal, marched off and disappeared. And
with the departure of worry came brilliant, permeating
symbolism. Edith became a flighty, negligible girl,
not to be worried over; rather to be laughed at. She
fitted like a figure of his own dream into the surface
world forming about him. He himself became in a
measure symbolic, a type of the continent bacchanal,
the brilliant dreamer at play.
Then the symbolic mood faded and as he sipped his
third highball his imagination yielded to the warm glow
and he lapsed into a state similar to floating on his
back in pleasant water. It was at this point that he
noticed that a green baize door near him was open
about two inches, and that through the aperture a pair
of eyes were watching him intently.
"Hm," murmured Peter calmly.
The green door closed—and then opened again—a
bare half inch this time.
"Peek-a-boo," murmured Peter.
The door remained stationary and then he became
aware of a series of tense intermittent whispers.
"One guy."
"What's he doin'?"
"He's sittin' lookin'."
"He better beat it off. We gotta get another li'l'
bottle."
Peter listened while the words filtered into his consciousness.
"Now this," he thought, "is most remarkable."
He was excited. He was jubilant. He felt that he
had stumbled upon a mystery. Affecting an elaborate
carelessness he arose and walked around the table—
then, turning quickly, pulled open the green door, precipitating
Private Rose into the room.
Peter bowed.
"How do you do?" he said.
Private Rose set one foot slightly in front of the other,
poised for fight, flight, or compromise.
"How do you do?" repeated Peter politely.
"I'm o'right."
"Can I offer you a drink?"
Private Rose looked at him searchingly, suspecting
possible sarcasm.
"O'right," he said finally.
Peter indicated a chair.
"Sit down."
"I got a friend," said Rose, "I got a friend in there."
He pointed to the green door.
"By all means let's have him in."
Peter crossed over, opened the door and welcomed in
Private Key, very suspicious and uncertain and guilty.
Chairs were found and the three took their seats around
the punch bowl. Peter gave them each a highball and
offered them a cigarette from his case. They accepted
both with some diffidence.
"Now," continued Peter easily, "may I ask why you
gentlemen prefer to lounge away your leisure hours in a
room which is chiefly furnished, as far as I can see, with
scrubbing brushes. And when the human race has progressed
to the stage where seventeen thousand chairs
are manufactured on every day except Sunday—" he
you tell me," went on Peter, "why you choose to rest
yourselves on articles intended for the transportation
of water from one place to another?"
At this point Rose contributed a grunt to the conversation.
"And lastly," finished Peter, "will you tell me why,
when you are in a building beautifully hung with enormous
candelabra, you prefer to spend these evening
hours under one anemic electric light?"
Rose looked at Key; Key looked at Rose. They
laughed; they laughed uproariously; they found it was
impossible to look at each other without laughing.
But they were not laughing with this man—they were
laughing at him. To them a man who talked after this
fashion was either raving drunk or raving crazy.
"You are Yale men, I presume," said Peter, finishing
his highball and preparing another.
They laughed again.
"Na-ah."
"So? I thought perhaps you might be members of
that lowly section of the university known as the Sheffield
Scientific School."
"Na-ah."
"Hm. Well, that's too bad. No doubt you are
Harvard men, anxious to preserve your incognito in
this—this paradise of violet blue, as the newspapers
say,"
"Na-ah," said Key scornfully, "we was just waitin'
for somebody."
"Ah," exclaimed Peter, rising and filling their glasses,
"very interestin'. Had a date with a scrublady, eh?"
They both denied this indignantly.
"It's all right," Peter reassured them, "don't apologize.
A scrublady's as good as any lady in the world.
skin.' "
"Sure," said Key, winking broadly at Rose.
"My case, for instance," continued Peter, finishing
his glass. "I got a girl up here that's spoiled. Spoildest
darn girl I ever saw. Refused to kiss me; no reason
whatsoever. Led me on deliberately to think sure I
want to kiss you and then plunk! Threw me over!
What's the younger generation comin' to?"
"Say tha's hard luck," said Key—"that's awful hard
luck."
"Oh, boy!" said Rose.
"Have another?" said Peter.
"We got in a sort of fight for a while," said Key after
a pause, "but it was too far away."
"A fight?—tha's stuff!" said Peter, seating himself
unsteadily. "Fight 'em all! I was in the army."
"This was with a Bolshevik fella."
"Tha's stuff!" exclaimed Peter, enthusiastic.
"That's what I say! Kill the Bolshevik! Exterminate
'em!"
"We're Americuns," said Rose, implying a sturdy,
defiant patriotism.
"Sure," said Peter. "Greatest race in the world!
We're all Americuns! Have another."
They had another.
VI
At one o'clock a special orchestra, special even in a
day of special orchestras, arrived at Delmonico's, and
its members, seating themselves arrogantly around the
piano, took up the burden of providing music for the
Gamma Psi Fraternity. They were headed by a famous
flute-player, distinguished throughout New York for
his feat of standing on his head and shimmying with
flute. During his performance the lights were extinguished
except for the spotlight on the flute-player and
another roving beam that threw flickering shadows and
changing kaleidoscopic colors over the massed dancers.
Edith had danced herself into that tired, dreamy
state habitual only with débutantes, a state equivalent
to the glow of a noble soul after several long highballs.
Her mind floated vaguely on the bosom of her music;
her partners changed with the unreality of phantoms
under the colorful shifting dusk, and to her present
coma it seemed as if days had passed since the dance
began. She had talked on many fragmentary subjects
with many men. She had been kissed once and made
love to six times. Earlier in the evening different undergraduates
had danced with her, but now, like all the
more popular girls there, she had her own entourage—
that is, half a dozen gallants had singled her out or
were alternating her charms with those of some other
chosen beauty; they cut in on her in regular, inevitable
succession.
Several times she had seen Gordon—he had been sitting
a long time on the stairway with his palm to his
head, his dull eyes fixed at an infinite speck on the floor
before him, very depressed, he looked, and quite drunk—
but Edith each time had averted her glance hurriedly.
All that seemed long ago; her mind was passive now,
her senses were lulled to trance-like sleep; only her feet
danced and her voice talked on in hazy sentimental
banter.
But Edith was not nearly so tired as to be incapable
of moral indignation when Peter Himmel cut in on her,
sublimely and happily drunk. She gasped and looked
up at him.
"Why, Peter!"
"I'm a li'l' stewed, Edith."
"Why, Peter, you're a peach, you are! Don't you
think it's a bum way of doing—when you're with me?"
Then she smiled unwillingly, for he was looking at
her with owlish sentimentality varied with a silly spasmodic
smile.
"Darlin' Edith," he began earnestly, "you know I
love you, don't you?"
"You tell it well."
"I love you—and I merely wanted you to kiss me,"
he added sadly.
His embarrassment, his shame, were both gone. She
was a mos' beautiful girl in whole worl'. Mos' beautiful
eyes, like stars above. He wanted to 'pologize—
firs', for presuming try to kiss her; second, for drinking
—but he'd been so discouraged 'cause he had thought
she was mad at him—
The red-fat man cut in, and looking up at Edith
smiled radiantly.
"Did you bring any one?" she asked.
No. The red-fat man was a stag.
"Well, would you mind—would it be an awful bother
for you to—to take me home to-night?" (this extreme
diffidence was a charming affectation on Edith's part—
she knew that the red-fat man would immediately dissolve
into a paroxysm of delight).
"Bother? Why, good Lord, I'd be darn glad to!
You know I'd be darn glad to."
"Thanks loads! You're awfully sweet."
She glanced at her wrist-watch. It was half-past one.
And, as she said "half-past one" to herself, it floated
vaguely into her mind that her brother had told her at
luncheon that he worked in the office of his newspaper
until after one-thirty every evening.
Edith turned suddenly to her current partner.
"What street is Delmonico's on, anyway?"
"Street? Oh, why Fifth Avenue, of course."
"I mean, what cross street?"
"Why—let's see—it's on Forty-fourth Street."
This verified what she had thought. Henry's office
must be across the street and just around the corner,
and it occurred to her immediately that she might slip
over for a moment and surprise him, float in on him, a
shimmering marvel in her new crimson opera cloak and
"cheer him up." It was exactly the sort of thing Edith
revelled in doing—an unconventional, jaunty thing.
The idea reached out and gripped at her imagination—
after an instant's hesitation she had decided.
"My hair is just about to tumble entirely down,"
she said pleasantly to her partner; "would you mind
if I go and fix it?"
"Not at all."
"You're a peach."
A few minutes later, wrapped in her crimson opera
cloak, she flitted down a side-stairs, her cheeks glowing
with excitement at her little adventure. She ran by a
couple who stood at the door—a weak-chinned waiter
and an over-rouged young lady, in hot dispute—and
opening the outer door stepped into the warm May
night.
VII
The over-rouged young lady followed her with a brief,
bitter glance—then turned again to the weak-chinned
waiter and took up her argument.
"You better go up and tell him I'm here," she said
defiantly, "or I'll go up myself."
"No, you don't!" said George sternly.
The girl smiled sardonically.
"Oh, I don't, don't I? Well, let me tell you I know
glad to take me out on a party, than you ever saw in
your whole life."
"Maybe so—"
"Maybe so," she interrupted. "Oh, it's all right for
any of 'em like that one that just ran out—God knows
where she went—it's all right for them that are asked
here to come or go as they like—but when I want to see
a friend they have some cheap, ham-slinging, bring-me-a-doughnut
waiter to stand here and keep me out."
"See here," said the elder Key indignantly, "I can't
lose my job. Maybe this fella you're talkin' about
doesn't want to see you."
"Oh, he wants to see me all right."
"Anyways, how could I find him in all that crowd?"
"Oh, he'll be there," she asserted confidently. "You
just ask anybody for Gordon Sterrett and they'll point
him out to you. They all know each other, those fellas."
She produced a mesh bag, and taking out a dollar
bill handed it to George.
"Here," she said, "here's a bribe. You find him and
give him my message. You tell him if he isn't here in
five minutes I'm coming up."
George shook his head pessimistically, considered
the question for a moment, wavered violently, and then
withdrew.
In less than the allotted time Gordon came down-stairs.
He was drunker than he had been earlier in the evening
and in a different way. The liquor seemed to have
hardened on him like a crust. He was heavy and lurching—almost
incoherent when he talked.
"'Lo, Jewel," he said thickly. "Came right away.
Jewel, I couldn't get that money. Tried my best."
"Money nothing!" she snapped. "You haven't been
near me for ten days. What's the matter?"
He shook his head slowly.
"Been very low, Jewel. Been sick."
"Why didn't you tell me if you were sick. I don't
care about the money that bad. I didn't start bothering
you about it at all until you began neglecting me."
Again he shook his head.
"Haven't been neglecting you. Not at all."
"Haven't! You haven't been near me for three
weeks, unless you been so drunk you didn't know what
you were doing."
"Been sick, Jewel," he repeated, turning his eyes
upon her wearily.
"You're well enough to come and play with your
society friends here all right. You told me you'd meet
me for dinner, and you said you'd have some money for
me. You didn't even bother to ring me up."
"I couldn't get any money."
"Haven't I just been saying that doesn't matter?
I wanted to see you, Gordon, but you seem to prefer
your somebody else."
He denied this bitterly.
"Then get your hat and come along," she suggested.
Gordon hesitated—and she came suddenly close to
him and slipped her arms around his neck.
"Come on with me, Gordon," she said in a half whisper.
"We'll go over to Devineries' and have a drink,
and then we can go up to my apartment."
"I can't, Jewel,—"
"You can," she said intensely.
"I'm sick as a dog!"
"Well, then, you oughtn't to stay here and dance."
With a glance around him in which relief and despair
were mingled, Gordon hesitated; then she suddenly
pulled him to her and kissed him with soft, pulpy lips.
"All right," he said heavily. "I'll get my hat.
VIII
When Edith came out into the clear blue of the May
night she found the Avenue deserted. The windows of
the big shops were dark; over their doors were drawn
great iron masks until they were only shadowy tombs of
the late day's splendor. Glancing down toward Forty-second
Street she saw a commingled blur of lights from
the all-night restaurants. Over on Sixth Avenue the
elevated, a flare of fire, roared across the street between
the glimmering parallels of light at the station and
streaked along into the crisp dark. But at Forty-fourth
Street it was very quiet.
Pulling her cloak close about her Edith darted across
the Avenue. She started nervously as a solitary man
passed her and said in a hoarse whisper—"Where bound,
kiddo?" She was reminded of a night in her childhood
when she had walked around the block in her pajamas
and a dog had howled at her from a mystery-big back
yard.
In a minute she had reached her destination, a two-story,
comparatively old building on Forty-fourth, in
the upper window of which she thankfully detected a
wisp of light. It was bright enough outside for her to
make out the sign beside the window—the New York
Trumpet. She stepped inside a dark hall and after a
second saw the stairs in the corner.
Then she was in a long, low room furnished with many
desks and hung on all sides with file copies of newspapers.
There were only two occupants. They were
sitting at different ends of the room, each wearing a
green eye-shade and writing by a solitary desk light.
For a moment she stood uncertainly in the doorway,
and then both men turned around simultaneously and
she recognized her brother.
"Why, Edith!" He rose quickly and approached
her in surprise, removing his eye-shade. He was tall,
lean, and dark, with black, piercing eyes under very thick
glasses. They were far-away eyes that seemed always
fixed just over the head of the person to whom he was
talking.
He put his hands on her arms and kissed her cheek.
"What is it?" he repeated in some alarm.
"I was at a dance across at Delmonico's, Henry,"
she said excitedly, "and I couldn't resist tearing over
to see you."
"I'm glad you did." His alertness gave way quickly
to a habitual vagueness. "You oughtn't to be out
alone at night though, ought you?"
The man at the other end of the room had been looking
at them curiously, but at Henry's beckoning gesture
he approached. He was loosely fat with little twinkling
eyes, and, having removed his collar and tie, he gave
the impression of a Middle-Western farmer on a Sunday
afternoon.
"This is my sister," said Henry. "She dropped in to
see me."
"How do you do?" said the fat man, smiling. "My
name's Bartholomew, Miss Bradin. I know your
brother has forgotten it long ago."
Edith laughed politely.
"Well," he continued, "not exactly gorgeous quarters
we have here, are they?"
Edith looked around the room.
"They seem very nice," she replied. "Where do you
keep the bombs?"
"The bombs?" repeated Bartholomew, laughing.
"That's pretty good—the bombs. Did you hear her,
Henry? She wants to know where we keep the bombs.
Say, that's pretty good."
Edith swung herself onto a vacant desk and sat
seat beside her.
"Well," he asked, absent-mindedly, "how do you
like New York this trip?"
"Not bad. I'll be over at the Biltmore with the Hoyts
until Sunday. Can't you come to luncheon to-morrow?"
He thought a moment.
"I'm especially busy," he objected, "and I hate women
in groups."
"All right," she agreed, unruffled. "Let's you and
me have luncheon together."
"Very well."
"I'll call for you at twelve."
Bartholomew was obviously anxious to return to his
desk, but apparently considered that it would be rude
to leave without some parting pleasantry.
"Well"—he began awkwardly.
They both turned to him.
"Well, we—we had an exciting time earlier in the
evening."
The two men exchanged glances.
"You should have come earlier," continued Bartholomew,
somewhat encouraged. "We had a regular
vaudeville."
"Did you really?"
"A serenade," said Henry. "A lot of soldiers
gathered down there in the street and began to yell
at the sign."
"Why?" she demanded.
"Just a crowd," said Henry, abstractedly. "All
crowds have to howl. They didn't have anybody with
much initiative in the lead, or they'd probably have
forced their way in here and smashed things up."
"Yes," said Bartholomew, turning again to Edith,
"you should have been here."
He seemed to consider this a sufficient cue for withdrawal,
desk.
"Are the soldiers all set against the Socialists?" demanded
Edith of her brother. "I mean do they attack
you violently and all that?"
Henry replaced his eye-shade and yawned.
"The human race has come a long way," he said
casually, "but most of us are throw-backs; the soldiers
don't know what they want, or what they hate, or what
they like. They're used to acting in large bodies, and
they seem to have to make demonstrations. So it happens
to be against us. There've been riots all over the
city to-night. It's May Day, you see."
"Was the disturbance here pretty serious?"
"Not a bit," he said scornfully. "About twenty-five
of them stopped in the street about nine o'clock,
and began to bellow at the moon."
"Oh"— She changed the subject. "You're glad
to see me, Henry?"
"Why, sure."
"You don't seem to be."
"I am."
"I suppose you think I'm a—a waster. Sort of the
World's Worst Butterfly."
Henry laughed.
"Not at all. Have a good time while you're young.
Why? Do I seem like the priggish and earnest youth?"
"No—" She paused, "—but somehow I began
thinking how absolutely different the party I'm on is
from—from all your purposes. It seems sort of—of
incongruous, doesn't it?—me being at a party like that,
and you over here working for a thing that'll make
that sort of party impossible ever any more, if your
ideas work."
"I don't think of it that way. You're young, and
ahead—have a good time?"
Her feet, which had been idly swinging, stopped and
her voice dropped a note.
"I wish you'd—you'd come back to Harrisburg and
have a good time. Do you feel sure that you're on the
right track—"
"You're wearing beautiful stockings," he interrupted.
"What on earth are they?"
"They're embroidered," she replied, glancing down.
"Aren't they cunning?" She raised her skirts and
uncovered slim, silk-sheathed calves. "Or do you disapprove
of silk stockings?"
He seemed slightly exasperated, bent his dark eyes
on her piercingly.
"Are you trying to make me out as criticizing you in
any way, Edith?"
"Not at all—"
She paused. Bartholomew had uttered a grunt. She
turned and saw that he had left his desk and was standing
at the window.
"What is it?" demanded Henry.
"People," said Bartholomew, and then after an instant:
"Whole jam of them. They're coming from Sixth Avenue."
"People?"
The fat man pressed his nose to the pane.
"Soldiers, by God!" he said emphatically. "I had
an idea they'd come back."
Edith jumped to her feet, and running over joined
Bartholomew at the window.
"There's a lot of them!" she cried excitedly. "Come
here, Henry!"
Henry readjusted his shade, but kept his seat.
"Hadn't we better turn out the lights?" suggested
Bartholomew.
"No. They'll go away in a minute."
"They're not," said Edith, peering from the window.
"They're not even thinking of going away. There's
more of them coming. Look—there's a whole crowd
turning the corner of Sixth Avenue."
By the yellow glow and blue shadows of the street
lamp she could see that the sidewalk was crowded with
men. They were mostly in uniform, some sober, some
enthusiastically drunk, and over the whole swept an
incoherent clamor and shouting.
Henry rose, and going to the window exposed himself
as a long silhouette against the office lights. Immediately
the shouting became a steady yell, and a rattling
fusillade of small missiles, corners of tobacco plugs,
cigarette-boxes, and even pennies beat against the window.
The sounds of the racket now began floating up
the stairs as the folding doors revolved.
"They're coming up!" cried Bartholomew.
Edith turned anxiously to Henry.
"They're coming up, Henry."
From down-stairs in the lower hall their cries were
now quite audible.
"—God damn Socialists!"
"Pro-Germans! Boche-lovers!"
"Second floor, front! Come on!"
"We'll get the sons—"
The next five minutes passed in a dream. Edith was
conscious that the clamor burst suddenly upon the three
of them like a cloud of rain, that there was a thunder
of many feet on the stairs, that Henry had seized her
arm and drawn her back toward the rear of the office.
Then the door opened and an overflow of men were
forced into the room—not the leaders, but simply those
who happened to be in front.
"Hello, Bo!"
"Up late, ain't you?"
"You an' your girl. Damn you!"
She noticed that two very drunken soldiers had been
forced to the front, where they wobbled fatuously—one
of them was short and dark, the other was tall and
weak of chin.
Henry stepped forward and raised his hand.
"Friends!" he said.
The clamor faded into a momentary stillness, punctuated
with mutterings.
"Friends!" he repeated, his far-away eyes fixed over
the heads of the crowd, "you're injuring no one but
yourselves by breaking in here to-night. Do we look
like rich men? Do we look like Germans? I ask you
in all fairness—"
"Pipe down!"
"I'll say you do!"
"Say, who's your lady friend, buddy?"
A man in civilian clothes, who had been pawing over
a table, suddenly held up a newspaper.
"Here it is!" he shouted. "They wanted the Germans
to win the war!"
A new overflow from the stairs was shouldered in and
of a sudden the room was full of men all closing around
the pale little group at the back. Edith saw that the
tall soldier with the weak chin was still in front. The
short dark one had disappeared.
She edged slightly backward, stood close to the open
window, through which came a clear breath of cool
night air.
Then the room was a riot. She realized that the soldiers
were surging forward, glimpsed the fat man swinging
a chair over his head—instantly the lights went out,
and her ears were full of shouting and trampling and
hard breathing.
A figure flashed by her out of nowhere, tottered, was
edged sideways, and of a sudden disappeared helplessly
out through the open window with a frightened, fragmentary
cry that died staccato on the bosom of the
clamor. By the faint light streaming from the building
backing on the area Edith had a quick impression
that it had been the tall soldier with the weak chin.
Anger rose astonishingly in her. She swung her
arms wildly, edged blindly toward the thickest of the
scuffling. She heard grunts, curses, the muffled impact
of fists.
"Henry!" she called frantically, "Henry!"
Then, it was minutes later, she felt suddenly that
there were other figures in the room. She heard a
voice, deep, bullying, authoritative; she saw yellow
rays of light sweeping here and there in the fracas.
The cries became more scattered. The scuffling increased
and then stopped.
Suddenly the lights were on and the room was full
of policemen, clubbing left and right. The deep voice
boomed out:
"Here now! Here now! Here now!"
And then:
"Quiet down and get out! Here now!"
The room seemed to empty like a wash-bowl. A
policeman fast-grappled in the corner released his hold
on his soldier antagonist and started him with a shove
toward the door. The deep voice continued. Edith perceived
now that it came from a bull-necked police captain
standing near the door.
"Here now! This is no way! One of your own sojers
got shoved out of the back window an' killed hisself!"
"Henry!" called Edith, "Henry!"
She beat wildly with her fists on the back of the man
in front of her; she brushed between two others; fought,
shrieked, and beat her way to a very pale figure sitting
on the floor close to a desk.
"Henry," she cried passionately, "what's the matter?
What's the matter? Did they hurt you?"
His eyes were shut. He groaned and then looking up
said disgustedly—
"They broke my leg. My God, the fools!"
"Here now!" called the police captain. "Here now!
Here now!"
IX
"Childs', Fifty-ninth Street," at eight o'clock of any
morning differs from its sisters by less than the width
of their marble tables or the degree of polish on the frying-pans.
You will see there a crowd of poor people
with sleep in the corners of their eyes, trying to look
straight before them at their food so as not to see the
other poor people. But Childs', Fifty-ninth, four hours
earlier is quite unlike any Childs' restaurant from Portland,
Oregon, to Portland, Maine. Within its pale but
sanitary walls one finds a noisy medley of chorus girls,
college boys, débutantes, rakes, filles de joie—a not unrepresentative
mixture of the gayest of Broadway, and
even of Fifth Avenue.
In the early morning of May the second it was unusually
full. Over the marble-topped tables were bent
the excited faces of flappers whose fathers owned individual
villages. They were eating buckwheat cakes
and scrambled eggs with relish and gusto, an accomplishment
that it would have been utterly impossible for
them to repeat in the same place four hours later.
Almost the entire crowd were from the Gamma Psi
from a midnight revue who sat at a side table and wished
they'd taken off a little more make-up after the show.
Here and there a drab, mouse-like figure, desperately
out of place, watched the butterflies with a weary,
puzzled curiosity. But the drab figure was the exception.
This was the morning after May Day, and celebration
was still in the air.
Gus Rose, sober but a little dazed, must be classed
as one of the drab figures. How he had got himself from
Forty-fourth Street to Fifty-ninth Street after the riot
was only a hazy half-memory. He had seen the body
of Carrol Key put in an ambulance and driven off, and
then he had started up town with two or three soldiers.
Somewhere between Forty-fourth Street and Fifty-ninth
Street the other soldiers had met some women
and disappeared. Rose had wandered to Columbus
Circle and chosen the gleaming lights of Childs' to
minister to his craving for coffee and doughnuts. He
walked in and sat down.
All around him floated airy, inconsequential chatter
and high-pitched laughter. At first he failed to understand,
but after a puzzled five minutes he realized that
this was the aftermath of some gay party. Here and
there a restless, hilarious young man wandered fraternally
and familiarly between the tables, shaking hands
indiscriminately and pausing occasionally for a facetious
chat, while excited waiters, bearing cakes and eggs
aloft, swore at him silently, and bumped him out of the
way. To Rose, seated at the most inconspicuous and
least crowded table, the whole scene was a colorful circus
of beauty and riotous pleasure.
He became gradually aware, after a few moments,
that the couple seated diagonally across from him, with
their backs to the crowd, were not the least interesting
dinner coat with a dishevelled tie and shirt swollen by
spillings of water and wine. His eyes, dim and bloodshot,
roved unnaturally from side to side. His breath
came short between his lips.
"He's been on a spree!" thought Rose.
The woman was almost if not quite sober. She was
pretty, with dark eyes and feverish high color, and she
kept her active eyes fixed on her companion with the
alertness of a hawk. From time to time she would lean
and whisper intently to him, and he would answer by
inclining his head heavily or by a particularly ghoulish
and repellent wink.
Rose scrutinized them dumbly for some minutes,
until the woman gave him a quick, resentful look; then
he shifted his gaze to two of the most conspicuously
hilarious of the promenaders who were on a protracted
circuit of the tables. To his surprise he recognized in
one of them the young man by whom he had been so
ludicrously entertained at Delmonico's. This started
him thinking of Key with a vague sentimentality, not
unmixed with awe. Key was dead. He had fallen
thirty-five feet and split his skull like a cracked cocoanut.
"He was a darn good guy," thought Rose mournfully.
"He was a darn good guy, o'right. That was
awful hard luck about him."
The two promenaders approached and started down
between Rose's table and the next, addressing friends
and strangers alike with jovial familiarity. Suddenly
Rose saw the fair-haired one with the prominent teeth
stop, look unsteadily at the man and girl opposite, and
then begin to move his head disapprovingly from side
to side.
The man with the blood-shot eyes looked up.
"Gordy," said the promenader with the prominent
teeth, "Gordy."
"Hello," said the man with the stained shirt thickly.
Prominent Teeth shook his finger pessimistically at
the pair, giving the woman a glance of aloof condemnation.
"What'd I tell you Gordy?"
Gordon stirred in his seat.
"Go to hell!" he said.
Dean continued to stand there shaking his finger.
The woman began to get angry.
"You go way!" she cried fiercely. "You're drunk,
that's what you are!"
"So's he," suggested Dean, staying the motion of his
finger and pointing it at Gordon.
Peter Himmel ambled up, owlish now and oratorically
inclined.
"Here now," he began as if called upon to deal with
some petty dispute between children. "Wha's all
trouble?"
"You take your friend away," said Jewel tartly.
"He's bothering us."
"What's at?"
"You heard me!" she said shrilly. "I said to take
your drunken friend away."
Her rising voice rang out above the clatter of the restaurant
and a waiter came hurrying up.
"You gotta be more quiet!"
"That fella's drunk," she cried. "He's insulting
us."
"Ah-ha, Gordy," persisted the accused. "What'd I
tell you." He turned to the waiter. "Gordy an' I
friends. Been tryin' help him, haven't I, Gordy?"
Gordy looked up.
"Help me? Hell, no!"
Jewel rose suddenly, and seizing Gordon's arm assisted
him to his feet.
"Come on, Gordy!" she said, leaning toward him and
speaking in a half whisper. "Let's us get out of here.
This fella's got a mean drunk on."
Gordon allowed himself to be urged to his feet and
started toward the door. Jewel turned for a second and
addressed the provoker of their flight.
"I know all about you!" she said fiercely. "Nice
friend, you are, I'll say. He told me about you."
Then she seized Gordon's arm, and together they
made their way through the curious crowd, paid their
check, and went out.
"You'll have to sit down," said the waiter to Peter
after they had gone.
"What's 'at? Sit down?"
"Yes—or get out."
Peter turned to Dean.
"Come on," he suggested. "Let's beat up this
waiter."
"All right."
They advanced toward him, their faces grown stern.
The waiter retreated.
Peter suddenly reached over to a plate on the table
beside him and picking up a handful of hash tossed it
into the air. It descended as a languid parabola in
snowflake effect on the heads of those near by.
"Hey! Ease up!"
"Put him out!"
"Sit down, Peter!"
"Cut out that stuff!"
Peter laughed and bowed.
"Thank you for your kind applause, ladies and gents.
If some one will lend me some more hash and a tall hat
we will go on with the act."
The bouncer bustled up.
"You've gotta get out!" he said to Peter.
"Hell, no!"
"He's my friend!" put in Dean indignantly.
A crowd of waiters were gathering. "Put him out!"
"Better go, Peter."
There was a short struggle and the two were edged
and pushed toward the door.
"I got a hat and a coat here!" cried Peter.
"Well, go get 'em and be spry about it!"
The bouncer released his hold on Peter, who, adopting
a ludicrous air of extreme cunning, rushed immediately
around to the other table, where he burst
into derisive laughter and thumbed his nose at the exasperated
waiters.
"Think I just better wait a l'il' longer," he announced.
The chase began. Four waiters were sent around one
way and four another. Dean caught hold of two of
them by the coat, and another struggle took place before
the pursuit of Peter could be resumed; he was
finally pinioned after overturning a sugar-bowl and several
cups of coffee. A fresh argument ensued at the
cashier's desk, where Peter attempted to buy another
dish of hash to take with him and throw at policemen.
But the commotion upon his exit proper was dwarfed
by another phenomenon which drew admiring glances
and a prolonged involuntary "Oh-h-h!" from every
person in the restaurant.
The great plate-glass front had turned to a deep
creamy blue, the color of a Maxfield Parrish moonlight—
a blue that seemed to press close upon the pane as if to
crowd its way into the restaurant. Dawn had come up
in Columbus Circle, magical, breathless dawn, silhouetting
the great statue of the immortal Christopher, and
mingling in a curious and uncanny manner with the
fading yellow electric light inside.
X
Mr. In and Mr. Out are not listed by the census-taker.
You will search for them in vain through the social
register or the births, marriages, and deaths, or the
grocer's credit list. Oblivion has swallowed them
and the testimony that they ever existed at all is vague
and shadowy, and inadmissible in a court of law. Yet
I have it upon the best authority that for a brief
space Mr. In and Mr. Out lived, breathed, answered
to their names and radiated vivid personalities of their
own.
During the brief span of their lives they walked in
their native garments down the great highway of a great
nation; were laughed at, sworn at, chased, and fled from.
Then they passed and were heard of no more.
They were already taking form dimly, when a taxicab
with the top open breezed down Broadway in the
faintest glimmer of May dawn. In this car sat the souls
of Mr. In and Mr. Out discussing with amazement the
blue light that had so precipitately colored the sky behind
the statue of Christopher Columbus, discussing
with bewilderment the old, gray faces of the early risers
which skimmed palely along the street like blown bits of
paper on a gray lake. They were agreed on all things,
from the absurdity of the bouncer in Childs' to the absurdity
of the business of life. They were dizzy with
the extreme maudlin happiness that the morning had
awakened in their glowing souls. Indeed, so fresh and
vigorous was their pleasure in living that they felt it
should be expressed by loud cries.
"Ye-ow-ow!" hooted Peter, making a megaphone
with his hands—and Dean joined in with a call that,
though equally significant and symbolic, derived its
resonance from its very inarticulateness.
"Yo-ho! Yea! Yoho! Yo-buba!"
Fifty-third Street was a bus with a dark, bobbed-hair
beauty atop; Fifty-second was a street cleaner who
dodged, escaped, and sent up a yell of, "Look where
you're aimin'!" in a pained and grieved voice. At
Fiftieth Street a group of men on a very white sidewalk
in front of a very white building turned to stare after
them, and shouted:
"Some party, boys!"
At Forty-ninth Street Peter turned to Dean. "Beautiful
morning," he said gravely, squinting up his owlish
eyes.
"Probably is."
"Go get some breakfast, hey?"
Dean agreed—with additions.
"Breakfast and liquor."
"Breakfast and liquor," repeated Peter, and they
looked at each other, nodding. "That's logical."
Then they both burst into loud laughter.
"Breakfast and liquor! Oh, gosh!"
"No such thing," announced Peter.
"Don't serve it? Ne'mind. We force 'em serve it.
Bring pressure bear."
"Bring logic bear."
The taxi cut suddenly off Broadway, sailed along a
cross street, and stopped in front of a heavy tomb-like
building in Fifth Avenue.
"What's idea?"
The taxi-driver informed them that this was Delmonico's.
This was somewhat puzzling. They were forced to
devote several minutes to intense concentration, for if
such an order had been given there must have been a
reason for it.
"Somep'm 'bouta coat," suggested the taxi-man.
That was it. Peter's overcoat and hat. He had left
from the taxi and strolled toward the entrance
arm in arm.
"Hey!" said the taxi-driver.
"Huh?"
"You better pay me."
They shook their heads in shocked negation.
"Later, not now—we give orders, you wait."
The taxi-driver objected; he wanted his money now.
With the scornful condescension of men exercising tremendous
self-control they paid him.
Inside Peter groped in vain through a dim, deserted
check-room in search of his coat and derby.
"Gone, I guess. Somebody stole it."
"Some Sheff student."
"All probability."
"Never mind," said Dean, nobly. "I'll leave mine
here too—then we'll both be dressed the same."
He removed his overcoat and hat and was hanging
them up when his roving glance was caught and held
magnetically by two large squares of cardboard tacked
to the two coat-room doors. The one on the left-hand
door bore the word "In" in big black letters, and the
one on the right-hand door flaunted the equally emphatic
word "Out."
"Look!" he exclaimed happily—
Peter's eyes followed his pointing finger.
"What?"
"Look at the signs. Let's take 'em."
"Good idea."
"Probably pair very rare an' valuable signs. Probably
come in handy."
Peter removed the left-hand sign from the door and
endeavored to conceal it about his person. The sign
being of considerable proportions, this was a matter of
air of dignified mystery he turned his back. After
an instant he wheeled dramatically around, and stretching
out his arms displayed himself to the admiring Dean.
He had inserted the sign in his vest, completely covering
his shirt front. In effect, the word "In" had been
painted upon his shirt in large black letters.
"Yoho!" cheered Dean. "Mister In."
He inserted his own sign in like manner.
"Mister Out!" he announced triumphantly. "Mr.
In meet Mr. Out."
They advanced and shook hands. Again laughter overcame
them and they rocked in a shaken spasm of mirth.
"Yoho!"
"We probably get a flock of breakfast."
"We'll go—go to the Commodore."
Arm in arm they sallied out the door, and turning
east in Forty-fourth Street set out for the Commodore.
As they came out a short dark soldier, very pale and
tired, who had been wandering listlessly along the sidewalk,
turned to look at them.
He started over as though to address them, but as
they immediately bent on him glances of withering unrecognition,
he waited until they had started unsteadily
down the street, and then followed at about forty paces,
chuckling to himself and saying "Oh, boy!" over and
over under his breath, in delighted, anticipatory tones.
Mr. In and Mr. Out were meanwhile exchanging pleasantries
concerning their future plans.
"We want liquor; we want breakfast. Neither without
the other. One and indivisible."
"We want both 'em!"
"Both 'em!"
It was quite light now, and passers-by began to bend
curious eyes on the pair. Obviously they were engaged
in a discussion, which afforded each of them intense
seize upon them so violently that, still with their arms
interlocked, they would bend nearly double.
Reaching the Commodore, they exchanged a few
spicy epigrams with the sleepy-eyed doorman, navigated
the revolving door with some difficulty, and then made
their way through a thinly populated but startled lobby
to the dining-room, where a puzzled waiter showed them
an obscure table in a corner. They studied the bill of
fare helplessly, telling over the items to each other in
puzzled mumbles.
"Don't see any liquor here," said Peter reproachfully.
The waiter became audible but unintelligible.
"Repeat," continued Peter, with patient tolerance,
"that there seems to be unexplained and quite distasteful
lack of liquor upon bill of fare."
"Here!" said Dean confidently, "let me handle him."
He turned to the waiter—"Bring us—bring us—" he
scanned the bill of fare anxiously. "Bring us a quart
of champagne and a—a—probably ham sandwich."
The waiter looked doubtful.
"Bring it!" roared Mr. In and Mr. Out in chorus.
The waiter coughed and disappeared. There was a
short wait during which they were subjected without
their knowledge to a careful scrutiny by the headwaiter.
Then the champagne arrived, and at the sight
of it Mr. In and Mr. Out became jubilant.
"Imagine their objecting to us having champagne for
breakfast—jus' imagine."
They both concentrated upon the vision of such an
awesome possibility, but the feat was too much for them.
It was impossible for their joint imaginations to conjure
up a world where any one might object to any one else
having champagne for breakfast. The waiter drew the
cork with an enormous pop—and their glasses immediately
foamed with pale yellow froth.
"Here's health, Mr. In."
"Here's same to you, Mr. Out."
The waiter withdrew; the minutes passed; the champagne
became low in the bottle.
"It's—it's mortifying," said Dean suddenly.
"Wha's mortifying?"
"The idea their objecting us having champagne
breakfast."
"Mortifying?" Peter considered. "Yes, tha's word
—mortifying."
Again they collapsed into laughter, howled, swayed,
rocked back and forth in their chairs, repeating the
word "mortifying" over and over to each other—each
repetition seeming to make it only more brilliantly absurd.
After a few more gorgeous minutes they decided on
another quart. Their anxious waiter consulted his immediate
superior, and this discreet person gave implicit
instructions that no more champagne should be served.
Their check was brought.
Five minutes later, arm in arm, they left the Commodore
and made their way through a curious, staring
crowd along Forty-second Street, and up Vanderbilt
Avenue to the Biltmore. There, with sudden cunning,
they rose to the occasion and traversed the lobby,
walking fast and standing unnaturally erect.
Once in the dining-room they repeated their performance.
They were torn between intermittent convulsive
laughter and sudden spasmodic discussions of politics,
college, and the sunny state of their dispositions. Their
watches told them that it was now nine o'clock, and a
dim idea was born in them that they were on a memorable
party, something that they would remember always.
They lingered over the second bottle. Either of them
had only to mention the word "mortifying" to send
whirring and shifting now; a curious lightness permeated
and rarefied the heavy air.
They paid their check and walked out into the lobby.
It was at this moment that the exterior doors revolved
for the thousandth time that morning, and admitted
into the lobby a very pale young beauty with dark circles
under her eyes, attired in a much-rumpled evening
dress. She was accompanied by a plain stout man,
obviously not an appropriate escort.
At the top of the stairs this couple encountered Mr.
In and Mr. Out.
"Edith," began Mr. In, stepping toward her hilariously
and making a sweeping bow, "darling, good morning."
The stout man glanced questioningly at Edith, as if
merely asking her permission to throw this man summarily
out of the way.
"'Scuse familiarity," added Peter, as an afterthought.
"Edith, good-morning."
He seized Dean's elbow and impelled him into the
foreground.
"Meet Mr. In, Edith, my bes' frien'. Inseparable.
Mr. In and Mr. Out."
Mr. Out advanced and bowed; in fact, he advanced so
far and bowed so low that he tipped slightly forward
and only kept his balance by placing a hand lightly on
Edith's shoulder.
"I'm Mr. Out, Edith," he mumbled pleasantly, "S'misterin
Misterout."
"'Smisterinanout," said Peter proudly.
But Edith stared straight by them, her eyes fixed on
some infinite speck in the gallery above her. She
nodded slightly to the stout man, who advanced bulllike
and with a sturdy brisk gesture pushed Mr. In and
walked.
But ten paces farther on Edith stopped again—stopped
and pointed to a short, dark soldier who was eying the
crowd in general, and the tableau of Mr. In and Mr. Out
in particular, with a sort of puzzled, spell-bound awe.
"There," cried Edith. "See there!"
Her voice rose, became somewhat shrill. Her pointing
finger shook slightly.
"There's the soldier who broke my brother's leg."
There were a dozen exclamations; a man in a cutaway
coat left his place near the desk and advanced alertly;
the stout person made a sort of lightning-like spring
toward the short, dark soldier, and then the lobby closed
around the little group and blotted them from the
sight of Mr. In and Mr. Out.
But to Mr. In and Mr. Out this event was merely a
particolored iridescent segment of a whirring, spinning
world.
They heard loud voices; they saw the stout man
spring; the picture suddenly blurred.
Then they were in an elevator bound skyward.
"What floor, please?" said the elevator man.
"Any floor," said Mr. In.
"Top floor," said Mr. Out.
"This is the top floor," said the elevator man.
"Have another floor put on," said Mr. Out.
"Higher," said Mr. In.
"Heaven," said Mr. Out.
XI
In a bedroom of a small hotel just off Sixth Avenue
Gordon Sterrett awoke with a pain in the back of his
head and a sick throbbing in all his veins. He looked at
a raw place on a large leather chair in the corner where
it had long been in use. He saw clothes, dishevelled,
rumpled clothes on the floor and he smelt stale cigarette
smoke and stale liquor. The windows were tight shut.
Outside the bright sunlight had thrown a dust-filled beam
across the sill—a beam broken by the head of the wide
wooden bed in which he had slept. He lay very quiet—
comatose, drugged, his eyes wide, his mind clicking
wildly like an unoiled machine.
It must have been thirty seconds after he perceived
the sunbeam with the dust on it and the rip on the large
leather chair that he had the sense of life close beside
him, and it was another thirty seconds after that before
that he realized that he was irrevocably married to
Jewel Hudson.
He went out half an hour later and bought a revolver
at a sporting goods store. Then he took a taxi to the
room where he had been living on East Twenty-seventh
Street, and, leaning across the table that held his drawing
materials, fired a cartridge into his head just behind the
temple.
PORCELAIN AND PINK
A room in the down-stairs of a summer cottage. High
around the wall runs an art frieze of a fisherman with
a pile of nets at his feet and a ship on a crimson ocean,
a fisherman with a pile of nets at his feet and a ship
on a crimson ocean, a fisherman with a pile of nets
at his feet and so on. In one place on the frieze there
is an overlapping—here we have half a fisherman
with half a pile of nets at his foot, crowded damply
against half a ship on half a crimson ocean. The
frieze is not in the plot, but frankly it fascinates me.
I could continue indefinitely, but I am distracted by
one of the two objects in the room—a blue porcelain
bath-tub. It has character, this bath-tub. It is not
one of the new racing bodies, but is small with a high
tonneau and looks as if it were going to jump; discouraged,
however, by the shortness of its legs, it has
submitted to its environment and to its coat of sky-blue
paint. But it grumpily refuses to allow any patron
completely to stretch his legs—which brings us neatly
to the second object in the room:
It is a girl—clearly an appendage to the bath-tub, only her
head and throat—beautiful girls have throats instead
of necks—and a suggestion of shoulder appearing
above the side. For the first ten minutes of the play
the audience is engrossed in wondering if she really
is playing the game fairly and hasn't any clothes on
or whether it is being cheated and she is dressed.
The girl's name is Julie Marvis. From the proud way
she sits up in the bath-tub we deduce that she is not
very tall and that she carries herself well. When
of an Easter Bunny. She is within whispering distance
of twenty years old.
One thing more—above and to the right of the bath-tub is a
window. It is narrow and has a wide sill; it lets in
much sunshine, but effectually prevents any one who
looks in from seeing the bath-tub. You begin to suspect
the plot?
We open, conventionally enough, with a song, but, as the
startled gasp of the audience quite drowns out the
first half, we will give only the last of it:
Julie:
(In an airy sophrano-enthusiastico)
He was a graceful child,
Those sacred chickens
Just raised the dickens
The Vestal Virgins went wild.
Whenever the Nervii got nervy
He gave them an awful razz
They shook in their shoes
With the Consular blues
The Imperial Roman Jazz
moves her arms and makes waves on the
surface of the water—at least we suppose she
does. Then the door on the left opens and Lois
Marvis enters, dressed but carrying garments
and towels. Lois is a year older than Julie
and is nearly her double in face and voice, but in
her clothes and expression are the marks of the
conservative. Yes, you've guessed it. Mistaken
identity is the old, rusty pivot upon which the
plot turns.)
(Starting)
Oh, 'scuse me. I didn't know you
were here.
Julie:
Oh, hello. I'm giving a little concert—
Lois:
(Interrupting)
Why didn't you lock the door?
Julie:
Didn't I?
Lois:
Of course you didn't. Do you think I just
walked through it?
Julie:
I thought you picked the lock, dearest.
Lois:
You're so careless.
Julie:
No. I'm happy as a garbage-man's dog and
I'm giving a little concert.
Lois:
(Severely)
Grow up!
Julie:
(Waving a pink arm around the room)
The walls
reflect the sound, you see. That's why there's something
very beautiful about singing in a bath-tub. It gives an
effect of surpassing loveliness. Can I render you a
selection?
Lois:
I wish you'd hurry out of the tub.
Julie:
(Shaking her head thoughtfully)
Can't be hurried.
This is my kingdom at present, Godliness.
Lois:
Why the mellow name?
Julie:
Because you're next to Cleanliness. Don't
throw anything please!
Lois:
How long will you be?
Julie:
(After some consideration)
Not less than fifteen
nor more than twenty-five minutes.
Lois:
As a favor to me will you make it ten?
Julie:
(Reminiscing)
Oh, Godliness, do you remember
a day in the chill of last January when one Julie, famous
for her Easter-rabbit smile, was going out and there
was scarcely any hot water and young Julie had just
filled the tub for her own little self when the wicked
sister came and did bathe herself therein, forcing the
young Julie to perform her ablutions with cold cream—
which is expensive and a darn lot of trouble?
(Impatiently)
Then you won't hurry?
Julie:
Why should I?
Lois:
I've got a date.
Julie:
Here at the house?
Lois:
None of your business.
(Julie shrugs the visible tips of her shoulders andstirs the water into ripples.)
Julie:
So be it.
Lois:
Oh, for Heaven's sake, yes! I have a date here
at the house—in a way.
Julie:
In a way?
Lois:
He isn't coming in. He's calling for me and
we're walking.
Julie:
(Raising her eyebrows)
Oh, the plot clears.
It's that literary Mr. Calkins. I thought you promised
mother you wouldn't invite him in.
Lois:
(Desperately)
She's so idiotic. She detests him
because he's just got a divorce. Of course she's had
more experience than I have, but—
Julie:
(Wisely)
Don't let her kid you! Experience
is the biggest gold brick in the world. All older people
have it for sale.
Lois:
I like him. We talk literature.
Julie:
Oh, so that's why I've noticed all these weighty
books around the house lately.
Lois:
He lends them to me.
Julie:
Well, you've got to play his game. When in
Rome do as the Romans would like to do. But I'm
through with books. I'm all educated.
Lois:
You're very inconsistent—last summer you
read every day.
Julie:
If I were consistent I'd still be living on warm
milk out of a bottle.
Lois:
Yes, and probably my bottle. But I like Mr.
Calkins.
I never met him.
Lois:
Well, will you hurry up?
Julie:
Yes. (After a pause)
I wait till the water
gets tepid and then I let in more hot.
Lois:
(Sarcastically)
How interesting!
Julie:
'Member when we used to play "soapo"?
Lois:
Yes—and ten years old. I'm really quite surprised
that you don't play it still.
Julie:
I do. I'm going to in a minute.
Lois:
Silly game.
Julie:
(Warmly)
No, it isn't. It's good for the
nerves. I'll bet you've forgotten how to play it.
Lois:
(Defiantly)
No, I haven't. You—you get the
tub all full of soapsuds and then you get up on the edge
and slide down.
Julie:
(Shaking her head scornfully)
Huh! That's
only part of it. You've got to slide down without touching
your hands or feet—
Lois:
(Impatiently)
Oh, Lord! What do I care? I
wish we'd either stop coming here in the summer or
else get a house with two bath-tubs.
Julie:
You can buy yourself a little tin one, or use
the hose—
Lois:
Oh, shut up!
Julie:
(Irrelevantly)
Leave the towel.
Lois:
What?
Julie:
Leave the towel when you go.
Lois:
This towel?
Julie:
(Sweetly)
Yes, I forgot my towel.
Lois:
(Looking around for the first time)
Why, you
idiot! You haven't even a kimono.
Julie:
(Also looking around)
Why, so I haven't.
Lois:
(Suspicion growing on her)
How did you get
here?
Julie:
(Laughing)
I guess I—I guess I whisked here.
and—
Lois:
(Scandalized)
Why, you little wretch. Haven't
you any pride or self-respect?
Julie:
Lots of both. I think that proves it. I looked
very well. I really am rather cute in my natural state.
Lois:
Well, you—
Julie:
(Thinking aloud)
I wish people didn't wear any
clothes. I guess I ought to have been a pagan or a native
or something.
Lois:
You're a—
Julie:
I dreamt last night that one Sunday in church
a small boy brought in a magnet that attracted cloth.
He attracted the clothes right off of everybody; put
them in an awful state; people were crying and shrieking
and carrying on as if they'd just discovered their
skins for the first time. Only I didn't care. So I just
laughed. I had to pass the collection plate because nobody
else would.
Lois:
(Who has turned a deaf ear to this speech)
Do
you mean to tell me that if I hadn't come you'd have
run back to your room—un—unclothed?
Julie:
Au naturel is so much nicer.
Lois:
Suppose there had been some one in the living-room.
Julie:
There never has been yet.
Lois:
Yet! Good grief! How long—
Julie:
Besides, I usually have a towel.
Lois:
(Completely overcome)
Golly! You ought to
be spanked. I hope you get caught. I hope there's a
dozen ministers in the living-room when you come out—
and their wives and their daughters.
Julie:
There wouldn't be room for them in the living-room,
answered Clean Kate of the Laundry District.
All right. You've made your own—bath-tub;
you can lie in it.
Julie:
(In alarm)
Hey! Hey! I don't care about
the k'mono, but I want the towel. I can't dry myself
on a piece of soap and a wet wash-rag.
Lois:
(Obstinately)
I won't humor such a creature.
You'll have to dry yourself the best way you can. You
can roll on the floor like the animals do that don't wear
any clothes.
Julie:
(Complacent again)
All right. Get out!
Lois:
(Haughtily)
Huh!
directs a parabolic stream at Lois. Lois retires
quickly, slamming the door after her. Julie
laughs and turns off the water)
Julie:
(Singing)
Meets the D'jer-kiss girl
On the smokeless Sante Fé
Her Pebeco smile
Her Lucile style
De dum da-de-dum one day—
turn on the taps, but is startled by three loud
banging noises in the pipes. Silence for a moment—then
she puts her mouth down near the
spigot as if it were a telephone)
Julie:
Hello! (No answer)
Are you a plumber?
(No answer)
Are you the water department? (One
loud, hollow bang)
What do you want? (No answer)
I believe you're a ghost. Are you? (No answer)
Well, then, stop banging. (She reaches out and turns
on the warm tap. No water flows. Again she puts her
If you're the plumber
that's a mean trick. Turn it on for a fellow. (Two
loud, hollow bangs)
Don't argue! I want water—
water! Water! (A young man's head appears in the window—a
head decorated with a slim mustache and sympathetic
eyes. These last stare, and though they
can see nothing but many fishermen with nets
and much crimson ocean, they decide him to
speak)
The Young Man:
Some one fainted?
Julie:
(Starting up, all ears immediately)
Jumping
cats!
The Young Man:
(Helpfully)
Water's no good for
fits.
Julie:
Fits! Who said anything about fits!
The Young Man:
You said something about a cat
jumping.
Julie:
(Decidedly)
I did not!
The Young Man:
Well, we can talk it over later.
Are you ready to go out? Or do you still feel that if
you go with me just now everybody will gossip?
Julie:
(Smiling)
Gossip! Would they? It'd be
more than gossip—it'd be a regular scandal.
The Young Man:
Here, you're going it a little strong.
Your family might be somewhat disgruntled—but to
the pure all things are suggestive. No one else would
even give it a thought, except a few old women. Come
on.
Julie:
You don't know what you ask.
The Young Man:
Do you imagine we'd have a
crowd following us?
Julie:
A crowd? There'd be a special, all-steel,
buffet train leaving New York hourly.
The Young Man:
Say, are you house-cleaning?
Why?
The Young Man:
I see all the pictures are off the
walls.
Julie:
Why, we never have pictures in this room.
The Young Man:
Odd. I never heard of a room
without pictures or tapestry or panelling or something.
Julie:
There's not even any furniture in here.
The Young Man:
What a strange house!
Julie:
It depends on the angle you see it from.
The Young Man:
(Sentimentally)
It's so nice talking
to you like this—when you're merely a voice. I'm
rather glad I can't see you.
Julie:
(Gratefully)
So am I.
The Young Man:
What color are you wearing?
Julie:
(After a critical survey of her shoulders)
Why, I
guess it's a sort of pinkish white.
The Young Man:
Is it becoming to you?
Julie: Very.
It's—it's old. I've had it for a long
while.
The Young Man:
I thought you hated old
clothes.
Julie:
I do—but this was a birthday present and I
sort of have to wear it.
The Young Man:
Pinkish white. Well, I'll bet it's
divine. Is it in style?
Julie:
Quite. It's very simple, standard model.
The Young Man:
What a voice you have! How it
echoes! Sometimes I shut my eyes and seem to see
you in a far desert island calling for me. And I plunge
toward you through the surf, hearing you call as you
stand there, water stretching on both sides of you—
in. The young man blinks)
The Young Man:
What was that? Did I dream it?
Julie:
Yes. You're—you're very poetic, aren't you?
(Dreamily)
No. I do prose. I
do verse only when I am stirred.
Julie:
(Murmuring)
Stirred by a spoon—
The Young Man:
I have always loved poetry. I
can remember to this day the first poem I ever learned
by heart. It was "Evangeline."
Julie:
That's a fib.
The Young Man:
Did I say "Evangeline"? I
meant "The Skeleton in Armor."
Julie:
I'm a low-brow. But I can remember my first
poem. It had one verse:
Sittin' on a fence
Tryne to make a dollar
Outa fit-teen cents.
The Young Man:
(Eagerly)
Are you growing fond of
literature?
Julie:
If it's not too ancient or complicated or depressing.
Same way with people. I usually like 'em
if they're not too ancient or complicated or depressing.
The Young Man:
Of course I've read enormously.
You told me last night that you were very fond of Walter
Scott.
Julie:
(Considering)
Scott? Let's see. Yes, I've
read "Ivanhoe" and "The Last of the Mohicans."
The Young Man:
That's by Cooper.
Julie:
(Angrily)
"Ivanhoe" is? You're crazy! I
guess I know. I read it.
The Young Man:
"The Last of the Mohicans" is
by Cooper.
Julie:
What do I care! I like O. Henry. I don't
see how he ever wrote those stories. Most of them he
wrote in prison. "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" he
made up in prison.
(Biting his lip)
Literature—literature!
How much it has meant to me!
Julie:
Well, as Gaby Deslys said to Mr. Bergson,
with my looks and your brains there's nothing we couldn't
do.
The Young Man:
(Laughing)
You certainly are hard
to keep up with. One day you're awfully pleasant and
the next you're in a mood. If I didn't understand your
temperament so well—
Julie:
(Impatiently)
Oh, you're one of these amateur
character-readers, are you? Size people up in five minutes
and then look wise whenever they're mentioned. I
hate that sort of thing.
The Young Man:
I don't boast of sizing you up.
You're most mysterious, I'll admit.
Julie:
There's only two mysterious people in history.
The Young Man:
Who are they?
Julie:
The Man with the Iron Mask and the fella
who says "ug uh-glug uh-glug uh-glug" when the line
is busy.
The Young Man:
You are mysterious. I love you.
You're beautiful, intelligent, and virtuous, and that's
the rarest known combination.
Julie:
You're a historian. Tell me if there are any
bath-tubs in history. I think they've been frightfully
neglected.
The Young Man:
Bath-tubs! Let's see. Well, Agamemnon
was stabbed in his bath-tub. And Charlotte
Corday stabbed Marat in his bath-tub.
Julie:
(Sighing)
Way back there! Nothing new besides
the sun, is there? Why only yesterday I picked
up a musical-comedy score that must have been at least
twenty years old; and there on the cover it said "The
Shimmies of Normandy," but shimmie was spelt the
old way, with a "C."
I loathe these modern dances.
Oh, Lois, I wish I could see you. Come to the window.
the flow starts from the open taps. Julie
turns them off quickly)
The Young Man:
(Puzzled)
What on earth was
that?
Julie:
(Ingeniously)
I heard something, too.
The Young Man:
Sounded like running water.
Julie:
Didn't it? Strange like it. As a matter of
fact I was filling the gold-fish bowl.
The Young Man:
(Still puzzled)
What was that banging
noise?
Julie:
One of the fish snapping his golden jaws.
The Young Man:
(With sudden resolution)
Lois, I
love you. I am not a mundane man but I am a forger—
Julie:
(Interested at once)
Oh, how fascinating.
The Young Man:
—a forger ahead. Lois, I want
you.
Julie:
(Skeptically)
Huh! What you really want is
for the world to come to attention and stand there till
you give "Rest!"
The Young Man:
Lois I—Lois I—
(He stops as Lois opens the door, comes in, andbangs it behind her. She looks peevishly at
Julie and then suddenly catches sight of the
young man in the window)
Lois:
(In horror)
Mr. Calkins!
The Young Man:
(Surprised)
Why I thought you
said you were wearing pinkish white!
her hands in surrender, and sinks to the floor.)
The Young Man:
(In great alarm)
Good Lord!
She's fainted! I'll be right in.
from Lois's inert hand.)
Julie:
In that case I'll be right out.
(She puts her hands on the side of the tub to lift herself
out and a murmur, half gasp, half sigh,
ripples from the audience.
A Belasco midnight comes quickly down and blots
out the stage.)
Curtain.
| Tales of the jazz age | |