up to ole McGillycuddy’s an have somethin to wet our whistles in the
private bar.... My treat. I need a bit of a drink to cheer me up. Come
on Nellie.”
“I wish I could,” said Baldwin, “but I’m afraid I cant. I’m pretty busy
these days. But just give me your signature before you go and I’ll have
the check for you tomorrow.... Sign here ... and here.”
McNiel had stumped over to the desk and was leaning over the papers.
Baldwin felt that Nellie was trying to make a sign to him. He kept his
eyes down. After they had left he noticed her purse, a little leather
purse with pansies burned on the back, on the corner of the desk. There
was a tap on the glass door. He opened.
“Why wouldn’t you look at me?” she said breathlessly low.
“How could I with him here.” He held the purse out to her.
She put her arms round his neck and kissed him hard on the mouth. “What
are we goin to do? Shall I come in this afternoon? Gus’ll be liquorin
up to get himself sick again now he’s out of the hospital.”
“No I cant Nellie.... Business ... business.... I’m busy every minute.”
“Oh yes you are.... All right have it your own way.” She slammed the
door.
Baldwin sat at his desk biting his knuckles without seeing the pile
of papers he was staring at. “I’ve got to cut it out,” he said aloud
and got to his feet. He paced back and forth across the narrow office
looking at the shelves of lawbooks and the Gibson girl calendar over
the telephone and the dusty square of sunlight by the window. He looked
at his watch. Lunchtime. He drew the palm of a hand over his forehead
and went to the telephone.
“Rector 1237.... Mr. Sandbourne there?... Say Phil suppose I come by
for you for lunch? Do you want to go out right now?... Sure.... Say
Phil I clinched it, I got the milkman his damages. I’m pleased as the
dickens. I’ll set you up to a regular lunch on the strength of it...
So long....”
He came away from the telephone smiling, took his hat off its hook,
fitted it carefully on his head in front of the little mirror over the
hatrack, and hurried down the stairs.
On the last flight he met Mr. Emery of Emery & Emery who had their
offices on the first floor.
“Well Mr. Baldwin how’s things?” Mr. Emery of Emery & Emery was a
flatfaced man with gray hair and eyebrows and a protruding wedgeshaped
jaw. “Pretty well sir, pretty well.”
“They tell me you are doing mighty well.... Something about the New
York Central Railroad.”
“Oh Simsbury and I settled it out of court.”
“Humph,” said Mr. Emery of Emery & Emery.
As they were about to part in the street Mr. Emery said suddenly “Would
you care to dine with me and my wife some time?”
“Why ... er ... I’d be delighted.”
“I like to see something of the younger fellows in the profession you
understand.... Well I’ll drop you a line.... Some evening next week. It
would give us a chance to have a chat.”
Baldwin shook a blueveined hand in a shinystarched cuff and went off
down Maiden Lane hustling with a springy step through the noon crowd.
On Pearl Street he climbed a steep flight of black stairs that smelt of
roasting coffee and knocked on a groundglass door.
“Come in,” shouted a bass voice. A swarthy man lanky in his
shirtsleeves strode forward to meet him. “Hello George, thought you
were never comin’. I’m hongry as hell.”
“Phil I’m going to set you up to the best lunch you ever ate in your
life.”
“Well I’m juss waitin’ to be set.”
Phil Sandbourne put on his coat, knocked the ashes out of his pipe on
the corner of a draftingtable, and shouted into a dark inner office,
“Goin out to eat, Mr. Specker.”
“All right go ahead,” replied a goaty quavering from the inner office.
“How’s the old man?” asked Baldwin as they went out the door.
“Ole Specker? Bout on his last legs ... but he’s been thataway for
years poa ole soul. Honest George I’d feel mighty mean if anythin
happened to poa ole Specker.... He’s the only honest man in the city of
New York, an he’s got a head on his shoulders too.”
“He’s never made anything much by it,” said Baldwin.
“He may yet.... He may yet.... Man you ought to see his plans for
allsteel buildins. He’s got an idea the skyscraper of the future’ll be
built of steel and glass. We’ve been experimenting with vitrous tile
recently.... cristamighty some of his plans would knock yer eye out....
He’s got a great sayin about some Roman emperor who found Rome of brick
and left it of marble. Well he says he’s found New York of brick an
that he’s goin to leave it of steel ... steel an glass. I’ll have to
show you his project for a rebuilt city. It’s some pipedream.”
They settled on a cushioned bench in the corner of the restaurant that
smelled of steak and the grill. Sandbourne stretched his legs out under
the table.
“Wow this is luxury,” he said.
“Phil let’s have a cocktail,” said Baldwin from behind the bill of
fare. “I tell you Phil, it’s the first five years that’s the hardest.”
“You needn’t worry George, you’re the hustlin kind.... I’m the ole
stick in the mud.”
“I don’t see why, you can always get a job as a draftsman.”
“That’s a fine future I muss say, to spend ma life with the corner of a
draftintable stuck in ma bally.... Christ-amighty man!”
“Well Specker and Sandbourne may be a famous firm yet.”
“People’ll be goin round in flyin machines by that time an you and
me’ll be laid out with our toes to the daisies.”
“Here’s luck anyway.”
“Here’s lead in yer pencil, George.”
They drank down the Martinis and started eating their oysters.
“I wonder if it’s true that oysters turn to leather in your stomach
when you drink alcohol with em.”
“Search me.... Say by the way Phil how are you getting on with that
little stenographer you were taking out?”
“Man the food an drink an theaters I’ve wasted on that lil girl....
She’s got me run to a standstill.... Honest she has. You’re a sensible
feller, George, to keep away from the women.”
“Maybe,” said Baldwin slowly and spat an olive stone into his clenched
fist.
* * * * *
The first thing they heard was the quavering whistle that came from a
little wagon at the curb opposite the entrance to the ferry. A small
boy broke away from the group of immigrants that lingered in the
ferryhouse and ran over to the little wagon.
“Sure it’s like a steam engine an its fulla monkeynuts,” he yelled
running back.
“Padraic you stay here.”
“And this here’s the L station, South Ferry,” went on Tim Halloran who
had come down to meet them. “Up thataway’s Battery Park an Bowling
Green an Wall Street an th’ financial district.... Come along Padraic
your Uncle Timothy’s goin to take ye on th’ Ninth Avenoo L.”
There were only three people left at the ferrylanding, an old woman
with a blue handkerchief on her head and a young woman with a magenta
shawl, standing at either end of a big corded trunk studded with brass
tacks; and an old man with a greenish stub of a beard and a face lined
and twisted like the root of a dead oak. The old woman was whimpering
with wet eyes: “Dove andiamo Madonna mia, Madonna mia?” The young
woman was unfolding a letter blinking at the ornate writing. Suddenly
she went over to the old man, “Non posso leggere,” holding out the
letter to him. He wrung his hands, letting his head roll back and
forth, saying over and over again something she couldn’t understand.
She shrugged her shoulders and smiled and went back to the trunk. A
Sicilian with sideburns was talking to the old woman. He grabbed the
trunk by its cord and pulled it over to a spring wagon with a white
horse that stood across the street. The two women followed the trunk.
The Sicilian held out his hand to the young woman. The old woman still
muttering and whimpering hoisted herself painfully onto the back of the
wagon. When the Sicilian leaned over to read the letter he nudged the
young woman with his shoulder. She stiffened. “Awright,” he said. Then
as he shook the reins on the horse’s back he turned back towards the
old woman and shouted, “Cinque le due.... Awright.”
IV. Tracks
_The rumpetybump rumpetybump spaced out, slackened; bumpers
banged all down the train. The man dropped off the rods. He
couldnt move for stiffness. It was pitchblack. Very slowly
he crawled out, hoisted himself to his knees, to his feet
until he leaned panting against the freightcar. His body
was not his own; his muscles were smashed wood, his bones
were twisted rods. A lantern burst his eyes._
“_Get outa here quick yous. Company detectives is beatin
through de yards._”
“_Say feller, is this New York?_”
“_You’re goddam right it is. Juss foller my lantern; you
kin git out along de waterfront._”
_His feet could barely stumble through the long gleaming
v’s and crisscrossed lines of tracks, he tripped and fell
over a bundle of signal rods. At last he was sitting on the
edge of a wharf with his head in his hands. The water made
a soothing noise against the piles like the lapping of a
dog. He took a newspaper out of his pocket and unwrapped
a hunk of bread and a slice of gristly meat. He ate them
dry, chewing and chewing before he could get any moisture
in his mouth. Then he got unsteadily to his feet, brushed
the crumbs off his knees, and looked about him. Southward
beyond the tracks the murky sky was drenched with orange
glow._
“_The Gay White Way,” he said aloud in a croaking voice.
“The Gay White Way._”
Through the rainstriped window Jimmy Herf was watching the umbrellas
bob in the slowly swirling traffic that flowed up Broadway. There was a
knock at the door; “Come in,” said Jimmy and turned back to the
window when he saw that the waiter wasn’t Pat. The waiter switched
on the light. Jimmy saw him reflected in the windowpane, a lean
spikyhaired man holding aloft in one hand the dinnertray on which
the silver covers were grouped like domes. Breathing hard the waiter
advanced into the room dragging a folding stand after him with his free
hand. He jerked open the stand, set the tray on it and laid a cloth on
the round table. A greasy pantry smell came from him. Jimmy waited till
he’d gone to turn round. Then he walked about the table tipping up the
silver covers; soup with little green things in it, roast lamb, mashed
potatoes, mashed turnips, spinach, no desert either.
“Muddy.” “Yes deary,” the voice wailed frailly through the folding
doors.
“Dinner’s ready mother dear.”
“You begin darling boy, I’ll be right in....”
“But I dont want to begin without you mother.”
He walked round the table straightening knives and forks. He put a
napkin over his arm. The head waiter at Delmonico’s was arranging the
table for Graustark and the Blind King of Bohemia and Prince Henry the
Navigator and ...
“Mother who d’you want to be Mary Queen of Scots or Lady Jane Grey?”
“But they both had their heads chopped off honey.... I dont want to
have my head chopped off.” Mother had on her salmoncolored teagown.
When she opened the folding doors a wilted smell of cologne and
medicines seeped out of the bedroom, trailed after her long lacefringed
sleeves. She had put a little too much powder on her face, but her
hair, her lovely brown hair was done beautifully. They sat down
opposite one another; she set a plate of soup in front of him, lifting
it between two long blueveined hands.
He ate the soup that was watery and not hot enough. “Oh I forgot the
croûtons, honey.”
“Muddy ... mother why arent you eating your soup?”
“I dont seem to like it much this evening. I couldn’t think what to
order tonight my head ached so. It doesn’t matter.”
“Would you rather be Cleopatra? She had a wonderful appetite and ate
everything that was put before her like a good little girl.”
“Even pearls.... She put a pearl in a glass of vinegar and drank it
down....” Her voice trembled. She stretched out her hand to him across
the table; he patted her hand manfully and smiled. “Only you and me
Jimmy boy.... Honey you’ll always love your mother wont you?”
“What’s the matter muddy dear?”
“Oh nothing; I feel strange this evening.... Oh I’m so tired of never
really feeling well.”
“But after you’ve had your operation....”
“Oh yes after I’ve had my operation.... Deary there’s a paper of fresh
butter on the windowledge in the bathroom.... I’ll put some on these
turnips if you fetch it for me.... I’m afraid I’ll have to complain
about the food again. This lamb’s not all it should be; I hope it wont
make us sick.”
Jimmy ran through the folding doors and his mother’s room into the
little passage that smelled of mothballs and silky bits of clothing
littered on a chair; the red rubber tubing of a douche swung in his
face as he opened the bathroom door; the whiff of medicines made his
ribs contract with misery. He pushed up the window at the end of the
tub. The ledge was gritty and feathery specks of soot covered the plate
turned up over the butter. He stood a moment staring down the airshaft,
breathing through his mouth to keep from smelling the coalgas that
rose from the furnaces. Below him a maid in a white cap leaned out of
a window and talked to one of the furnacemen who stood looking up at
her with his bare grimy arms crossed over his chest. Jimmy strained his
ears to hear what they were saying; to be dirty and handle coal all day
and have grease in your hair and up to your armpits.
“Jimmee!”
“Coming mother.” Blushing he slammed down the window and walked back
to the sittingroom, slowly so that the red would have time to fade out
of his face.
“Dreaming again, Jimmy. My little dreamer.”
He put the butter beside his mother’s plate and sat down.
“Hurry up and eat your lamb while it’s hot. Why dont you try a little
French mustard on it? It’ll make it taste better.”
The mustard burnt his tongue, brought tears to his eyes.
“Is it too hot?” mother asked laughing. “You must learn to like hot
things.... He always liked hot things.”
“Who mother?”
“Someone I loved very much.”
They were silent. He could hear himself chewing. A few rattling sounds
of cabs and trolleycars squirmed in brokenly through the closed
windows. The steampipes knocked and hissed. Down the airshaft the
furnaceman with grease up to his armpits was spitting words out of his
wabbly mouth up at the maid in the starched cap--dirty words. Mustard’s
the color of ...
“A penny for your thoughts.”
“I wasn’t thinking of anything.”
“We mustn’t have any secrets from each other dear. Remember you’re the
only comfort your mother has in the world.”
“I wonder what it’d be like to be a seal, a little harbor seal.”
“Very chilly I should think.”
“But you wouldn’t feel it.... Seals are protected by a layer of blubber
so that they’re always warm even sitting on an iceberg. But it would be
such fun to swim around in the sea whenever you wanted to. They travel
thousands of miles without stopping.”
“But mother’s traveled thousands of miles without stopping and so have
you.”
“When?”
“Going abroad and coming back.” She was laughing at him with bright
eyes.
“Oh but that’s in a boat.”
“And when we used to go cruising on the _Mary Stuart_.”
“Oh tell me about that muddy.”
There was a knock. “Come.” The spikyhaired waiter put his head in the
door.
“Can I clear mum?”
“Yes and bring me some fruit salad and see that the fruit is fresh
cut.... Things are wretched this evening.”
Puffing, the waiter was piling dishes on the tray. “I’m sorry mum,” he
puffed.
“All right, I know it’s not your fault waiter.... What’ll you have
Jimmy?”
“May I have a meringue glacé muddy?”
“All right if you’ll be very good.”
“Yea,” Jimmy let out a yell.
“Darling you mustn’t shout like that at table.”
“But we dont mind when there are just the two of us.... Hooray meringue
glacé.”
“James a gentleman always behaves the same way whether he’s in his own
home or in the wilds of Africa.”
“Gee I wish we were in the wilds of Africa.”
“I’d be terrified, dear.”
“I’d shout like that and scare away all the lions and tigers.... Yes I
would.”
The waiter came back with two plates on the tray. “I’m sorry mum but
meringue glacé’s all out.... I brought the young gentleman chocolate
icecream instead.”
“Oh mother.”
“Never mind dear.... It would have been too rich anyway.... You eat
that and I’ll let you run out after dinner and buy some candy.”
“Oh goody.”
“But dont eat the icecream too fast or you’ll have collywobbles.”
“I’m all through.”
“You bolted it you little wretch.... Put on your rubbers honey.”
“But it’s not raining at all.”
“Do as mother wants you dear.... And please dont be long. I put you on
your honor to come right back. Mother’s not a bit well tonight and she
gets so nervous when you’re out in the street. There are such terrible
dangers....”
He sat down to pull on his rubbers. While he was snapping them tight
over his heels she came to him with a dollar bill. She put her arm with
its long silky sleeve round his shoulder. “Oh my darling.”
She was crying.
“Mother you mustnt.” He squeezed her hard; he could feel the ribs
of her corset against his arms. “I’ll be back in a minute, in the
teenciest weenciest minute.”
On the stairs where a brass rod held the dull crimson carpet in place
on each step, Jimmy pulled off his rubbers and stuffed them into the
pockets of his raincoat. With his head in the air he hurried through
the web of prying glances of the bellhops on the bench beside the
desk. “Goin fer a walk?” the youngest lighthaired bellhop asked him.
Jimmy nodded wisely, slipped past the staring buttons of the doorman
and out onto Broadway full of clangor and footsteps and faces putting
on shadowmasks when they slid out of the splotches of light from
stores and arclamps. He walked fast uptown past the Ansonia. In the
doorway lounged a blackbrowed man with a cigar in his mouth, maybe a
kidnapper. But nice people live in the Ansonia like where we live.
Next a telegraph office, drygoods stores, a dyers and cleaners, a
Chinese laundry sending out a scorched mysterious steamy smell. He
walks faster, the chinks are terrible kidnappers. Footpads. A man with
a can of coaloil brushes past him, a greasy sleeve brushes against his
shoulder, smells of sweat and coaloil; suppose he’s a firebug. The
thought of firebug gives him gooseflesh. Fire. Fire.
Huyler’s; there’s a comfortable fudgy odor mixed with the smell of
nickel and wellwiped marble outside the door, and the smell of cooking
chocolate curls warmly from the gratings under the windows. Black and
orange crêpepaper favors for Hallowe’en. He is just going in when he
thinks of the Mirror place two blocks further up, those little silver
steamengines and automobiles they give you with your change. I’ll
hurry; on rollerskates it’d take less time, you could escape from
bandits, thugs, holdupmen, on rollerskates, shooting over your shoulder
with a long automatic, bing ... one of em down! that’s the worst of
em, bing ... there’s another; the rollerskates are magic rollerskates,
whee ... up the brick walls of the houses, over the roofs, vaulting
chimneys, up the Flatiron Building, scooting across the cables of
Brooklyn Bridge.
Mirror candies; this time he goes in without hesitating. He stands at
the counter a while before anyone comes to wait on him. “Please a pound
of sixty cents a pound mixed chocolate creams,” he rattled off. She is
a blond lady, a little crosseyed, and looks at him spitefully without
answering. “Please I’m in a hurry if you dont mind.”
“All right, everybody in their turn,” she snaps. He stands blinking at
her with flaming cheeks. She pushes him a box all wrapped up with a
check on it “Pay at the desk.” I’m not going to cry. The lady at the
desk is small and grey-haired. She takes his dollar through a little
door like the little doors little animals go in and out of in the Small
Mammal House. The cash register makes a cheerful tinkle, glad to get
the money. A quarter, a dime, a nickel and a little cup, is that forty
cents? But only a little cup instead of a steamengine or an automobile.
He picks up the money and leaves the little cup and hurries out with
the box under his arm. Mother’ll say I’ve been too long. He walks home
looking straight ahead of him, smarting from the meanness of the blond
lady.
“Ha ... been out abuyin candy,” said the lighthaired bellhop. “I’ll
give you some if you come up later,” whispered Jimmy as he passed. The
brass rods rang when he kicked them running up the stairs. Outside the
chocolate-colored door that had 503 on it in white enameled letters he
remembered his rubbers. He set the candy on the floor and pulled them
on over his damp shoes. Lucky Muddy wasn’t waiting for him with the
door open. Maybe she’d seen him coming from the window.
“Mother.” She wasn’t in the sittingroom. He was terrified. She’d gone
out, she’d gone away. “Mother!”
“Come here dear,” came her voice weakly from the bedroom.
He pulled off his hat and raincoat and rushed in. “Mother what’s the
matter?”
“Nothing honey.... I’ve a headache that’s all, a terrible headache....
Put some cologne on a handkerchief and put it on my head nicely, and
dont please dear get it in my eye the way you did last time.”
She lay on the bed in a skyblue wadded wrapper. Her face was purplish
pale. The silky salmoncolored teagown hung limp over a chair; on the
floor lay her corsets in a tangle of pink strings. Jimmy put the wet
handkerchief carefully on her forehead. The cologne reeked strong,
prickling his nostrils as he leaned over her.
“That’s so good,” came her voice feebly. “Dear call up Aunt Emily,
Riverside 2466, and ask her if she can come round this evening. I want
to talk to her.... Oh my head’s bursting.”
His heart thumping terribly and tears blearing his eyes he went to the
telephone. Aunt Emily’s voice came unexpectedly soon.
“Aunt Emily mother’s kinder sick.... She wants you to come around....
She’s coming right away mother dear,” he shouted, “isn’t that fine?
She’s coming right around.” He tiptoed back into his mother’s room,
picked up the corset and the teagown and hung them in the wardrobe.
“Deary” came her frail voice “take the hairpins out of my hair, they
hurt my head.... Oh honeyboy I feel as if my head would burst....” He
felt gently through her brown hair that was silkier than the teagown
and pulled out the hairpins.
“Ou dont, you are hurting me.”
“Mother I didn’t mean to.”
Aunt Emily, thin in a blue mackintosh thrown over her evening dress,
hurried into the room, her thin mouth in a pucker of sympathy. She
saw her sister lying twisted with pain on the bed and the skinny
whitefaced boy in short pants standing beside her with his hands full
of hairpins.
“What is it Lil?” she asked quietly.
“My dear something terrible’s the matter with me,” came Lily Herf’s
voice in a gasping hiss.
“James,” said Aunt Emily harshly, “you must run off to bed.... Mother
needs perfect quiet.”
“Good night muddy dear,” he said.
Aunt Emily patted him on the back. “Dont worry James I’ll attend to
everything.” She went to the telephone and began calling a number in a
low precise voice.
The box of candy was on the parlor table; Jimmy felt guilty when he put
it under his arm. As he passed the bookcase he snatched out a volume
of the American Cyclopædia and tucked it under the other arm. His aunt
did not notice when he went out the door. The dungeon gates opened.
Outside was an Arab stallion and two trusty retainers waiting to speed
him across the border to freedom. Three doors down was his room. It was
stuffed with silent chunky darkness. The light switched on obediently
lighting up the cabin of the schooner _Mary Stuart_. All right Captain
weigh anchor and set your course for the Windward Isles and dont
let me be disturbed before dawn; I have important papers to peruse.
He tore off his clothes and knelt beside the bed in his pyjamas.
Nowilaymedowntosleep Ipraythelordmysoultokeep Ifishoulddiebeforeiwake
Ipraythelordmysoultotake.
Then he opened the box of candy and set the pillows together at the end
of the bed under the light. His teeth broke through the chocolate into
a squashysweet filling. Let’s see ...
A the first of the vowels, the first letter in all written
alphabets except the Amharic or Abyssinian, of which it is
the thirteenth, and the Runic of which it is the tenth....
Darn it that’s a hairy one....
AA, Aachen (see Aix-la-Chapelle).
Aardvark ...
Gee he’s funny looking ...
(orycteropus capensis), a plantigrade animal of the class
mammalia, order edentata, peculiar to Africa.
Abd,
Abd-el-halim, an Egyptian prince, son of Mehmet Ali and a
white slave woman....
His cheeks burned as he read:
The Queen of the White Slaves.
Abdomen (lat. of undetermined etymology) ... the lower part
of the body included between the level of the diaphragm and
that of the pelvis....