head ached as if it were bound with hot wire. She went to the window
and leaned out into the sunlight. Across Park Avenue the flameblue sky
was barred with the red girder cage of a new building. Steam riveters
rattled incessantly; now and then a donkeyengine whistled and there was
a jingle of chains and a fresh girder soared crosswise in the air. Men
in blue overalls moved about the scaffolding. Beyond to the northwest a
shining head of clouds soared blooming compactly like a cauliflower. Oh
if it would only rain. As the thought came to her there was a low growl
of thunder above the din of building and of traffic. Oh if it would
only rain.
Ellen had just hung a chintz curtain in the window to hide with its
blotchy pattern of red and purple flowers the vista of desert backyards
and brick flanks of downtown houses. In the middle of the bare room was
a boxcouch cumbered with teacups, a copper chafingdish and percolator;
the yellow hardwood floor was littered with snippings of chintz and
curtainpins; books, dresses, bedlinen cascaded from a trunk in the
corner; from a new mop in the fireplace exuded a smell of cedar oil.
Ellen was leaning against the wall in a daffodilcolored kimono looking
happily about the big shoebox-shaped room when the buzzer startled her.
She pushed a rope of hair up off her forehead and pressed the button
that worked the latch. There was a little knock on the door. A woman
was standing in the dark of the hall.
“Why Cassie I couldn’t make out who you were. Come in.... What’s the
matter?”
“You are sure I’m not intwuding?”
“Of course not.” Ellen leaned to give her a little pecking kiss.
Cassandra Wilkins was very pale and there was a nervous quiver about
her eyelids. “You can give me some advice. I’m just getting my curtains
up.... Look do you think that purple goes all right with the gray wall?
It looks kind of funny to me.”
“I think it’s beautiful. What a beautiful woom. How happy you’re going
to be here.”
“Put that chafingdish down on the floor and sit down. I’ll make some
tea. There’s a kind of bathroom kitchenette in the alcove there.”
“You’re sure it wouldn’t be too much twouble?”
“Of course not.... But Cassie what’s the matter?”
“Oh everything.... I came down to tell you but I cant. I cant ever tell
anybody.”
“I’m so excited about this apartment. Imagine Cassie it’s the first
place of my own I ever had in my life. Daddy wants me to live with him
in Passaic, but I just felt I couldn’t.”
“And what does Mr. Oglethorpe...? Oh but that’s impertinent of me....
Do forgive me Elaine. I’m almost cwazy. I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“Oh Jojo’s a dear. He’s even going to let me divorce him if I want
to.... Would you if you were me?” Without waiting for an answer she
disappeared between the folding doors. Cassie remained hunched up on
the edge of the couch.
Ellen came back with a blue teapot in one hand and a pan of steaming
water in the other. “Do you mind not having lemon or cream? There’s
some sugar on the mantelpiece. These cups are clean because I just
washed them. Dont you think they are pretty? Oh you cant imagine
how wonderful and domestic it makes you feel to have a place all to
yourself. I hate living in a hotel. Honestly this place makes me just
so domestic ... Of course the ridiculous thing is that I’ll probably
have to give it up or sublet as soon as I’ve got it decently fixed up.
Show’s going on the road in three weeks. I want to get out of it but
Harry Goldweiser wont let me.” Cassie was taking little sips of tea out
of her spoon. She began to cry softly. “Why Cassie buck up, what’s the
matter?”
“Oh, you’re so lucky in everything Elaine and I’m so miserable.”
“Why I always thought it was my jinx that got the beautyprize, but what
is the matter?”
Cassie put down her cup and pushed her two clenched hands into her
neck. “It’s just this,” she said in a strangled voice.... “I think I’m
going to have a baby.” She put her head down on her knees and sobbed.
“Are you sure? Everybody’s always having scares.”
“I wanted our love to be always pure and beautiful, but he said he’d
never see me again if I didn’t ... and I hate him.” She shook the words
out one by one between tearing sobs.
“Why don’t you get married?”
“I cant. I wont. It would interfere.”
“How long since you knew?”
“Oh it must have been ten days ago easily. I know it’s that ... I dont
want to have anything but my dancing.” She stopped sobbing and began
taking little sips of tea again.
Ellen walked back and forth in front of the fireplace. “Look here
Cassie there’s no use getting all wrought up over things, is there? I
know a woman who’ll help you.... Do pull yourself together please.”
“Oh I couldn’t, I couldn’t.” ... The saucer slid off her knees and
broke in two on the floor. “Tell me Elaine have you ever been through
this?... Oh I’m so sowy. I’ll buy you another saucer Elaine.” She got
totteringly to her feet and put the cup and spoon on the mantelpiece.
“Oh of course I have. When we were first married I had a terrible
time....”
“Oh Elaine isn’t it hideous all this? Life would be so beautiful and
free and natural without it.... I can feel the howor of it cweeping up
on me, killing me.”
“Things are rather like that,” said Ellen gruffly.
Cassie was crying again. “Men are so bwutal and selfish.”
“Have another cup of tea, Cassie.”
“Oh I couldn’t. My dear I feel a deadly nausea.... Oh I think I’m going
to be sick.”
“The bathroom is right through the folding doors and to the left.”
Ellen walked up and down the room with clenched teeth. I hate women. I
hate women.
After a while Cassie came back into the room, her face greenish white,
dabbing her forehead with a washrag.
“Here lie down here you poor kid,” said Ellen clearing a space on the
couch. “... Now you’ll feel much better.”
“Oh will you ever forgive me for causing all this twouble?”
“Just lie still a minute and forget everything.”
“Oh if I could only relax.”
Ellen’s hands were cold. She went to the window and looked out. A
little boy in a cowboy suit was running about the yard waving an end
of clothesline. He tripped and fell. Ellen could see his face puckered
with tears as he got to his feet again. In the yard beyond a stumpy
woman with black hair was hanging out clothes. Sparrows were chirping
and fighting on the fence.
“Elaine dear could you let me have a little powder? I’ve lost my vanity
case.”
She turned back into the room. “I think.... Yes there’s some on the
mantelpiece.... Do you feel better now Cassie?”
“Oh yes,” said Cassie in a trembly voice. “And have you got a lipstick?”
“I’m awfully sorry.... I’ve never worn any street makeup. I’ll have
to soon enough if I keep on acting.” She went into the alcove to take
off her kimono, slipped on a plain green dress, coiled up her hair
and pushed a small black hat down over it. “Let’s run along Cassie. I
want to have something to eat at six.... I hate bolting my dinner five
minutes before a performance.”
“Oh I’m so tewified.... Pwomise you wont leave me alone.”
“Oh she wouldnt do anything today.... She’ll just look you over and
maybe give you something to take.... Let’s see, have I got my key?”
“We’ll have to take a taxi. And my dear I’ve only got six dollars in
the world.”
“I’ll make daddy give me a hundred dollars to buy furniture. That’ll be
all right.”
“Elaine you’re the most angelic cweature in the world.... You deserve
every bit of your success.”
At the corner of Sixth Avenue they got into a taxi.
Cassie’s teeth were chattering. “Please let’s go another time. I’m too
fwightened to go now.”
“My dear child it’s the only thing to do.”
* * * * *
Joe Harland, puffing on his pipe, pulled to and bolted the wide quaking
board gates. A last splash of garnet-colored sunlight was fading on the
tall housewall across the excavation. Blue arms of cranes stood out
dark against it. Harland’s pipe had gone out, he stood puffing at it
with his back to the gate looking at the files of empty wheelbarrows,
the piles of picks and shovels, the little shed for the donkeyengine
and the steam drills that sat perched on a split rock like a
mountaineer’s shack. It seemed to him peaceful in spite of the rasp of
traffic from the street that seeped through the hoarding. He went into
the leanto by the gate where the telephone was, sat down in the chair,
knocked out, filled and lit his pipe and spread the newspaper out on
his knees. CONTRACTORS PLAN LOCKOUT TO ANSWER BUILDERS’ STRIKE. He
yawned and threw back his head. The light was too blue-dim to read. He
sat a long time staring at the stub scarred toes of his boots. His mind
was a fuzzy comfortable blank. Suddenly he saw himself in a dress-suit
wearing a top hat with an orchid in his buttonhole. The Wizard of Wall
Street looked at the lined red face and the gray hair under the mangy
cap and the big hands with their grimy swollen knuckles and faded with
a snicker. He remembered faintly the smell of a Corona-Corona as he
reached into the pocket of the peajacket for a can of Prince Albert
to refill his pipe. “What dif does it make I’d like to know?” he said
aloud. When he lit a match the night went suddenly inky all round. He
blew out the match. His pipe was a tiny genial red volcano that made
a discreet cluck each time he pulled on it. He smoked very slowly
inhaling deep. The tall buildings all round were haloed with ruddy
glare from streets and electriclight signs. Looking straight up through
glimmering veils of reflected light he could see the blueblack sky and
stars. The tobacco was sweet. He was very happy.
A glowing cigarend crossed the door of the shack. Harland grabbed his
lantern and went out. He held the lantern up in the face of a blond
young man with a thick nose and lips and a cigar in the side of his
mouth.
“How did you get in here?”
“Side door was open.”
“The hell it was? Who are you looking for?”
“You the night watchman round here?” Harland nodded. “Glad to meet
yez.... Have a cigar. I jus wanted to have a little talk wid ye,
see?... I’m organizer for Local 47, see? Let’s see your card.”
“I’m not a union man.”
“Well ye’re goin to be aint ye.... Us guys of the buildin trades have
got to stick together. We’re tryin to get every bloke from night
watchmen to inspectors lined up to make a solid front against this here
lockout sitooation.”
Harland lit his cigar. “Look here, bo, you’re wasting your breath on
me. They’ll always need a watchman, strike or no strike.... I’m an old
man and I havent got much fight left in me. This is the first decent
job I’ve had in five years and they’ll have to shoot me to get it away
from me.... All that stuff’s for kids like you. I’m out of it. You sure
are wasting your breath if you’re going round trying to organize night
watchmen.”
“Say you don’t talk like you’d always been in this kind o woik.”
“Well maybe I aint.”
The young man took off his hat and rubbed his hand over his forehead
and up across his dense cropped hair. “Hell it’s warm work arguin....
Swell night though aint it?”
“Oh the night’s all right,” said Harland.
“Say my name’s O’Keefe, Joe O’Keefe.... Gee I bet you could tell a guy
a lot o things.” He held out his hand.
“My name’s Joe too ... Harland.... Twenty years ago that name meant
something to people.”
“Twenty years from now ...”
“Say you’re a funny fellow for a walking delegate.... You take an old
man’s advice before I run you off the lot, and quit it.... It’s no game
for a likely young feller who wants to make his way in the world.”
“Times are changin you know.... There’s big fellers back o this here
strike, see? I was talkin over the sitooation with Assemblyman McNiel
jus this afternoon in his office.”
“But I’m telling you straight if there’s one thing that’ll queer you in
this town it’s this labor stuff.... You’ll remember someday that an
old drunken bum told you that and it’ll be too late.”
“Oh it was drink was it? That’s one thing I’m not afraid of. I don’t
touch the stuff, except beer to be sociable.”
“Look here bo the company detective’ll be makin his rounds soon. You’d
better be making tracks.”
“I ain’t ascared of any goddam company detective.... Well so long I’ll
come in to see you again someday.”
“Close that door behind you.”
Joe Harland drew a little water from a tin container, settled himself
in his chair and stretched his arms out and yawned. Eleven o’clock.
They would just be getting out of the theaters, men in eveningclothes,
girls in lowneck dresses; men were going home to their wives and
mistresses; the city was going to bed. Taxis honked and rasped outside
the hoarding, the sky shimmered with gold powder from electric signs.
He dropped the butt of the cigar and crushed it on the floor with his
heel. He shuddered and got to his feet, then paced slowly round the
edge of the buildinglot swinging his lantern.
The light from the street yellowed faintly a big sign on which was a
picture of a skyscraper, white with black windows against blue sky
and white clouds. SEGAL AND HAYNES will erect on this site a modern
uptodate TWENTYFOUR STORY OFFICE BUILDING open for occupancy January
1915 renting space still available inquire....
* * * * *
Jimmy Herf sat reading on a green couch under a bulb that lit up a
corner of a wide bare room. He had come to the death of Olivier in
_Jean Christophe_ and read with tightening gullet. In his memory
lingered the sound of the Rhine swirling, restlessly gnawing the foot
of the garden of the house where Jean Christophe was born. Europe was a
green park in his mind full of music and red flags and mobs marching.
Occasionally the sound of a steamboat whistle from the river settled
breathless snowysoft into the room. From the street came a rattle of
taxis and the whining sound of streetcars.
There was a knock at the door. Jimmy got up, his eyes blurred and hot
from reading.
“Hello Stan, where the devil did you come from?”
“Herfy I’m tight as a drum.”
“That’s no novelty.”
“I was just giving you the weather report.”
“Well perhaps you can tell me why in this country nobody ever does
anything. Nobody ever writes any music or starts any revolutions or
falls in love. All anybody ever does is to get drunk and tell smutty
stories. I think it’s disgusting....”
“’Ear, ’ear.... But speak for yourself. I’m going to stop drinking....
No good drinking, liquor just gets monotonous.... Say, got a bathtub?”
“Of course there’s a bathtub. Whose apartment do you think this is,
mine?”
“Well whose is it Herfy?”
“It belongs to Lester. I’m just caretaker while he’s abroad, the lucky
dog.” Stan started peeling off his clothes letting them drop in a pile
about his feet. “Gee I’d like to go swimming.... Why the hell do people
live in cities?”
“Why do I go on dragging out a miserable existence in this crazy
epileptic town ... that’s what I want to know.”
“Lead on Horatius, to the baawth slave,” bellowed Stan who stood on top
of his pile of clothes, brown with tight rounded muscles, swaying a
little from his drunkenness.
“It’s right through that door.” Jimmy pulled a towel out of the
steamertrunk in the corner of the room, threw it after him and went
back to reading.
Stan tumbled back into the room, dripping, talking through the towel.
“What do you think, I forgot to take my hat off. And look Herfy,
there’s something I want you to do for me. Do you mind?”
“Of course not. What is it?”
“Will you let me use your back room tonight, this room?”
“Sure you can.”
“I mean with somebody.”
“Go as far as you like. You can bring the entire Winter Garden Chorus
in here and nobody will see them. And there’s an emergency exit down
the fire escape into the alley. I’ll go to bed and close my door so you
can have this room and the bath all to yourselves.”
“It’s a rotten imposition but somebody’s husband is on the rampage and
we have to be very careful.”
“Dont worry about the morning. I’ll sneak out early and you can have
the place to yourselves.”
“Well I’m off so long.”
Jimmy gathered up his book and went into his bedroom and undressed.
His watch said fifteen past twelve. The night was sultry. When he had
turned out the light he sat a long while on the edge of the bed. The
faraway sounds of sirens from the river gave him gooseflesh. From the
street he heard footsteps, the sound of men and women’s voices, low
youthful laughs of people going home two by two. A phonograph was
playing _Secondhand Rose_. He lay on his back on top of the sheet.
There came on the air through the window a sourness of garbage, a smell
of burnt gasoline and traffic and dusty pavements, a huddled stuffiness
of pigeonhole rooms where men and women’s bodies writhed alone tortured
by the night and the young summer. He lay with seared eyeballs staring
at the ceiling, his body glowed in a brittle shivering agony like
redhot metal.
A woman’s voice whispering eagerly woke him; someone was pushing open
the door. “I wont see him. I wont see him. Jimmy for Heaven’s sake you
go talk to him. I wont see him.” Elaine Oglethorpe draped in a sheet
walked into the room.
Jimmy tumbled out of bed. “What on earth?”
“Isn’t there a closet or something in here.... I will not talk to Jojo
when he’s in that condition.”
Jimmy straightened his pyjamas. “There’s a closet at the head of the
bed.”
“Of course.... Now Jimmy do be an angel, talk to him and make him go
away.”
Jimmy walked dazedly into the outside room. “Slut, slut,” was yelling
a voice from the window. The lights were on. Stan, draped like an
Indian in a gray and pink-striped blanket was squatting in the middle
of the two couches made up together into a vast bed. He was staring
impassively at John Oglethorpe who leaned in through the upper part of
the window screaming and waving his arms and scolding like a Punch and
Judy show. His hair was in a tangle over his eyes, in one hand he waved
a stick, in the other a creamandcoffeecolored felt hat. “Slut come
here.... Flagrante delictu that’s what it is.... Flagrante delictu.
It was not for nothing that inspiration led me up Lester Jones’s fire
escape.” He stopped and stared a minute at Jimmy with wide drunken
eyes. “So here’s the cub reporter, the yellow journalist is it, looking
as if butter wouldnt melt in his mouth is it? Do you know what my
opinion of you is, would you like to know what my opinion of you is? Oh
I’ve heard about you from Ruth and all that. I know you think you’re
one of the dynamiters and aloof from all that.... How do you like being
a paid prostitute of the public press? How d’you like your yellow
ticket? The brass check, that’s the kind of thing.... You think that as
an actor, an artiste, I dont know about those things. I’ve heard from
Ruth your opinion of actors and all that.”
“Why Mr. Oglethorpe I am sure you are mistaken.”
“I read and keep silent. I am one of the silent watchers. I know that
every sentence, every word, every picayune punctuation that appears in
the public press is perused and revised and deleted in the interests of
advertisers and bondholders. The fountain of national life is poisoned
at the source.”
“Yea, you tell em,” suddenly shouted Stan from the bed. He got to his
feet clapping his hands. “I should prefer to be the meanest stagehand.
I should prefer to be the old and feeble charwoman who scrubs off the
stage ... than to sit on velvet in the office of the editor of the
greatest daily in the city. Acting is a profession honorable, decent,
humble, gentlemanly.” The oration ended abruptly.
“Well I dont see what you expect me to do about it,” said Jimmy
crossing his arms.
“And now it’s starting to rain,” went on Oglethorpe in a squeaky
whining voice.
“You’d better go home,” said Jimmy.
“I shall go I shall go where there are no sluts ... no male and female
sluts.... I shall go into the great night.”
“Do you think he can get home all right Stan?”
Stan had sat down on the edge of the bed shaking with laughter. He
shrugged his shoulders.
“My blood will be on your head Elaine forever.... Forever, do you hear
me? ... into the night where people dont sit laughing and sneering.
Dont you think I dont see you.... If the worst happens it will not be
my fault.”
“Go-od night,” shouted Stan. In a last spasm of laughing he fell off
the edge of the bed and rolled on the floor. Jimmy went to the window
and looked down the fire escape into the alley. Oglethorpe had gone. It
was raining hard. A smell of wet bricks rose from the housewalls.
“Well if this isnt the darnedest fool business?” He walked back into
his room without looking at Stan. In the door Ellen brushed silkily
past him.
“I’m terribly sorry Jimmy ...” she began.
He closed the door sharply in her face and locked it. “The goddam fools
they act like crazy people,” he said through his teeth. “What the hell
do they think this is?”
His hands were cold and trembling. He pulled a blanket up over him. He
lay listening to the steady beat of the rain and the hissing spatter of
a gutter. Now and then a puff of wind blew a faint cool spray in his
face. There still lingered in the room a frail cedarwood gruff smell of
her heavycoiled hair, a silkiness of her body where she had crouched
wrapped in the sheet hiding.
Ed Thatcher sat in his bay window among the Sunday papers. His hair was
grizzled and there were deep folds in his cheeks. The upper buttons of
his pongee trousers were undone to ease his sudden little potbelly. He
sat in the open window looking out over the blistering asphalt at the
endless stream of automobiles that whirred in either direction past
the yellowbrick row of stores and the redbrick station under the eaves
of which on a black ground gold letters glinted feebly in the sun:
PASSAIC. Apartments round about emitted a querulous Sunday grinding
of phonographs playing _It’s a Bear_. The Sextette from _Lucia_,
selections from _The Quaker Girl_. On his knees lay the theatrical
section of the New York _Times_. He looked out with bleared eyes into
the quivering heat feeling his ribs tighten with a breathless ache. He
had just read a paragraph in a marked copy of _Town Topics_.
Malicious tongues are set wagging by the undeniable fact
that young Stanwood Emery’s car is seen standing every
night outside the Knickerbocker Theatre and never does it
leave they say, without a certain charming young actress
whose career is fast approaching stellar magnitude. This
same young gentleman, whose father is the head of one of
the city’s most respected lawfirms, who recently left
Harvard under slightly unfortunate circumstances, has been
astonishing the natives for some time with his exploits
which we are sure are merely the result of the ebullience
of boyish spirits. A word to the wise.
The bell rang three times. Ed Thatcher dropped his papers and hurried
quaking to the door. “Ellie you’re so late. I was afraid you weren’t
coming.”
“Daddy dont I always come when I say I will?”
“Of course you do deary.”
“How are you getting on? How’s everything at the office?”
“Mr. Elbert’s on his vacation.... I guess I’ll go when he comes back. I
wish you’d come down to Spring Lake with me for a few days. It’d do you
good.”
“But daddy I cant.” ... She pulled off her hat and dropped it on the
davenport. “Look I brought you some roses, daddy.”
“Think of it; they’re red roses like your mother used to like. That was
very thoughtful of you I must say.... But I dont like going all alone
on my vacation.”
“Oh you’ll meet lots of cronies daddy, sure you will.”
“Why couldnt you come just for a week?”
“In the first place I’ve got to look for a job ... show’s going on the
road and I’m not going just at present. Harry Goldweiser’s awfully sore
about it.” Thatcher sat down in the bay window again and began piling
up the Sunday papers on a chair. “Why daddy what on earth are you doing
with that copy of _Town Topics_?”
“Oh nothing. I’d never read it; I just bought it to see what it was
like.” He flushed and compressed his lips as he shoved it in among the
_Times_.
“It’s just a blackmail sheet.” Ellen was walking about the room. She
had put the roses in a vase. A spiced coolness was spreading from them
through the dustheavy air. “Daddy, there’s something I want to tell you
about ... Jojo and I are going to get divorced.” Ed Thatcher sat with
his hands on his knees nodding with tight lips, saying nothing. His
face was gray and dark, almost the speckled gray of his pongee suit.
“It’s nothing to take on about. We’ve just decided we cant get along
together. It’s all going through quietly in the most approved style ...
George Baldwin, who’s a friend of mine, is going to run it through.”
“He with Emery and Emery?”
“Yes.”
“Hum.”
They were silent. Ellen leaned over to breathe deep of the roses. She
watched a little green measuring worm cross a bronzed leaf.