I’ll have the stuff get there at noon sharp.... And remember what I
tell you Cynthia, if you ever hear a business associate talking about
civic virtue, look lively.”
They are crossing Fourteenth. Father and daughter look out through the
glass at the windbitten faces of people waiting to cross the street.
Jimmy Herf yawned and scraped back his chair. The nickel glints of the
typewriter hurt his eyes. The tips of his fingers were sore. He pushed
open the sliding doors a little and peeped into the cold bedroom. He
could barely make out Ellie asleep in the bed in the alcove. At the
far end of the room was the baby’s crib. There was a faint milkish
sour smell of babyclothes. He pushed the doors to again and began
to undress. If we only had more space, he was muttering; we live
cramped in our squirrelcage.... He pulled the dusty cashmere off the
couch and yanked his pyjamas out from under the pillow. Space space
cleanness quiet; the words were gesticulating in his mind as if he were
addressing a vast auditorium.
He turned out the light, opened a crack of the window and dropped
wooden with sleep into bed. Immediately he was writing a letter on a
linotype. Now I lay me down to sleep ... mother of the great white
twilight. The arm of the linotype was a woman’s hand in a long white
glove. Through the clanking from behind amber foots Ellie’s voice Dont,
dont, dont, you’re hurting me so.... Mr. Herf, says a man in overalls,
you’re hurting the machine and we wont be able to get out the bullgod
edition thank dog. The linotype was a gulping mouth with nickelbright
rows of teeth, gulped, crunched. He woke up sitting up in bed. He was
cold, his teeth were chattering. He pulled the covers about him and
settled to sleep again. The next time he woke up it was daylight. He
was warm and happy. Snowflakes were dancing, hesitating, spinning,
outside the tall window.
“Hello Jimps,” said Ellie coming towards him with a tray.
“Why have I died and gone to heaven or something?”
“No it’s Sunday morning.... I thought you needed a little luxury.... I
made some corn muffins.”
“Oh you’re marvelous Ellie.... Wait a minute I must jump up and wash my
teeth.” He came back with his face washed, wearing his bathrobe. Her
mouth winced under his kiss. “And it’s only eleven o’clock. I’ve gained
an hour on my day off.... Wont you have some coffee too?”
“In a minute.... Look here Jimps I’ve got something I want to talk
about. Look dont you think we ought to get another place now that
you’re working nights again all the time?”
“You mean move?”
“No. I was thinking if you could get another room to sleep in somewhere
round, then nobody’d ever disturb you in the morning.”
“But Ellie we’d never see each other.... We hardly ever see each other
as it is.”
“It’s terrible ... but what can we do when our office-hours are so
different?”
Martin’s crying came in a gust from the other room. Jimmy sat on the
edge of the bed with the empty coffeecup on his knees looking at his
bare feet. “Just as you like,” he said dully. An impulse to grab her
hands to crush her to him until he hurt her went up through him like a
rocket and died. She picked up the coffeethings and swished away. His
lips knew her lips, his arms knew the twining of her arms, he knew the
deep woods of her hair, he loved her. He sat for a long time looking at
his feet, lanky reddish feet with swollen blue veins, shoebound toes
twisted by stairs and pavements. On each little toe there was a corn.
He found his eyes filling with pitying tears. The baby had stopped
crying. Jimmy went into the bathroom and started the water running in
the tub.
* * * * *
“It was that other feller you had Anna. He got you to thinkin you didnt
give a damn.... He made you a fatalist.”
“What’s at?”
“Somebody who thinks there’s no use strugglin, somebody who dont
believe in human progress.”
“Do you think Bouy was like that?”
“He was a scab anyway ... None o these Southerners are
classconscious.... Didn’t he make you stop payin your union dues?”
“I was sick o workin a sewin machine.”
“But you could be a handworker, do fancy work and make good money.
You’re not one o that kind, you’re one of us.... I’ll get you back in
good standin an you kin get a good job again.... God I’d never have let
you work in a dancehall the way he did. Anna it hurt me terrible to see
a Jewish girl goin round with a feller like that.”
“Well he’s gone an I aint got no job.”
“Fellers like that are the greatest enemies of the workers.... They
dont think of nobody but themselves.”
They are walking slowly up Second Avenue through a foggy evening. He
is a rustyhaired thinfaced young Jew with sunken cheeks and livid pale
skin. He has the bandy legs of a garment worker. Anna’s shoes are too
small for her. She has deep rings under her eyes. The fog is full of
strolling groups talking Yiddish, overaccented East Side English,
Russian. Warm rifts of light from delicatessen stores and softdrink
stands mark off the glistening pavement.
“If I didn’t feel so tired all the time,” mutters Anna.
“Let’s stop here an have a drink.... You take a glass o buttermilk
Anna, make ye feel good.”
“I aint got the taste for it Elmer. I’ll take a chocolate soda.”
“That’ll juss make ye feel sick, but go ahead if you wanter.” She sat
on the slender nickelbound stool. He stood beside her. She let herself
lean back a little against him. “The trouble with the workers is” ...
He was talking in a low impersonal voice. “The trouble with the workers
is we dont know nothin, we dont know how to eat, we dont know how to
live, we dont know how to protect our rights.... Jez Anna I want to
make you think of things like that. Cant you see we’re in the middle
of a battle just like in the war?” With the long sticky spoon Anna was
fishing bits of icecream out of the thick foamy liquid in her glass.
George Baldwin looked at himself in the mirror as he washed his hands
in the little washroom behind his office. His hair that still grew
densely down to a point on his forehead was almost white. There was
a deep line at each corner of his mouth and across his chin. Under
his bright gimleteyes the skin was sagging and granulated. When he
had wiped his hands slowly and meticulously he took a little box of
strychnine pills from the upper pocket of his vest, swallowed one, and
feeling the anticipated stimulus tingle through him went back into his
office. A longnecked officeboy was fidgeting beside his desk with a
card in his hand.
“A lady wants to speak to you sir.”
“Has she an appointment? Ask Miss Ranke.... Wait a minute. Show the
lady right through into this office.” The card read Nellie Linihan
McNiel. She was expensively dressed with a lot of lace in the opening
of her big fur coat. Round her neck she had a lorgnette on an amethyst
chain.
“Gus asked me to come to see you,” she said as he motioned her into a
chair beside the desk.
“What can I do for you?” His heart for some reason was pounding hard.
She looked at him a moment through her lorgnette. “George you stand it
better than Gus does.”
“What?”
“Oh all this.... I’m trying to get Gus to go away with me for a rest
abroad ... Marianbad or something like that ... but he says he’s in too
deep to pull up his stakes.”
“I guess that’s true of all of us,” said Baldwin with a cold smile.
They were silent a minute, then Nellie McNiel got to her feet. “Look
here George, Gus is awfully cut up about this.... You know he likes to
stand by his friends and have his friends stand by him.”
“Nobody can say that I haven’t stood by him.... It’s simply this, I’m
not a politician, and as, probably foolishly, I’ve allowed myself to be
nominated for office, I have to run on a nonpartisan basis.”
“George that’s only half the story and you know it.”
“Tell him that I’ve always been and always shall be a good friend of
his.... He knows that perfectly well. In this particular campaign I
have pledged myself to oppose certain elements with which Gus has let
himself get involved.”
“You’re a fine talker George Baldwin and you always were.”
Baldwin flushed. They stood stiff side by side at the office door. His
hand lay still on the doorknob as if paralyzed. From the outer offices
came the sound of typewriters and voices. From outside came the long
continuous tapping of riveters at work on a new building.
“I hope your family’s all well,” he said at length with an effort.
“Oh yes they are all well thanks ... Goodby.” She had gone.
Baldwin stood for a moment looking out of the window at the gray
blackwindowed building opposite. Silly to let things agitate him so.
Need of relaxation. He got his hat and coat from their hook behind the
washroom door and went out. “Jonas,” he said to a man with a round
bald head shaped like a cantaloupe who sat poring over papers in the
highceilinged library that was the central hall of the lawoffice,
“bring everything up that’s on my desk.... I’ll go over it uptown
tonight.”
“All right sir.”
When he got out on Broadway he felt like a small boy playing hooky. It
was a sparkling winter afternoon with hurrying rifts of sun and cloud.
He jumped into a taxi. Going uptown he lay back in the seat dozing. At
Fortysecond Street he woke up. Everything was a confusion of bright
intersecting planes of color, faces, legs, shop windows, trolleycars,
automobiles. He sat up with his gloved hands on his knees, fizzling
with excitement. Outside of Nevada’s apartmenthouse he paid the taxi.
The driver was a negro and showed an ivory mouthful of teeth when he
got a fiftycent tip. Neither elevator was there so Baldwin ran lightly
up the stairs, half wondering at himself. He knocked on Nevada’s door.
No answer. He knocked again. She opened it cautiously. He could see her
curly towhead. He brushed into the room before she could stop him. All
she had on was a kimono over a pink chemise.
“My God,” she said, “I thought you were the waiter.”
He grabbed her and kissed her. “I dont know why but I feel like a
threeyear old.”
“You look like you was crazy with the heat.... I dont like you to come
over without telephoning, you know that.”
“You dont mind just this once I forgot.”
Baldwin caught sight of something on the settee; he found himself
staring at a pair of darkblue trousers neatly folded.
“I was feeling awfully fagged down at the office Nevada. I thought I’d
come up to talk to you to cheer myself up a bit.”
“I was just practicing some dancing with the phonograph.”
“Yes very interesting....” He began to walk springily up and down.
“Now look here Nevada.... We’ve got to have a talk. I dont care who it
is you’ve got in your bedroom.” She looked suddenly in his face and
sat down on the settee beside the trousers. “In fact I’ve known for
some time that you and Tony Hunter were carrying on.” She compressed
her lips and crossed her legs. “In fact all this stuff and nonsense
about his having to go to a psychoanalyst at twentyfive dollars an
hour amused me enormously.... But just this minute I’ve decided I had
enough. Quite enough.”
“George you’re crazy,” she stammered and then suddenly she began to
giggle.
“I tell you what I’ll do,” went on Baldwin in a clear legal voice,
“I’ll send you a check for five hundred, because you’re a nice girl and
I like you. The apartment’s paid till the first of the month. Does that
suit you? And please never communicate with me in any way.”
She was rolling on the settee giggling helplessly beside the neatly
folded pair of darkblue trousers. Baldwin waved his hat and gloves at
her and left closing the door very gently behind him. Good riddance, he
said to himself as he closed the door carefully behind him.
Down in the street again he began to walk briskly uptown. He felt
excited and talkative. He wondered who he could go to see. Telling over
the names of his friends made him depressed. He began to feel lonely,
deserted. He wanted to be talking to a woman, making her sorry for the
barrenness of his life. He went into a cigarstore and began looking
through the phonebook. There was a faint flutter in him when he found
the H’s. At last he found the name Herf, Helena Oglethorpe.
Nevada Jones sat a long while on the settee giggling hysterically.
At length Tony Hunter came in in his shirt and drawers with his bow
necktie perfectly tied.
“Has he gone?”
“Gone? sure he’s gone, gone for good,” she shrieked. “He saw your damn
pants.”
He let himself drop on a chair. “O God if I’m not the unluckiest fellow
in the world.”
“Why?” she sat spluttering with laughter with the tears running down
her face.
“Nothing goes right. That means it’s all off about the matinees.”
“It’s back to three a day for little Nevada.... I dont give a damn....
I never did like bein a kept woman.”
“But you’re not thinking of my career.... Women are so selfish. If you
hadn’t led me on....”
“Shut up you little fool. Dont you think I dont know all about you?”
She got to her feet with the kimono pulled tight about her.
“God all I needed was a chance to show what I could do, and now I’ll
never get it,” Tony was groaning.
“Sure you will if you do what I tell you. I set out to make a man
of you kiddo and I’m goin to do it.... We’ll get up an act. Old
Hirshbein’ll give us a chance, he used to be kinder smitten.... Come on
now, I’ll punch you in the jaw if you dont. Let’s start thinkin up....
We’ll come in with a dance number see ... then you’ll pretend to want
to pick me up.... I’ll be waitin for a streetcar ... see ... and you’ll
say Hello Girlie an I’ll call Officer.”
* * * * *
“Is that all right for length sir,” asked the fitter busily making
marks on the trousers with a piece of chalk.
James Merivale looked down at the fitter’s little greenish wizened bald
head and at the brown trousers flowing amply about his feet. “A little
shorter.... I think it looks a little old to have trousers too long.”
“Why hello Merivale I didn’t know you bought your clothes at Brooks’
too. Gee I’m glad to see you.”
Merivale’s blood stood still. He found himself looking straight in the
blue alcoholic eyes of Jack Cunningham. He bit his lip and tried to
stare at him coldly without speaking.
“God Almighty, do you know what we’ve done?” cried out Cunningham.
“We’ve bought the same suit of clothes.... I tell you it’s identically
the same.”
Merivale was looking in bewilderment from Cunningham’s brown trousers
to his own, the same color, the same tiny stripe of red and faint
mottling of green.
“Good God man two future brothersinlaw cant wear the same suit.
People’ll think it’s a uniform.... It’s ridiculous.”
“Well what are we going to do about it?” Merivale found himself saying
in a grumbling tone.
“We have to toss up and see who gets it that’s all.... Will you lend me
a quarter please?” Cunningham turned to his salesman. “All right....
One toss, you yell.”
“Heads,” said Merivale mechanically.
“The brown suit is yours.... Now I’ve got to choose another ... God I’m
glad we met when we did. Look,” he shouted out through the curtains of
the booth, “why dont you have dinner with me tonight at the Salmagundi
Club?... I’m going to be dining with the only man in the world who’s
crazier about hydroplanes than I am.... It’s old man Perkins, you
know him, he’s one of the vicepresidents of your bank.... And look
when you see Maisie tell her I’m coming up to see her tomorrow. An
extraordinary series of events has kept me from communicating with her
... a most unfortunate series of events that took all my time up to
this moment.... We’ll talk about it later.”
Merivale cleared his throat. “Very well,” he said dryly.
“All right sir,” said the fitter giving Merivale a last tap on the
buttocks. He went back into the booth to dress.
“All right old thing,” shouted Cunningham, “I’ve got to go pick out
another suit ... I’ll expect you at seven. I’ll have a Jack Rose
waiting for you.”
Merivale’s hands were trembling as he fastened his belt. Perkins,
Jack Cunningham, the damn blackguard, hydroplanes, Jack Cunningham
Salmagundi Perkins. He went to a phone booth in a corner of the store
and called up his mother. “Hello Mother, I’m afraid I wont be up to
dinner.... I’m dining with Randolph Perkins at the Salmagundi Club....
Yes it is very pleasant.... Oh well he and I have always been fairly
good friends.... Oh yes it’s essential to stand in with the men higher
up. And I’ve seen Jack Cunningham. I put it up to him straight from
the shoulder man to man and he was very much embarrassed. He promised
a full explanation within twentyfour hours.... No I kept my temper
very well. I felt I owed it to Maisie. I tell you I think the man’s a
blackguard but until there’s proof.... Well good night dear, in case
I’m late. Oh no please dont wait up. Tell Maisie not to worry I’ll be
able to give her the fullest details. Good night mother.”
* * * * *
They sat at a small table in the back of a dimly lighted tearoom. The
shade on the lamp cut off the upper parts of their faces. Ellen had
on a dress of bright peacock blue and a small blue hat with a piece
of green in it. Ruth Prynne’s face had a sagging tired look under the
street makeup.
“Elaine, you’ve just got to come,” she was saying in a whiny voice.
“Cassie’ll be there and Oglethorpe and all the old gang.... After all
now that you’re making such a success of editorial work it’s no reason
for completely abandoning your old friends is it? You dont know how
much we talk and wonder about you.”
“No but Ruth it’s just that I’m getting to hate large parties. I guess
I must be getting old. All right I’ll come for a little while.”
Ruth put down the sandwich she was nibbling at and reached for Ellen’s
hand and patted it. “That’s the little trouper.... Of course I knew you
were coming all along.”
“But Ruth you never told me what happened to that traveling repertory
company last summer....”
“O my God,” burst out Ruth. “That was terrible. Of course it was a
scream, a perfect scream. Well the first thing that happened was that
Isabel Clyde’s husband Ralph Nolton who was managing the company was a
dipsomaniac ... and then the lovely Isabel wouldn’t let anybody on the
stage who didn’t act like a dummy for fear the rubes wouldnt know who
the star was.... Oh I cant tell about it any more.... It isnt funny to
me any more, it’s just horrible.... Oh Elaine I’m so discouraged. My
dear I’m getting old.” She suddenly burst out crying.
“Oh Ruth please dont,” said Ellen in a little rasping voice. She
laughed. “After all we’re none of us getting any younger are we?”
“Dear you dont understand ... You never will understand.”
They sat a long while without saying anything, scraps of lowvoiced
conversation came to them from other corners of the dim tearoom. The
palehaired waitress brought them two orders of fruit salad.
“My it must be getting late,” said Ruth eventually.
“It’s only half past eight.... We dont want to get to this party too
soon.”
“By the way ... how’s Jimmy Herf. I havent seen him for ages.”
“Jimps is fine.... He’s terribly sick of newspaper work. I do wish he
could get something he really enjoyed doing.”
“He’ll always be a restless sort of person. Oh Elaine I was so happy
when I heard about your being married.... I acted like a damn fool.
I cried and cried.... And now with Martin and everything you must be
terribly happy.”
“Oh we get along all right.... Martin’s picking up, New York seems
to agree with him. He was so quiet and fat for a long while we were
terribly afraid we’d produced an imbecile. Do you know Ruth I don’t
think I’d ever have another baby.... I was so horribly afraid he’d turn
out deformed or something.... It makes me sick to think of it.”
“Oh but it must be wonderful though.”
They rang a bell under a small brass placque that read: Hester Voorhees
INTERPRETATION OF THE DANCE. They went up three flights of creaky
freshvarnished stairs. At the door open into a room full of people they
met Cassandra Wilkins in a Greek tunic with a wreath of satin rosebuds
round her head and a gilt wooden panpipe in her hand.
“Oh you darlings,” she cried and threw her arms round them both at
once. “Hester said you wouldnt come but I just knew you would.... Come
wight in and take off your things, we’re beginning with a few classic
wythms.” They followed her through a long candlelit incensesmelling
room full of men and women in dangly costumes.
“But my dear you didn’t tell us it was going to be a costume party.”
“Oh yes cant you see evewything’s Gweek, absolutely Gweek.... Here’s
Hester.... Here they are darling.... Hester you know Wuth ... and this
is Elaine Oglethorpe.”
“I call myself Mrs. Herf now, Cassie.”
“Oh I beg your pardon, it’s so hard to keep twack.... They’re just in
time.... Hester’s going to dance an owiental dance called Wythms from
the Awabian Nights.... Oh it’s too beautiful.”
When Ellen came out of the bedroom where she had left her wraps a tall
figure in Egyptian headdress with crooked rusty eyebrows accosted her.
“Allow me to salute Helena Herf, distinguished editress of _Manners_,
the journal that brings the Ritz to the humblest fireside ... isnt that
true?”
“Jojo you’re a horrible tease.... I’m awfully glad to see you.”
“Let’s go and sit in a corner and talk, oh only woman I have ever
loved...”
“Yes do let’s ... I dont like it here much.”
“And my dear, have you heard about Tony Hunter’s being straightened
out by a psychoanalyst and now he’s all sublimated and has gone on the
vaudeville stage with a woman named California Jones.”
“You’d better watch out Jojo.”
They sat down on a couch in a recess between the dormer windows. Out of
the corner of her eye she could see a girl dancing in green silk veils.
The phonograph was playing the Cesar Frank symphony.
“We mustnt miss Cassie’s daunce. The poor girl would be dreadfully
offended.”
“Jojo tell me about yourself, how have you been?”
He shook his head and made a broad gesture with his draped arm. “Ah let
us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the deaths of kings.”
“Oh Jojo I’m sick of this sort of thing.... It’s all so silly and
dowdy.... I wish I hadnt let them make me take my hat off.”
“That was so that I should look upon the forbidden forests of your
hair.”
“Oh Jojo do be sensible.”
“How’s your husband, Elaine or rathah Helenah?”
“Oh he’s all right.”
“You dont sound terribly enthusiastic.”
“Martin’s fine though. He’s got black hair and brown eyes and his
cheeks are getting to be pink. Really he’s awfully cute.”
“My deah, spare me this exhibition of maternal bliss.... You’ll be
telling me next you walked in a baby parade.”
She laughed. “Jojo it’s lots of fun to see you again.”
“I havent finished my catechism yet deah.... I saw you in the oval
diningroom the other day with a very distinguished looking man with
sharp features and gray hair.”
“That must have been George Baldwin. Why you knew him in the old days.”
“Of course of course. How he has changed. A much more interesting
looking man than he used to be I must say.... A very strange place
for the wife of a bolshevik pacifist and I. W. W. agitator to be seen
taking lunch, I must say.”
“Jimps isnt exactly that. I kind of wish he were....” She wrinkled up
her nose. “I’m a little fed up too with all that sort of thing.”
“I suspected it my dear.” Cassie was flitting selfconsciously by.
“Oh do come and help me.... Jojo’s teasing me terribly.”
“Well I’ll twy to sit down just for a second, I’m going to dance
next.... Mr. Oglethorpe’s going to wead his twanslation of the songs of
Bilitis for me to dance to.”
Ellen looked from one to the other; Oglethorpe crooked his eyebrows and
nodded.
Then Ellen sat alone for a long while looking at the dancing and the
chittering crowded room through a dim haze of boredom.
The record on the phonograph was Turkish. Hester Voorhees, a skinny
woman with a mop of hennaed hair cut short at the level of her ears,
came out holding a pot of drawling incense out in front of her preceded
by two young men who unrolled a carpet as she came. She wore silk
bloomers and a clinking metal girdle and brassières. Everybody was
clapping and saying, “How wonderful, how marvelous,” when from another
room came three tearing shrieks of a woman. Everybody jumped to his
feet. A stout man in a derby hat appeared in the doorway. “All right
little goils, right through into the back room. Men stay here.”
“Who are you anyway?”
“Never mind who I am, you do as I say.” The man’s face was red as a
beet under the derby hat.
“It’s a detective.” “It’s outrageous. Let him show his badge.”
“It’s a holdup.”
“It’s a raid.”