twenty years ago, there was a feller on the boat.... This is the door,
see A. D., Armand Duval. Him and me ran away togedder an always he say
to me, ‘Armand you never make a success, too lazy, run after the leetle
girls too much....’ Now he’s my cook ... first class chef, cordon bleu,
eh? Life is one funny ting, Meester ’Erf.”
“Gee this is fine,” said Jimmy Herf leaning back in a highbacked
Spanish chair in the blackwalnut library with a glass of old Bourbon in
his hand. “Congo ... I mean Armand, if I’d been God and had to decide
who in this city should make a million dollars and who shouldnt I swear
you’re the man I should have picked.”
“Maybe by and by the misses come in. Very pretty I show you.” He made
curly motions with his fingers round his head. “Very much blond hair.”
Suddenly he frowned. “But Meester ’Erf, if dere is anyting any time I
can do for you, money or like dat, you let me know eh? It’s ten years
now you and me very good frien.... One more drink?”
On his third glass of Bourbon Herf began to talk. Congo sat listening
with his heavy lips a little open, occasionally nodding his head. “The
difference between you and me is that you’re going up in the social
scale, Armand, and I’m going down.... When you were a messboy on a
steamboat I was a horrid little chalkyfaced kid living at the Ritz.
My mother and father did all this Vermont marble blackwalnut grand
Babylonian stuff ... there’s nothing more for me to do about it....
Women are like rats, you know, they leave a sinking ship. She’s going
to marry this man Baldwin who’s just been appointed District Attorney.
They’re said to be grooming him for mayor on a fusion reform ticket....
The delusion of power, that’s what’s biting him. Women fall for it
like hell. If I thought it’d be any good to me I swear I’ve got the
energy to sit up and make a million dollars. But I get no organic
sensation out of that stuff any more. I’ve got to have something new,
different.... Your sons’ll be like that Congo.... If I’d had a decent
education and started soon enough I might have been a great scientist.
If I’d been a little more highly sexed I might have been an artist
or gone in for religion.... But here I am by Jesus Christ almost
thirty years old and very anxious to live.... If I were sufficiently
romantic I suppose I’d have killed myself long ago just to make people
talk about me. I havent even got the conviction to make a successful
drunkard.”
“Looks like,” said Congo filling the little glasses again with a slow
smile, “Meester ’Erf you tink too much.”
“Of course I do Congo, of course I do, but what the hell am I going to
do about it?”
“Well when you need a little money remember Armand Duval.... Want a
chaser?”
Herf shook his head. “I’ve got to chase myself.... So long Armand.”
In the colonnaded marble hall he ran into Nevada Jones. She was wearing
orchids. “Hullo Nevada, what are you doing in this palace of sin?”
“I live here, what do you think?... I married a friend of yours the
other day, Armand Duval. Want to come up and see him?”
“Just been.... He’s a good scout.”
“He sure is.”
“What did you do with little Tony Hunter?”
She came close to him and spoke in a low voice. “Just forget about me
and him will you?... Gawd the boy’s breath’d knock you down.... Tony’s
one of God’s mistakes, I’m through with him.... Found him chewing the
edges of the rug rolling on the floor of the dressing room one day
because he was afraid he was going to be unfaithful to me with an
acrobat.... I told him he’d better go and be it and we busted up right
there.... But honest I’m out for connubial bliss this time, right on
the level, so for God’s sake dont let anybody spring anything about
Tony or about Baldwin either on Armand ... though he knows he wasnt
hitching up to any plaster virgin.... Why dont you come up and eat with
us?”
“I cant. Good luck Nevada.” The whisky warm in his stomach, tingling
in his fingers, Jimmy Herf stepped out into seven o’clock Park
Avenue, whirring with taxicabs, streaked with smells of gasoline and
restaurants and twilight.
* * * * *
It was the first evening James Merivale had gone to the Metropolitan
Club since he had been put up for it; he had been afraid, that like
carrying a cane, it was a little old for him. He sat in a deep leather
chair by a window smoking a thirtyfive cent cigar with the _Wall Street
Journal_ on his knee and a copy of the _Cosmopolitan_ leaning against
his right thigh and, with his eyes on the night flawed with lights like
a crystal, he abandoned himself to reverie: Economic Depression....
Ten million dollars.... After the war slump. Some smash I’ll tell the
world. BLACKHEAD & DENSCH FAIL FOR $10,000,000.... Densch left the
country some days ago.... Blackhead incommunicado in his home at Great
Neck. One of the oldest and most respected import and export firms in
New York, $10,000,000. _O it’s always fair weather When good fellows
get together._ That’s the thing about banking. Even in a deficit
there’s money to be handled, collateral. These commercial propositions
always entail a margin of risk. We get ’em coming or else we get ’em
going, eh Merivale? That’s what old Perkins said when Cunningham mixed
him that Jack Rose.... _With a stein on the tabul And a good song
ri-i-inging clear._ Good connection that feller. Maisie knew what
she was doing after all.... A man in a position like that’s always
likely to be blackmailed. A fool not to prosecute.... Girl’s crazy
he said, married to another man of the same name.... Ought to be in
a sanitarium, a case like that. God I’d have dusted his hide for him.
Circumstances exonerated him completely, even mother admitted that.
_O Sinbad was in bad in Tokio and Rome_ ... that’s what Jerry used to
sing. Poor old Jerry never had the feeling of being in good right in on
the ground floor of the Metropolitan Club.... Comes of poor stock. Take
Jimmy now ... hasnt even that excuse, an out and out failure, a misfit
from way back.... Guess old man Herf was pretty wild, a yachtsman. Used
to hear mother say Aunt Lily had to put up with a whole lot. Still
he might have made something of himself with all his advantages ...
dreamer, wanderlust ... Greenwich Village stuff. And dad did every bit
as much for him as he did for me.... And this divorce now. Adultery ...
with a prostitute like as not. Probably had syphilis or something. Ten
Million Dollar Failure.
Failure. Success.
Ten Million Dollar Success.... Ten Years of Successful Banking....
At the dinner of the American Bankers Association last night James
Merivale, president of the Bank & Trust Company, spoke in answer to
the toast ‘Ten Years of Progressive Banking.’ ... Reminds me gentlemen
of the old darky who was very fond of chicken.... But if you will
allow me a few serious words on this festive occasion (flashlight
photograph) there is a warning note I should like to sound ... feel it
my duty as an American citizen, as president of a great institution of
nationwide, international in the better sense, nay, universal contacts
and loyalties (flashlight photograph).... At last making himself heard
above the thunderous applause James Merivale, his stately steelgray
head shaking with emotion, continued his speech.... Gentlemen you do me
too much honor.... Let me only add that in all trials and tribulations,
becalmed amid the dark waters of scorn or spurning the swift rapids
of popular estimation, amid the still small hours of the night, and
in the roar of millions at noonday, my staff, my bread of life, my
inspiration has been my triune loyalty to my wife, my mother, and my
flag.
The long ash from his cigar had broken and fallen on his knees. James
Merivale got to his feet and gravely brushed the light ash off his
trousers. Then he settled down again and with an intent frown began to
read the article on Foreign Exchange in the _Wall Street Journal_.
* * * * *
They sit up on two stools in the lunchwaggon.
“Say kid how the hell did you come to sign up on that old scow?”
“Wasnt anything else going out east.”
“Well you sure have dished your gravy this time kid, cap’n ’s a
dopehead, first officer’s the damnedest crook out o Sing Sing, crew’s a
lot o bohunks, the ole tub aint worth the salvage of her.... What was
your last job?”
“Night clerk in a hotel.”
“Listen to that cookey ... Jesus Kerist Amighty look at a guy who’ll
give up a good job clerkin in a swell hotel in Noo York City to sign
on as messboy on Davy Jones’ own steam yacht.... A fine seacook
you’re goin to make.” The younger man is flushing. “How about that
Hamburgher?” he shouts at the counterman.
After they have eaten, while they are finishing their coffee, he
turns to his friend and asks in a low voice, “Say Rooney was you ever
overseas ... in the war?”
“I made Saint Nazaire a couple o times. Why?”
“I dunno.... It kinder gave me the itch.... I was two years in it.
Things aint been the same. I used to think all I wanted was to get a
good job an marry an settle down, an now I dont give a damn.... I can
keep a job for six months or so an then I get the almighty itch, see?
So I thought I ought to see the orient a bit....”
“Never you mind,” says Rooney shaking his head. “You’re goin to see it,
dont you worry about that.”
“What’s the damage?” the young man asks the counterman.
“They must a caught you young.”
“I was sixteen when I enlisted.” He picks up his change and follows
Rooney’s broad shambling back into the street. At the end of the
street, beyond trucks and the roofs of warehouses, he can see masts and
the smoke of steamers and white steam rising into the sunlight.
* * * * *
“Pull down the shade,” comes the man’s voice from the bed.
“I cant, it’s busted.... Oh hell, here’s the whole business down.” Anna
almost bursts out crying when the roll hits her in the face, “You fix
it,” she says going towards the bed.
“What do I care, they cant see in,” says the man catching hold of her
laughing.
“It’s just those lights,” she moans, wearily letting herself go limp in
his arms.
It is a small room the shape of a shoebox with an iron bed in the
corner of the wall opposite the window. A roar of streets rises to it
rattling up a V shaped recess in the building. On the ceiling she can
see the changing glow of electric signs along Broadway, white, red,
green, then a jumble like a bubble bursting, and again white, red,
green.
“Oh Dick I wish you’d fix that shade, those lights give me the willies.”
“The lights are all right Anna, it’s like bein in a theater.... It’s
the Gay White Way, like they used to say.”
“That stuff’s all right for you out of town fellers, but it gives me
the willies.”
“So you’re workin for Madame Soubrine now are you Anna?”
“You mean I’m scabbin.... I know it. The old woman trew me out an it
was get a job or croak....”
“A nice girl like you Anna could always find a boyfriend.”
“God you buyers are a dirty lot.... You think that because I’ll go with
you, I’d go wid anybody.... Well I wouldnt, do you get that?”
“I didnt mean that Anna.... Gee you’re awful quick tonight.”
“I guess it’s my nerves.... This strike an the old woman trowin me out
an scabbin up at Soubrine’s ... it’d get anybody’s goat. They can all
go to hell for all I care. Why wont they leave you alone? I never did
nothin to hurt anybody in my life. All I want is for em to leave me
alone an let me get my pay an have a good time now and then.... God
Dick it’s terrible.... I dont dare go out on the street for fear of
meetin some of the girls of my old local.”
“Hell Anna, things aint so bad, honest I’d take you West with me if it
wasnt for my wife.”
Anna’s voice goes on in an even whimper, “An now ’cause I take a shine
to you and want to give you a good time you call me a goddam whore.”
“I didnt say no such thing. I didnt even think it. All I thought was
that you was a dead game sport and not a kewpie above the ears like
most of ’em.... Look if it’ll make ye feel better I’ll try an fix that
shade.”
Lying on her side she watches his heavy body move against the milky
light of the window. At last his teeth chattering he comes back to her.
“I cant fix the goddam thing.... Kerist it’s cold.”
“Never mind Dick, come on to bed.... It must be late. I got to be up
there at eight.”
He pulls his watch from under the pillow. “It’s half after two....
Hello kitten.”
On the ceiling she can see reflected the changing glare of the electric
signs, white, red, green, then a jumble like a bubble bursting, then
again white, green, red.
* * * * *
“An he didn’t even invite me to the wedding.... Honestly Florence I
could have forgiven him if he’d invited me to the wedding,” she said
to the colored maid when she brought in the coffee. It was a Sunday
morning. She was sitting up in bed with the papers spread over her lap.
She was looking at a photograph in a rotogravure section labeled Mr.
and Mrs. Jack Cunningham Hop Off for the First Lap of Their Honeymoon
on his Sensational Seaplane Albatross VII. “He looks handsome dont he?”
“He su’ is miss.... But wasn’t there anything you could do to stop ’em,
miss?”
“Not a thing.... You see he said he’d have me committed to an asylum if
I tried.... He knows perfectly well a Yucatan divorce isn’t legal.”
Florence sighed.
“Menfolks su’ do dirt to us poor girls.”
“Oh this wont last long. You can see by her face she’s a nasty selfish
spoiled little girl.... And I’m his real wife before God and man. Lord
knows I tried to warn her. Whom God has joined let no man put asunder
... that’s in the Bible isnt it?... Florence this coffee is simply
terrible this morning. I cant drink it. You go right out and make me
some fresh.”
Frowning and hunching her shoulders Florence went out the door with the
tray.
Mrs. Cunningham heaved a deep sigh and settled herself among the
pillows. Outside churchbells were ringing. “Oh Jack you darling I
love you just the same,” she said to the picture. Then she kissed it.
“Listen, deary the churchbells sounded like that the day we ran away
from the High School Prom and got married in Milwaukee.... It was a
lovely Sunday morning.” Then she stared in the face of the second Mrs.
Cunningham. “Oh you,” she said and poked her finger through it.
* * * * *
When she got to her feet she found that the courtroom was very slowly
sickeningly going round and round; the white fishfaced judge with
noseglasses, faces, cops, uniformed attendants, gray windows, yellow
desks, all going round and round in the sickening close smell, her
lawyer with his white hawk nose, wiping his bald head, frowning, going
round and round until she thought she would throw up. She couldn’t
hear a word that was said, she kept blinking to get the blur out of her
ears. She could feel Dutch behind her hunched up with his head in his
hands. She didnt dare look back. Then after hours everything was sharp
and clear, very far away. The judge was shouting at her, from the small
end of a funnel his colorless lips moving in and out like the mouth of
a fish.
“... And now as a man and a citizen of this great city I want to say
a few words to the defendants. Briefly this sort of thing has got to
stop. The unalienable rights of human life and property the great men
who founded this republic laid down in the constitootion have got to be
reinstated. It is the dooty of every man in office and out of office to
combat this wave of lawlessness by every means in his power. Therefore
in spite of what those sentimental newspaper writers who corrupt the
public mind and put into the head of weaklings and misfits of your
sort the idea that you can buck the law of God and man, and private
property, that you can wrench by force from peaceful citizens what they
have earned by hard work and brains ... and get away with it; in spite
of what these journalistic hacks and quacks would call extentuating
circumstances I am going to impose on you two highwaymen the maximum
severity of the law. It is high time an example was made....”
The judge took a drink of water. Francie could see the little beads of
sweat standing out from the pores of his nose.
“It is high time an example was made,” the judge shouted. “Not that
I dont feel as a tender and loving father the misfortunes, the lack
of education and ideels, the lack of a loving home and tender care of
a mother that has led this young woman into a life of immorality and
misery, led away by the temptations of cruel and voracious men and
the excitement and wickedness of what has been too well named, the
jazz age. Yet at the moment when these thoughts are about to temper
with mercy the stern anger of the law, the importunate recollection
rises of other young girls, perhaps hundreds of them at this moment
in this great city about to fall into the clutches of a brutal and
unscrupulous tempter like this man Robertson ... for him and his ilk
there is no punishment sufficiently severe ... and I remember that
mercy misplaced is often cruelty in the long run. All we can do is shed
a tear for erring womanhood and breathe a prayer for the innocent babe
that this unfortunate girl has brought into the world as the fruit of
her shame....”
Francie felt a cold tingling that began at her fingertips and ran up
her arms into the blurred whirling nausea of her body. “Twenty years,”
she could hear the whisper round the court, they all seemed licking
their lips whispering softly “Twenty years.” “I guess I’m going to
faint,” she said to herself as if to a friend. Everything went crashing
black.
* * * * *
Propped with five pillows in the middle of his wide colonial mahogany
bed with pineapples on the posts Phineas P. Blackhead his face purple
as his silk dressing gown sat up and cursed. The big mahogany-finished
bedroom hung with Javanese print cloth instead of wallpaper was empty
except for a Hindu servant in a white jacket and turban who stood at
the foot of the bed, with his hands at his sides, now and then bowing
his head at a louder gust of cursing and saying “Yes, Sahib, yes,
Sahib.”
“By the living almighty Jingo you goddam yellow Babu bring me that
whiskey, or I’ll get up and break every bone in your body, do you hear,
Jesus God cant I be obeyed in my own house? When I say whiskey I mean
rye not orange juice. Damnation. Here take it!” He picked up a cutglass
pitcher off the nighttable and slung it at the Hindu. Then he sank back
on the pillows, saliva bubbling on his lips, choking for breath.
Silently the Hindu mopped up the thick Beluchistan rug and slunk out
of the room with a pile of broken glass in his hand. Blackhead was
breathing more easily, his eyes sank into their deep sockets and were
lost in the folds of sagged green lids.
He seemed asleep when Gladys came in wearing a raincoat with a wet
umbrella in her hand. She tiptoed to the window and stood looking
out at the gray rainy street and the old tomblike brownstone houses
opposite. For a splinter of a second she was a little girl come in her
nightgown to have Sunday morning breakfast with daddy in his big bed.
He woke up with a start, looked about him with bloodshot eyes, the
heavy muscles of his jowl tightening under the ghastly purplish skin.
“Well Gladys where’s that rye whiskey I ordered?”
“Oh daddy you know what Dr. Thom said.”
“He said it’d kill me if I took another drink.... Well I’m not dead yet
am I? He’s a damned ass.”
“Oh but you must take care of yourself and not get all excited.” She
kissed him and put a cool slim hand on his forehead.
“Havent I got reason to get excited? If I had my hands on that dirty
lilylivered bastard’s neck.... We’d have pulled through if he hadnt
lost his nerve. Serve me right for taking such a yellow sop into
partnership.... Twentyfive, thirty years of work all gone to hell
in ten minutes.... For twentyfive years my word’s been as good as a
banknote. Best thing for me to do’s to follow the firm to Tophet, to
hell with me. And by the living Jingo you, my own flesh, tell me not
to drink.... God almighty. Hay Bob.... Bob.... Where’s that goddam
officeboy gone? Hay come here one of you sons of bitches, what do you
think I pay you for?”
A nurse put her head in the door.
“Get out of here,” shouted Blackhead, “none of your starched virgins
around me.” He threw the pillow from under his head. The nurse
disappeared. The pillow hit one of the posts and bounced back on the
bed. Gladys began to cry.
“Oh daddy I cant stand it ... and everybody always respected you so....
Do try to control yourself, daddy dear.”
“And why should I for Christ’s sake...? Show’s over, why dont you
laugh? Curtain’s down. It’s all a joke, a smutty joke.”
He began to laugh deliriously, then he was choking, fighting for breath
with clenched fists again. At length he said in a broken voice, “Don’t
you see that it’s only the whiskey that was keeping me going? Go away
and leave me Gladys and send that damned Hindu to me. I’ve always liked
you better than anything in the world.... You know that. Quick tell him
to bring me what I ordered.”
Gladys went out crying. Outside her husband was pacing up and down the
hall. “It’s those damned reporters ... I dont know what to tell ’em.
They say the creditors want to prosecute.”
“Mrs. Gaston,” interrupted the nurse, “I’m afraid you’ll have to get
male nurses.... Really I cant do anything with him....” On the lower
floor a telephone was ringing, ringing.
When the Hindu brought the bottle of whiskey Blackhead filled a
highball glass and took a deep gulp of it.
“Ah that makes you feel better, by the living Jingo it does. Achmet
you’re a good fellow.... Well I guess we’ll have to face the music and
sell out.... Thank God Gladys is settled. I’ll sell out every goddam
thing I’ve got. I wish that precious son-in-law wasnt such a simp.
Always my luck to be surrounded by a lot of capons.... By gad I’d just
as soon go to jail if it’ll do em any good; why not? it’s all in a
lifetime. And afterwards when I come out I’ll get a job as a bargeman
or watchman on a wharf. I’d like that. Why not take it easy after
tearing things up all my life, eh Achmet?”
“Yes Sahib,” said the Hindu with a bow.
Blackhead mimicked him, “Yes Sahib.... You always say yes, Achmet,
isn’t that funny?” He began to laugh with a choked rattling laugh. “I
guess that’s the easiest way.” He laughed and laughed, then suddenly he
couldnt laugh any more. A perking spasm went through all his limbs. He
twisted his mouth in an effort to speak. For a second his eyes looked
about the room, the eyes of a little child that has been hurt before
it begins to cry, until he fell back limp, his open mouth biting at
his shoulder. Achmet looked at him coolly for a long time then he went
up to him and spat in his face. Immediately he took a handkerchief out
of the pocket of his linen jacket and wiped the spittle off the taut
ivory skin. Then he closed the mouth and propped the body among the
pillows and walked softly out of the room. In the hall Gladys sat in a
big chair reading a magazine. “Sahib much better, he sleep a little bit
maybe.”
“Oh Achmet I’m so glad,” she said and looked back to her magazine.
* * * * *
Ellen got off the bus at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fiftythird
Street. Rosy twilight was gushing out of the brilliant west, glittered
in brass and nickel, on buttons, in people’s eyes. All the windows on
the east side of the avenue were aflame. As she stood with set teeth
on the curb waiting to cross, a frail tendril of fragrance brushed her
face. A skinny lad with towhair stringy under a foreignlooking cap was
offering her arbutus in a basket. She bought a bunch and pressed her
nose in it. May woods melted like sugar against her palate.
The whistle blew, gears ground as cars started to pour out of the side
streets, the crossing thronged with people. Ellen felt the lad brush
against her as he crossed at her side. She shrank away. Through the
smell of the arbutus she caught for a second the unwashed smell of his
body, the smell of immigrants, of Ellis Island, of crowded tenements.
Under all the nickelplated, goldplated streets enameled with May,
uneasily she could feel the huddling smell, spreading in dark slow
crouching masses like corruption oozing from broken sewers, like a mob.
She walked briskly down the cross-street. She went in a door beside a
small immaculately polished brass plate.
MADAME SOUBRINE
ROBES
She forgot everything in the catlike smile of Madame Soubrine herself,
a stout blackhaired perhaps Russian woman who came out to her from
behind a curtain with outstretched arms, while other customers waiting
on sofas in a sort of Empress Josephine parlor, looked on enviously.
“My dear Mrs. Herf, where have you been? We’ve had your dress for a
week,” she exclaimed in too perfect English. “Ah my dear, you wait ...
it’s magnificent.... And how is Mr. Harrpiscourt?”
“I’ve been very busy.... You see I’m giving up my job.”
Madame Soubrine nodded and blinked knowingly and led the way through
the tapestry curtains into the back of the shop.