“The death of Jennifer Rarick’s brother has played the dickens with
her,” people were saying in one way or another.
It had played this kind of a dickens with her, sobering her in a way
that made her dull, most of all to herself.
“I’ve gone dry rot,” she said one night to her mirror, propping her
cheeks in her palms and gazing at herself through a sudden attack of
inertia that had swooped down upon her in the midst of dressing for
an early-dinner appointment that had kept her knees feeling like sand
under her all day.
The dinner appointment was a clandestine one with Berry. They were
to meet and dine at a business men’s chop-house near Wall Street.
Afterward, Berry was to join his mother-in-law for another dinner and
a benefit performance of “The Port of Salute.” Jennifer was also to
dine with Hartley Slocum at the Ambassadeur Club and go on to that same
occasion. It was not the first time that their respective appetites,
blunted by the six-o’clock clandestine meal near Wall Street, were
later to be commented upon in the course of a second and more formal
meal.
It made it easier to eat as they met. Berry had discovered that it kept
down Jennifer’s late tendency to hysteria. Jennifer no longer made
terms, but complied.
There had been only four such occasions. The death of Avery had been
a crash into the apple-cart. Why couldn’t life jell neatly the way it
did in the copy-books? According to rhyme and reason, if there were
such, this hit between the eyes, this barge into the solar plexus, this
death of a boy, should have jerked her to the sanity for which she had
prayed those weeks at the camp. This should have made an end of that
monstrosity of her state of mind and soul and heart toward Berry. She
should have come through the fire of that ordeal of the death of a
life that had been sweet to her, cleansed. And here she was, with the
feeling of running sand through her knees, dressing to meet Berry.
Waiting to meet Berry, as she had been waiting since last they met.
“I can’t go,” she said, and began to cry weakly to herself in the
mirror. “I’m too tired to go. I’m too sick to go and I can’t not go.”
“Damn it!” as her eyes dried. “Berry was so much tripe.” Many happy
returns to him on the birth of a son, and may the next be twins! Well,
it would be worth the trip down to the Wall Street restaurant to see
him in this new rôle of father. Comedy lay ahead.... You didn’t go
sober over life just because of death--you certainly didn’t go sober
over death.
Avery had been in on the know, that was all, and had seen fit to pop
off. Thank God, one Rarick had dared to be honest about the waste of
time so solemnly called life. An Indian philosopher had said it! Time
passes. We don’t. Avery had turned into Time.
Fool nonsense called grief. One hurt, yes, like the devil. He had been
such a regular kid to be on to life that way, secretly down inside of
him.
He had written her a letter only a few weeks before. It was soggy now
with her secret tears:
DEAR JENNIF: Come on up to college over next week-end and let’s talk.
I’m for cultivating more of that indoor sport among the Raricks.
She had sent him, by telegraph, what she called one of their nuttyisms.
Darling, can’t. I’m doppling with a darling doppus to a chic shindig
on Saturday.
The darling doppus had been Berry and the chic shindig a furtive
rendezvous with him at a road-house where the tables offered the
doubtful seclusion of little three sided booths.
“Oh, darling,” she cried into her palms, sitting there half dressed
before her mirror, her maid dismissed, and lacking herself the impulse
to lift brush to her hair, “how in on the know you looked in your
beautiful coffin. Were you just afraid, Avery, or was it something too
terrible and adolescent to understand--or, I wonder, Avery, were you
just low-down frightened and a quitter?...”
“I’m frightened,” said Jennifer to herself, and lifted her face out of
her hands to regard it in the mirror. “You’ve knocked what few props I
had left right out from under me, Avery. I don’t want it all, any more
than you wanted it, only I don’t know what to do about it. I haven’t
got the guts, or I’ve got too many, to do it your way. Which is it,
darling? I don’t want to get dressed. I don’t want to go on. There’s
no place to go. All dressed up and no place to go, Avery. That’s me.
Why the devil did you, darling? It’s a mess. Was it on account of the
Rarick? God! but you did for him, Av! He looks as if somebody had put
him wise, five minutes after they had been sold to the McCreey chain,
to five million toy balloons that went cheap at enforced sale. He isn’t
a bad party. He deserved a better break. So did you, darling. Damned
little I did to see that you got it. That’s wisdom after the event,
like the Raricks. Why did you do it, Av? You’ve been on to the Jenny
ever since you were born. We both know that her square is crooked, but
it looks square to her. I’m for her, Av. So were you. Why did you do
it? I know--I know--only I can’t say it, any more than I can describe
the taste of tripe. Damn it, Avery, life’s got a core to it somewhere!
Look how many have nibbled through to it. The Rarick suspects the core,
only he hasn’t nibbled through. Gerkes has nibbled through, but on a
cotton apple. The world you thumbed your nose at, and quit cold, is
the Rarick-world. There are better ones. That’s why the copy-books say
riches can’t buy happiness. That’s why Indians, who sit and look all
day at their navels, are happy. Damn it, darling! I don’t want to sit
all day and look at mine. But I want to be happy, sweet Avery, and be
something decent to atone for the way life didn’t come off for you.
Damn it, I do!” sobbed Jennifer into her sobs.
A clock struck then, and Jennifer began climbing into what she would
have called her “dud.” A lace frock, the beautiful color of coffee,
well creamed. It weighed less than half a pound, cost three hundred
and sixty-five dollars, and its trade name in the fashion-show of the
French _couturière_ who had created it, had been “Irresistible.”
* * * * *
Berry kept her waiting twenty minutes, so that she sat alone in the
business men’s restaurant, trying, behind her flaming discomfort,
to look interested in the large menu proclaiming its specialties of
grilled dishes. Fool to have come! Berry at last was probably going
to stand her up. He had begged her to leave off writing, not meaning
it, of course. Perhaps his new dignity as father of his son! Strange,
how curious that made her to see him, although to visualize him, even
vicariously, in the rôle that was almost unbearable to her, was pain.
Berry was the father of Leslie’s child, and here was Jennifer waiting
for him, the week after the birth, in a downtown restaurant, as she
sat trying to hide her face behind the huge menu of grilled chops and
planked steaks. Sickness of spirit smote her. She was on the point
of pushing back her chair and leaving the waiter an apologetic tip,
when the revolving-door spun Berry into the room, and with his usual
capacity to make any place he entered look busy, a hat girl, two
waiters, and a _maître d’hôtel_ bowed him to his place.
He ordered abruptly, without consulting her. She liked that. There was
a great straight seam horizontally across Berry’s brow. She tried to
remember if it had ever been there in unbroken line before.
“Well,” he said, and rubbed it, “this hasn’t been what you would call a
nice getaway. Too many lies.”
How matter-of-fact he was, and hot-looking, as if he had perspired.
Business men looked that way after a hard day. It made him appear like
a big rumpled boy. That softened her.
“You might have spared me this waiting around beneath a grilled mutton
chop, Berry.”
“Good lord, Jennifer!” he said, and looked at her with incredulity in
his big chiseled face. “Do you realize that I had a kid born a few days
ago? Nine pounds, all to the good.”
There was nothing to say to that, and so she stared with her palm up
against where she felt her throat beating.
“It’s a hell of a job, getting born, Jennifer.”
“Well, what do you expect me to do about it?”
“What do you expect me to do about it?”
They stared and stared across the catsup-bottle and the A-1 sauce
and the jar of chutney. Stared as if they could never have done with
staring.
“Look here, Jennif, make allowances.”
“For what?”
“Good God! for the birth of a man’s son.”
“Berry dear----”
“Jennifer dear----”
“I’m dense.”
“I--I’m--I guess I’m confused, Jennif.”
She wanted to feel, and she was not feeling; so she spoke words that
she felt she would have spoken had she been feeling.
“Dearest Berry, we’ve passed that milestone.”
“Whew, yes!”
“We’ve never exactly discussed what then--but doesn’t it seem to you
like release, Berry? Like a release for us, now that it’s over?”
“Where do you get that, Jennif?”
“She’ll be back in normal health now--Leslie----”
“I see.”
“There’s no question of money. You’ve both so much....”
“What the devil....”
“What the devil?”
“Yes? What? I say, Jennifer, it _is_ a hell of a job getting born.”
“Well, as I seem to have remarked before, what do you expect me to do
about it?”
They were staring again, across the chutney, staring and staring in
incredulity at each other. Simultaneously, the impulse to laugh smote
them. A side-twisting, strangulating gust of it shook Jennifer, not
hysterical, but what Berry later designated as an eleven-dollar,
orchestra-seat, below-the-belt laugh. He swept in on it. Waiters turned
away to hide their smiles behind palms, as, gasping, they regarded each
other across the table through the thick lenses of laughter-induced
tears; and no sooner were their faces untwisted of their simply
inexorable mirth, off they were again. It buckled them around the
waists. It strained at the chest. It jammed in their windpipes and made
them purple and full of exhausted little “oh’s” and “ah’s.”
“Oh! oh! oh!” gasped Jennifer, and clasped herself at the right side of
her waist line.
“Good lord!” panted Berry, and kept wiping at his tears, and poking his
handkerchief back into his breast pocket, and wiping his tears again
and poking it back. “I’ve paid eleven dollars an orchestra seat for a
laugh that didn’t come through like that. Whew! Now how do you think we
got that way, Jennifer?”
“I don’t know, Berry,” she said, still laughing in a soft exhausted way.
“Give you my word, Jennif. I think we were laughing at us.”
“I hope so, Berry. It will help me to seem funny to me.”
“What about me?”
“I--I’m afraid all of a sudden you are funny to me, Berry--and that’s
fatal.”
“To what?”
“Us.”
“Us is a nice word, Jennifer, when applied to us.”
“You don’t mean that. You wish to God I’d let you be.”
“Then what?”
“So you could settle down to being what you are at heart. A husband. A
fast, rich, gay stockbroker on the side, who thinks girls were made to
pinch and wives were made to have nine-pound sons. A father whose son
is a miracle, chiefly because he resembles his daddy.”
“Pretty picture.”
“I hate it more than you do.”
“Hang it, Jennif! I’ll say it, even at the risk of bringing down that
well-known scorn of yours--that kid, getting himself born as mine, gave
me the kick of a lifetime.”
“So it should, Berry.”
“Hang it, Jennif! I’ll say it again, even if I afford you the laugh of
your life, that kid getting himself born as mine gave me the kick of a
lifetime.”
“I hope it’s the only one he’ll ever give you.”
“Not nice.”
“Sorry, Berry.”
“Dear girl....”
“Don’t say that, Berry.”
“Now what?”
“Because it’s as if--as if I lifted the words off this table and put
them on your lips.”
“You should have been a writer of fantasies.”
“I’m a liver of them.”
“Nothing fantastic about this mutton chop,” he said, and slid a
black-handled steel knife into the “specialty of the house.”
“And I am expected to nibble boned breast of chicken with Hartley
Slocum at seven,” she said, slicing down, too, into mutton that flowed
red.
“And me, breast-of-something-or-other with my mother-in-law, who will
have many a bone to pick with me besides, if I’m late. Jennifer, ever
see a new kid?”
“Yes. They cause strong men to falter and bad girls to trek across the
snow----”
“Damn it, I like my kid! Now what are you going to do about it?”
“I’m afraid, Berry, I’m going to be noble.”
“God forbid!”
“I’m going to give you back to your wife and your chee-ild.”
“But I don’t want to be guv.”
“You do. Only, this surreptitious thing on the side with me satisfies
the bounder instinct in you. I satisfy your instinct for show-girls.
I’m one to you now, being pinched.”
“God, you can say the low-down to a man, Jennifer!”
“Funny, Berry, that I can say it to you so quietly. I’m all helped.
Look, I can throw away my crutches. Note the way in which she carves
her mutton chop until the bloody juices run, scoops up some baked
potato and says, ‘Pass the A-1 sauce.’ I’m awfully afraid something has
happened over this mutton chop, Berry. I’m out of love. I see you now
in your true light. Perforce, villain, you’re a family-man at heart.
You’re a Babbit in sheik’s clothing. I’m for you, but not after you.”
“If a man did the square thing by you and himself, he’d turn you over
his knee and spank you for making a continual fool of him, going and
coming.”
“That’s all that is needed to give this occasion the truly heroic
ending it deserves. I’m renouncing you, Berry, not--denouncing.”
“Why the devil....”
“Is your kid all beety and underdone? Do his fingers twine around
yours?...”
“Gad! a woman has got to be sure of herself to get away with that....”
“Does the sight of his crib warm the cockles of your heart? Why is it
cockles are always warmed?...”
“Damn it, yes!”
“Berry, there are little spangles all across your forehead. You’re
perspiring. Not nice. Hanky.”
“God! I wouldn’t treat a dog the way you’re treating me.”
“Neither would I. The husband-and-father technique applies to this case
better than canine technique would.”
“I’ll go!”
“Berry, I’m _for_ your kid----”
“I know you are. You’re so damned for him that I strongly suspect you
of being noble----”
“Maybe I am. But if that’s true--it’s such easy, incidental
nobility--it’s easy for me to want to play square by your youngster and
your wife, Berry--chiefly because I’ve come to the conclusion that one
good husband and father is worth more than a bounder.”
“But, Jennifer----”
“But, Berry----”
“Damn it, Jennif! now that this has happened--maybe it is for the best.”
“Maybe, nothing. Surely, you mean. Here, Berry, my hanky. Wipe
your forehead--it’s damp--and pay our check. You’ll be late for
Mother-in-law.”
“That’s my business.”
“No, Berry. Thank God, now it’s my business to see that you’re not late
for Mother-in-law.”
They drove uptown in his car, their fingers interlaced after an old
fashion between them, his knee ingratiated against hers, but in a
silence that began to embarrass.
“I say, Jennifer,” he said, as they approached the Plaza. “I say----”
“Don’t say, Berry,” she said. “It would spoil the perfect thing that
has happened between us. Wait until I’ve gone, and then say ‘Amen.
Fini. Curtain.’”
She alighted, leaving him standing bareheaded and perspiring, as she
ran up the hotel steps.
That was the night, after dinner and the benefit performance with
Hartley Slocum, that Jennifer met, for the first time, the author of
_Port of Salute_--a young man named Gratton Davies.
An idea began slowly, surely, and roundly to form itself in Rarick’s
brain. With the characteristically slow metabolism of a mind that
thinks its way cautiously to destination, even the consummation
took place so gradually that up to a certain point it was scarcely
perceptible to Rarick himself.
It was his way, nerve-racking, sometimes, to those dependent upon his
decision, to wake up one morning with clear-cut plan of action seeming
to spring full-grown out of long periods of what appeared to be a
languid series of procrastinations.
For instance, over a period of four and one-half years, Rarick had held
up certain final building decisions that had delayed the breaking of
ground for the Rarick Building almost beyond the endurance of those
intimately connected with the gigantic project.
At the conclusion of the fifty-fourth month of procrastination, certain
franchise developments and new subway constructions gave the delays
a most providential significance, although it had been impossible
to get out of Rarick whether he had foreseen, maneuvered, or been
just characteristically slow, careful, and lucky. There were those
who maintained that both the franchise developments and the subway
constructions had been the outgrowth of only the last six months of
the four and one-half years, and that it must have been foresight, not
insight. Hellman, who possibly was closest of all to this particular
situation, maintained a face carved out of cherry-stone, insinuating
with his manner, that circumstances similar to this happened too
frequently to leave doubt, in any except the most obtuse, of the
enormous quality of generalship behind such slow-moving maneuver.
On the other hand, there was Jenny, wife, to whom all things were still
flowing from the accident of her initial twenty-five hundred dollars.
This success of his, engendered by her, was merely going on succeeding
and succeeding....
The ideas, which, it seemed to Rarick now, must have been slowly
congealing in his subconscious mind for years and years before a chance
dissertation from Gerkes had jelled them, so to speak, had reached,
these months since the death of Avery, a sudden consistency.
Half-thoughts, semi-intentions, parts of ideas, seemed to come awake.
It was to be expected that Rarick, in his upper fifties, should already
have expended much thought upon the growing problem of the ultimate
dispositions of his ever-accruing fortunes. A man pondered over his
riches. Pondered and vexed himself over apportionments, contemplated,
wondered, and faltered. Rarick had done his share of all of these, and,
from time to time, always with ultimate revision in mind, had made
temporary wills to cover the exigency of sudden death, adding codicil
by codicil, as occasions arose.
It was when Avery had been dead a six-month that the slowly congealing
major idea became determination.
Day after day, in the maelstrom of his affairs, in conference, in trips
of coast-to-coast inspection, on tours through the raw scaffolding of
the partially erected Rarick Building; night after night, sitting in
his library in discussion with Gerkes, poring over his amulets or his
orchids, the idea, gathering specks from all corners of his mind, was
slowly swimming into pattern.
“The wealth which man draws from his fellow creatures as clouds draw
moisture from poisonous and sweet waters alike, must be made to
descend again in productive rains, or what availeth it?”
Or what availeth it? Avery had answered that. His death had
simultaneously seemed to promulgate and answer that question. Without
progeny of son, Rarick sat in his Gothic aisle, pondering his
responsibilities of disposing of a wealth that up to now had chiefly
accrued interest and objects.
According to the charts of the companies that carried his enormous
insurances, his span of life was two-thirds spent. Even with long-life
expectancy, and somehow in Rarick that expectancy had never run high,
the time had come when a man whose share in the wealth of the world, if
you figured it per capita, was several millions of human heads, must
prepare to put his house in order.
“The wealth which man draws from his fellow creatures as clouds draw
rain from poisonous and sweet waters alike, must be made to descend
again in productive rains, or what availeth it?”
There were books on Rarick’s night-table, Adam Smith’s _Wealth of
Nations_, Shaw’s _Socialism for Millionaires_, Karl Marx’s _Capital_,
Stuart Chase’s _The Tragedy of Waste_, Veblen’s _Theory of the Leisure
Class_, Weston’s _Economics for the Business Man_, William Morris’s
_Letters on Socialism_, John Stuart Mill’s _Principles of Political
Economy_, many of which he found out-of-date, confusing, un- or
mis-informing, and coldly technical.
Disposition of wealth, life being what it was, human ties being
what they were, was not a matter that springs so completely, as
the theorists seemed to reckon, out of the tenets of mathematics,
sociology, and geometric, economic patterns. Human equations of greed,
ego, blood-ties, preferences, hates, loves, sentiment, emotions,
irrationalities, devotion and lack of it, leaned into the situation.
The disposition of over one hundred million dollars according to
a man’s temperament, family, dependents, hobbies, preferences,
philanthropies, altruisms, wisdoms, principles, and conscientious
convictions, was a highly personal and complex matter, to say nothing
of the responsibilities, ethical and sentimental, for which there
was no proviso in the erudite volumes of economics, sociology,
philanthropy, or wealth in relation to peoples, land, cities, industry,
and countries.
The time had come, it seemed to Rarick, to formulate into words of
legal document, the groping convictions of years, which, aided and
abetted by what he regarded as certain brilliant thinking of Gerkes,
the death of his son had solidified in his mind.
Disposition of wealth. This much beyond a doubt: The members of his
family who survived him must be made safe from his millions. These
millions must be made to accumulate something besides interest and
objects. Bracelets and shields, as he had read it storied of the
Greeks, had also bewildered his son out of life. Smothered him to
death. This much beyond a doubt: The members of his family who survived
him must be made safe from those millions.
Wealth need not be in itself the arbitrary symbol of man’s ability to
exploit man, as it was painted in stiff chromo against the minds of
people like Hildegarde. Capital, yes, might be interpreted as that
which you in your strength continued to draw from the weak. Wealth,
if you were worthy of it, was what you turned back to them, wisely
minted....
The time had come when Rarick contemplated with obsession the turning
of his capital into wealth, wisely minted, into the largest crusade of
preventive scientific and sociological research ever launched as either
group or individual enterprise.
The wealth which man draws from his fellow creatures was not to descend
in a crushing, golden mantle upon such shoulders as Jenny’s, to whom
those fellow creatures by now had become so many millions of maggots
eating away the impedimenta of life for her, that she might walk in
glory.
It was thus out of the freighted solitudes of the long evenings of the
long months following the death of Avery, that Rarick began writing the
document that was to be his last will and testament.
The day the last steel beam was laid across the seventy-ninth story of
the skeleton of the Rarick Building, Hellman arranged a ceremonial;
a luncheon to take place under gay awnings on an improvised platform
erected among the mortar and bricks of the parapet that surrounded the
Gothic auditorium that topped the tallest building in the world.
It was a motion designed chiefly to catch the eye and headline of the
press. Tables were set up exclusively for reporters and feature-writers
at the most spectacular end of the platform, overlooking more span of
bridge, rush of skyscraper, and bird’s-eye panorama than had yet been
achieved from roof-top.
There were about seventy guests. Mayor. Aldermen. Health Commissioner.
Lieutenant-Governor. Borough Presidents. Superintendent of Schools.
Chief of Police. An ex-mayor of St. Louis and old personal friend of
Rarick’s. A half-dozen leading St. Louis citizens. The eight most
important executives of Rarick Chain, Inc. President of the Gray
Department Store Chain, in which Rarick was reputed to hold large
interests. Vice-president of Chicago Transit Company. Owner of the
San Francisco _Commercial Journal_. Attorney-General of the State of
Pennsylvania. Max Lindsey, internationally-renowned corporation lawyer.
Doctors, lawyers, merchants, yes, and even a fire-chief. Myron Stahl,
District Attorney. Ramon Lopez.
Wives had been invited. The publicity value of women present was
incalculable. Editors would give photographs of a mixed assembly twice
the space. Jenny had realized the indiscretion of asking Ramon; and
yet the explanation of his presence had seemed so obvious, almost too
trivial to require comment. She had motored down for the ceremony from
Roslyn, where she had been superintending the doing-over of the brace
of six beautiful bedrooms that overlooked a rose-garden, and had picked
up Ramon, who had been week-ending at the Breckenridge Scotes’, at
Scotes Manor, where she had stopped for luncheon. She had given him
and Eulalie Lett a lift to town, dropping Eulalie at Charvet’s for
a facial, and bringing Ramon along to the ceremonies. Nice boy--so
obliging----
Indeed, so trivial was the circumstance, that when she explained it to
Rarick, he scarcely heard; his nervous attention focused instead, on
the arrival of guests, as they stepped out of the narrow, improvised
elevator that they were obliged to take in three shifts, changing
from one at the twentieth floor to another, and then out again at the
sixtieth into a third, which completed the ascent.
Public ceremonial occasions were such painful and excoriating
anathema to Rarick that his consistent failure to accept civic and
honorary rôles could be traced to what amounted to an insurmountable
disability to occupy a president’s or chairman’s position. Even board
and directors’ meetings at which he must preside filled him with
apprehension. Usually he evaded parliamentary procedure by calling
conference in his office and seating the group about his desk, this
colossal shyness also accounting for the almost total lack of social
life in his scheme of things.
Hellman, who was always averring, averred that this inability to glean
the best from his fellow men, coupled with a certain humorlessness, was
what kept Rarick from his place among the truly great. Gerkes, in his
totally different way, practically said the same thing, when, one day,
apropos of Woodrow Wilson, whom he had known personally, he deplored
Rarick’s policy of going it alone.
On those rare occasions when his appearance at formal functions--such
as the Rarick Chain Twentieth Anniversary Banquet, the annual
Rarick Chain conventions, the laying of the cornerstone of the
Rarick Building, the dedication of the Rarick Stadium at a Missouri
university--was imperative, it took more hours of steeling his will to
make these appearances than even Hellman would ever realize.
It was rumored that Rarick paid Hellman, who was supposed to write his
speeches, stage such necessary formalities as these, and appear as
his proxy wherever opportunity presented, the sum of twenty thousand
dollars a year.
As a matter of fact, he paid him thirty.
This was one of the occasions when not even the machinations of Hellman
could prevent the affair from falling mercilessly on the shoulders of
Rarick, whose place of honor at the head of the T-shaped table, even
before the guests were assembled, had become dreadful to him at the
sight of the small ivory gavel there.
The page of typewritten address, of decorous phrases, mock humility,
and suave platitude, lay folded in the pocket of his stiff-feeling
cutaway; steep sills of language to be crossed by his faltering lips.
Presently, at whispered word from Hellman, he would push back the
fluted-paper cup of untasted pistachio ice-cream, rest his cigar on
the edge of the saucer of his demitasse, place the neat circle of his
watch in very precise position, clear his throat, strike his gavel, and
curtsy to the Mayor.