while after Christmas. She and I were walking around the promenade
between the acts one night at the Metropolitan and Larry was with
us, when a fellow stopped Larry and spoke to him. I could see the guy
looking at the girl and me as he and Larry talked. Later, Larry told me
that it was one of Jake Hergsheimer's friends, and he had been a little
bit surprised to see Larry at the opera all diked out, and he had wanted
to know who the girl was.
“Well, anyhow, she never went to the opera with me after that; but a few
weeks later I saw her at a cabaret with Jake's friend. It was a grief to
me; but I got into some real trouble, or let it get into me, about
the same time, and that helped take the sting off. I had once been
married--but there's no use going into all that. Anyhow, when the
marriage kind o' wore off, my own folks took my wife's side of the case
and she went to live with them. My old dad was sick, and they needed
money, and my wife wrote to me that she was willing to let bygones be
bygones and accept some money from me, and that my parents felt the same
way, and there was a kid, too, that my folks were bringing up.
“Well, I was desperate for some way to get hold of some cash and send
to them. In the end, I took one of Jake Hergsheimer's silver vases and
hocked it and sent the money, and got it out of hock two or three months
later; but in the meantime there was a spell when I was so hard pressed
it looked to me like I would actually have to do something dishonest to
get that money.
“One night, before Jake Hergsheimer came to my rescue and lent me that
silver vase, if you want to call it that, I was sitting alone in the
house thinking what a failure in life I was, and how rotten it was to
have a wife and kid and parents all set against me, and drinking some of
Jake's good booze, and getting more and more low in my mind, when there
came a ring at the front doorbell. The butler was out, and old Mary was
asleep way up in the top of the house, at the back, and wouldn't hear.
“'I'll bet,' I said to myself, 'that's Old Man Singleton nosing around
for his cabbage.' And I made up my mind I wouldn't let him in--he could
ring till he froze to death on the front steps, and I wouldn't. It was
a blustery, snowy January night, with new snow over the old ice
underneath, and I says to myself, 'It's a wonder the old coot don't slip
down and bust some of those big New England bones of his. And I wouldn't
care much if he did.'
“But he kept on ringing, and finally I thought I'd better go and let him
in. I didn't have any ulterior notions when I went up the stairs from
the servants' dining room and made for the front door. But the minute I
clapped eyes on him I thought of all that kale in his pocket.
“I opened the front door, but outside of that was an iron grille. It had
a number of fastenings, but the final one was a short, heavy iron bar
that lay in two sockets, one on each side of the opening.
“I lifted the bar and swung the grille open.
“'Ha! Hum!' said he, and sneezed. 'It's you, Ed, is it?'
“And, snuffing and sneezing, he passed in front of me.
“And as he passed by me that bar said something to my hand. And the hand
raised up. It wasn't any of my doings, it was all the hand and the bar.
It raised up, that bar did, right behind the old man's head. He stopped
just outside the front door and flapped his big bony feet on a rug
that was there, to get the snow off his shoes, and while he flapped and
sneezed that bar was right over the old man's brain-box.
“'Well,' I said to myself, 'here is your chance to be an honest man and
a prosperous man, reunited with your wife and your kid and your folks
at home, and not have to borrow anything from Jake Hergsheimer's
collection--just one little tap on the old man's head, and down he goes,
and he's got anywhere from one hundred thousand to two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars in his clothes.'
“'Yes,' said myself to me, 'one little tap, and maybe you kill him. What
then? The electric chair, huh?'
“'Hell!' I said to myself. 'Take a chance! The old man has so much money
that what he has in his pocket means nothing to him one way or another.
Larry's gone till morning, and the old woman won't wake for a long time.
It means a little bit of a headache for Old Lemuel here, and it means
your chance to lead an honest life hereafter and be a useful citizen and
take care of those you have been neglecting.'
“'Yes,' said myself to me, 'it's more moral to do it, and make your life
over, but you never have been one for morality in the past. Besides,
you'd kill him.'
“And I might have killed him, boss. I wasn't sure of it then, but I've
been sure of it since then. I was that strung up that I would have hit
too hard.
“And yet, I might _not_ have done so! I might have hit him just enough
to put him out and make my get-away, and I might have led an honest life
since then.
“But at the moment I couldn't do it. I saw, all of a sudden, something
funny. I saw the old man stamping his feet and getting the snow off, and
I thought of him as a dead man, and I says to myself: 'How damned funny
for a dead man to stamp the snow off his feet!' And I laughed.
“'Heh? Heh? What did you say, Ed?' says the old man, and turns around.
“I dropped the iron bar to my side, and that dead man came up out of the
grave.
“'Nothing, Mr. Singleton,' I said. 'I was just going to say, go on in,
and I'll get a brush and clean the snow off of you.'
“I said I saved his life from a man one time. Well, I was the man I
saved his life from.
“He went on in, and I barred the grille and locked the door, and we went
on down to the dining room. I was shaking, and still I wasn't easy in my
mind. I told him there wasn't anybody home but me, and he said he'd take
a drop of Jake's brandy. And while I was opening a bottle of it for him,
what does he do but pull out that billfolder.
“'For God's sake, Mr. Singleton,' I said, turning weak and sitting down
in a chair all of a sudden, 'put that money up.'
“He sat there and sipped his brandy and talked, but I didn't hear what
he was saying. I just looked at him, and kept saying to myself, should I
have done it? Or should I have let him go by?
“Boss, that was nearly ten years ago, and I've been asking myself that
question from time to time ever since. Should I have done it? Was it
moral to refuse that chance to make my life over again? You know me,
kid. You know some of me, at least. You know I don't hold much by
morals. If I was to tell you how I got that bullet under my kneecap,
you'd know me better than _you_ do. If I had hit him just right and made
my get-away, I would have led a different life.
“And I wouldn't now be 'waiting for my death sentence. For that's
practically what this prohibition thing means to me. I can't work at
anything but this. And this is through with. And I'm through with. I'm a
bum from now on. There's no use kidding myself; I'm a bum.
“And yet, often, I'm glad I didn't do it.”
Ed brooded in silence for a while.
And then I said, “It's strange he didn't know you.”
“It's been ten years,” said Ed, “and you saw that the old man's got
to the doddering stage. He likely wouldn't know his own children if he
didn't see them every day or two.”
“I suppose,” I said, “that the old man feels he is ending his days in a
very satisfactory manner--the national prohibition thing triumphant, and
all that.”
“How do you mean?” asked Ed.
“Don't you know?” I said. “Why, Old Man Singleton, it is said, helped
to finance the fight, and used his money and his influence on other big
money all over the country in getting next to doubtful politicians and
putting the thing through the state legislatures. I don't mean there
was anything crooked about it anywhere, but he was one of the bunch that
represented organized power, and put the stunt across while the liquor
interests were still saying national prohibition could never come.”
“The hell he did!” said Ed. “I didn't know he was mixed up with it. I
never saw him take a drink, now that I remember, except the brandy on
the night I saved his life.”
“Old Man Singleton,” I said, “is credited with having had more to do
with it than any other one person, by those who are on the inside.”
“The old coot!” said Ed. And then added wryly: “I hope he gets as stiff
in his knee joint as I am and lives forever! He's made a bum of me!”
It was three or four weeks after my talk with Ed that I read in the
papers of a peculiar accident of which Old Man Singleton had been the
victim. A head of cabbage, he said, had fallen out of a tree and hit him
on his own head one evening as he was walking alone in Central Park. He
had been dazed by the blow for a moment; and when he regained his feet
a considerable sum of money which he had been carrying was gone. He was
sure that he had been struck by a head of cabbage, for a head of cabbage
lay on the pathway near him when he was helped to his feet. He did not
pretend to be able to say how a head of cabbage could have gotten into
one of the park trees.
The police discredited his story, pointing out that likely the old
man, who was near-sighted, had blundered against a tree in the dusk and
struck his head. The head of cabbage, they told the reporters, could
have had nothing to do with it; it could not have come into contact with
his head at all, unless, indeed, some one had put it into a sack and
swung it on him like a bludgeon; and this, the police said, was too
absurd to be considered. For why should a crook use a head of cabbage,
when the same results might have been attained with the more usual
blackjack, stick or fist?
Old Man Singleton was not badly hurt; and as regarded the loss of the
money, he never said, nor did his family ever say, just how large the
sum was. Mr. Singleton had the vague impression that after the cabbage
fell out of the tree and hit him he had been helped to his feet by a man
who limped and who said to him: “Kale is given to them that can best use
it, to have and to hold.”
He did not accuse this person, who disappeared before he was thoroughly
himself again, of having found the money which had evidently dropped
from his pocket when the cabbage fell from the tree and hit him, but
he was suspicious, and he thought the police were taking the matter too
lightly; he criticized the police in an interview given to the papers.
The police pointed out the irrelevance of the alleged words of the
alleged person who limped, and intimated that Mr. Singleton was
irrational and should be kept at home evenings; as far as they were
concerned, the incident was closed.
But I got another slant at it, as Ed might have said. Last winter I was
talking at my club with a friend just back from Cuba, where the rum is
red and joy is unconfined.
“I met a friend of yours,” he said, “by the name of Ed down there, who
is running a barroom and seems to be quite a sport in his way. Sent his
regards to you. Must have made it pay--seems to have all kinds of money.
Named his barroom 'The Second Thought.' Asked him why. He said nobody
knew but himself, and he was keeping it a secret--though you might
guess. Wants you to come down. Sent you a message. Let's see: what was
it? Oh, yes! Cryptic! Very cryptic! Wrote it down--here it is: '_Kale!
Kale! The gang's all here_.' Make anything out of it? I can't.”
I could, though I didn't tell him what. But I shall not visit Ed in
Cuba; I consider him an immoral person.
VII--Bubbles
I
|Tommy Hawkins was not so sober that you could tell it on him. Certainly
his friend Jack Dobson, calling on him one dreary winter evening--an
evening of that winter before John Barleycorn cried maudlin tears into
his glass and kissed America good-by--would never have guessed it from
Tommy's occupation. Presenting himself at Tommy's door and finding it
unlocked, Jack had gone on in. A languid splashing guided him to the
bathroom. In the tub sat Tommy with the water up to his shoulders,
blowing soap bubbles.
“You darned old fool!” said Jack. “Aren't you ever going to grow up,
Tommy?”
“Nope,” said Tommy placidly. “What for?” Sitting on a chair close by
the bathtub was a shallow silver dish with a cake of soap and some
reddish-colored suds in it. Tommy had bought the dish to give some one
for a wedding present, and then had forgotten to send it.
“What makes the suds red?” asked Jack.
“I poured a lot of that nose-and-throat spray stuff into it,” explained
Tommy. “It makes them prettier. Look!”
As a pipe he was using a piece of hollow brass curtain rod six or eight
inches long and of about the diameter of a fat lead pencil. He soused
this thing in the reddish suds and manufactured a bubble with elaborate
care. With a graceful gesture of his wet arm he gently waved the rod
until the bubble detached itself. It floated in the air for a moment,
and the thin, reddish integument caught the light from the electric
globe and gave forth a brief answering flash as of fire. Then the bubble
suddenly and whimsically dashed itself against the wall and was no more,
leaving a faint, damp, reddish trace upon the white plaster.
“Air current caught it,” elucidated Tommy with the air of a circus
proprietor showing off pet elephants. In his most facetious moments
Tommy was wont to hide his childish soul beneath an exterior of serious
dignity. “This old dump is full of air currents. They come in round
the windows, come in round the doors, come right in through the
walls. Damned annoying, too, for a scientist making experiments with
bubbles--starts a bubble and never knows which way it's going to jump.
I'm gonna complain to the management of this hotel.”
“You're going to come out of that bathtub and get into your duds,” said
Jack. “That water's getting cool now, and between cold water and air
currents you'll have pneumonia the first thing you know--you poor silly
fish, you.”
“Speaking of fish,” said Tommy elliptically, “there's a bottle of
cocktails on the mantel in the room there. Forgot it for a moment. Don't
want to be inhospitable, but don't drink all of it.”
“It's all gone,” said Dobson a moment later.
“So?” said Tommy in surprise. “That's the way with cocktails. Here
one minute and gone the next--like bubbles. Bubbles! Life's like that,
Jack!” He made another bubble with great solemnity, watched it float and
dart and burst. “Pouf!” he said. “Bubbles! Bubbles! Life's like that!”
“You're an original philosopher, you are,” said Jack, seizing him by the
shoulders. “You're about as original as a valentine. Douse yourself
with cold water and rub yourself down and dress. Come out of it, kid, or
you'll be sick.”
“If I get sick,” said Tommy, obeying, nevertheless, “I won't have to go
to work to-morrow.”
“Why aren't you working to-day?” asked his friend, working on him with a
coarse towel.
“Day off,” said Tommy.
“Day off!” rejoined Dobson. “Since when has the _Morning Despatch_
been giving two days off a week to its reporters? You had your day off
Tuesday, and this is Thursday.”
“Is it?” said Tommy. “I always get Tuesday and Thursday mixed. Both
begin with a T. Hey, Jack, how's that? Both begin with a T! End with a
tea party! Good line, hey, Jack? Tuesday and Thursday both begin with
a T and end with a tea party. I'm gonna write a play round that, Jack.
Broadway success! Letters a foot high! Royalties for both of us! I won't
forget you, Jack! You suggested the idea for the plot, Jack. Drag you
out in front of the curtain with me when I make my speech. 'Author!
Author!' yells the crowd. 'Ladies and gentlemen,' says I, 'here is the
obscure and humble person who set in motion the train of thought that
led to my writing this masterpiece. Such as he is, I introduce him to
you.'”
“Shut up!” said Jack, and continued to lacerate Tommy's hide with the
rough towel. “Hold still! Now go and get into your clothes.” And as
Tommy began to dress he regarded that person darkly. “You're a brilliant
wag, you are! It's a shame the way the copy readers down on the
_Despatch_ keep your best things out of print, you splattering
supermudhen of journalism, you! You'll wake up some morning without any
more job than a kaiser.” And as Tommy threaded himself into the mystic
maze of his garments Mr. Dobson continued to look at him and mutter
disgustedly, “Bubbles!”
Not that he was afraid that Tommy would actually lose his job. If it had
been possible for Tommy to lose his job that must have happened years
before. But Tommy wrote a certain joyous type of story better than any
other person in New York, and his facetiousness got him out of as many
scrapes as it got him into. He was thirty years old. At ninety he would
still be experimenting with the visible world in a spirit of random
eagerness, joshing everything in it, including himself. He looked
exactly like the young gentleman pictured in a widely disseminated
collar advertisement. He enjoyed looking that way, and occasionally he
enjoyed talking as if he were exactly that kind of person. He loved to
turn his ironic levity against the character he seemed to be, much as
the mad wags who grace the column of F. P. A. delight in getting their
sayings across accompanied by a gentle satirical fillip at all mad
waggery.
“Speaking of bubbles,” he suddenly chuckled as he carefully adjusted his
tie in the collar that looked exactly like the one in the advertisement,
“there's an old party in the next room that takes 'em more seriously
than you do, Jack.”
The old downtown hotel in which Tommy lived had once been a known and
noted hostelry, and persons from Plumville, Pennsylvania, Griffin,
Georgia, and Galva, Illinois, still stopped there when in New York,
because their fathers and mothers had stopped there on their wedding
journeys perhaps. It was not such a very long way from the Eden Musee,
when there was an Eden Musee. Tommy's room had once formed part of a
suite. The bathroom which adjoined it had belonged jointly to another
room in the suite. But now these two rooms were always let separately.
Still, however, the bathroom was a joint affair. When Tommy wished to
bathe he must first insure privacy by hooking on the inside the door
that led into the bathroom from the chamber beyond.
“Old party in the next room?” questioned Jack.
“Uh-huh,” said Tommy, who had benefited by his cold sluicing and his
rubdown. “I gave him a few bubbles for his very own--through the keyhole
into his room, you know. Poked that brass rod through and blew the
bubble in his room. Detached it with a little jerk and let it float.
Seemed more sociable, you know, to let him in on the fun. Never be
stingy with your pleasures, Jack. Shows a mean spirit--a mean soul. Why
not cheer the old party up with soap bubbles? Cost little, bubbles
do. More than likely he's a stranger in New York. Unfriendly city, he
thinks. Big city. Nobody thinks of him. Nobody cares for him. Away from
home. Winter day. Melancholy. Well, I say, give him a bubble now and
then. Shows some one is thinking of him. Shows the world isn't so
thoughtless and gloomy after all. Neighborly sort of thing to do, Jack.
Makes him think of his youth--home--mother's knee--all that kind of
thing, Jack. Cheers him up. Sat in the tub there and got to thinking
of him. Almost cried, Jack, when I thought how lonely the old man must
be--got one of these old man's voices. Whiskers. Whiskers deduced from
the voice. So I climbed out of the tub every ten or fifteen minutes all
afternoon and gave the old man a bubble. Rain outside--fog, sleet. Dark
indoors. Old man sits and thinks nobody loves him. Along comes a bubble.
Old man gets happy. Laughs. Remembers his infancy. Skies clear. You
think I'm a selfish person, Jack? I'm not. I'm a Samaritan. Where will
we eat?”
“You are a darned fool,” said Jack. “You say he took them seriously?
What do you mean? Did he like 'em?”
“Couldn't quite make out,” said Tommy. “But they moved him. Gasped every
now and then. Think he prayed. Emotion, Jack. Probably made him think
of boyhood's happy days down on the farm. Heard him talking to himself.
Think he cried. Went to bed anyhow with his clothes on and pulled the
covers over his head. Looked through the keyhole and saw that. Gray
whiskers sticking up, and that's all. Deduced the whiskers from the
voice, Jack. Let's give the old party a couple more bubbles and then go
eat. It's been an hour since he's had one. Thinks I'm forgetting him, no
doubt.”
So they gave the old man a couple of bubbles, poking the brass rod
through the keyhole of the door.
The result was startling and unexpected. First there came a gasp from
the other room, a sort of whistling release of the breath, and an
instant later a high, whining, nasal voice.
“Oh, God! God! Again! You meant it, then, God! You meant it!”
The two young men started back and looked at each other in wonderment.
There was such a quivering agony, such an utter groveling terror in this
voice from the room beyond that they were daunted.
“What's eating him?” asked Dobson, instinctively dropping his tones to a
whisper.
“I don't know,” said Tommy, temporarily subdued. “Sounds like that last
one shell-shocked him when it exploded, doesn't it?”
But Tommy was subdued only for a moment.
As they went out into the corridor he giggled and remarked, “Told you he
took 'em seriously, Jack.”
II
“Seriously” was a word scarcely strong enough for the way in which the
old party in the room beyond had taken it, though he had not, in fact,
seen the bubble. He had only seen a puff of smoke coming apparently from
nowhere, originating in the air itself, as it seemed to him, manifesting
itself, materializing itself out of nothing, and floating in front of
the one eye which was peeping fearfully out of the huddled bedclothing
which he had drawn over himself. He had lain quaking on the bed, waiting
for this puff of smoke for an hour or more, hoping against hope that it
would not come, praying and muttering, knotting his bony hands in the
whiskers that Tommy had seen sticking up from the coverings, twisting
convulsively.
Tommy had whimsically filled the bubble, as he blew it, with smoke
from his cigarette. He had in like manner, throughout the afternoon and
early-evening, filled all the bubbles that he had given the old man
with cigarette or pipe smoke. The old party had not been bowled over
by anything in Tommy's tobacco. He had not noticed that the smoke was
tobacco smoke, for he had been smoking a pipe himself the greater part
of the day, and had not aired out the room. It was neither bubbles nor
tobacco that had flicked a raw spot on his soul. It was smoke.
III
Bubbles! They seemed to be in Tommy's brain. Perhaps it was the
association of ideas that made him think of champagne. At any rate he
declared that he must have some, and vetoed his friend's suggestion that
they dine--as they frequently did--at one of the little Italian table
d'hote places in Greenwich Village.
“You're a bubble and I'm a bubble and the world is a bubble,” Tommy
was saying a little later as he watched the gas stirring in his golden
drink.
They had gone to the genial old Brevoort, which was--but why tell
persons who missed the Brevoort in its mellower days what they missed,
and why cause anguished yearnings in the bosoms of those who knew it
well?
“Tommy,” said his friend, “don't, if you love me, hand out any more of
your jejune poeticism or musical-comedy philosophy. I'll agree with you
that the world is a bubble for the sake of argument, if you'll change
the record. I want to eat, and nothing interferes with my pleasure in
a meal so much as this line of pseudocerebration that you seem to have
adopted lately.”
“Bubbles seem trivial things, Jack,” went on Tommy, altogether
unperturbed. “But I have a theory that there aren't any trivial things.
I like to think of the world balancing itself on a trivial thing. Look
at the Kaiser, for instance. A madman. Well, let's say there's been a
blood clot in his brain for years--a little trivial thing the size of a
pin point, Jack. It hooks up with the wrong brain cell; it gets into
the wrong channel, and--pouf! The world goes to war. A thousand million
people are affected by it--by that one little clot of blood no bigger
than a pin point that gets into the wrong channel. An atom! A planet
balanced on an atom! A star pivoting on a molecule!”
“Have some soup,” said his friend.
“Bubbles! Bubbles and butterflies!” continued Tommy. “Some day, Jack,
I'm going to write a play in which a butterfly's wing brushes over an
empire.”
“No, you're not,” said Jack. “You're just going to talk about it and
think you're writing it and peddle the idea round to everybody you know,
and then finally some wise guy is going to grab it off and really write
it. You've been going to write a play ever since I knew you.”
“Yes, I am; I'm really going to write that play.”
“Well, Tommy,” said Jack, looking round the chattering dining room,
“this is a hell of a place to do it in!”
“Meaning, of course,” said Tommy serenely, “that it takes more than a
butterfly to write a play about a butterfly.”