I'm ever coming down here to see you."
"Well, Jerry," she answered, "that'll be all right with me unless you
start going to see some other girl in some other house along the row
here."
"It's not that," he explained. "I'm going to quit going down the line
altogether. I'm through"--he made a gesture with his hands--"through
with the whole thing from now on."
"I see," she said, after a moment or two. "Been getting yourself
engaged to some nice girl--is that the way it is, Jerry?"
"Yes," he told her, "that's the way it is, Queenie."
She did not ask who the nice girl might be nor did he offer to tell
her. In that ancient age--the latter decades of the last century before
this one--there was a code for which nearly everybody of whatsoever
station had the proper reverence. In some places--bar-rooms, for
example, and certain other places--a gentleman did not bring up the
name of a young lady. It was never the thing to do.
"Here, Jerry," she said next. "I'll be kind of sorry to say good-by,
but I want you to know I wish you mighty well. Not that you need my
good wishes--you're going ahead and you'll keep on going--but I want
you to have them. Because, Jerry, if it was my dying words I was
speaking I'd still say it just the same--you've always been on the
square with me, and that's what counts with a girl like me. You never
came down here drunk, you never used rough language before me, you
never tried to bilk me or take advantage of me any kind of way. Yes,
sir, that's what counts. Even if I don't never see you face to face
again I won't forget how kind and pleasant you've been towards me. And
I'd die before I'd make any trouble for you, ever. You go your way and
I'll go mine, such as it is, and that'll be all there is to it so far
as I'm concerned.
"Now then, you've told me some news; I'll tell you some. I'm fixing
to buy out Miss Carrie. She wants to quit this business and go over
to Chicago and live decent. She's got a married daughter there, going
straight, and anyhow she's made her pile out of this drum and can
afford to quit, and I don't blame her any, at her age, for wanting to
quit. But me, it's different with. I've got a little money saved up of
my own and she's willing to take that much down and take a mortgage on
the furniture and trust me for the rest of the payments as they fall
due. And just yesterday we closed up the bargain, and next week the
lease and the telephone number and all go in my name. So you see I'm
trying to get along, too, the best way I can." She lifted the glass of
beer that she was holding in her hand. "Here's good luck!"
She took the draught down greedily. Her full lips had the drooping at
their corners which advertises the potential dipsomaniac.
Face to face, through the rest of her life he never did speak to her.
To be sure, there were at irregular intervals telephone conversations
between them. I'll come to that part of it later. Anyhow, they were not
social conversations, but purely business.
He saw her, of course--Dyketon was a small place then; it was
afterwards that it grew into a city--but always at a distance, always
across the wide gulf that little-town etiquette digs for encounters
in public between the godly and the ungodly. Once in a while she
would pass him on the street, she usually riding in a hack and he
usually afoot, with no sign of recognition, of course, on the part
of either. Then again, some evening at the theater, he, sitting with
his wife down-stairs, would happen to glance up toward the "white"
gallery and she would be perched, as one of a line of her sisters of
transgression, on the front row there. The Dyketon theater management
practiced the principle of segregation for prostitutes just as the city
government practically enforced it in the matter of their set-apart
living-quarters. These communal taboos were as old as the community
itself was. Probably they still endure.
With time, even the occasional sight of his old light-o'-love failed to
revive in his mind pictures of the house where he once had knowledge of
her. The memories of that interior faded into a conglomerate blur. One
memory did persist. Long after the rest was a faint jumble he recalled
quite sharply the landlady's two pets--her asthmatic pug-dog with its
broody cocked eyes, and her wicked talking parrot with its yellow head
and its vice for gnawing woodwork and its favorite shrieked refrain:
"Ladies, gent'men in the parlor!"
He remembered them long after he forgot how the place had smelled of
bottled beer and cheap perfumery and unaired sofa-stuffing; and how
always on the lower floor there had prevailed in daytime a sort of
dusky gloom by reason of the shutters being tightly closed and barred
fast against sunlight and small boys or other Peeping Toms who might
come venturing on forbidden ground; and how, night-times, above the
piano-playing of the resident "professor" and the clamor of many voices
there would cut through the shrill squeals of an artificial joy--the
laughter forced from the sorry souls of those forlorn practitioners at
the oldest and the very saddest of human trades.
* * * * *
The one he married was the only daughter of his employer, Mr. Gus
Ralph; a passionless, circumspect young woman three or four years his
senior. The father approved heartily of the engagement and in testimony
thereof promptly promoted Jerome to a place of more responsibility and
larger salary; the best families likewise gave to this match their
approval. Even so, Mr. Ralph never would have advanced the future
son-in-law had not the latter been deserving of it. The elder man's
foresight had been good, very, very good. Jerome was cut out for the
banking business. He proved that from the start. He knew when to say
no, and prospective borrowers learned that his no meant no. Personally
he was frugal without being miserly and, in the earlier days at least,
he had firmness without arrogance; and if personally he was one of the
most selfish creatures ever created, he had for public affairs a fine,
broad spirit.
He had been brought up a Baptist but almost on the heels of his wedding
he joined his wife's congregation. She was a strict Presbyterian, and
in Dyketon the Presbyterians, next after the Episcopalians, constituted
the most aristocratic department of piety. This step also pleased old
Mr. Ralph exceedingly.
It wasn't very long before Mr. Bracken, as everybody nearly except his
intimates called him, was chief of staff down at the bank, closest
adviser and right-hand-man to the owner. In another five years he was
junior partner and vice-president. Five years more, and he, still on
the sunny side of thirty-five, was president. Mr. Ralph had died and
among the directors no other name was considered for the vacancy. His
election merely was a matter of form. With his wife's holdings and his
own and his widowed mother-in-law's, he controlled a heavy majority of
the stock.
Jerome Bracken was a model to all young men growing up. Look at the way
his earthly affairs were prospering! Look at his tithes to religion
and to charity--one-tenth of all he made bestowed on good causes and
in good deeds; a sober man laying up treasures not only in this world
but for the world to come. Look how the Lord was multiplying his
profits unto him! Mothers and fathers enjoined their sons' notice upon
these proofs. Jerome Bracken's life was like a motto on a wall, like a
burning torch in the night-time.
Still, there were those--a few only, be it said--who claimed that with
increasing years and increasing powers Mr. Bracken took on a temper
which made him hard and high-handed and greedy for yet more authority.
This hardness does come often to those who sit in lofty seats and rule
over the small destinies of the smaller fry. On the other hand, though,
anyone who notably succeeds is sure to have his detractors; success
breeds envy and envy breeds criticism. That fierce light which beats
upon a throne brings out in clean relief any imperfections of the
illumined one, and people are bound to notice them and some people are
bound to comment on them.
Take, for instance, the time when that young fellow, Quinn, was caught
dead to rights pilfering from the petty cash. It seemed he had been
speculating in a small way at bucket-shops and, what was worse, betting
on the races. It further seemed to quite a number of citizens that Mr.
Bracken might have found it in his heart to be pitiful to the sinner.
Not much more than a boy and his father and mother hard-working, decent
people and his older brother a priest and all--these were the somewhat
indirect arguments they offered in condonement. And besides, wasn't old
man Quinn ready to sell his cottage and use the money from the sale to
make good the shortage? Then why not let the whole messy business drop
where it was? Least said soonest mended. And so on and so forth.
Mr. Bracken couldn't see the situation in any such light. He felt sorry
enough for the lad and sorrier for the lad's family, and so stated when
a sort of unofficial delegation of the pleaders waited on him. Nor was
it the amount of the theft that counted with him; he said that, too.
But in his position he had a duty to the commonweal and topping that,
an obligation to his depositors and his patrons. He refused to consent
that the thing be hushed up. He went himself and swore out the warrant,
and that night young Quinn's wayward head tossed on a cot in the county
jail. Mr. Bracken went before the grand jury likewise and pressed
for the indictment; and at the trial in circuit court he was the
prosecution's chief witness, relating with a regretful but painstaking
fidelity the language of the defendant's confession to him.
Young Quinn accordingly departed to state's prison for two years of
hard labor, becoming what frequently is spoken of as a warning and an
example. While there he learned to make chair-bottoms but so far as
might be learned never made any after his release. When last heard of
he was a hobo and presumably an associate of members of the criminal
classes. By all current standards of righteous men the example was now
a perfected one.
Persons who found fault with the attitude Mr. Bracken had taken in
the case naturally did not know of any offsetting acts of kindliness
performed by him behind closed doors. Regarding these acts there was no
way for them to know. Had they known, perhaps they might have altered
their judgments. Or perhaps not. Behind his back they probably would
have gone right on picking him to pieces. A main point, though, was
that nobody berated him to his face; nobody would dare. He passed
through his maturing years shielded by an insulation of expressed
approval for what he said and what he thought and what he did.
This was true of the home circle, which a fine and gracious flavor of
domestic harmony perfumed; and it was true of his life locally and
abroad. When you get to be a little tin god on wheels, the crowd is
glad to trail along and grease the wheels for you with words of praise
and admiring looks. And when everybody is saying yes, yes, oh yes, to
you, why, you get out of the habit ever of saying no, emphatically no,
to yourself. That's only human nature, which is one of the few things
that the automobile and the radio have not materially altered.
So much, for the moment, for this man who was a model to young men
growing up. It is necessary to turn temporarily to one who went down,
down, down, as that first one, in the estimation of a vast majority of
his fellow beings was going up and up and ever higher up.
Queenie Sears was the one whose straying feet took hold on hell.
Presently her establishment had a booze-artist for a proprietor and a
hard and aggravating name among the police force. They called it the
toughest joint in the First Ward. City court warrants were sworn out
against her--for plain drunkenness, for disorderly conduct along with
drunkenness, for fighting with other women of her sort, for suffering
gaming and dope-peddling on her premises.
When an inmate of her house killed herself under peculiarly distressing
circumstances, sermons were preached about her from at least two city
pulpits, the ministers speaking of depravity and viciousness and the
debauching of youth and plaguish blots on the fair burnished face
of the civic shield. When she took the Keeley Cure--and speedily
relapsed--those who frequented her neighborhood of ill repute had a
hearty laugh over the joke of it. She was gross of size and waddled
when she walked, and her big earrings of flawed diamonds rested against
jowls of quivering, unwholesome bloat.
But dissipation did not destroy the beldame's faculties for earning
money--if money got that way could be said to be earned--and for
putting it by. Mr. Jerome Bracken, who had known her back in those long
bygone days of her comeliness, was in position to give evidence, had he
been so minded, regarding her facility at saving it up. This was how he
came to have such information:
Once or twice a year, say, she would call him on the telephone at his
office in the bank. Across the wire to him her eaten-out voice would
come, hoarse and flattened--a hoarseness and a flatness which increased
as the years rolled by.
"Jerry," she would say, following almost a set pattern, "you know who
this is, don't you--Queenie?"
"Yes," he would answer; "what can I do for you now?"
"Same as you done the last time," she would say. "I've got a few more
iron men tucked away and I'm looking for a little suggestion about a
place to put 'em. And, Jerry, I hope you don't mind my calling you up.
There ain't nobody else I could depend on like I can on you."
She never told him, in dollars and cents, how much she had for
investment nor did he ever ask. If inwardly he guessed at the possible
total his guess did not run to large figures. But just as he might have
done in the case of any individual seeking his counsel in this regard,
he would recommend to her this or that bond or such-and-such standard
stock, and she would repeat the name after him until she had memorized
it and then she would thank him.
"I'm mighty much obliged to you, Jerry," she would say. "I ain't ever
lost any money yet by following after your advice. It's awful good of
you, helping me out this way, and I appreciate it--I certainly do."
"That's all right, Queenie," he would tell her, in his precise manner
of speech. "I'm glad to be able to serve you. You are free to call on
me--by telephone--whenever you care to."
"I won't never forget it," she would reply. "Well, good-by, Jerry."
It never happened more than twice a year, sometimes only once in a year
as they--these years--kept on mounting up.
They mounted up until Dyketon had increased herself from a sprawled-out
county-seat into a city of the second class. She had 100,000
inhabitants now--only 83,000 according to the notoriously inadequate
federal census figures, but fully 100,000 by the most conservative
estimates of the Board of Trade--and old inhabitants were deploring
that whereas once they knew by name or face everybody they met, now a
fellow could take a stroll on almost every street and about every other
person he ran into would be a total stranger to him.
New blood was quick and rampant in Dyketon's commercial arteries and
new leaders had risen up in this quarter or that, but two outstanding
figures of the former times still were outstanding. On all customary
counts Mr. Jerome Bracken was the best man in town and old Queenie
Sears the worst woman. He led all in eminence, she distanced the field
in iniquity. By every standard he was at the very top. Nobody disputed
her evil hold on the bottommost place of all. Between those heights
of his gentility and those depths of her indecency there was a space
of a million miles that seemed to any imagination unbridgeable; at
least that seemed so to Dyketon's moralists, provided they ever had
coupled the honored president of the State Bankers' Association and
the abandoned strumpet of Front Street in the same thought, which was
improbable.
A certain day was a great day for him who was used to great days. But
this one, by reason of two things, was really a day above other great
days. In the same issue of the Dyketon Morning Sun appeared, at the top
of the social notes, an announcement of his daughter's engagement to
Mr. Thomas H. Scopes III, a distinguished member of one of the oldest
families in town, and, on the front page, his own announcement as an
aspirant for the Republican nomination for United States Senator.
Until now he had put by all active political ambitions. From time to
time, tempting prospects of office-holding had come to him; he had
waved them aside. But now, his private fortune having passed the mark
of two millions, and his business being geared to run practically
on its own momentum and smoothly, he felt, and his formal card to
the voters so stated, that he might with possible profit to the
commonwealth devote the energies of his seasoned years to public
service as a public servant. Quote: If the people by the expression of
their will at the approaching primaries indicated him as the choice of
his party for this high position, then so be it; his opponent would
find him ready for the issue. End quote.
All the morning and all the afternoon until he left his office he was
receiving the congratulations of associates and well-wishers upon Miss
Bracken's engagement and likewise upon his own decision to run for
Senator. His desk telephone was jingling constantly. He stopped in at
his club on the way home--the Metropolis Club it was, and the most
exclusive one in town--and there he held a sort of levee. Whole-hearted
support was promised him by scores, literally. The most substantial
men in the whole city gathered about him, endorsing him for the step
he had taken and pledging themselves to work for him and predicting
his easy nomination and his equally easy election. The state generally
went Republican--not always, but three times out of four on an average.
Under this barrage of applause he unbent somewhat, showing more warmth,
more geniality, than he had shown anywhere for a good long while. He
did not unbend too far, though, but just far enough.
The club cynic, an aged and petulant retired physician, watching the
scene in the club library from his regular seat by the tall marble
fireplace, remarked under his voice to the first deputy club cynic, who
now bore him company and who would succeed him on his death:
"Haughty as hell, even now, ain't he? Notice this, Ike--he's not
acknowledging the enthusiasm of that flock of bootlickers that are
swarming around him yonder, he's merely accepting it as his proper
due. What does the man think he is anyhow--God Almighty?"
"Humph!" answered the deputy. "You rate our budding statesman too low.
Down in that Calvinistic soul of his he may sometimes question the
workings of the Divine Scheme, but you bet he never has questioned his
own omnipotence--the derned money-changing pouter pigeon. Look at him,
all reared back there with one hand on his heart and the other under
his coat-tails--like a steel engraving of Daniel Webster!"
"Not on his heart, Ike," corrected the chief cynic grimly; "merely on
the place where his heart would be if he had any heart. He had one
once, I guess, but from disuse it's withered up and been absorbed
into the system. Remember, don't you, how just here the other week he
clamped down on poor old Hank Needham and squeezed the last cent out
of him? He'll win, though, mark my words on it. He always has had his
way and he'll keep on having it. Lord, Lord, and I can remember when
we used to send real men to Washington from this state--human he-men,
not glorified dollar-grabbers always looking for the main chance. Given
half a show, Hank Needham could have come back; now he's flat busted
and he'll be dead in six months, or I miss my guess."
These isolated two--the official crab and his understudy--were the
only men in the room, barring club servants, who remained aloof from
the circle surrounding the candidate. They bided on where they were,
eyeing him from under their drooped eyelids when, at the end of a happy
hour, he passed out, a strong, erect, soldierly man in his ripening
fifties. Then, together, they both grunted eloquently.
In a fine glow of contentment Jerome Bracken walked to his house. He
wanted the exercise, he wanted to be alone for a little while with his
optimism.
He was almost home when a city hospital ambulance hurried past him, its
gong clanging for passage in the traffic of early evening. Just after
it got by he saw a white-coated interne and a policeman wrestling with
somebody who seemed to be fastened down to a stretcher in the interior
of the motor, and from that struggling somebody he heard delirious
sobbing outcries in a voice that was feminine and yet almost too
coarsened and thick to be feminine.
Vaguely it irked him that even for a passing moment this interruption
should break in on his thoughts. But no untoward thing disturbed the
household rhapsody that night. There, as at the office, the bell on
the telephone kept ringing almost constantly, and, being answered, the
telephone yielded only felicitating words from all and sundry who had
called up.
A man who had no shadow of earthly doubt touching on his destinies
slept that night in Jerome Bracken's bed. And if he dreamed we may be
well assured that his dreams were untroubled by specters of any who
had besought him for mercy and had found it not. A conscience that is
lapped in eider-down is nearly always an easy conscience.
* * * * *
It was the fifth day after the next day when, with no warning
whatsoever, Jerome Bracken got smashed all to flinders. He was in his
office at the rear of the bank going over the morning mail--it mostly
was letters written by friendly partisans over the state, including one
from the powerful national committeeman for the state--when without
knocking, his lawyer, Mr. Richard Griffin, opened the door and walked
in followed by his local political manager, who also happened to be
the local political boss. The faces of both wore looks of a grave
uneasiness, the manners of both were concerned and unhappy.
"Morning, gentlemen," said Mr. Bracken. "What is pressing down on your
minds this fine day?"
Yankee-fashion, Mr. Griffin answered the question by putting another.
"Bracken," he said, "how long have you been knowing this woman, Queenie
Sears?"
"What do you mean?" demanded Mr. Bracken sharply.
"What I say. How long have you known her? And how well?"
"I don't understand you, Dick." The other's tone was angry. "And by
what right do you assume--"
"Bracken," snapped Griffin sharply, "I'm here as a man who's been your
lifelong friend--you must know that. And Dorgan here has come with
me in the same capacity--as a friend of yours. This thing is serious.
It's damned serious. It's likely to be about the most serious thing
that ever happened to you. I'll repeat the question and I'm entitled to
a fair, frank answer: How long have you been acquainted with Queenie
Sears?"
In his irate bewilderment Mr. Bracken could think of but one plausible
explanation for this incredible inquiry. He started up from his chair,
his hands gripping into fists. He almost shouted it.
"Has that dirty, libelous, scandal-mongering rag of an afternoon paper
down the street had the effrontery this early in the campaign to
attempt to besmirch my character? If it has I'll--"
"Not yet!" For the first time the politician was taking a hand in the
talk. "But it will--before sundown tonight. Catch a Democrat outfit
passing up a bet like this! Sweet chance!" He looked toward the lawyer.
"You better tell him, Griffin," he said with a certain gloomy decision.
"Then when you're through I'll have my little say-so."
"Probably that would be best," agreed Griffin resignedly. "Sit down,
won't you, Bracken? I'm going to hand you a pretty hard blow right in
the face."
His amazement growing, Mr. Bracken sat down. Through what painfully
followed, the other two continued to stand.