saw that his mother had opened them. Now, as he came into the room, her
diseased eyes narrowed:
“That’s why we go hungry an education to give you? That’s why?”
He coloured. Angrily.
“You shouldn’t have opened them. You had no business to.”
“What? My own children’s letters I shouldn’t open, maybe?”
Anyway, she couldn’t have read them. She couldn’t read English. One of
the things was a returned manuscript, the other a letter from Etta....
Still, his mother must have guessed, because now she turned on him:
“Goils! To spend money on. And this craziness, this story business.”
Pale, he threw at her:
“I’ve got to write if I want to be a writer!”
Her face hardened. She shook her bony, needle-scarred finger in his
face:
“A writer he wants to be, with the family starving.” She wiped her nose,
her eyes. “A doctor he don’t want to be, what’s a profession. A writer,
even if maybe we die and your sister Reba got to break her arms pushing
that machine.”
Out in the kitchen he read Etta’s letter. She had spoken to her parents,
she wrote--Emmanuel had left that to her because he didn’t have the
courage, he didn’t care enough--and her father had expressed willingness
to furnish an office for him after the marriage. “Gee, I’m just tickled
silly, are you glad, honey?” was her question in the even,
characterless business-college handwriting. “I just couldn’t wait until
I see you, so I had to write.”
“So that’s it,” he thought. His mouth moved: “Glad....”
His mother was standing next to him again.
“Goils! I’m going blind with embroidery and your father any minute is
gonna kill himself with that rheumatism yet. All our lifes, all our
lifes for you we worked.”
Oh, yes, all their lives. Putting pennies into him, putting food into
him, waiting, waiting....
“It’s all right, Ma, I....”
“My eyes feel like they was on fire....”
“It’s all right, Ma. Listen!” He read her the letter. “You see, Etta’s
father is going to furnish an office for me. You see....”
“Manny! Oh, my good God, honest? Honest, Manny? My Manny, my good son,
what’s going to be a doctor, what’s going to be so good to his family!”
She kissed him. She pawed over his face, his hair. He suffered that.
Writing? Well.... Where was the street? Well.... He’d be a doctor....
Etta, his father, his mother, Reba....
“Sure, Ma.”
IV
Emmanuel watched the patient go out of his office. He hadn’t been able
to do anything for the girl. He hadn’t dared to do anything for her. In
fact, he had shaken his head even before hearing her request. Her eyes
had told him. Sorry for the girl? Yes. Of course he was sorry for her.
But it wasn’t ethical.... He had to laugh at the word. Ethics--smug
euphemism. Simply afraid, that was the truth. Couldn’t risk it. He, the
well-known physician, member of medical associations, “a respected
member of the community.”
Seven years ago, perhaps, when money had been needed. When impatient
eyes were watching him. Four pairs of eyes--no, six, because there had
been Etta’s family, too. Now there was enough money. Now there was his
office. The mahogany desk with its impressive medical volumes, the white
enamel instrument cabinet. An X-ray apparatus. The elaborate washstand
with its gleaming appointments. The blue-lettered sign on the window: E.
Manfred Woll, M.D.
“That’s not I, of course,” he told himself.
E. Manfred Woll.... Etta’s doing.
“You can’t have a kike name in a swell neighbourhood like this,” she had
told him.
All right, the physician, _medicinæ doctor_, that was E. Manfred Woll.
But then where was Emmanuel Wolkowitz? He didn’t know.
There used to be a street. That wasn’t any more. Upstairs there was only
his apartment, with every piece of correct furniture just so, with every
proper picture just so, every cushion rigid, every piece of china, every
vase as the interior decorator had planned it. He was living in an
interior decorator’s apartment! Etta’s doing.
Etta herself, his wife, composed of a pretty face, a carefully,
painfully, pretty face, of just so much obedient, matter-of-fact sex, so
much wifely devotion, solicitude:
“Dearie, you’re so tired!” Every day.... “Here, let me get the girl to
make you a nice hot cup of tea.”
There used to be a melody.... In the beginning he had attempted to get
Etta to sing. She had replied:
“Oh, I don’t know! Too much trouble. Lessons and everything. Of course,
if I was a single girl it would be nice to learn and get a job in a show
or in vaudeville. But ain’t I got the best husband in the world to take
care of me now?”
Well, she didn’t understand! Emmanuel watched the things in the office,
he watched himself seated at the desk of E. Manfred Woll, M.D. Funny,
that was!
Etta came in. As usual:
“Am I disturbing you, dear?”
He didn’t reply. She would come in, anyway. She seated herself on the
edge of his desk, her pretty legs two silken flashes as they rocked. She
toyed with his paper knife, the self-consciously ornamental onyx knife,
her gift.
“That car salesman is going to come around to-morrow. What shall I tell
him?”
“The salesman. I don’t know! What do you want to tell him?”
Etta pouted. In spite of the usual smile she had so carefully
cultivated during the last seven years, her eyes were cold.
“It isn’t what _I_ want to tell him. You know that. I’m not the one for
whose sake we’re getting that limousine. But you can’t be driving around
in that dingy sedan. You ought to have a real car. People expect it of
you.”
Always that argument. The apartment people expected of him, her dresses
people expected of him, his name people expected of him. Nothing for
her. Everything for him. Oh, a good wife!
“You expect it of me, too, don’t you, Etta?”
“Well....”
“You all expect it of me? Your father expected an interest on his money:
a nice home for you, nice clothes for you. He got it. My family....
Well, they’re well off now, they’ve no troubles. A nice home in the
Bronx. Reba got her dowry, she got her lawyer.... Aren’t you, all of
you, satisfied yet? What else do you want?”
“Manny, I don’t understand you.”
“No!”
“What is the matter with you to-day?”
To-day.... Seven years, nine, twelve....
“Etta, what would you say if I told you I’m through?”
“What do you mean, ‘through’?”
“That I’m going away?”
“Where are you going?”
He couldn’t answer that. Where would he be going? To the street? The
street....
Etta had left him, shrugging her shoulders. She didn’t bother to try to
understand him. One of his unaccountable fits! Alone, Emmanuel continued
sitting at his desk. Would he really go away?
The telephone rang. He recognized the voice. His uncle. For years the
“support of the family,” who had helped him through college, helped his
father with the basement penny business. A self-satisfied, ruthless,
self-made man, narrow, full of many hatreds. A charitable, religious
Jew, a good father. Cloaks and suits.
“Manny, my son Dewey is gonna have for him a graduation party from high
school. I want you positively to come.”
Emmanuel promised. He liked Dewey, a boy who was forced to be bright,
who was forced to be the best student in his class, Dewey, who had once
received a beating in his presence for daring to read a novel on a
Saturday instead of going to the synagogue. Was Dewey perhaps like
himself?
Emmanuel walked out of the house. At the door his chauffeur asked:
“Shall I get the car, sir?”
“No, I’ll walk.”
The man touched his cap, looked after Emmanuel stupidly. It was raining.
Emmanuel didn’t care. The rain would do him good to-day, he thought. It
would be good to walk into the street while it was raining. Already the
afternoon, dusk-cloaked, was slipping away and in the coming darkness
the pavement of the street would reflect the light from the windows.
Yellow pools of light.... It would be a long walk. The street was far
away.
Too far away. After some five blocks Emmanuel stopped. Could that
distance to the street be covered to-day? Could it be covered in a year,
in a lifetime? Perhaps it wasn’t there at all. There was no melody
now--perhaps there never had been a melody....
And did it matter now? He was a doctor. Could he tell that to the
street? Could he tell about his family, about Etta?
Was there nothing else than to go back home? That he couldn’t answer.
After all the years, that distant street was still calling Emmanuel.
Maybe.... Even if there should be no melody, one could go on toward the
street. But--home? He walked on.
Then he remembered. Wasn’t there something he had intended to do on the
way? What? Oh, Dewey.... The graduation party would be a grand affair.
He wouldn’t go, of course, but a gift would be expected. A set of books?
A set of books for Dewey? Who was so much like himself? Books? Dewey was
like himself! But then....
“They were my tools,” the thought came to him. “I couldn’t use them.
They weren’t the right tools.... Yes, they were.... Those others weren’t
right.... The ones at college. Now they’re at home. Etta’s? She can have
them. Let her have them. Wrong tools, all of them wrong tools.... The
others, too.... All the books I’ve ever had!” And then the zig-zag
pattern: “Tools, books, tools, tools....”
He entered a shop. No books.... He pointed to a table. To the clerk he
muttered:
“These....”
He gave Dewey’s name, the address. He stood there, watching the large
package being wrapped up. He nodded:
“That’s right....”
A set of carpenter’s tools. A hammer, a saw, a plane.
Out of the shop. He went on. How far the street was! No--there it was,
approaching him, coming toward him. There, that was the street. He
stopped for a breath. These were the stones ... his feet were touching
the pavement.... And the street was dark. But this end had always been
dark, he remembered. Emmanuel lifted his head, his eyes searched the
darkness. Nothing yet. But he knew. The yellow pools would be farther
on, much farther on....
THE WAGER
BY ISA URQUHART GLENN
From _Argosy-All Story_
“Kirwin, you’ll find rain in hell as soon as you will a straight girl in
a dance hall in Manila! Don’t wax sentimental over a pretty blonde, out
here, until you know the circumstances which landed the lady among the
half-breeds. I’ll wager that girl is as tough as they make ’em in even
this off country.”
This from young Angier.
“I’ll take you! There’s something in her face that one can tie to. Call
her over, at the end of this dance, and let’s settle it. Long wait ahead
of us, anyway, until Mayhew shows up. He won’t be in a hurry, with this
deluge. Been roughing it sufficiently; he’ll be taking it easy while he
is in town.” Kirwin’s older and somewhat graver face was turned toward
the dancing couples. He stared at them from underneath beetling brows,
dispassionately appraising the girl whom they were discussing.
“Ever find out why Mayhew is in the islands?” asked Angier idly.
“Secretive cuss! Acts like a Secret Service bird--prowling around
unlikely places, such as this joint in which he arranged to meet us
to-night.”
“Job brought him. That’s straight enough. But I see what you mean. He
does seem to be looking for something outside the job. Now, as to that
bet----”
Seriously they arranged the terms of the wager. In the byways of the
world, trifles are serious when big things are not happening.
“Two to one----”
It was young Angier who plunged the deepest. He was at the age when a
man is sure that he knows the woman game.
“It will be the same old tale,” he said. “Men! One man; then two men;
then a few more--and the streets.”
It rained--as if a gigantic bucket of water were being emptied from the
clouds that lowered over the city.
Manila, like all ladies, has moods; and when she weeps it means trouble.
Her rainy mood is sinister--reminiscent of untold horrors. The Moat,
evil in even its modernized form, seems, when bespattered by the
raindrops that turn oily as they strike, to be hiding dark secrets of a
past age. Over the wet and slippery Bridge of Spain many men have gone
to their ruin; through the Puerta Isabella Dos many women have reached
the bottom. Manila blinks through the downpour, knowing full well that
men are strong, and men are weak, but no man can be both. And well does
Manila know that few women in her clutches have achieved the first.
The tin roof reverberated under the bombardment of the rain. The wind
hit the building, which vibrated. A breath of damp, cool air blew in to
the crowded dance hall. The dancers paused, for an instant taken aback
by the fury of the storm. They felt the insecurity of the human being in
the face of the elements. The clamour of the trap drum was unaccompanied
by the sliding sound of feet; even the feet faltered. The wind died down
as suddenly as it had arisen. The music of the Filipino jazz band broke
forth with renewed vigour. The dancers again set out upon the vast
floor, moving along in the fox trot as interpreted by the two
hemispheres.
At a table near the dancing floor sat the two officers who had made the
bet. They waited for their white uniforms to dry out from the storm that
had caught them unprepared. Amusement showed in their sunburnt faces as
they watched the many odd variations of the great American dance. The
dancers circled past their table, the mestizos throwing out their feet
with waving motions inherited from the Spanish habanera, the full-blood
natives flopping carelessly along in heelless chinelas which
necessitated exaggerated glides, the Chinamen shuffling. Dancing with
these assorted breeds were girls as unmistakably Caucasian as their
partners were Oriental. These girls clung precariously to the loose
sleeves of the Chinaman, the unconfined shirt tails of the Filipino, the
starched coat of the mestizo. The painted faces looked up at the
yellow, brown, and bistre skins of their partners. White teeth gleamed
from the men’s open mouths; gold fillings flashed between the
dangerously smiling lips of the girls.
Angier grinned.
“Watch your pure and very blonde lady leering up at that greasy old
chino! Young for it, too. Now you, Kirwin--you never believe wrong of a
pretty woman, though you agree about the shortcomings of the ugly ones.
But you are wrong, old top! Sin overtakes the fair, not the unlovely.
Look at that girl’s dress. Disreputable! What decent woman would show
all of her naked shoulders and most of her back to this crowd? Do you
suppose that the chino dancing with her thinks she is decent? Not on
your life he doesn’t! His decent women swathe themselves in stiff
brocades and padded coats.”
“So do his indecent ones. Stick to facts.”
They ordered another round of the sickeningly sweet and depressingly
lukewarm soft drinks of a reformed Manila. The straws wilted as soon as
touched, and fell over the sides of the tall glasses in the manner of
Victorian heroines who swoon.
The music stopped. The dancers separated, going to the different tables.
Pink and shabby, tawdry skirts; very lovely hair in long and thick curls
down her back and hanging in her eyes--that variety of soft blue eye
which, when angry, suggests steel heated to the white pitch, but which
crinkles engagingly when merry; face hard and sophisticated--the dancer
of the wager!
Easy to induce her to sit down at their table; impossible to persuade
her to take a drink from the flasks with which they were armed against
contingencies. She insisted on soda water--and then more soda water.
“I want something sweet and cold,” she told them. “God--how I’ve missed
it! I hate places where there’s not enough ice for ice cream.”
Before the soda water arrived the music started again. Kirwin half rose
from his chair and bowed ceremoniously to the girl. “Will you give me
the pleasure of this dance?”
“Gee!” exclaimed the young person. “And the soda water on the way!”
“I thought you’d like it,” muttered the man.
“Like it? Like to dance?” She broke into laughter. “Say--don’t you know
yet that a person’s job is never fun? It’s bread and butter for me to
move my feet, not pleasure.”
She seized the glass of purplish mixture that was being placed before
her and plunged the spoon, and after that her nose, into its enticing
depths.
“Now, this is real joy!” she announced.
“Where you living?” Angier was already at the business of winning his
bet.
The girl turned on him a cold and wary look that, as she studied his
frank boyish face, softened into good fellowship.
“Over in the Tondo--a Ford-sized life in a Ford-sized room. I take my
shower under an oil can, and that after I’ve gone out and fetched in the
water that’s in the can. And if the water runs out before the soap’s
off, I’ve got to hustle into my kimono and get some more to fill up the
darned can--and then jump under it like the house was on fire, so’s the
water won’t give out again. That’s comfort for you! And me used to
Broadway! I tell you--give me Broadway, with the human toads staring at
you! Out here, there’s nothing to stare at you except half-breed frogs.
I’m not strong for half-breeds. That’s the reason I came over here when
you called me--because you fellows are white.” She gave them another of
her wary looks; prepared for their unbelief.
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Miss Casey--to you!” replied the girl promptly, and with emphasis on
the title.
“What’s your name to the chinos?” asked the amused Angier.
The girl’s face turned a dark and painful red. She glanced helplessly at
the man whose manner toward her was marked by a difference.
Kirwin smiled kindly in response to this glance.
“That’s enough, Angier,” he said with some sternness in his voice. “Miss
Casey, my friend is distinctly young and rather flippant; take him with
a grain of salt.”
“Sure!” responded Miss Casey. “I’ve often met ’em like that. They’re
harmless.”
Angier lifted his glass to his merry young mouth. From the glass issued
a gurgle or two. Miss Casey eyed him for a moment; then turned to Kirwin
with a degree of confidence.
“Say--what did you two fellows call me over here for? I know it wasn’t
just to have a good time. You can’t fool Mary. I know the difference in
men. He’s guying me, but he isn’t tough.”
Kirwin bowed, growing respect in his deep-set eyes.
“Miss Casey, we owe you an apology. We did an unpardonable thing; we
made a bet on you. It isn’t what men should do about a woman----”
“ ...But you did it about me, because I’m not a woman--I’m just a
dance-hall girl in the Orient? Oh, don’t apologize; I understand. I’m
used to it.”
There was no longer a trace of the ironic in Kirwin’s deference.
Something of old-fashioned ceremony crept into his manner and softened
the girl. She smiled at him without rancour.
“Don’t say a word,” she said kindly, with the obvious intent of putting
him at his ease. “You haven’t hurt my feelings a bit. I know when to get
mad; and I know when not to. I don’t think either of you meant a thing.
And it’s a comfort to be sitting here with two men from home. Forget
it!”
Angier withdrew his face from the tall glass. He put his hand on the
roughened hand of the girl as it rested on the table beside her soda
water.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “And I want to ask you something quite aside from
the bet. We’re all Americans, as you said. Is there anything that we
could do for you?”
Mary Casey put her other hand on top of his and pressed it. For a moment
there was a mist over her blue eyes.
“You’re a nice boy. Much obliged. But there isn’t anything. I’m taking
care of myself; and I can pay my rent, and pick up my meals one way or
another. And not from men!” The guarded look was again in evidence as
she said this. Then she laughed. “You see how mean I am, about
suspecting men! But I have to be that way. There aren’t too many you can
trust.”
To the jerky strains of Manila’s latest jazz--a tune already, in
America, a year old and buried--she leaned across the rickety table and
looked from one to the other of the men.
It was a direct, level look.
“What was the bet?”
“Oh, I say! Miss Casey!” began Angier uncomfortably. “See here: I’ve
already said I was sorry I’d made it.” He took out his cigarette case.
He struck a match. There was a tinge of nervousness in his manner.
Mary extended her hand for a cigarette.
“Might as well have one,” she said; “though it does register guilt, in
the movies, for a woman to smoke!” She leaned back in her cane chair and
absently watched the thin blue vapour that curled up from her nose. Her
rouged lips were parted in a rather hard smile. “Never occurred to you,
did it, that women could stay straight easier if you men weren’t so keen
on saying we were crooked? Of course I can guess what the bet was! And I
can very nearly guess which of you it was who bet for me. And--on
account of one of you having taken a chance on me--I may tell you a
thing or two before the evening is over. I’d somehow like a man who had
the nerve to take a chance like that--on my side--to win his bet!”
The muchacho approached the table for orders. He bowed obsequiously to
the two officers and brushed his arm contemptuously across the shoulder
of Mary Casey. He drew back suddenly, rubbing his cheek. Miss Casey’s
hand had administered a smart slap on that yellow expanse. She glanced
apologetically at the two Americans.
“It’s the only way to treat ’em,” she informed them. “Treat ’em rough,
and in a hurry! That’s my way, and it works. If you don’t know the game,
this is no place for you.”
She looked out over the floor. A stout and perspiring mestizo, with the
unmistakable Chinese look, was approaching.
“I must dance with this bum. He’s one of the ‘influential patrons,’ and
the management would have a fit and bounce me if I turned him down. I’ll
be back after he’s walked a mile on my feet.”
The two men watched her as she steered the lumbering mestizo through the
crowd. Neither of them spoke.
At the end of the dance she returned to the table and sat down as a
matter of course. This was the Orient, and a long way from home and its
standards of caste. And these Americans had been decent to her--kind to
her.
“Ain’t it fierce, to have to dance with a man that’s a hop toad and an
elephant all in one?” she inquired with a passing annoyance.
“Know the game? Sure I know the game--and a darned good thing I do!” she
continued, taking up the conversation where they had left it. “I’ve
known it since I was a kid. I’m twenty-three now; and I’ve been thanking
my stars all that time that I knew it. You put yourself through the
China Coast, and you need to know the ropes of life. You think I’d want
to be one of those sweet, innocent dunces that you men always like to
believe we blondes are--and that we aren’t, so many times? I’d have
fallen into the paws of a Chink--I would! Innocent sweetness can’t come
through the China Coast whole, and don’t you forget it! I’ve walked
straight, but it wasn’t by being sweet and innocent that I did it. It
was by knowing every devilment that men can be up to. They are all
alike--the men I meet. Their skins are different colours, but their
ideas are the same. All yellow inside, and black and brown and white
outside.”
Musingly, she sipped her soda water. In this repose her mouth showed
hard lines in crescents at the corners. There were wrinkles raying out
from her eyes--baby eyes, at times. These eyes now turned contritely to
the two officers.
“That was hitting below the belt, wasn’t it? My turn to apologize now!
But it isn’t often I meet fellows like you--fellows who’ll talk to me
instead of wanting to paw me--guys who are drunk, and----” Her voice
trailed off. She stared unseeingly at the crowd as it pranced past the
table. “God! I don’t blame men for the way things are with us girls! If
I was a man I’d play the game that way, too, I guess. They haven’t got a
thing staked on the turn of the wheel. But we’ve got everything to lose.
And if we aren’t careful we lose it; that’s all.”
The wind came up again and tore at the house, and around the house, with
concentrated enmity. It played with the loose shell windows as the cat
with the mouse. Inspired by this lack of control in the elements, Kirwin
became elemental in his questioning of the girl.
“Born and brought up in New York, on Eighth Avenue, you say? Then why
out here?”