feed her--if she’s a fool! A man goes and marries, and gets a girl baby.
And does he have that girl baby taught a trade when she leaves grammar
school, like he does his sons? He does, like hell! He throws her out--in
front of men--to catch a husband! ’Tisn’t fair to the girls. Look at me:
I didn’t know how to do a thing except dance. I’d learned how to do that
on the sidewalks, to hurdy-gurdies.”
The noise of the rain on the roof deadened her voice, so that the men
had to lean across the table in order to hear her next words.
“I said I’d tell you a few things. All right! I will! It may help you in
your bets on other women.”
Her voice became shriller, more filled with excitement. The rain no
longer deadened it; it was charged with an electricity that carried it
above the storm.
“When I knew that if I didn’t want to marry one of the poor simps I
met--with his hair slicked down with grease till it looked like shiny
black shoes--I’d have to scratch for my living, I got busy and hunted a
job in a cheap dance hall in that part of town. My job was to dance with
any dirty, smelly man who came in and hadn’t got a girl along. Not much
of a trade, but it was a long sight better than the one my sister took
up--on the streets! That was another trade you didn’t have to be trained
for!
“‘Mary, be careful!’ my mother kept telling me. ‘A girl has got to be
careful--because the men won’t be careful for her.’
“By the time I’d learned the game of taking care of myself, I’d worked
up to a sweller dance hall on Broadway. The fellows who came in there
were clean, except in their minds. But I kept saying to myself: ‘Mary,
be careful!’
“And then, one evening, in came a seedy-looking man who made you think
he’d seen better times and a fatter living. Always shaved clean, and
smelled of talcum powder. But his clothes were brushed until there
wasn’t a bit of nap left on them, I used to think when I was dancing
with him and looking at his shoulder. He was an actor, out of a job, he
told me. They tell you the story of their lives when they’re dancing
with you.
“Once he came in downright hungry. I shared with him that night the
dinner the management gave me.
“I got in the habit of looking for him, and sharing my dinner with him.
I respected myself a lot because I was giving him dinner instead of him
feeding me. Silly, wasn’t it?” She looked at Kirwin.
Kirwin nodded gravely. “I understand that perfectly,” he said. “You
would feel that way. So should I, in your place.”
“Thanks!” said Mary Casey. “Well--you know--after you’ve fed a man when
he’s hungry, you get to sort of think you own him. You feel like you’re
his mother, you might say. I got to feeling that way about Teddy. I felt
like he was mine. I don’t suppose I thought about marrying; I knew he
couldn’t support me. But I never thought about anything that I’d be
doing, way off in life, when we were older, without thinking about him
being right there with me. You know what I mean? I just didn’t think
we’d ever be anywhere without the other one being there, too. Not that
he said anything much, only--‘I’m awful fond of you, kid!’ But I didn’t
mind. I was fool happy, dancing afternoons with all sorts of men, and
all the time thinking that pretty soon Teddy’d be coming in by the
doorkeeper, and looking around for me--and then sit in the darkish
restaurant eating part of my dinner--though it did used to leave me
pretty hungry, for the dinner the management gave us wasn’t much on
size. Some of the girls used to kick about those dinners; you’re awful
hungry after you’ve been dragged around the floor for hours and hours by
heavy-footed hicks. But the management laughed at the complaints; said
the girls would keep their figures if they didn’t eat too much. I’ll say
I kept mine! I was ’most starved every night when I got to bed. My
stomach used to feel as if it was sticking to my backbone. I was on the
floor every dance. I was popular with the men who came there. It isn’t
that I’m pretty; I’m not. And so they look again to see what the deuce I
am. And that gets a man’s goat--when he can’t make out what he likes
about a girl.
“Anyhow, if I’d ever been pretty I’d have lost it by now. I’ve been so
darned careful; and when a girl’s careful, and suspects everybody, she
gets hard and mean looking. The other girls--those that aren’t
careful--get hard and tough. It all comes to the same thing; they look
the same way in the face. Women can’t look soft in the face unless
they’re taken care of by their people.”
“When you are talking this way, you don’t look hard,” interrupted
Kirwin.
“That’s because it’s a comfort to sit here and say everything that comes
into my head. Most times, when I’m across a table from a man, I have to
think before I open my mouth: ‘Will this give him a handle?’ And so I
just say: ‘Oh! Isn’t this a lovely floor?’ And: ‘My! But you are a dandy
dancer!’ When like as not he’s stepped all over me.”
“Men are brutes! They even step on the ladies’ toes!” the laughing
Angier remarked.
“They step on more than their toes,” the girl countered. “They step on
anything the girl gives them a chance to step on! At least, most of them
do. I never saw but one who wouldn’t. And I lost him--lost sight of him,
I mean--on account of losing his card.” She lifted her long and thick
lashes of a golden brown that caught the light from the swinging oil
lamps and formed a delicate nimbus around her serious eyes. “But I’m
going to tell you about him. I’d like you to know I’ve met one man I
could respect. Men who hang around dance halls not even a boob could
think much of!
“It was this way:
“Times got worse. I got so I couldn’t make out. They raised my rent on
me. I couldn’t go to live with my people. They bunked and washed and
cooked in one room, with a window and the fire escape for their
excitement; and I’d got used to better. I couldn’t go back there--not
with Teddy in my head. He’d have looked down on me, see?
“So Teddy says to me: ‘Why don’t you try South America? I’ve been told
they pay high, down there, for American dancers. And board and lodging
thrown in,’ he says. And he says that he’ll see if he can get me a
chance, through a friend of his that’s in town looking for girls to go
down to Colon. This friend came in to talk to me about it. It’s a swell
chance to make big money, he says. The Panamanians are ready spenders,
he says, and crazy over dancing. And Teddy kept trying to make me go.
“I went. The boat got in about seven o’clock in the evening. The man
they sent to meet me said that I was to hop into my dance clothes and
hurry along with him to the hall. My trunk would go up afterward.
“Say, I’m telling you--I never did see a dance hall like that one! It
was a scream! The guy hadn’t told me that the Panamanians were all
colours! Everything was sitting at the tables, from putty-coloured dudes
with diamonds in their embroidered shirts to jet-black niggers in fine
clothes. Each man had poured a bottle of scent over himself. The smell
of that perfume, and the smell of the different breeds of people, all
hot and perspiring, was something fierce. It made me feel queer, all of
a sudden.
“I sat down at one of the tables, and the fat, cream-coloured woman who
ran the place came over and gave me something to drink, to cool me off,
she said. It made me cool, but odd feeling. I leaned my head on my hand,
so’s the floor would stop going around. And something--the heat,
maybe--made me so sleepy I thought to myself I’d swap my job for a bed,
if I could of found a bed. And then I realized that somebody was
stroking my arm; long, pressing strokes like you give a cat’s back.
There wasn’t much feeling in my arm, it was sorter dead; but I knew
darned well that somebody was fooling with it. I opened my eyes wide. It
was a coon who was fooling with my arm! A real coon, like we have at
home--only this one spoke a lingo that I guess was Spanish. Any rate, I
didn’t understand a word he said. And I jumped away from him; I never
had had a coon stroke my arm, and I didn’t like it a bit. So I says to
him: ‘You get away from me!’ But he laughed so all his teeth showed; and
he reached over and grabbed me. That waked me up sure enough; and I
kicked and screamed. And the next thing I knew a white man had come
across the room and lifted that coon by the scruff of his neck and
thrown him in a corner. I’ve seen fights in my day--but say! I never saw
a prettier one than that! The white man cleaned out the crowd!
“The cream-coloured woman rushed over and began jabbering at him; and
the dudes with the diamond buttons stood close by and laughed and
whispered to each other in their crazy talk, and pushed their shoulders
up in the air until you couldn’t see their big ears; but that American
paid no attention to them. He treated them so like scum that I was
proud to be standing by him.
“The American took me by the arm--not spoony; just sort of as if he was
boss around those diggings--and walked me over to a table in a far
corner, away from the jabbering dudes. We sat down. I was sorter nervous
by that time. There was something I didn’t get, if you know what I mean?
So that man tells me:
“‘This is no place for an American girl! How’d you come here?’
“I told him all about the contract I’d signed to dance there. And I told
him about Teddy, and everything else I could think of. He was a comfort
in the midst of all those funny people. He didn’t smell of perfume, and
he had on plain white clothes, and they were clean around the collar and
cuffs. Different, that’s all. While I was talking, he sat there looking
at me with his eyes half shut, like he was sizing me up. And every now
and then he’d nod his head. Once I heard him muttering something about:
‘My first assay would be--pure gold!’ And I got scared; I thought that
he was crazy, too. But when he saw how I was getting as far away in my
chair as I could, he laughed--first time he’d laughed. And I noticed
that his nose stayed quiet while he was laughing, instead of working up
and down like the dagos’ noses did. And his eyes laughed; and the dagos’
eyes don’t laugh. That made me trust him.
“He told me that he was a mining engineer, down there on a job for a
Denver crowd.
“‘Miss Casey,’ the engineer fellow said then, ‘I’m not going to leave
you here! Do you know what sort of place you’re in?’
“I told him all over again about the contract to dance. He frowned, and
beat on the table with his forefinger. And when I stopped talking he
told me what kind of place it was. I don’t suppose I need to tell you?
“I never would have got out of there whole except for that American. I
tell you what, I burn candles in the church for that man!
“He explained it all to me; just what business Teddy’s friend was up to,
shipping girls down to the dance halls in South and Central America. But
I didn’t like to believe Teddy knew what that friend of his was wishing
on me. The American thought he knew; and he called him an awful word. I
felt mad--and sick--and I told him that he was lying about Teddy. But I
didn’t believe he was lying. And he was awful nice about it; said he
didn’t blame me for talking up for my friends! But say! What men are
friends to girls like me? Never but one man was straight with me--that
fellow in Panama!”
The blue eyes were not hard now; neither did they crinkle merrily. Mary
Casey’s soul looked out of them.
“That engineer fellow was the man I told you I could respect,” she
stated gravely. “You know what he did for me? He helped me get away from
that place! He worked our way through the jabbering crowd until we were
near the door; and then, when the music was blaring loud, he threw his
coat over my dance dress and grabbed me with his left arm while he
pushed off the men who ran in front of us with his right fist. He had a
heavy fist--that fellow! I saw one man’s nose start bleeding. And a few
more were knocked over like ninepins. It only takes one white man to
ball out a crowd of niggers and spinnachers.
“‘Sorry for the rough-house, Miss Casey,’ said the engineer fellow, ‘but
we have to make our get-away before these nigger police show up.’
“We made it! We ran along the crooked streets that I’d thought were so
funny when I drove up from the boat; but they weren’t quite as funny
when we were running along them in the dark and I was catching my heels
in the holes between the big paving blocks that didn’t fit even against
each other. One of the heels came off, and we didn’t have time to go
back and pick it up. I hobbled along as well as I could, holding on to
the engineer fellow’s nice hard arm. I didn’t want to fuss when he was
being such a good sport.
“All the way down to the docks the engineer fellow was telling me, as
well as he could for running and dodging from shadow to shadow of the
squatty houses, and looking up and down each street that we had to
cross, what I was to do when I got to New Orleans. But I didn’t hear a
word he said: I was so busy thinking how nice it was to have a man like
that taking care of me--and how strong his arm was. If I’d stopped
thinking about his arm and thought more about what he was saying to me,
I’d have been better off. But you never are foxy at the time that you
ought to be.
“He swung me aboard a ship just as the gangplank was drawn up. All he
had time to do was to push a card into my hand.
“‘Here’s my address,’ he said. ‘Let me know how you are coming on, and
where you are.’ And then he said: ‘_Hasta la mañana!_’ which I’d picked
up in the dance hall, and knew meant that he was going to see me some
time.
“The captain was looking over the rail of the ship. The engineer fellow
threw him a little package twisted up in a piece of paper that he tore
from a notebook; and he said something to the captain in Spanish.
“So there I was, on a banana ship--in my dance dress and one heel off my
slippers, and the engineer fellow’s coat over my shoulders! I must have
struck that captain dumb! But I didn’t care. I was too busy staring at
the engineer fellow back there on the dock.
“A puff of wind came up and blew the card that he had given me out of my
hand and down into the water. I leaned way over the rail and saw it
sucked under by the churning of the machinery. And then I remembered
that I hadn’t read it. I’d been too busy staring at him to read his
note. I ran after the captain and asked him if he knew the name of the
fellow. ‘No,’ he said, ‘he’d never seen the chap before.’ I took the
fellow’s coat off and looked through the pockets to see if there wasn’t
another card in one of them. But there wasn’t a thing except some papers
scrawled all over with his figuring--his mining work, I guess.
“That’s the way I lost out. But I’ve always kept the coat. It reminds me
that I once met a good man.
“When we got to New Orleans with those bananas, I was still a long way
from home. And I didn’t have a cent of money; my purse was in the trunk
that they’d been going to send up to the dance hall at Colon. I said to
the captain the day we made port:
“‘I don’t know how I am to pay you, unless you wait until I get a job in
this town.’
“The captain told me that the engineer fellow had paid my passage, and
fifty dollars over for me to get a start on--buy some clothes to wear
when I was out looking for a job. That was a real man, that fellow! And
as I didn’t know his name having been such a fool about not reading his
card for looking at him, I couldn’t hunt him up to pay it back. So I
burn candles for him.”
Silence--except for the noise of the jazz band and the shuffling feet.
Kirwin broke this silence. He leaned nearer the girl; his voice was very
kind as he spoke to her.
“You shouldn’t have come out here. No girl should come out here so long
as she can make a cent in the States.”
“Dance halls in the States are supposed to be respectable. They’ll keep
girls on that they suspect a lot about; but they bounce her as soon as
all the people outside the business know about her. See? Everybody who
went to dance halls in New York knew I’d left on that contract; I’d been
such a fool I’d told it all around, trusting Teddy and his friend as I
did. That closed the doors of every place I tried to get an engagement.
I’ve chased half way round the world, now, trying to get to
some place where they couldn’t find out about it. San
Anton--’Frisco--Honolulu--I’ve tried ’em all. And I’ve sloped out of all
of ’em for the same reason. Running away from the flag, I was, instead
of following it like the cocktails did. Somebody’d always show up who
was there that night in Colon, or who had heard about it; and nobody
believed my tale. I don’t blame ’em! I wouldn’t have believed it if any
girl had tried to pass off on me that she’d been such a fool. Girls like
me are supposed to know their way around. But I’d been too smashed on
Teddy to see straight. That was my one big mistake: to get soft on him.
Girls like me can’t afford to care for a man.
“It did me one good turn--that jolt at Colon. It knocked Teddy out of my
head. I couldn’t help seeing the difference between him and the engineer
fellow.”
She absently stirred the sediment at the bottom of her glass.
“Listen: now I’ve told you all this--there’s one more thing I want to
tell you--I’ve walked straight, even out here. You believe me?” Her
voice was tense.
Kirwin and Angier spoke at once. “Yes!”
“I wish I could see that engineer fellow again, and tell him that, too.
He did a lot for me.”
The rattle of the trap drum, the bellow of the brasses rose above the
storm that still raged outside. The rain beat on the roof in rivalry
with the drum.
“Nice night to be getting back to the Tondo in a shaky carromata!” said
Mary Casey. “But it’s near closing time. You can tell by the state of
the chinks’ camisas. When they are soaked through, it’s early morning.
Chinks don’t heat up as soon as other men. Ain’t they a sweet lot? And
heavy on their feet! Oof!” She lifted one slippered foot and rubbed it
tenderly.
A Filipino walked up with mincing gait. He thrust out a dance ticket.
With a shrug of her thin shoulders Mary Casey went on the floor and
abandoned herself to his arms.
Angier turned a sober face to Kirwin.
“You win!” he said.
Kirwin twisted his wrist around until he could see the face of the watch
strapped there.
“No use to wait for Mayhew. It’s two o’clock.”
He clapped his hands together sharply. He settled their score with the
muchacho who came in response to that summons. The two men arose from
the table of empty glasses.
Fresh air came in to them as they opened the door. Seeming a part of
that fresh air was the tall and lean man whom they encountered on the
narrow sidewalk. A man in white linen of unmilitary cut, on his
close-cropped head a slouched panama that had seen better days. As the
three hailed a passing calesa and took refuge within its cramped depths
from the downpour, the man took off the battered panama and carefully
drained the water from its brim. The little horse attached to the calesa
by casual harness ambled down the street.
Above the sloshing sound made by the little horse’s feet as he wandered
through the puddles, the tall man lifted up his voice and spoke:
“Hard time getting away from the dames at the hotel,” he announced
grimly. “Those women would chew over a bit of heaven itself until it was
as pallid and unappetizing as an over-masticated piece of bacon! I fled
for my life, finally. Healthier down in the bowels of the earth,
surrounded by gold that doesn’t belong to me, and that I am merely
passing on for the chaps who are buying up Masbate.”
“Does it never make you want some gold of your own, Mayhew?” inquired
the curious Angier. “I’d not be able to stand the strain of being a
mining expert. Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. That
sort of stuff.”
“Might if I hadn’t been very busy with something else. I’ve been
prospecting for human gold. Struck the vein once, and lost it through a
fluke.” He turned a rather shame-faced gaze on his friends. “What would
you say if I told you that for years I’d been chasing a pipe-dream from
pillar to post--always trying to catch up with it and see if I was right
in my assay? Taking unlikely jobs which would carry me to unlikely
places--never overlooking a dance hall this side of hell--with only one
thing tangible enough to prove to me that it wasn’t actually a dream--a
broken slipper heel that I’d picked up in the street on my way back
from--from the vision, you might say!”
“So it’s a woman you’ve been sleuthing, you old son of a gun!” howled
gleefully the unobservant Angier.
But Kirwin leaned forward and touched the cochero on the shoulder.
“_Mano!_” he commanded. “And hurry that plug along!”
The calesa turned a corner on one of its two inadequate wheels. The
three men were thrown against each other.
“What the devil, Kirwin----” began Angier. “Oh, I see!” He whistled
softly.
“_Sila!_” Kirwin directed the cochero.
The calesa veered around a curve on its other wheel.
“_Poco más!_”
The calesa came to an abrupt halt in front of the dance hall that they
had quitted a short time before. The men of the jazz band were coming
out, their swathed instruments under their arms. The proprietor was
fitting the key into the lock of the door.
Kirwin leaned from the calesa and looked anxiously up and down the
narrow street. A solitary female figure, huddled under a dripping
umbrella, was picking its way, with the delicate step of the dancer,
between the pools of water that overflowed from the gutter on to the
sidewalk.
Kirwin sprang from the calesa. He pulled the astonished Mayhew after
him. With one hand on Mayhew’s shoulder, he turned him in the direction
of the huddled figure under the umbrella.
“Go fit that heel to Cinderella!” he laughed.
CÉLESTINE
BY JAMES HOPPER
From _Collier’s_
In March the war came much nearer to the town, and an aviation camp was
set up just outside, in the wheatfields by the National Road. It took
shape, as it were, overnight, as if by some enchantment; Célestine, from
the round window of her garret room in the inn, saw the planes alighting
like white birds in the rose of the dawn. They came five by five from
the east; for two days they remained as they had landed, shelterless and
inert, as if worn out. Then heavy trucks came rumbling, threw off bales
of canvas and partitions of thin wood, and soon a flying camp stood
complete, with its tents and its sheds, its hundreds of busy mechanics.
Many of the white birds seemed wounded. Holes were in the wings, some of
the wings trailed. The conductors of those weary dragons were
sunken-eyed; their faces tattooed with oil, their hair matted. But a
lull had come; somewhere in the hills to the east the new drive at last
had been stopped; you could hear at night the soft drumming of the guns.
The flying men cleaned up. Primp, in freshly pressed uniforms and
shining boots, they strolled about, very young men, slim and elegant,
twirling swagger sticks and parading gaiety. Gaiety, although each one
of them bore stamped upon his heart, as pure gold is stamped, a small
secret figure which stood for a certain day, a certain hour, the end of
youth, of joy, of adventure and love. Mostly they passed by the inn, on
their way to the brighter cafés at the centre of the town; but some of
them stopped at the inn and sat at the tables under the trees.
Célestine’s heart beat faster when they were there; she watched them as
she worked; from a distance, for she did not wait on the tables.
She was not allowed to wait on the tables because she was not pretty.
The mistress of the inn believed in pretty serving maids, and Célestine
was not pretty. The thick skin of her face was a mask which let pass not
a ray of the iridescences of the soul; before that sad dead face men
stood embarrassed or even angry. So she did not wear the white aprons
and caps, the lacy waists of the tablemaids, but rough blue garments;
and did not flit outside under the trees, but was held to the bedrooms
and the kitchen’s back regions. She was the drudge; she started with the
day. She polished boots, laid fires, carried hot water and trays up
countless stairs, made beds, swept rooms, swabbed halls. She carried
heavy luggage upstairs and obeyed the rageful tyranny of the bells.
Midnight would strike before she threw herself upon her narrow pallet
under the eaves.
Every afternoon, from four to six, she took the baby of the mistress of
the inn out in its perambulator. This was her recreation and her rest.
After the flying field had been established on the National Road, it was
there she would go. The place had become the town promenade. Out to it,
along the road, especially on Sundays, the inhabitants would go in
family groups--in family groups in which there were no men, unless,
perhaps, some brittle old grandfather.
Once at the field, they stood about respectfully noting everything
avidly and calling one another’s attention to what they saw; and small
boys, terribly interested in what for several years now had been the
male’s sole interest, slipping under the ropes, got to where they had no
business to be.