stamp of time and whose contempt for the contemporary is from behind the
easy refuge of the classics, suffer you the shuddering analogy that
between Aspasia who inspired Pericles, Theodora who suggested the
Justinian code, and Gertie Slayback who commandeered Jimmie Batch, is a
sistership which rounds them, like a lasso thrown back into time, into
one and the same petticoat dynasty behind the throne.
True, Gertie Slayback's _mise en scene_ was a two-room kitchenette
apartment situated in the Bronx at a surveyor's farthest point between
two Subway stations, and her present state one of frequent red-faced
forays down into a packing-case. But there was that in her eyes which
witchingly bespoke the conquered, but not the conqueror. Hers was
actually the titillating wonder of a bird which, captured, closes its
wings, that surrender can be so sweet.
Once she sat on the edge of the packing-case, dallying with a hammer,
then laid it aside suddenly, to cross the littered room and place the
side of her head to the immaculate waistcoat of Mr. Jimmie Batch,
red-faced, too, over wrenching up with hatchet-edge a barrel-top.
"Jimmie darling, I--I just never will get over your finding this place
for us."
Mr. Batch wiped his forearm across his brow, his voice jerking between
the squeak of nails extracted from wood.
"It was you, honey. You give me the to let ad. and I came to look,
that's all."
"Just the samey, it was my boy found it. If you hadn't come to look we
might have been forced into taking that old dark coop over on Simpson
Street."
"What's all this junk in this barrel?"
"Them's kitchen utensils, honey."
"Kitchen what?"
"Kitchen things that you don't know nothing about except to eat good
things out of."
"What's this?"
"Don't bend it! That's a celery-brush. Ain't it cute?"
"A celery-brush! Why didn't you get it a comb, too?"
"Ah, now, honey-bee, don't go trying to be funny and picking through
these things you don't know nothing about! They're just cute things I'm
going to cook something grand suppers in, for my something awful bad
boy."
He leaned down to kiss her at that. "Gee!"
She was standing, her shoulder to him and head thrown back against his
chest. She looked up to stroke his cheek, her face foreshortened.
"I'm all black and blue pinching myself, Jimmie."
"Me too."
"Every night when I get home from working here in the flat I say to
myself in the looking-glass, I say, 'Gertie Slayback, what if you're
only dreamin'?'"
"Me too."
"I say to myself, 'Are you sure that darling flat up there, with the new
pink-and-white wall-paper and the furniture arriving every day, is going
to be yours in a few days when you're Mrs. Jimmie Batch?'"
"Mrs. Jimmie Batch--say, that's immense."
"I keep saying it to myself every night, 'One day less.' Last night it
was two days. To-night it'll be--one day, Jimmie, till I'm--her."
She closed her eyes and let her hand linger up to his cheek, head still
back against him, so that, inclining his head, he could rest his lips in
the ash-blond fluff of her hair.
"Talk about can't wait! If to-morrow was any farther off they'd have to
sweep out a padded cell for me."
She turned to rumple the smooth light thatch of his hair. "Bad boy!
Can't wait! And here we are getting married all of a sudden, just like
that. Up to the time of this draft business, Jimmie Batch, 'pretty soon'
was the only date I could ever get out of you, and now here you are
crying over one day's wait. Bad honey boy!"
He reached back for the pink newspaper so habitually protruding from his
hip-pocket. "You ought to see the way they're neck-breaking for the
marriage-license bureaus since the draft. First thing we know the whole
shebang of the boys will be claiming exemption of sole support of wife."
"It's a good thing we made up our minds quick, Jimmie. They'll be
getting wise. If too many get exemption from the army by marrying right
away, it'll be a give-away."
"I'd like to know who can lay his hands on the exemption of a little
wife to support."
"Oh, Jimmie, it--it sounds so funny. Being supported! Me that always did
the supporting, not only to me, but to my mother and great-grandmother
up to the day they died."
"I'm the greatest little supporter you ever seen."
"Me getting up mornings to stay at home in my own darling little flat,
and no basement or time-clock. Nothing but a busy little hubby to eat
him nice, smelly, bacon breakfast and grab him nice morning newspaper,
kiss him wifie, and run downtown to support her. Jimmie, every morning
for your breakfast I'm going to fry----"
"You bet your life he's going to support her, and he's going to pay back
that forty dollars of his girl's that went into his wedding duds, that
hundred and ninety of his girl's savings that went into furniture----"
"We got to meet our instalments every month first, Jimmie. That's what
we want--no debts and every little darling piece of furniture paid up."
"We--I'm going to pay it, too."
"And my Jimmie is going to work to get himself promoted and quit being a
sorehead at his steady hours and all."
"I know more about selling, honey, than the whole bunch of dubs in that
store put together if they'd give me a chance to prove it."
She laid her palm to his lips.
"Shh-h-h! You don't nothing of the kind. It's not conceit, it's work is
going to get my boy his raise."
"If they'd listen to me, that department would----"
"Sh-h-h! J. G. Hoffheimer don't have to get pointers from Jimmie Batch
how to run his department store."
"There you go again. What's J. G. Hoffheimer got that I ain't? Luck and
a few dollars in his pocket that, if I had in mine, would----"
"It was his own grit put those dollars there, Jimmie. Just put it out of
your head that it's luck makes a self-made man."
"Self-made! You mean things just broke right for him. That's two-thirds
of this self-made business."
"You mean he buckled right down to brass tacks, and that's what my boy
is going to do."
"The trouble with this world is it takes money to make money. Get your
first few dollars, I always say, no matter how, and then when you're on
your feet scratch your conscience if it itches. That's why I said in the
beginning, if we had took that hundred and ninety furniture money and
staked it on----"
"Jimmie, please--please! You wouldn't want to take a girl's savings of
years and years to gamble on a sporty cigar proposition with a card-room
in the rear. You wouldn't, Jimmie. You ain't that kind of fellow. Tell
me you wouldn't, Jimmie."
He turned away to dive into the barrel. "Naw," he said. "I wouldn't."
The sun had receded, leaving a sudden sullen gray; the little square
room, littered with an upheaval of excelsior, sheet-shrouded furniture,
and the paper-hanger's paraphernalia and inimitable smells, darkening
and seeming to chill.
"We got to quit now, Jimmie. It's getting dark and the gas ain't turned
on in the meter yet."
He rose up out of the barrel, holding out at arm's-length what might
have been a tinsmith's version of a porcupine.
"What in-- What's this thing that scratched me?"
She danced to take it. "It's a grater, a darling grater for horseradish
and nutmeg and cocoanut. I'm going to fix you a cocoanut cake for our
honeymoon supper to-morrow night, honey-bee. Essie Wohlgemuth over in
the cake-demonstrating department is going to bring me the recipe.
Cocoanut cake! And I'm going to fry us a little steak in this darling
little skillet. Ain't it the cutest!"
"Cute she calls a tin skillet."
"Look what's pasted on it. 'Little Housewife's Skillet. The Kitchen
Fairy.' That's what I'm going to be, Jimmie, the kitchen fairy. Give me
that. It's a rolling-pin. All my life I've wanted a rolling-pin. Look
honey, a little string to hang it up by. I'm going to hang everything up
in rows. It's going to look like Tiffany's kitchen, all shiny. Give me,
honey; that's an egg-beater. Look at it whiz. And this--this is a pan
for war bread. I'm going to make us war bread to help the soldiers."
"You're a little soldier yourself," he said.
"That's what I would be if I was a man, a soldier all in brass buttons."
"There's a bunch of the fellows going," said Mr. Batch, standing at the
window, looking out over roofs, dilly-dallying up and down on his heels
and breaking into a low, contemplative whistle.
She was at his shoulder, peering over it. "You wouldn't be afraid, would
you, Jimmie?"
"You bet your life I wouldn't."
She was tiptoes now, her arms creeping up to him. "Only my boy's got a
wife--a brand-new wifie to support, ain't he?"
"That's what he has," said Mr. Batch, stroking her forearm, but still
gazing through and beyond whatever roofs he was seeing.
"Jimmie!"
"Huh?"
"Look! We got a view of the Hudson River from our flat, just like we
lived on Riverside Drive."
"All the Hudson River I can see is fifteen smokestacks and somebody's
wash-line out."
"It ain't so. We got a grand view. Look! Stand on tiptoe, Jimmie, like
me. There, between that water-tank on that black roof over there and
them two chimneys. See? Watch my finger. A little stream of something
over there that moves."
"No, I don't see."
"Look, honey-bee, close! See that little streak?"
"All right, then, if you see it I see it."
"To think we got a river view from our flat! It's like living in the
country. I'll peek out at it all day long. God! honey, I just never will
be over the happiness of being done with basements."
"It was swell of old Higgins to give us this half-Saturday. It shows
where you stood with the management, Gert--this and a five-dollar gold
piece. Lord knows they wouldn't pony up that way if it was me getting
married by myself."
"It's because my boy ain't shown them down there yet the best that's in
him. You just watch his little safety-first wife see to it that from now
on he keeps up her record of never in seven years pushing the time-clock
even one minute late, and that he keeps his stock shelves O. K. and
shows his department he's a comer-on."
"With that bunch of boobs a fellow's got a swell chance to get
anywheres."
"It's getting late, Jimmie. It don't look nice for us to stay here so
late alone, not till--to-morrow. Ruby and Essie and Charley are going to
meet us in the minister's back parlor at ten sharp in the morning. We
can be back here by noon and get the place cleared up enough to give 'em
a little lunch, just a fun lunch without fixings."
"I hope the old guy don't waste no time splicing us. It's one of the
things a fellow likes to have over with."
"Jimmie! Why, it's the most beautiful thing in the world, like a garden
of lilies or--or something, a marriage ceremony is! You got the ring
safe, honey-bee, and the license?"
"Pinned in my pocket where you put 'em, Flirty Gertie."
"Flirty Gertie! Now you'll begin teasing me with that all our life--the
way I didn't slap your face that night when I should have. I just
couldn't have, honey. Goes to show we were just cut and dried for each
other, don't it? Me, a girl that never in her life let a fellow even bat
his eyes at her without an introduction. But that night when you winked,
honey--something inside of me just winked back."
"My girl!"
"You mean it, boy? You ain't sorry about nothing, Jimmie?"
"Sorry? Well, I guess not!"
"You seen the way--she--May--you seen for yourself what she was, when we
seen her walking, that next night after Ceiner's, nearly staggering, up
Sixth Avenue with Budge Evans."
"I never took no stock in her, honey. I was just letting her like me."
She sat back on the box edge, regarding him, her face so soft and wont
to smile that she could not keep its composure.
"Get me my hat and coat, honey. We'll walk down. Got the key?"
They skirmished in the gloom, moving through slit-like aisles of
furniture and packing-box.
"Ouch!"
"Oh, the running water is hot, Jimmie, just like the ad. said! We got
red-hot running water in our flat. Close the front windows, honey. We
don't want it to rain in on our new green sofa. Not till it's paid for,
anyways."
"Hurry."
"I'm ready."
They met at the door, kissing on the inside and the outside of it; at
the head of the fourth and the third and the second balustrade down.
"We'll always make 'em little love landings, Jimmie, so we can't ever
get tired climbing them."
"Yep."
Outside there was still a pink glow in a clean sky. The first flush of
spring in the air had died, leaving chill. They walked briskly, arm in
arm, down the asphalt incline of sidewalk leading from their
apartment-house, a new street of canned homes built on a hillside--the
sepulchral abode of the city's trapped whose only escape is down the
fire-escape, and then only when the alternative is death. At the base of
the hill there flows, in constant hubbub, a great up-and-down artery of
street, repeating itself, mile after mile, in terms of the butcher, the
baker, and the every-other-corner drug-store of a million dollar
corporation. Housewives with perambulators and oilcloth shopping bags.
Children on roller-skates. The din of small tradesmen and the humdrum of
every city block where the homes remain unboarded all summer, and every
wife is on haggling terms with the purveyor of her evening roundsteak
and mess of rutabaga.
Then there is the soap-box provender, too, sure of a crowd, offering
creed, propaganda, patent medicine, and politics. It is the pulpit of
the reformer and the housetop of the fanatic, this soap-box. From it the
voice to the city is often a pious one, an impious one, and almost
always a raucous one. Luther and Sophocles and even a Citizen of
Nazareth made of the four winds of the street corner the walls of a
temple of wisdom. What more fitting acropolis for freedom of speech
than the great out-of-doors!
Turning from the incline of cross-street into this petty Bagdad of the
petty wise, the voice of the street corner lifted itself above the
inarticulate din of the thoroughfare. A youth, thewed like an ox,
surmounted on a stack of three self-provided canned-goods boxes, his
in-at-the-waist silhouette thrown out against a sky that was almost
ready to break out in stars; a crowd tightening about him.
"It's a soldier-boy talkin', Gert."
"If it ain't!" They tiptoed at the fringe of the circle, heads back.
"Look, Gert, he's a lieutenant; he's got a shoulder-bar. And those four
down there holding the flag are just privates. You can always tell a
lieutenant by the bar."
"Uh-huh."
"Say, them boys do stack up some for Uncle Sam."
"'Shh-h-h, Jimmie!"
"I'm here to tell you that them boys stack up some."
A banner stiffened out in the breeze, Mr. Batch reading: "Enlist before
you are drafted. Last chance to beat the draft. Prove your patriotism.
Enlist now! Your country calls!"
"Come on," said Mr. Batch.
"Wait. I want to hear what he's saying."
" ... there's not a man here before me can afford to shirk his duty to
his country. The slacker can't get along without his country, but his
country can very easily get along without him."
Cheers.
"The poor exemption boobs are already running for doctors' certificates
and marriage licenses, but even if they get by with it--and it is
ninety-nine to one they won't--they can't run away from their own
degradation and shame."
"Come on, Jimmie."
"Wait."
"Men of America, for every one of you who tries to dodge his duty to
his country there is a yellow streak somewhere underneath the hide of
you. Women of America, every one of you that helps to foster the spirit
of cowardice in your particular man or men is helping to make a coward.
It's the cowards and the quitters and the slackers and dodgers that need
this war more than the patriotic ones who are willing to buckle on and
go!
"Don't be a buttonhole patriot! A government that is good enough to live
under is good enough to fight under!"
Cheers.
"If there is any reason on earth that has manifested itself for this
devastating and terrible war it is that it has been a maker of men.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am back from four months in the trenches with
the French army, and I've come home, now that my own country is at war,
to give her every ounce of energy I've got to offer. As soon as a hole
in my side is healed up I'm going back to those trenches, and I want to
say to you that them four months of mine face to face with life and with
death have done more for me than all my twenty-four civilian years put
together."
Cheers.
"I'll be a different man, if I live to come back home after this war and
take up my work again as a draftsman. Why, I've seen weaklings and
self-confessed failures and even ninnies go into them trenches and come
out--oh yes, plenty of them do come out--men. Men that have got close
enough down to the facts of things to feel new realizations of what life
means come over them. Men that have gotten back their pep, their
ambitions, their unselfishness. That's what war can do for your men, you
women who are helping them to foster the spirit of holding back, of
cheating their government. That's what war can do for your men. Make of
them the kind of men who some day can face their children without
having to hang their heads. Men who can answer for their part in making
the world a safe place for democracy."
An hour they stood there, the air quieting but chilling, and lavishly
sown stars cropping out. Street lights had come out, too, throwing up in
ever darker relief the figure above the heads of the crowd. His voice
had coarsened and taken on a raw edge, but every gesture was flung from
the socket, and from where they had forced themselves into the tight
circle Gertie Slayback, her mouth fallen open and her head still back,
could see the sinews of him ripple under khaki and the diaphragm lift
for voice.
There was a shift of speakers then, this time a private, still too
rangy, but his looseness of frame seeming already to conform to the
exigency of uniform.
"Come on, Jimmie. I--I'm cold."
They worked out into the freedom of the sidewalk, and for ten minutes,
down blocks of petty shops already lighted, walked in a silence that
grew apace.
He was suddenly conscious that she was crying, quietly, her handkerchief
wadded against her mouth. He strode on with a scowl and his head bent.
"Let's sit down in this little park, Jimmie. I'm tired."
They rested on a bench on one of those small triangles of
breathing-space which the city ekes out now and then; mill ends of land
parcels.
He took immediately to roving the toe of his shoe in and out among the
gravel. She stole out her hand to his arm.
"Well, Jimmie?" Her voice was in the gauze of a whisper that hardly left
her throat.
"Well, what?" he said, still toeing.
"There--there's a lot of things we never thought about, Jimmie."
"Aw!"
"Eh, Jimmie?"
"You mean _you_ never thought about."
"What do you mean?"
"I know what I mean alrighty."
"I--I was the one that suggested it, Jimmie, but--but you fell in. I--I
just couldn't bear to think of it, Jimmie--your going and all. I
suggested it, but--you fell in."
"Say, when a fellow's shoved he falls. I never gave a thought to
sneaking an exemption until it was put in my head. I'd smash the fellow
in the face that calls me coward, I will."
"You could have knocked me down with a feather, Jimmie, looking at it
his way, all of a sudden."
"You couldn't me. Don't think I was ever strong for the whole business.
I mean the exemption part. I wasn't going to say nothing. What's the
use, seeing the way you had your heart set on--on things? But the whole
business, if you want to know it, went against my grain. I'll smash the
fellow in the face that calls me a coward."
"I know, Jimmie; you--you're right. It was me suggested hurrying things
like this. Sneakin'! Oh, God! ain't I the messer-up!"
"Lay easy, girl. I'm going to see it through. I guess there's been
fellows before me and will be after me who have done worse. I'm going to
see it through. All I got to say is I'll smash up the fellow calls me
coward. Come on, forget it. Let's go."
She was close to him, her cheek crinkled against his with the frank kind
of social unconsciousness the park bench seems to engender.
"Come on, Gert. I got a hunger on."
"'Shh-h-h, Jimmie! Let me think. I'm thinking."
"Too much thinking killed a cat. Come on."
"Jimmie!"
"Huh?"
"Jimmie--would you--had you ever thought about being a soldier?"
"Sure. I came in an ace of going into the army that time after--after
that little Central Street trouble of mine. I've got a book in my trunk
this minute on military tactics. Wouldn't surprise me a bit to see me
land in the army some day."
"It's a fine thing, Jimmie, for a fellow--the army."
"Yeh, good for what ails him."
She drew him back, pulling at his shoulder so that finally he faced her.
"Jimmie!"
"Huh?"
"I got an idea."
"Shoot."
"You remember once, honey-bee, how I put it to you that night at
Ceiner's how, if it was for your good, no sacrifice was too much to
make."
"Forget it."
"You didn't believe it."
"Aw, say now, what's the use digging up ancient history?"
"You'd be right, Jimmie, not to believe it. I haven't lived up to what I
said."
"Oh Lord, honey! What's eating you now? Come to the point."
She would not meet his eyes, turning her head from him to hide lips that
would quiver. "Honey, it--it ain't coming off--that's all. Not
now--anyways."
"What ain't?"
"Us."
"Who?"
"You know what I mean, Jimmie. It's like everything the soldier boy on
the corner just said. I--I saw you getting red clear behind your ears
over it. I--I was, too, Jimmie. It's like that soldier boy was put there
on that corner just to show me, before it was too late, how wrong I been
in every one of my ways. Us women who are helping to foster slackers.
That's what we're making of them--slackers for life. And here I been
thinking it was your good I had in mind, when all along it's been mine.
That's what it's been, mine!"
"Aw, now, Gert----"
"You got to go, Jimmie. You got to go, because you want to go
and--because I want you to go."
"Where?"
"To war."
He took hold of her two arms because they were trembling. "Aw, now,
Gert, I didn't say anything complaining. I----"
"You did, Jimmie, you did, and--and I never was so glad over you that
you did complain. I just never was so glad. I want you to go, Jimmie. I
want you to go and get a man made out of you. They'll make a better job
out of you than ever I can. I want you to get the yellow streak washed
out. I want you to get to be all the things he said you would. For every
line he was talking up there, I could see my boy coming home to me some
day better than anything I could make out of him, babying him the way I
can't help doing. I could see you, honey-bee, coming back to me with the
kind of lift to your head a fellow has when he's been fighting to make
the world a safe place for dem--for whatever it was he said. I want you
to go, Jimmie. I want you to beat the draft, too. Nothing on earth can
make me not want you to go."
"Why, Gert--you're kiddin'!"
"Honey, you want to go, don't you? You want to square up those shoulders
and put on khaki, don't you? Tell me you want to go!"
"Why--why, yes, Gert, if----"
"Oh, you're going, Jimmie! You're going!"
"Why, girl--you're crazy! Our flat! Our furniture--our----"
"What's a flat? What's furniture? What's anything? There's not a firm in
business wouldn't take back a boy's furniture--a boy's
everything--that's going out to fight for--for dem-o-cracy! What's a
flat? What's anything?"
He let drop his head to hide his eyes.
Do you know it is said that on the Desert of Sahara, the slope of
Sorrento, and the marble of Fifth Avenue the sun can shine whitest?
There is an iridescence to its glittering on bleached sand, blue bay,
and Carrara facade that is sheer light distilled to its utmost.
On one such day when, standing on the high slope of Fifth Avenue where
it rises toward the Park, and looking down on it, surging to and fro, it
was as if, so manifest the brilliancy, every head wore a tin helmet,
parrying sunlight at a thousand angles of refraction.
Parade-day, all this glittering midstream is swept to the clean sheen of
a strip of moire, this splendid desolation blocked on each side by
crowds half the density of the sidewalk.