The Arena was cosy and inviting when, on a night during Easter week,
Ulick entered and traversed the length of the room. All the tables were
occupied. Mr. Muschenheim met him and for a few minutes they gossiped
in German, which language Ulick spoke as well as he did French and
English because of his sojourn at Jena. "Your friends are sitting in
the next room, in the corner," said his host. Ulick cast inquiring
eyes. To his surprise he saw Milt and with him, Alfred. Considering how
heartily he had cursed him after their last encounter Ulick's power of
social adaptation must have been in excellent working order. He went
over to the pair and was welcomed by Milt with unfeigned cordiality.
Alfred gave him two chilly fingers. "You here"? Ulick asked. "Yes,"
replied Milt. "I am home for a week, the Easter holidays, you know,"
"And he isn't ashamed to sit in a café with his collar buttoned
behind," Stoned jeered. "Now, Alfred, what nonsense. On the continent
even the clergy go to public places, such as concerts, opera, and
restaurants. We must eat and drink like other men. Look at Mgr. Ducey.
He is a man of the world, yet an irreproachable ecclesiastic," Alfred
sniffed. Ulick didn't dare to ask news of Mona. His heart was heavy
with anticipation. The sight of her brother revived his love. What a
charming girl she was. What intelligence. How unlike other women? With
her the expected never happened. He was annoyed at his false position,
and not reassured when his eyes met the searching glance of Milt.
"Well, Ulick, how goes the culture of that famous ego of yours?" The
tone was friendly, but for some reason, inexplicable to himself, Ulick
felt annoyed. "My ego is all right, Milt. Anyhow, it is freer than
yours. Convictions are prisons, you know?" "Ah, Nietzsche. I see you
have absorbed his poison, too. My dear boy, those false prophets and
corrupters of youth always preach freedom. Freedom for what? While I
am not a determinist, yet I admit we can't be free from ourselves.
Our personality is an ensemble of our ancestral characteristics. Our
instincts are dangerous guides. Just now there is a tendency to place
instinct over intellect. Reason unaided by God is a treacherous guide,
but instinct alone! Heavens. In twenty years cosmos would be chaos."
Milt wiped his forehead.
"Phew!" cried Alfred, "what a sermon you will preach some day, Milt.
You will be a regular turkey-cock of God. Instinct or not, our country
is galloping hellward. Watch. When it was half aristocratic there
was some outward semblance of respect for the government, but today
the individual, and his rights, are both growing less and less. Mob
rules. The melting-pot! What not! We shall never melt the muckers
who are overrunning us. I happen to have a good friend, an abbé from
Luxembourg, little, plump, blond; the typical French abbé of the
18th century. He has a theory. He says: "The first swarm of locusts
ate up the Indians; then came the Irish; and the English and Dutch
disappeared. Followed the Germans, and now the Italians and Slavs. They
have eaten up the native American. The Jews are the last and deadliest
locusts of all; when they finish with America not a green leaf, a blade
of grass, an ear of wheat, will be left in the land." The others were
amused at his earnestness. Surely Alfred was of Jewish descent! Ulick
interposed: "But Alfred you are a Jew. Why do you class them among the
destructive elements? As for the Italians--well, I wish that America
had been completely colonized by them. What a different atmosphere
would be ours. The fine-arts, and the art of living, would be our
heritage instead of our craze for commercialism, not to mention the
growing menace of puritanism." "Don't abuse the Puritans," interrupted
Milt. "They are a misrepresented people. It is their fanatical
offspring who will lay waste America. A moribund branch of Christianity
will attempt to shackle freedom and force its prejudices on a free
people...."
"Free fiddlesticks"! Alfred was in a rage. "Melting-pot be hanged.
There wall be anarchy in this land if these rattlesnakes are not
scotched--you can't kill them. A republic is doomed to tyranny; the
worst sort of tyranny--public opinion. I grant you, Milt, that the
modern breed of those Mayflower pests are more tyrannical than the
original lot of religious degenerates--what else were they, crazy as
lunatics with their private interpretations of biblical texts; the
book of the Apocalypse is responsible for more madmen than any other
so-called sacred script in existence--yet the neo-puritan means to
put us all in a little hell of his own. He calls it heaven, but it
will be hell. The country is overrun by astrologists, fortune-tellers,
unchristian scientists, holy howlers. We are not far from being a
nation of mad folk. One neurosis follows another. I tell you--anarchy
looms ahead. And woman-suffrage--the worst of all our tyrants; woman,
the eternal ninny. She is to rule, as if she doesn't play her sex
now for all it's worth. Pardon me, Milt--she is right as a cook or a
concubine, but as a ruler! Excuse me. And prohibition. It's coming, and
in its train, drugs and other tyrannies. Men will smoke bad tobacco in
fear and trembling. The melting-pot--I see the locusts swarming for
their last attack on the good things of America. Poor old America! She
succumbed because she was too sentimental, and sentimentality breeds
altruism, and altruism breeds busybodies, and busy bodies breed war.
War breeds more war, and then the final catastrophe...."
"Stop it!" commanded Milt, "stop that choral of pessimism. So bad
things are not." "Didn't Nietzsche assert that Christianity and
alcohol have been the two great means of corruption and still are
the worst foes of civilization?" asked Ulick. "Why drag in alcohol?"
"If he did, he was quite right," commented Alfred, as he emptied his
stein and rapped for another. "Symptoms of mysticism are usually
accompanied by sexual impotence." Milt was distressed. The turn of
the talk didn't please him, besides, it was Ulick, not Alfred, in
whom he was interested. The other, that little Jew atheist with his
filthy vices--all the turpitudes, he felt assured--was a rotten branch
lopped from his own religion and race. Christianity wanted none of such
men; dessicated souls. Vases of iniquity. Vile, accursed, doomed to
Gehenna. Nevertheless, with his paternal solicitude for the straying
sinner, Milt placed his hand over Alfred's and smiled benignly.
"Alfred," he adjured, "Alfred repent while there's time. Here is
Ulick fuddling his wits with writings that are of no pith or moment.
Their rhetoric it is that seduces him. The petticoats, too,--Hello!
who's this? I vow if here isn't Paul Godard." Ulick groaned. Always
Paul. He couldn't escape him. Nor did Alfred look overjoyed. Paul,
accompanied by an insignificant chap, bustled to the table. "Oh! I
say, isn't this a jolly go. You fellows look as if you had the affairs
of state burdening your souls. You have? Well, it's time I intervened
and brought a new atmosphere to cheer you up. How do, bishop? No, not
yet? But soon will be, I hope, Milt. Some day, some day! as Tosti
sings. How d'ye do, Ulick? When did you see Dodo last? Fascinating
creature. I drink her health. And how are you, Stone? Your bones as
sour as ever. Ah! yes, I forgot! This is my friend Bell. But, of
course, you know him. He is working the same side of the street as you
fellows--excepting the Rev. Milt. What is it you say, Invern? Once a
newspaper man always a whore? Isn't that it? A jolly epigram, that...."
He rattled on "What I really said was this," ....ly answered Ulick:
"Once a millionaire always an imbecile." Paul laughed the loudest. "The
tables turned, that deal, and speaking of table-turning, let's get the
head-waiter to fetch a larger table. I need elbow room for I feel that
I'm going to make a night of it." "What night isn't all night with you?"
demanded Ulick. Paul sweetly grinned. "The night you are there," and
jerked his hand in the direction of Lexington Avenue. Invern scowled,
but kept his temper.
They now sat in the middle of the room around a bigger table. Bell,
who had been blinking at the company, blurted out: "Paul, I saw a
divorced wife of mine today." "Which one"? asked Paul, winking at
Stone. "I think it was the one who plays the violoncello--or should
I say, 'cello, Stone? Thank you. Yes, it was Ida. She set me crazy
with her practising. That bullfiddle always between her knees--she
complained of corns on her knees--always rumbling or buzzing like a big
bumble-bee with a basso-profundo stinger. No, I simply couldn't stand
it. I gave her grounds for divorce, miles and miles of grounds"--"Don't
boast, Bell," admonished Paul--"I don't boast Godard. Whatever fruit
fails we men all know that the co-respondent crop never fails. I might
add, never frosts." And then he went off into an hysterical burst of
laughter. No one smiled. Undaunted, Bell dried his eyes and resumed:
"Ida is O. K. She married a house-painter. I don't think any the less
of her for that. House-painters make more money than journalists--I
beg pardon, Stone--I mean, newspaper men. That constipated gargoyle,
Snapgood, he hates the word. He calls himself a journalist. I'm a
newspaper man, I am...." "And as ignorant as one, too," sarcastically
added Alfred. A chorus of dissent followed. Because Bell was a born
ass, the tribe he belonged to was not, necessarily the same. "You
should go to London, Alfred. There it takes four newspaper men combined
to understand a Yankee joke." It was Milt who spoke. "I don't wonder,"
retorted Alfred.
Bell was a much-married, much-harried, much-divorced man. Some wags
said that he was more divorced than married, more sinning than sinned
against. He admitted that he had to pay common-law alimony, as he
called it, to his common-law wives. They were legion. This small,
stupid-looking chap had a passion for getting into scrapes with girls.
He had been divorced four times in four different states by duped
women, whose indignation was boundless when they failed to get alimony;
rather, failed to collect. Their man was quicksilver. He always
escaped. Twice, death had obligingly stepped in and divorced him. In
these cases he even escaped paying posthumous alimony; he wouldn't foot
the undertaker's bill. His motto was: "Let the dead bury the dead."
And so it came to pass, he had married in succession his land-lady's
daughter, a greasy frump, a widow with an annuity, a pianiste, a
'cellist. Bell was also musical. He had successively lived with a fat
chorus girl, a professional prostitute--he kept this particular episode
to himself--a circus-rider, a servant girl, an octoroon, and with two
sisters, who worked in an artificial flowershop. He was versatile,
Bell. As he was glib of pen and tongue he earned plenty of money and
the women flocked about him. He had a certain goatish reputation.
Girls giggled when he passed, his eyes lecherously ogling. Little
riders! they whispered, and giggled again. Ulick despised him, but
his own morals were hardly a whit better; only his tastes were more
discriminating; thus he consoled himself.