convinced her better than any acting.
“But is a ‘best man’ necessary,” she persisted, “to a European wedding?”
“In every marriage,” I replied, “a licence is needed, and in any
marriage outside England a consular officer as witness; but I think I
could get an officer who would also act as ‘best man.’”
“Would that be legal?” she asked.
“Oh yes,” I remarked; “but what does the marriage matter if we love
each other?”
“Love’s all right,” she said, “but marriage gives security, and that’s
what a woman wants above everything.
“You’ll see,” she whispered, “how I’ll love you when you’re my
husband,” and she wound her arms around my neck and put her lips on
mine. In one moment they were hot, and she began then to ruffle my
hair with quick, impatient hands, small symbols of her keen desire. As
in turn I took and kissed her she sighed and relaxed, yielding to my
embrace. However self-interested and tyrannic she might be, she was
certainly a wonderful lover.
I now pretended that I did not want to go to the coast. “I’m in no
haste,” I said to Rachel. “I’d be content to stay always just as we
are. What do you care for a dress? And what’s a ‘best man’ to me?”
She appeared to agree with me, though now and then she would say
that the sooner an unpleasant thing was finished and done with the
better; but I noticed that the Sultan and Abdulla steadily hastened
our departure, and Tapp informed me from Leah that Rachel was secretly
helping the whole movement.
Meanwhile she showed me more unreservedly the passionate side of her
nature, evidently trusting altogether to the sex attraction to pull me
back to her at the earliest possible moment.
I sometimes wondered if she had any further or higher conception
of love; and now, looking back, I question it. No doubt a certain
motherliness would have come into her love if ever she had children,
but as a girl she was singularly free of it--a lover and nothing more.
The æsthetic sense in her was fairly developed. She knew a lovely
woman’s figure from a common type; knew that Leah’s shapely slim form
was more beautiful than Micah’s, and that Micah in turn was finer than
the negroid type. The conventional appealed to her strongly. As soon
as I spoke about the black hairs on her chest, they disappeared. She
tweaked them out ruthlessly, though she made her chest sore by her
roughness. I was astonished to see how angry and inflamed the place
became, but I treated it with wet pad of boracic acid, and it healed up
in a day. “He just put his hands on her breast and a little water on a
rag, and next morning it was well: great magic, his,” Leah told Tapp,
and that report brought me hosts of patients. But that’s another story.
For music Rachel had a distinct gift, but there her talents ended. Love
to her was a matter of sex, and spiritual companionship had little or
nothing to do with the matter.
It was Rachel who taught me to see the ordinary girl without glamour
or romance. As soon as I drew away from her I began to study her, and
with study came understanding. I could soon read her like an open
book, and her ignorance would have aroused my pity were it not for her
hard obstinacy of temper. In spite of her passionate kisses we drifted
steadily apart, till I could see her and her father in fair perspective
as Semites and Mohammedans. Their self-centred imperiousness threw
light for me on that religion of Mohammed that captivated, as by a
sirocco or cyclone, the whole Semitic race and still sways more than
two hundred millions of people. There is little of gentleness or
meekness or broad humanity in that creed, with its paradise of lovely
houris and sensual delights. Man’s duty to his brother man is summed up
in kindness to one’s dependents if they are of the true faith. It is
the religion of rank individualism and unrestrained sensuality.
But there is just a touch of higher things in Mohammed el Amin, or The
Honest, as he was called--an æsthetic sense at least. In the Koran I
find this great injunction: “If you have two loaves, sell one quickly
and buy a flower, for the soul, too, must be fed.” This love of beauty
was typified to me in Rachel’s pretty fancies and in her love of music.
She represented to me the very soul of Mohammed at its best.
At length the great moment came. The slave-caravan under Abdulla would
be ready next morning, the Sultan said, and my carriers had been warned
to be prepared.
The caravan taught me all the horrors of the African slave-trade: over
a thousand men and women, yoked by pairs and loaded down with sixty
or eighty pounds of ivory each. The younger girls and boys had been
reserved; only the older folk were used as carriers to the coast; but
many of the women were not more than twenty or twenty-five, and I was
horrified to find that three out of every four of the men and many of
the older women were suffering from recent wounds.
Suleiman had organized two or three slave-raids in order to get his
carriers. I was relieved to find that the caravan was to take another
road. We should be close to them, Abdulla informed me, but not with
them. In the half-hour they were grouped in front of the Sultan’s kraal
I saw such brutalities that I was glad to lose sight of them for ever,
and to try to forget. I may as well give here one incident that struck
me at the time and hardened my heart for the separation and deception.
While I was talking to Abdulla one of the pairs of women came towards
us, and I saw that one of these was a mulatto, pretty and young. She
stretched out her hands to Abdulla imploringly and fell on her knees,
beseeching him. I caught the words “Sultan” and “forgive, sorry, sorry,
I love him,” and then a flood of tears and sobs shook her slight,
nearly nude frame.
Abdulla glanced at her indifferently:
“Get back,” he ordered harshly.
I was surprised. “Does she want the Sultan to forgive her?” I asked.
“Surely he will? Why, the poor girl can’t be more than sixteen.”
“She was a fool,” remarked Abdulla sententiously; “she didn’t want to
yield to the Sultan at first, and he never forgives that sort of thing;
that’s why she’s in the slave-gang now and is to be sold at Mombasa.”
As the girl looked from one to the other of us, seeing, I suppose, some
hope in my pity, Abdulla grabbed her by the left breast, dragged her to
her feet and threw her back in the row.
“Get back,” he growled, “and keep quiet or you’ll have a hot back
to-night.”
With lips parted in a gasp of pain and staring wild eyes of fear, the
poor girl stood drooping, held up by her yoke-mate.
I don’t know why, but the whole scene sickened me. Abdulla’s act was so
unconscious in its brutality, the girl’s fear and pain so unaffected,
that I turned away and could hardly speak when a minute later the
Sultan came out of his kraal to give the final directions. I hated all
of them and wanted to get away.
Sultan Suleiman and Rachel in her French frock, accompanied by a guard
of honour, went with us through the belt of forest by a way until then
unknown to me--a broad road well defended. At the edge of the clearing
they halted and we said “Good-bye!” Sultan Suleiman’s eyes shone with a
certain kindliness, and Rachel did not hesitate to put her arms about
my neck and kiss me again and again.
“In a month I shall be here expecting you, my husband,” she whispered.
Not a word of love--“my husband”--strange pride of possession.
Two hundred yards lower down the road wound round a clump of trees and
bush, and we waved them “Farewell”--the last “Farewell.”
I never saw either of them again; but all through the trip, which took
me to the shores of the Great Lake and afterwards down the Nile to
Khartoum, the memory and image of Rachel pursued me. Often I’d awake
with her blue eyes looking into mine and hot kisses on my lips.
THE EXTRA EIGHT DAYS
THE EXTRA EIGHT DAYS
Léon Fornageot had lost his place as a notary’s clerk; he had been
proud of his position, and really dressed the part. He always wore
a frock-coat and a white tie; his short whiskers, too, cut English
fashion, gave him, he thought, an air of dignity. But once out of work
he fell to pieces very soon.
Madame Fornageot now dressed him and fed him, and did not forget to
tell him so even when pouring out the glass of water for him, with
which he had now to content himself. She was always reproaching him;
in a crowd she did not hesitate to push him. He would turn on her:
“Amelie! do not be brutal; I cannot be quicker than I am going; there
is someone in front of me.” “Yes,” she would reply angrily, “there’s
always someone in front of you.”
The rage of Madame Fornageot, with her spirit of economy, can be
imagined when Grabiche, a cousin of her husband, presented himself one
evening at seven o’clock and invited himself, if you please, to dinner.
They had not met for twenty-five years. Young Grabiche then was fat
and joyous, and used to sing songs in a café concert--naughty songs,
disgusting songs, according to Madame Fornageot. “A pretty family
yours!” she sighed afterwards to her husband.
But now here was a new Grabiche, a Grabiche of fifty-five years of
age--fatter than ever, redder than ever, and under his right arm
an immense paté and under his left a bottle. “We will have a jolly
dinner,” he cried. “Uncle Cyprien gave me your address.”
Madame Fornageot smiled, because she had noticed that although the
tweed suit of Grabiche showed marks of wear, still across his immense
stomach there was a beautiful gold chain, and on one rather dirty
finger a large diamond.
“Do you still sing at la Chaussée Clignancourt?” she asked.
“No!” cried Grabiche. “Oh no! It is the others now who sing for me.”
He explained that he had seen how the directors employed singers and
got the chief profits for themselves, so after ten years of economy he
bought an establishment of his own, “Le Cri Cri,” and baptized it “The
Music-Hall des Rigolos” (those who mean to enjoy themselves). “Now, my
children,” he added joyously, “I gather in my thirty thousand francs a
year without any trouble.
“The essential is never to have any trouble. My father and mother gave
me a salt mouth: I do not drink because I like it, but I drink because
I am always thirsty. I live well and save nothing. I am not married and
have no children--indeed, Fornageot, you are my only heir, and if I
kick the bucket before you I will always leave you enough to drink to
my health.... Do not shake that bottle, man, that’s good wine!”
After the dinner he took them to his music-hall: a dreadful
clientèle--men without collars and women without any hats. The director
put his relatives into a box, and the young fellows in the audience in
front of them kept making fun of them, especially of Madame Fornageot,
who had put on some little curls.
“They like to amuse themselves,” explained Grabiche. “They will not
throw anything at you. I know them nearly all”; and suddenly noticing
one of the guttersnipes who was making fun of Madame Fornageot’s
head-dress, he cried:
“Look here, Calves-liver, you shut up or I will come and talk to you!”
In the _entr’acte_ he took Léon Fornageot behind the scenes. They came
immediately upon half-a-dozen women in every state of undress, three or
four playing cards in a corner waiting for their turn.
Grabiche introduced them: “My English dancers: Rosa, Carmen, Bijou and
Mélindie. Do not get up, my dears!--only a relation.” Fornageot bowed
gravely to Monsieur Ernest, a comic, and Mademoiselle Laura Ponestier,
who seemed to be able to walk about on her hands as easily as on her
feet. He bowed also to Chung-Li, a Chinese juggler, who had the accent
of Montmartre, and to the Kreitzer family, newly imported from Vienna.
Grabiche ordered drinks, and as soon as they came, “This is the life
that pleases me,” he cried to Fornageot. “I change the entertainment
every eight days, but whenever I find a little girl that I like,
instead of sending her away I keep her a week longer--that is a little
present I make to myself. She is like the manageress for a whole week,
never more. Both my public and myself like change. At the end of a
fortnight she must go: they can cry or groan, I pay no attention.
“That is why whenever I change the bill here they ask, ‘Who is going to
get a week longer?’”
“Grabiche!” Fornageot cried reproachfully. “Grabiche!” But Grabiche did
not even notice the moral reproach.
When they came back they found Madame Fornageot very vexed, troubled
too, a little. She kept looking at her husband to see the effect that
had been produced upon him. But Léon had his old air of a head clerk
who was impenetrable. All he said was: “I was never behind the scenes
before; it is all excellently arranged. The lady artistes were playing
cards.”...
From this moment on, every Sunday Grabiche paid a visit to Fornageot.
He always came provided with food and rich wine. Madame Fornageot was
once able to recommend a sentimental song to him, and he always said
afterwards she was born for the theatre because the sentimental song
had a success.
One Sunday when Grabiche came Fornageot noticed that he was redder
even than ordinary, and could not walk straight. Instead of wine, too,
he had brought a bottle of old Cognac.
“I am not well,” he said. “I need to be screwed up a peg or two. I am
going to watch you folk dine, and I shall just be content with a glass
or two of old Cognac in which I dip a crust; that is my remedy for all
ailments.”
“It would perhaps be better----” insinuated Léon Fornageot.
But Madame Fornageot cried: “Leave your cousin alone; he knows best
what is good for him.”
“You are right,” cried Grabiche. “I am too well, my blood is too
strong, that is the terrible part of it; but I’ll pour out a little of
this Cognac. I have a sort of vertigo--a noise, too, a rumbling in my
ears. I’ll have a glass of this Cognac and I shall be all right.”
The Fornageots noticed that the first three glasses turned him to
violet instead of red, but Madame Fornageot helped the soup and they
began to eat. Suddenly Grabiche put out his right hand and closed it in
the air.
“The bottle is by your side,” cried Madame Fornageot. He tried to
reply, but it ended in a sort of groan. His face became blue instead of
violet, and he fell forward on the tablecloth.
“He is drunk!” cried Madame Fornageot.
He was dead....
* * * * *
There were long formalities, but at the end of three or four months,
thanks to M. Fornageot’s training as a notary’s clerk, the couple
came into possession of the Music-Hall des Rigolos and of about five
thousand four hundred francs in cash. The music-hall was not easy to
sell, but it was evident that with a little care it would bring in
twenty or thirty thousand francs a year. It was a fortune for the
Fornageots, and they did not hesitate to grasp it.
Madame Fornageot put herself before the cash-desk and engaged a strong
man to turn out any riotous spectators, and Fornageot carried on the
music-hall.
Monsieur Fornageot’s whiskers became more important than ever. He was
always now in a frock-coat and perfectly new white tie. And before long
his temptation came. There was a little Italian dancer whom he pinched
as she passed him and who smiled so sweetly at him that he made up his
mind he would follow the example of Grabiche and give her--an extra
week.
But he found it difficult to tell Madame Fornageot, for Madame
Fornageot now had put on great airs. She constantly wore her jewellery.
He noticed, too, that she rouged her cheeks a little, and that she
always put on artificial curls. But the charm of the Italian dancer
was invincible. M. Fornageot determined to speak plainly. So the same
evening he went to the cash-desk where Madame Fornageot was arranging
all the moneys:
“That little lace necklet suits you, my dear,” he said; “I want to
propose something----”
But Madame Fornageot interrupted him: “You know the tight-rope dancer,
he is very successful; he has made a hit, and as it is the custom here,
when the proprietor is content with the performance, I am determined to
give him an extra eight days.”
M. Fornageot found nothing to say!
THE GREAT GAME
THE GREAT GAME
When Dick Donovan was about seven he had a novel experience. One of the
boys in the street called him an “orphin” and jeered him because he had
no father, and when he clambered up all the stairs to the seventh floor
and asked his mother what an “orphin” was, she said:
“Your father was a pólisman (may God be good to his sowl!) and was
killed fallin’ into a ship’s hould wan slippery marnin’ on the docks.”
Soon after this Dick was packed off to the primary school, but as his
playmates were going too that did not make much difference to him. He
was naturally quick, and had a good memory.
Bit by bit in the next two or three years his mother’s tears and
complainings told him that they were going down in life. She often got
very little washing to do, and sometimes she was too ill to do it.
Dick had to carry the washing to the various houses and bring home
the money, and soon grew an adept at getting small coins on his own
account. He knew every cent in a dollar better even than his prayers.
He got through the primary school at about thirteen, and though his
mother was ill she insisted that he should go on to the high school,
which Dick thought mere waste of time and energy.
A little later when she was coughing worse than usual Bill Butler came
to see them. Bill was a big longshoreman, a friend of the boy’s father,
and he offered to get Dick a job under Long Dan O’Connor, the head of
the longshoremen, to run errands and do light jobs at Pier No. 9.
Mrs. Donovan protested feebly: “The boy must get his schoolin’”; but
Butler insisted that he was growing quite a man and “the very spit of
his father,” and Dick, seduced by being called a man, begged that the
proposal might be accepted, so that he could earn four dollars a week
and have done with that beastly old school.
The next day, in charge of Bill Butler, he went down to the docks and
began what he always regarded as his adult life. He was just thirteen.
Every day for the next four years Dick worked at the docks--ran
errands, did whatever they told him to do--and at the end of that time
was proud to bring home his eight dollars a week, that kept the house
going.
As Dick’s earnings grew larger Mrs. Donovan’s health improved, and when
he reached eight dollars a week she kept her room far better than Mrs.
Rubin kept hers.
The Rubins were wops from near Trieste who had just moved into the next
room and shared it with another Jewish family. Mrs. Donovan did not
like them. She thought it wasn’t “dacint” for two families both with
boys and girls growing up to be living in one room with only a chalk
line on the floor to divide them.
But Dick thought Maggie Rubin the prettiest girl he had ever seen, with
her black eyes and hair and her air of disdainful self-possession.
When Dick got to know them the Rubins were dreadfully poor and seemed
likely never to be richer. In the summer Mr. Rubin got a living out of
his push-cart with fruits and ice-cream, but in winter his earnings
fell away to almost nothing. His wife did her best to keep the house
going, but there was something reckless and extravagant about her. Some
said she was a gipsy, and it may well have been true, for Dave, her
son, was tameless as a hawk, and even as a lad took to gambling and bad
company, and Maggie never could resist pleasure, though her mother was
always preaching to her the necessity of getting rich.
“Take warning by me,” she used to sigh. “It is just as easy to marry a
rich man as a poor one, and oh! the difference afterwards.” Maggie’s
school chums all taught the same gospel.
Maggie liked Dick, for she saw that he admired her, and he was tall and
had fine grey-blue eyes and worked hard and--she just liked him.
Then came a bitter winter and on top of that the great strike. The
longshoremen, led by Bill Butler, would not accept a cut in wages and
Dick was out of a job. His mother looked very grave when he told her
the news, but determined to make the best of it. For a long dreadful
week, Dick was at a loose end, and for the first time in his life a
prey to absolute fear. He could earn something; he could get wood
enough from the houses that were being torn down and rebuilt and coal
enough too from the docks to keep a fire going and the room warm, but
he was out one whole day without earning ten cents, and no two people
can live on ten cents a day in New York.
Dick’s next discovery was that his mother loved to deny herself, but
when he found her eating potatoes for the second meal and giving him
the meat he couldn’t stand it.
“I don’t want the mate,” she said when he reproached her, “and me doin’
nothin’.”
“Then I won’t eat it either,” Dick replied, and forced her to take her
share.
After this Dick went out determined to get work somehow or other, and
the first person he struck was Dave Rubin.
Rubin was full of resources and knew New York like his pocket. After
talking a few minutes he told Dick that he could get him a place in
Heenan’s saloon on Maple Street where, after a week or so, he would
get five dollars a night for boxing and an extra buck slipped to him
besides if a gentleman drew blood or knocked him down.
With his mother’s economies pinching his heart Dick jumped at the
chance.
“Take me along,” he said; “sure they won’t kill me anyway.” And that
night, being Wednesday, Dave kept his word and about eight o’clock
presented Dick to Heenan’s partner, Ricker.
“If he can’t box,” said this worthy, “take him to the boys and let him
put the gloves on at once. I am afraid he is too young and lathy to be
much good.”
Dick found that at Heenan’s there were two large rooms on the ground
floor flanking the bar-room: one was kept for serious matches and
bouts; it had a twenty-four foot ring roped off all complete; the other
was where the boys boxed and talked and drank and smoked like men--up
to any devilry.
Dick was inclined to be shy and quiet, but Dave was evidently free of
the place in the widest sense of the word. The two boys who had been
boxing when they came in broke off for a moment of introductions,
but were soon at it again hammer and tongs. Dick’s eyes grew wide in
admiration of their skill. He confided as much to Dave, but Dave thrust
out contemptuous lips:
“You ought to beat them both at the end of your first week,” he said;
“they are only beginners.”
Dick’s eyes widened still further. He thought them both wonderful,
though rather small.
Suddenly Ricker broke off the contest: “Go down and bring me a drink,”
he said to one lad, “and you, Jones, come here and put on the gloves
with this dub.”
In a twinkling, under Dave’s orders, Dick slipped off his coat and
vest, drew his belt tighter round his middle and put on the gloves
for the first time in his life with Ed Jones, an undersized youth of
twenty or so who had already passed out of the feather-weight class.
As soon as he saw that Dick was a complete novice Jones seemed to take
pleasure in telling him how to hit and how to guard, and from the first
Dick took to the new sport with enthusiasm. True, Jones showed him more
than once that he could hit faster and harder than Dick had any idea
of, but he had learned his first lesson of life on the docks, and he
took the hard blows with the light ones without showing any pain, and
at the end of ten minutes or so he began divining the heavier blows,
either guarding or getting his head out of the way of them. Ricker’s
final “green as grass” only made him resolve to do better. Dave told
him it was a rather good sign, for after all Ricker had stood by to see
him begin.
As Ricker left the room Dave went with him, and when he came back
seemed rather anxious. “I’ll put on the gloves with you,” he said, “and
give you a lesson or two.” And then he began to show Dick how to hit
quick by throwing his fist, and how to guard and slip blows, and kept
on with him for nearly an hour, till Dick was wet with sweat and began
to get slow.
“You’re tired,” said Dave suddenly. “You’ll have to begin again
to-morrow.”
He confided to Dick on his way home that he had to beg Ricker a little
and promise to come himself one night because Ricker said that Dick
would need more than a month’s practice to get into the boxing enough
to be any good to the house.
Of course Dick was full of his evening and wanted to talk of it, and by
chance they met Maggie with a man in the hallway and out it all came.