Those of you who have dwelt--or even lingered--in Chicago, Illinois
(this is not a humorous story), are familiar with the region known as
the Loop. For those others of you to whom Chicago is a transfer point
between New York and San Francisco there is presented this brief
explanation:
The Loop is a clamorous, smoke-infested district embraced by the iron
arms of the elevated tracks. In a city boasting fewer millions, it would
be known familiarly as downtown. From Congress to Lake Street, from
Wabash almost to the river, those thunderous tracks make a complete
circle, or loop. Within it lie the retail shops, the commercial hotels,
the theatres, the restaurants. It is the Fifth Avenue (diluted) and the
Broadway (deleted) of Chicago. And he who frequents it by night in
search of amusement and cheer is known, vulgarly, as a Loop-hound.
Jo Hertz was a Loop-hound. On the occasion of those sparse first nights
granted the metropolis of the Middle West he was always present, third
row, aisle, left. When a new loop café was opened Jo's table always
commanded an unobstructed view of anything worth viewing. On entering
he was wont to say, "Hello, Gus," with careless cordiality to the head
waiter, the while his eye roved expertly from table to table as he
removed his gloves. He ordered things under glass, so that his table, at
midnight or thereabouts, resembled a hot-bed that favours the bell
system. The waiters fought for him. He was the kind of man who mixes his
own salad dressing. He liked to call for a bowl, some cracked ice,
lemon, garlic, paprika, salt, pepper, vinegar, and oil and make a rite
of it. People at near-by tables would lay down their knives and forks to
watch, fascinated. The secret of it seemed to lie in using all the oil
in sight and calling for more.
That was Jo--a plump and lonely bachelor of fifty. A plethoric,
roving-eyed and kindly man, clutching vainly at the garments of a youth
that had long slipped past him. Jo Hertz, in one of those pinch-waist
belted suits and a trench coat and a little green hat, walking up
Michigan Avenue of a bright winter's afternoon, trying to take the curb
with a jaunty youthfulness against which every one of his fat-encased
muscles rebelled, was a sight for mirth or pity, depending on one's
vision.
The gay-dog business was a late phase in the life of Jo Hertz. He had
been a quite different sort of canine. The staid and harassed brother of
three unwed and selfish sisters is an under dog. The tale of how Jo
Hertz came to be a Loop-hound should not be compressed within the
limits of a short story. It should be told as are the photo plays, with
frequent throwbacks and many cut-ins. To condense twenty-three years of
a man's life into some five or six thousand words requires a verbal
economy amounting to parsimony.
At twenty-seven Jo had been the dutiful, hard-working son (in the
wholesale harness business) of a widowed and gummidging mother, who
called him Joey. If you had looked close you would have seen that now
and then a double wrinkle would appear between Jo's eyes--a wrinkle that
had no business there at twenty-seven. Then Jo's mother died, leaving
him handicapped by a death-bed promise, the three sisters and a
three-story-and-basement house on Calumet Avenue. Jo's wrinkle became a
fixture.
Death-bed promises should be broken as lightly as they are seriously
made. The dead have no right to lay their clammy fingers upon the
living.
"Joey," she had said, in her high, thin voice, "take care of the girls."
"I will, Ma," Jo had choked.
"Joey," and the voice was weaker, "promise me you won't marry till the
girls are all provided for." Then as Joe had hesitated, appalled: "Joey,
it's my dying wish. Promise!"
"I promise, Ma," he had said.
Whereupon his mother had died, comfortably, leaving him with a
completely ruined life.
They were not bad-looking girls, and they had a certain style, too.
That is, Stell and Eva had. Carrie, the middle one, taught school over
on the West Side. In those days it took her almost two hours each way.
She said the kind of costume she required should have been corrugated
steel. But all three knew what was being worn, and they wore it--or
fairly faithful copies of it. Eva, the housekeeping sister, had a needle
knack. She could skim the State Street windows and come away with a
mental photograph of every separate tuck, hem, yoke, and ribbon. Heads
of departments showed her the things they kept in drawers, and she went
home and reproduced them with the aid of a two-dollar-a-day seamstress.
Stell, the youngest, was the beauty. They called her Babe. She wasn't
really a beauty, but some one had once told her that she looked like
Janice Meredith (it was when that work of fiction was at the height of
its popularity). For years afterward, whenever she went to parties, she
affected a single, fat curl over her right shoulder, with a rose stuck
through it.
Twenty-three years ago one's sisters did not strain at the household
leash, nor crave a career. Carrie taught school, and hated it. Eva kept
house expertly and complainingly. Babe's profession was being the family
beauty, and it took all her spare time. Eva always let her sleep until
ten.
This was Jo's household, and he was the nominal head of it. But it was
an empty title. The three women dominated his life. They weren't
consciously selfish. If you had called them cruel they would have put
you down as mad. When you are the lone brother of three sisters, it
means that you must constantly be calling for, escorting, or dropping
one of them somewhere. Most men of Jo's age were standing before their
mirror of a Saturday night, whistling blithely and abstractedly while
they discarded a blue polka-dot for a maroon tie, whipped off the maroon
for a shot-silk, and at the last moment decided against the shot-silk in
favor of a plain black-and-white, because she had once said she
preferred quiet ties. Jo, when he should have been preening his feathers
for conquest, was saying:
"Well, my God, I _am_ hurrying! Give a man time, can't you? I just got
home. You girls have been laying around the house all day. No wonder
you're ready."
He took a certain pride in seeing his sisters well dressed, at a time
when he should have been reveling in fancy waistcoats and brilliant-hued
socks, according to the style of that day, and the inalienable right of
any unwed male under thirty, in any day. On those rare occasions when
his business necessitated an out-of-town trip, he would spend half a day
floundering about the shops, selecting handkerchiefs, or stockings, or
feathers, or fans, or gloves for the girls. They always turned out to be
the wrong kind, judging by their reception.