At the Century roof garden they sat back and watched the spectacle
critically.
“It hasn’t the verve of a Paris performance,” remarked McCall.
“Verve--you mean nerve,” replied Hamilton. “But the cocktails are
there. Anyway, I like this better.”
“That’s because you’re a Puritan. In Paris you were always being
shocked by the exhibitions.” McCall winked at Dr. Levin, who was
listening with a smile on his face.
“Ah, yes, a Puritan who drinks cocktails. I don’t mind an exhibition
of legs, if they’re good legs--as these are. But in Paris they went
too far. Legs were a mere starter. Whenever a person exhibits a moral
impulse, you accuse him of being a Puritan.”
“Exactly,” said McCall. “You don’t expect me to call you a goddam prude
in company. A person has to be polite. Puritan is merely a euphuism.”
They argued genially for a while and then appealed to Dr. Levin.
“As usual, you are both wrong--and both right,” said Levin, lighting a
cigarette. “McCall is a poet and a symbolist. In what to you, Hamilton,
would be a shocking disregard of the morals, and to me a mere display
of the umbilical region, becomes in McCall’s mind a symbol of freedom,
of art, of life. But we’ve sat here almost an hour and it’s time to be
moving.”
At the Moulin Rouge, dimly lighted, with soft lights and women’s gowns
and jewels glowing subduedly, McCall passed into a sentimental mood.
“Want to hear a little poem I wrote? Wrote it to the sweetest little
girl in the world, wrote it on the back of an old envelope one day in
the hospital.”
McCall was having difficulty with his “l’s.” A woman with seductive
arms and eyes leaned over to him from the next table and smiled, while
her escort was fumbling in his pockets for some change.
“She’s the sweetest little girl in the world and I’ll never see her
again--never.”
“What’s the matter? A lover’s quarrel?” asked Levin.
“No.” Morosely.
“Where’d you meet her?” asked Hamilton. “That’s a new one on me. Paris?”
McCall nodded. He sipped a highball, ran his fingers through his hair
and began in a low, vibrant voice, his handsome boyish face flushed.
“_The agèd pilgrim hastens on the road,
Nor stops to pluck the flowers by the way
Lest Death o’ertake him ’ere the close of day
And find, too late, unreached the soul’s abode._
“_I, too, a pilgrim, love, with quick foot strode
Along Life’s highway: Often would I stay
To live a blissful hour, forever. ‘Nay.
On, on!’ cries Time, and smites with painful goad._
“_They say though, that before the soul is fled
From this frail house, old Time, turned kind, will bring,
In outstretched arms, those happy hours long dead--
A sheaf of golden moments spent with thee,
The tender blossoms of our hopeful spring
And, here and there, a scarlet memory._”
McCall’s voice stopped. His long, slender fingers went forward across
the table and he sat staring down in front of him. A waiter who had
been standing near-by in respectful silence, coughed. The lady at the
next table, looking haughtily ahead, swept by with her escort.
“It’s very pretty,” said Hamilton after a moment.
“Yes, I like it,” added Levin. Then with apparent irrelevance, “I
suppose you know that Miss Meadows is here, in New York.”
Hamilton betrayed his eagerness in a look.
“No, where is she?”
McCall was still staring at the table.
“She’s staying with a party of Red Cross nurses. Her parents met her
in New York, but went back alone. Of course you’ll call on her. I know
she’d be glad to see you.”
They walked out of the room together, McCall between them, still
absorbed in thought. His mood changed, however, at Reisenweber’s.
Opposite them sat a fat man in full-dress, with a chorus girl upon each
knee.
He was frankly hugging them and they were as frankly pulling greenbacks
out of his pockets and tucking them into their stockings, conveniently
rolled.
“Here’s civilization in America at its highest,” said Levin cynically.
“The fat man is a manufacturer who has been yelling against the
Bolsheviki for destroying the home. He’s a bitter opponent of free
love.”
McCall laughed.
“Well, why shouldn’t he be opposed to free love? He has to pay for it,
doesn’t he? He looks like a picture by Hogarth--a picture in the Rake’s
Progress. Only Death ought to be lurking somewhere about.”
“Oh, he is,” said Levin, “although you can’t see him. Life doesn’t
reveal its spectres until the right moment. But we’re all too
introspective. A cabaret is frankly a place for enjoyment. We ought to
dance.”
“I’d rather just look on,” said Hamilton.
“And I’m going to dance,” said McCall. “Watch me!”
He lurched unsteadily past the fat man and his odalisques to a table
where two dazzling blondes--a peroxide and a henna--sat waiting. The
next minute he was fox-trotting with the peroxide blonde. The fat man
and the two girls rose and went laughing and swaying out of the door.
Another officer sat down with the henna blonde. A couple walked by, the
woman’s black eyes beckoning to Hamilton, while her escort was looking
the other way. The waiter yawned. Hamilton looked at his watch.
“Wow, it’s after three! We’ll have to catch the four o’clock to make
reveille and then we won’t get any sleep.”
“Do you still have to stand reveille?” asked Levin.
“Oh, I’ve got a couple of shavetails who take turns at standing it with
the company--and for all I know they may leave it to the top-sergeant.
But our major’s a little fussy. Doesn’t know the war’s over, and he
might kick.”
“Well, you get McCall, and in the meantime I’ll order a round of
coffees. That’ll keep you awake until reveille, and then you can sleep.”
Hamilton found McCall making arrangements with the lady in henna, the
other officer and the peroxide blonde to visit a little apartment
uptown, but dragged him away. McCall refused to drink his coffee, but
finally consented to leave and walked out between them to the taxi.
They drove to the Pennsylvania station and Levin saw them to the gates
leading to their track.
“Let’s see, what was that address?” asked Hamilton.
“Miss Meadows? Here it is. Better write it down. Got a pencil? All
right. Well, so long. Look me up again. Come to see me when you’re in
Chicago. Good-night, McCall.”