Hamilton’s discharge came late the next day and he decided to leave the
following morning. He made the rounds of his most intimate friends,
wrote a few letters and retired early. He would reach New York by
noon, spend the day there, so as to avoid traveling by day as much as
possible, and leave at six o’clock for Washington. He would have time
to visit the office of the Hamilton Company, see Levin and perhaps even
call up Dorothy.
Hamilton left earlier than he had expected and reached New York at
eleven o’clock. The city was still in gala mood. There was a committee
of women to meet the soldiers with coffee and doughnuts. Hamilton had
breakfasted well in camp and expected to eat luncheon shortly, but out
of consideration for the plump blonde chairwoman, he managed to gulp
down the doughnut and coffee and thank her profusely. A slender, dark
girl, evidently Jewish, gave him a package of cigarettes. Hamilton
noticed that most of the soldiers, although they had been stuffing on
peanut candy and chocolate bars all the way from camp, also took their
doughnuts and coffee dutifully.
The streets were still decorated with flags, bunting and signs
welcoming the returning soldiers. The many uniforms on the streets,
while not enjoying the popularity of a month ago, had not yet become
objects of odium. Women, and a few men, still looked with sympathy at
soldiers who limped about on crutches or walked about minus an arm.
Hamilton walked leisurely up Broadway, his chest high and his shoulders
still squared by custom. The civilians, dodging about, looked pale,
round-shouldered and nervous. He peered upward at the tall buildings
and felt a glow of pride. He stopped at a cigar store to light a
cigarette, watched the men throwing dice, and envied their freedom. It
must be splendid not to have to stand reveille, not to have to stand
retreat, not to have to eat at a certain hour, not to have to stand
or do anything unless one wished to. How happy they must be. Then he
suddenly realized that he was one of them, and that though still in
uniform he was just as free. He stuck a hand in his pocket in defiance
of old military etiquette and in a burst of new-found freedom, thought
better of it, withdrew it and walked on.
Hamilton wished he had waited for the noon train and come down with
some of the other officers of his regiment. Wandering about New York
alone was too big a task for one man. There were so many thoughts he
wished to express, so many ideas to exchange. He wondered what McCall
would think about the men and women he passed on the streets--the
clerks, the girls with short skirts borrowed from the French, the women
who smiled because one was in uniform, the business men who looked away
for the same reason, the messenger boys, whose admiration and hero
worship had outlived the armistice.
Why had he come alone at the last minute? He had planned to come at
noon--had practically slipped away from camp. His mind reverted to
Dorothy, although he had decided not to see her. Dorothy would be
surprised to see him and probably chagrined that it was not McCall. Why
had not McCall told him anything about the poem or the snapshot? Still,
why should he?
Perhaps after all there was no more between them than between himself
and her. McCall was on his way back to Chicago. Perhaps he had called
on Dorothy while waiting for his train. Had he come alone to New York
in order to be able to spend more time with Dorothy?
No, he would not see her. He would not see her. First, because of the
emotional character of their farewell in Paris. In a sentimental vein
he might again commit the same kind of folly. She might misconstrue his
avowal of friendship for something deeper. Secondly, he would not see
her because McCall had written that poem to her. He was not jealous. A
ridiculous idea.
He reached the office building in which the Hamilton Company was
located and rode up in the elevator to his floor. He walked to the
end of the corridor and was turning the knob of the door when he
noticed that the lettering was changed. He stepped back, looked about
in bewilderment and finally entered. Yes, the office was differently
arranged and there was a strange stenographer at the information desk.
He had been here too often to mistake the number; still, if they had
moved, his father would undoubtedly have told him something about it.
“Could you please tell me where the Hamilton Company is located?” he
asked.
The stenographer, fluffy brown-haired and brown-eyed, looked up, smiled
and showed a row of white teeth.
“I don’t know. Been here only a month, but the elevator man might know.”
She looked a moment at his uniform.
“You’re a corporal or something, aren’t you? I can tell by the things
on your sleeve. I’ve got a gentleman friend who’s a corporal, too.”
“Thank you,” said Hamilton, about to turn away, when a stout gentleman
came up behind the information desk.
“Did you inquire about the Hamilton Company, Captain?” he asked. “We
moved in after they left, on the second of January.” The gentleman did
not know where the company had moved, but referred Hamilton to the
office of the building on the top floor.
On the top floor the secretary knew only that the office had been
vacated December thirty-first and that no New York forwarding address
had been left. All the mail, he added, was being sent to some southern
address--Virginia or Carolina--no Corinth, Georgia, that was it.
Hamilton’s mind was in a whirl. Why had the New York office been
discontinued? Why had his father not told him about it? He had received
a letter from him only a few days ago. The New York office had been
opened in 1915, when the rush of war orders had made it advisable to go
directly into exporting, instead of dealing through brokers. It had not
only saved the brokerage commission (a comparatively small item), but,
what was more important, had brought many new orders. Perhaps with the
war over, it was no longer needed.
It was nearly twelve now, and Hamilton decided to telephone Levin and
eat luncheon with him. He stepped into a cigar store and called up
his hotel. Levin had left fifteen minutes before, with a suitcase.
They hardly expected him back before night. No, he had not left any
instructions. Hamilton hung up the receiver and wondered why he had not
thought to wire the night before. This reminded him that he had not yet
wired home and he left for the nearest telegraph office where he sent
off two messages--one to his mother and one to Margaret. Then he set
out in search of a restaurant.
There was a cold look about the restaurants. They were either too large
and imposing or two white and busy. He wondered whether he could find
anything like the Black Cat in New York. He wished that he had come
with some one else and visited several hotels in the hope of finding
some one he knew in the lobby.
He was on the point of telephoning a few of his New York acquaintances
when he recalled that they were all still in the service. If this were
only Paris, he thought. He could sit down in any café and engage in
conversation with whomever he pleased, man or woman, without violating
the proprieties. It was about four months since he had eaten at the
Black Cat with Dorothy. Four whole months.
Why not have luncheon with her? They could recall their experiences in
Paris. They might spend the afternoon together. Hamilton remembered the
address. He had said it over and over to himself at odd moments. It was
only a mile or so away. No, that would be a weakness on his part. That
would be an admission of something that he did not wish to face even in
his mind. He would simply write her a note, saying that he had been in
New York and had not found time to call.
He walked to the curb and held up his hand to a taxi, gave the driver
a number and stepped in. He was still debating whether he should call
on Dorothy or not when the cab stopped, the driver opened the door and
he found himself actually standing outside her apartment. It would be
foolish to turn back now. Perhaps she had seen him through the window.
He paid the chauffeur and climbed the stairs with throbbing heart. It
was an old building--one of a row of old brownstone houses, which had
long since been altered into flats, family hotels and specialty shops.
It had an air of venerable, picturesque decay, an atmosphere of an
older, less feverish, more homogeneous New York. In the heavy oak door,
beneath a polished brass knocker, he found a button and pressed it.
Presently the door opened and a gray-haired lady, with a piqued face
and gold-rimmed spectacles, peered guardedly through the opening and
falteringly inquired his business. He told her.
After a moment’s inspection, she let him enter and ushered him into
the front room--a high-ceilinged one, with a bay window, a white-tiled
mantel in one corner and a heavy flowered carpet on the floor. Miss
Meadows would be back at one o’clock. It was almost that now and would
he sit down there and look at the papers until she came?
Hamilton contented himself with gazing about the room. He walked over
to the mantelpiece and idly inspected the ornaments--a china clock, an
old-fashioned Dresden doll, and a vase containing fresh violets. He
remembered that he had neglected to bring Dorothy flowers.
He turned to face the window, across which a heavily upholstered red
plush settee extended. Through the lace curtain the spring sunshine
fell in a golden stream. The sounds of passing persons and vehicles
came to him from the street. Suddenly in the sunlight he noticed an
envelope--a long official envelope. He felt of his pockets, which were
bristling with official orders, as he stooped to pick it up. He had
probably dropped it in removing his handkerchief. Yes, it bore his
name. He was straightening up, when he heard footsteps on the stairs
and a voice which he recognized as Dorothy’s. He had time to place the
letter in his pocket when the door opened and Dorothy came in, her
arms stretched out, a smile on her flushed face. Hamilton noticed that
little strands of hair were blowing loose.
“Captain Hamilton, how are you?” she crossed over to him and gave him
her hands. Hamilton’s heart beat wildly.
“This is such a surprise. Dr. Levin told me he had seen you.”
Hamilton mumbled something and was conscious of being very red.
“Yes. I’m going back to Corinth tonight and I thought I should like to
see you before I leave--renew our acquaintance.”
“That was splendid of you,” she said.
In a few words they told what had happened since their last meeting and
finally Hamilton suggested that they lunch together.
“I don’t suppose we can find a Black Cat here, but perhaps Claridge’s
might do for a substitute,” he suggested.
She expressed her delight and excused herself to go into the next room
and change to more suitable attire. When she reappeared she seemed more
radiantly beautiful than ever. She had slipped on a filmy dress of blue
crêpe bordered with silver.
“You look charming!” he said.
“Oh, that’s the conventional thing to say,” she retorted. “That’s what
every one says.”
“No wonder every one says it!”
“And that’s conventional, too,” said Dorothy with an arch frown. She
was patting her hair into position and taking one last look at herself
in the mirror above the mantel. “But today let’s not be conventional.
You are going to Corinth. I don’t know when we’ll meet again. So let’s
not spend our time in looking at each other through masks.” They were
walking down the stairs now. “No, don’t interrupt; and you were going
to say, ‘But I meant it.’ It’s like a game. Your partner leads with
this remark and you come back with that. Ordinarily, I can tell exactly
what a man is going to reply to whatever I say.”
In the taxi, she resumed the thread of her thought.
“Why can’t men and women talk to each other just as two men do?”
“Well, don’t they?”
“No, they simply bandy expressions back and forth like a tennis ball.
The man always flatters the woman. She always deprecates his words, and
he affirms them.”
She turned to him suddenly.
“What do you talk about when, say, you are with Captain McCall?”
Hamilton smiled.
“Oh, the same things I talk to you about.”
“No you don’t. You don’t say he has a lovely uniform. You discuss
things.”
“Has McCall been here?”
“Why no. When will he be discharged?”
“He left the day before yesterday. I was almost certain he’d visit you
before leaving for Chicago. It’s queer.”
“Queer? Why should it be? He’s probably forgotten all about me, or was
in too much of a hurry to stop off here.”
For some reason Hamilton felt immensely relieved. It was as though a
curtain had been lifted from before his eyes. He had been mistaken in
thinking that McCall had referred to Dorothy at the café. The poem had
not been written to her. Hamilton’s mind ran back to the finding of
the snapshot. It, too, probably had no particular significance. McCall
had probably a hundred snapshots of Paris. Hamilton talked on without
being fully conscious of what either he or Dorothy were saying. It
was something about men and women, and Hamilton reflected that any
conversation with women invariably resolved itself into the relations
of the two sexes--to love, to marriage, to standards of morality.
“And that’s what I admire about Dr. Levin,” Dorothy was saying.
Hamilton did not remember what had led to this remark.
“You admire--” he groped.
“Yes, I admire his sex unconsciousness,” she repeated. “He treats me,
not exactly like a man, but like an intellectual equal.”
The idea amused Hamilton.
“And what do you talk about?” he asked.
“Oh, we discuss things. Just as two men would. Politics, sociology,
literature, art.”
Hamilton laughed.
“Just as two men. You mean just as two Dr. Levins. When two men get
together they talk--well, where I come from, they’d probably talk about
hunting, or the cotton crop, or baseball or what would have happened if
it hadn’t been for the war--that is, the Civil War. I called Dr. Levin
when I came in, but they told me--”
“Yes, he’s gone for about two days to visit a sister. Oh, yes, and we
even discuss such things as intermarriage.”
“That’s a rather dangerous subject, isn’t it?” he asked. His mind went
back once more to McCall, who was a Catholic. Still this, too, was
probably only part of their intellectual conversation. It was probably
impersonal.
“Perhaps.” She changed the subject.
At Claridge’s they watched the people about them. They recognized
some of them as actors and actresses, one of them, a Broadway star
active in the formation of the new Equity League. In one corner sat a
distinguished looking gentleman, with cruel blue eyes and dark hair and
beard, surrounded by a group of admirers.
“That’s General Rodzinoff,” said Hamilton, “the Czarist commander whom
we saw in Paris. New York is becoming cosmopolitan.”
“Oh, yes, I remember him. He’s probably arousing sympathy for the old
régime,” remarked Dorothy. “The town is full of them. The emigrés are
tired of Paris and are coming to this country. It’s more fertile.”
For a time they studied their menus. The colored waiter took their
order obsequiously and hurried away.
“Don’t look now,” said Dorothy in a low voice, “but your Russian friend
seems to be flirting.”
“Has he been practising his charms on you?” asked Hamilton.
“Oh, he’s glanced this way once or twice. But I don’t take it
seriously. He’s probably spoiled by too much adulation.”
“And I suppose he’ll finish by marrying some American millionaire’s
daughter. Why shouldn’t he? He’s a great war hero.”
“I don’t know about that,” Dorothy’s eyes snapped, “but I do know that
he can drink like a good Russian officer. In Paris he was always more
or less intoxicated, and if I don’t mistake the symptoms, he’s a little
mellow now. That’s one of his favorite pastimes. The others are women
and Jew baiting.”
“Jew baiting?”
“Yes. Dr. Levin has told me of some of his activities in Russia. He’s
a regular _pogromchik_. That means an instigator of those horrible
massacres in Russia. I’m surprised they tolerate him. I understand that
he is spreading his propaganda in this country.”
“What propaganda? Against the Jews?”
“Yes. In Russia when anything went wrong, the ruling class always
blamed the Jew. He was the scapegoat. If taxes were high or wages low,
it was the Jew who was at fault. Now if General Rodzinoff can spread
anti-Semitism in this country, he may succeed also in spreading the
false impression that the Jews are the cause of all the trouble in
Russia. He may make people forget the oppression of the old Czarist
régime against which the people rebelled and from which they went to
the other extreme.”
“Oh, no. The American people are too sensible for that. He might get
a few fanatics, perhaps. But--” Hamilton shrugged his shoulders and
smiled. “Nobody of any standing.”
“Well, has Howard Brooks any standing?”
“Brooks?” Hamilton, like nine hundred and ninety-nine Americans out
of a thousand, knew Brooks as the inventor and exploiter to the tune
of many millions of the most widely-used automobile tire in the
world--a tire which had revolutionized the automobile industry and made
it possible for the first time in history for the farmer and small
salaried city man to operate his own car. Because of the peculiar
hissing sound they made, the tires were called “babbling brooks”--but
they did the work and were cheap. Brooks had mobilized thousands of
workmen, by paying them a bit more than the other manufacturers, and
had then housed them and cared for them with an exacting, paternalistic
benevolence. It was as though a super-efficiency man and the Kaiser
had decided to go into charity on a vast scale. Wages were higher,
hours were shorter, operations were safer than anywhere else; but
while the men did work, they worked like machines. Their production
was astounding. The lost moments in which workmen wipe their brows,
blow their noses or simply rest between processes had been reduced so
effectively that whereas seventeen per cent had been the smallest lost
time ever achieved in any factory, Brooks had cut the percentage down
to six--the minimum of safety, efficiency engineers agreed. How long a
man could work at a six per cent rate--or rather a ninety-four per cent
rate, of course had never been determined, as the system had been in
operation only a few years and the labor turnover was rather large.
Not only were the wages of Brooks’ employees higher than the prevailing
standard, but they were required to place a certain percentage of it
in the bank each week. There were also numberless rules about conduct,
about furnishing the home, about physical care. No Brooks employee was
allowed to drink or smoke. Company investigators visited the homes to
see if the food was cooked scientifically and if the baby was being fed
the proper formula of prepared milk, and, so it was whispered, to smell
breaths.
When the European war began Brooks had engaged the best aeronautic
engineers to construct an enormous dirigible balloon. The idea was
to fly over the Atlantic with it and then over the western front.
Brooks and his assistants, selected from representative clubs and
associations, would drop tons of peace tracts upon the combating
armies. Upon reading these, the armies would cease fighting. “Out of
the trenches by apple blossom time,” was his motto. Incidentally the
balloon would have a powerful advertising value, as the dirigible was
to be known as the Brooks Peace Ship. It wouldn’t hurt to get the
good-will of foreign motor users for after-the-war trade.
When a Chicago newspaper had poked fun at the plan and Brooks had sued
the paper for libel, Brooks had been placed on the witness stand and
exhibited a shocking ignorance of the most elementary facts of American
history. When asked who Benjamin Franklin was, for instance, he had
replied that he was the inventor of an air-cooled automobile motor and
Benedict Arnold, an English author.
At the last minute the committee in charge of the airship had fallen
out as to where they should fly first, over the French or over the
Germans, without offending either of the belligerents. It ended in a
tremendous row, with every one calling every one else a pro-German or a
pro-Frenchman and going home.
At the vaudeville shows, in the smokers of trains, in the joke columns
Brooks’ name appeared frequently. It was a by-word and a signal for
laughter. For one person to say to another:
“Say, I see you’ve got a new set of rubber doughnuts on your car,”
was a cue for uproarious laughter--rubber doughnuts of course meaning
“babbling brooks.”
For all these reasons the mention of Brooks’ name caused Hamilton to
smile involuntarily. He waved his hand in a deprecating gesture.
“Of course that strikes you as funny,” said Dorothy, “but Brooks _has_
standing--any man with so much money has. Of course he has no culture,
in fact is an ignoramus, but he has money and can hire brains. Men will
do anything for money.”
Hamilton laughed.
“Hope I’ve heard my last Brooks joke,” he said. “But where did you get
all this information?”
“Some of it from Dr. Levin. Some of it--”
“Oh, I see,” he interrupted. “Dr. Levin. Probably a little sensitive.
I’ve noticed most Jews are. Even in my company. You say something about
English or Irish or Italian and nobody minds. You even say ‘wop’ and
an Italian grins good naturedly. But the minute you say something,
anything, good or bad, about the Jew, they’re all ears and eyes--all on
edge. I think Dr. Levin’s probably supersensitive.”
Hamilton refused to take the matter seriously. At the same time
he wondered why she brought Dr. Levin’s name so often into the
conversation. She had learned this from Dr. Levin, and that. She quoted
him and sometimes even held him up as an example.
They finished their meal and left the Claridge, the Russian general
still charming his circle of admirers with his conversation, his cruel
blue eyes still circling the room for fresh objects of feminine beauty.