Chapter X: Part 10

_A man is shouting from a soapbox at Second Avenue and
Houston in front of the Cosmopolitan Cafè: “... these
fellers, men ... wageslaves like I was ... are sittin on
your chest ... they’re takin the food outen your mouths.
Where’s all the pretty girls I used to see walkin up and
down the bullevard? Look for em in the uptown cabarets....
They squeeze us dry friends ... feller workers, slaves
I’d oughter say ... they take our work and our ideers and
our women.... They build their Plaza Hotels and their
millionaire’s clubs and their million dollar theayters and
their battleships and what do they leave us?... They leave
us shopsickness an the rickets and a lot of dirty streets
full of garbage cans.... You look pale you fellers....
You need blood.... Why dont you get some blood in your
veins?... Back in Russia the poor people ... not so much
poorer’n we are ... believe in wampires, things come suck
your blood at night.... That’s what Capitalism is, a
wampire that sucks your blood ... day ... and ... night.”_

_It is beginning to snow. The flakes are giltedged where
they pass the streetlamp. Through the plate glass the
Cosmopolitan Cafè full of blue and green opal rifts of
smoke looks like a muddy aquarium; faces blob whitely round
the tables like illassorted fishes. Umbrellas begin to bob
in clusters up the snowmottled street. The orator turns up
his collar and walks briskly east along Houston, holding
the muddy soapbox away from his trousers._

Faces, hats, hands, newspapers jiggled in the fetid roaring subway car like corn in a popper. The downtown express passed clattering in yellow light, window telescoping window till they overlapped like scales.

“Look George,” said Sandbourne to George Baldwin who hung on a strap beside him, “you can see Fitzgerald’s contraction.”

“I’ll be seeing the inside of an undertaking parlor if I dont get out of this subway soon.”

“It does you plutocrats good now and then to see how the other half travels.... Maybe it’ll make you induce some of your little playmates down at Tammany Hall to stop squabbling and give us wageslaves a little transportation.... cristamighty I could tell em a thing or two.... My idea’s for a series of endless moving platforms under Fifth Avenue.”

“Did you cook that up when you were in hospital Phil?”

“I cooked a whole lot of things up while I was in hospital.”

“Look here lets get out at Grand Central and walk. I cant stand this.... I’m not used to it.”

“Sure ... I’ll phone Elsie I’ll be a little late to dinner.... Not often I get to see you nowadays George ... Gee it’s like the old days.”

In a tangled clot of men and women, arms, legs, hats aslant on perspiring necks, they were pushed out on the platform. They walked up Lexington Avenue quiet in the claretmisted afterglow.

“But Phil how did you come to step out in front of a truck that way?”

“Honestly George I dunno.... The last I remember is craning my neck to look at a terribly pretty girl went by in a taxicab and there I was drinking icewater out of a teapot in the hospital.”

“Shame on you Phil at your age.”

“Cristamighty dont I know it? But I’m not the only one.”

“It is funny the way a thing like that comes over you.... Why what have you heard about me?”

“Gosh George dont get nervous, it’s all right.... I’ve seen her in The Zinnia Girl.... She walks away with it. That other girl who’s the star dont have a show.”

“Look here Phil if you hear any rumors about Miss Oglethorpe for Heaven’s sake shut them up. It’s so damn silly you cant go out to tea with a woman without everybody starting their dirty gabble all over town.... By God I will not have a scandal, I dont care what happens.”

“Say hold your horses George.”

“I’m in a very delicate position downtown just at the moment that’s all.... And then Cecily and I have at last reached a modus vivendi.... I wont have it disturbed.”

They walked along in silence.

Sandbourne walked with his hat in his hand. His hair was almost white but his eyebrows were still dark and bushy. Every few steps he changed the length of his stride as if it hurt him to walk. He cleared his throat. “George you were asking me if I’d cooked up any schemes when I was in hospital.... Do you remember years ago old man Specker used to talk about vitreous and superenameled tile? Well I’ve been workin on his formula out at Hollis.... A friend of mine there has a two thousand degree oven he bakes pottery in. I think it can be put on a commercial basis.... Man it would revolutionize the whole industry. Combined with concrete it would enormously increase the flexibility of the materials at the architects’ disposal. We could make tile any color, size or finish.... Imagine this city when all the buildins instead of bein dirty gray were ornamented with vivid colors. Imagine bands of scarlet round the entablatures of skyscrapers. Colored tile would revolutionize the whole life of the city.... Instead of fallin back on the orders or on gothic or romanesque decorations we could evolve new designs, new colors, new forms. If there was a little color in the town all this hardshell inhibited life’d break down.... There’d be more love an less divorce....”

Baldwin burst out laughing. “You tell em Phil.... I’ll talk to you about that sometime. You must come up to dinner when Cecily’s there and tell us about it.... Why wont Parkhurst do anything?”

“I wouldnt let him in on it. He’d cotton on to the proposition and leave me out in the cold once he had the formula. I wouldn’t trust him with a rubber nickel.”

“Why doesnt he take you into partnership Phil?”

“He’s got me where he wants me anyway.... He knows I do all the work in his goddamned office. He knows too that I’m too cranky to make out with most people. He’s a slick article.”

“Still I should think you could put it up to him.”

“He’s got me where he wants me and he knows it, so I continue doin the work while he amasses the coin.... I guess it’s logical. If I had more money I’d just spend it. I’m just shiftless.”

“But look here man you’re not so much older than I am.... You’ve still got a career ahead of you.”

“Sure nine hours a day draftin.... Gosh I wish you’d go into this tile business with me.”

Baldwin stopped at a corner and slapped his hand on the briefcase he was carrying. “Now Phil you know I’d be very glad to give you a hand in any way I could.... But just at the moment my financial situation is terribly involved. I’ve gotten into some rather rash entanglements and Heaven knows how I’m going to get out of them.... That’s why I cant have a scandal or a divorce or anything. You dont understand how complicatedly things interact.... I couldnt take up anything new, not for a year at least. This war in Europe has made things very unsettled downtown. Anything’s liable to happen.”

“All right. Good night George.”

Sandbourne turned abruptly on his heel and walked down the avenue again. He was tired and his legs ached. It was almost dark. On the way back to the station the grimy brick and brownstone blocks dragged past monotonously like the days of his life.

Under the skin of her temples iron clamps tighten till her head will mash like an egg; she begins to walk with long strides up and down the room that bristles with itching stuffiness; spotty colors of pictures, carpets, chairs wrap about her like a choking hot blanket. Outside the window the backyards are striped with blue and lilac and topaz of a rainy twilight. She opens the window. No time to get tight like the twilight, Stan said. The telephone reached out shivering beady tentacles of sound. She slams the window down. O hell cant they give you any peace?

“Why Harry I didnt know you were back.... Oh I wonder if I can.... Oh yes I guess I can. Come along by after the theater.... Isnt that wonderful? You must tell me all about it.” She no sooner puts the receiver down than the bell clutches at her again. “Hello.... No I dont.... Oh yes maybe I do.... When did you get back?” She laughed a tinkling telephone laugh. “But Howard I’m terribly busy.... Yes I am honestly.... Have you been to the show? Well sometime come round after a performance.... I’m so anxious to hear about your trip ... you know ... Goodby Howard.”

A walk’ll make me feel better. She sits at her dressingtable and shakes her hair down about her shoulders. “It’s such a hellish nuisance, I’d like to cut it all off ... spreads apace. The shadow of white Death.... Oughtnt to stay up so late, those dark circles under my eyes.... And at the door, Invisible Corruption.... If I could only cry; there are people who can cry their eyes out, really cry themselves blind ... Anyway the divorce’ll go through....”

Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given

Gosh it’s six o’clock already. She starts walking up and down the room again. I am borne darkly fearfully afar.... The phone rings. “Hello.... Yes this is Miss Oglethorpe.... Why hello Ruth, why I haven’t seen you for ages, since Mrs. Sunderland’s.... Oh, do I’d love to see you. Come by and we’ll have a bite to eat on the way to the theater.... It’s the third floor.”

She rings off and gets a raincape out of a closet. The smell of furs and mothballs and dresses clings in her nostrils. She throws up the window again and breathes deep of the wet air full of the cold rot of autumn. She hears the burring boom of a big steamer from the river. Darkly, fearfully afar from this nonsensical life, from this fuzzy idiocy and strife; a man can take a ship for his wife, but a girl. The telephone is shiveringly beadily ringing, ringing.

The buzzer burrs at the same time. Ellen presses the button to click the latch. “Hello.... No, I’m very sorry I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me who it is. Why Larry Hopkins I thought you were in Tokyo.... They havent moved you again have they? Why of course we must see each other.... My dear it’s simply horrible but I’m all dated up for two weeks.... Look I’m sort of crazy tonight. You call up tomorrow at twelve and I’ll try to shift things around.... Why of course I’ve got to see you immediately you funny old thing.” ... Ruth Prynne and Cassandra Wilkins come in shaking the water off their umbrellas. “Well goodby Larry.... Why it’s so so sweet of both of you.... Do take your things off for a second.... Cassie wont you have dinner with us?”

“I felt I just had to see you.... It’s so wonderful about your wonderful success,” says Cassie in a shaky voice. “And my dear I felt so terribly when I heard about Mr. Emery. I cried and cried, didnt I Ruth?”

“Oh what a beautiful apartment you have,” Ruth is exclaiming at the same moment. Ellen’s ears ring sickeningly. “We all have to die sometime,” gruffly she blurts out.

Ruth’s rubberclad foot is tapping the floor; she catches Cassie’s eye and makes her stammer into silence. “Hadnt we better go along? It’s getting rather late,” she says.

“Excuse me a minute Ruth.” Ellen runs into the bathroom and slams the door. She sits on the edge of the bathtub pounding on her knees with her clenched fists. Those women’ll drive me mad. Then the tension in her snaps, she feels something draining out of her like water out of a washbasin. She quietly puts a dab of rouge on her lips.

When she goes back she says in her usual voice: “Well let’s get along.... Got a part yet Ruth?”

“I had a chance to go out to Detroit with a stock company. I turned it down.... I wont go out of New York whatever happens.”

“What wouldnt I give for a chance to get away from New York.... Honestly if I was offered a job singing in a movie in Medicine Hat I think I’d take it.”

Ellen picks up her umbrella and the three women file down the stairs and out into the street. “Taxi,” calls Ellen.

The passing car grinds to a stop. The red hawk face of the taxidriver craning into the light of the street lamp. “Go to Eugenie’s on Fortyeighth Street,” says Ellen as the others climb in. Greenish lights and darks flicker past the lightbeaded windows.

* * * * *

She stood with her arm in the arm of Harry Goldweiser’s dinner jacket looking out over the parapet of the roofgarden. Below them the Park lay twinkling with occasional lights, streaked with nebular blur like a fallen sky. From behind them came gusts of a tango, inklings of voices, shuffle of feet on a dancefloor. Ellen felt a stiff castiron figure in her metalgreen evening dress.

“Ah but Boirnhardt, Rachel, Duse, Mrs. Siddons.... No Elaine I’m tellin you, d’you understand? There’s no art like the stage that soars so high moldin the passions of men.... If I could only do what I wanted we’d be the greatest people in the world. You’d be the greatest actress.... I’d be the great producer, the unseen builder, d’you understand? But the public dont want art, the people of this country wont let you do anythin for em. All they want’s a detective melodrama or a rotten French farce with the kick left out or a lot of pretty girls and music. Well a showman’s business is to give the public what they want.”

“I think that this city is full of people wanting inconceivable things.... Look at it.”

“It’s all right at night when you cant see it. There’s no artistic sense, no beautiful buildins, no old-time air, that’s what’s the matter with it.”

They stood a while without speaking. The orchestra began playing the waltz from The Lilac Domino. Suddenly Ellen turned to Goldweiser and said in a curt tone. “Can you understand a woman who wants to be a harlot, a common tart, sometimes?”

“My dear young lady what a strange thing for a sweet lovely girl to suddenly come out and say.”

“I suppose you’re shocked.” She didnt hear his answer. She felt she was going to cry. She pressed her sharp nails into the palms of her hands, she held her breath until she had counted twenty. Then she said in a choking little girl’s voice, “Harry let’s go and dance a little.”

The sky above the cardboard buildings is a vault of beaten lead. It would be less raw if it would snow. Ellen finds a taxi on the corner of Seventh Avenue and lets herself sink back in the seat rubbing the numb gloved fingers of one hand against the palm of the other. “West Fiftyseventh, please.” Out of a sick mask of fatigue she watches fruitstores, signs, buildings being built, trucks, girls, messengerboys policemen through the jolting window. If I have my child, Stan’s child, it will grow up to jolt up Seventh Avenue under a sky of beaten lead that never snows watching fruitstores, signs, buildings being built, trucks, girls, messengerboys, policemen.... She presses her knees together sits up straight on the edge of the seat with her hands clasped over her slender belly. O God the rotten joke they’ve played on me, taking Stan away, burning him up, leaving me nothing but this growing in me that’s going to kill me. She’s whimpering into her numb hands. O God why wont it snow?

As she stands on the gray pavement fumbling in her purse for a bill, a dusteddy swirling scraps of paper along the gutter fills her mouth with grit. The elevatorman’s face is round ebony with ivory inlay. “Mrs. Staunton Wells?” “Yas ma’am eighth floor.”

The elevator hums as it soars. She stands looking at herself in the narrow mirror. Suddenly something recklessly gay goes through her. She rubs the dust off her face with a screwedup handkerchief, smiles at the elevatorman’s smile that’s wide as the full keyboard of a piano, and briskly rustles to the door of the apartment that a frilled maid opens. Inside it smells of tea and furs and flowers, women’s voices chirp to the clinking of cups like birds in an aviary. Glances flicker about her head as she goes into the room.

* * * * *

There was wine spilled on the tablecloth and bits of tomatosauce from the spaghetti. The restaurant was a steamy place with views of the Bay of Naples painted in soupy blues and greens on the walls. Ellen sat back in her chair from the round tableful of young men, watching the smoke from her cigarette crinkle spirally round the fat Chiantibottle in front of her. In her plate a slab of tricolor icecream melted forlornly. “But good God hasnt a man some rights? No, this industrial civilization forces us to seek a complete readjustment of government and social life ...”

“Doesnt he use long words?” Ellen whispered to Herf who sat beside her.

“He’s right all the same,” he growled back at her.... “The result has been to put more power in the hands of a few men than there has been in the history of the world since the horrible slave civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia....”

“Hear hear.”

“No but I’m serious.... The only way of bucking the interests is for working people, the proletariat, producers and consumers, anything you want to call them, to form unions and finally get so well organized that they can take over the whole government.”

“I think you’re entirely wrong, Martin, it’s the interests as you call em, these horrible capitalists, that have built up this country as we have it today.”

“Well look at it for God’s sake.... That’s what I’m saying. I wouldnt kennel a dog in it.”

“I dont think so. I admire this country.... It’s the only fatherland I’ve got.... And I think that all these downtrodden masses really want to be downtrodden, they’re not fit for anything else.... If they werent they’d be flourishing businessmen ... Those that are any good are getting to be.”

“But I don’t think a flourishing businessman is the highest ideal of human endeavor.”

“A whole lot higher than a rotten fiddleheaded anarchist agitator.... Those that arent crooks are crazy.”

“Look here Mead, you’ve just insulted something that you dont understand, that you know nothing about.... I cant allow you to do that.... You should try to understand things before you go round insulting them.”

“An insult to the intelligence that’s what it is all this socialistic drivel.”

Ellen tapped Herf on the sleeve. “Jimmy I’ve got to go home. Do you want to walk a little way with me?”

“Martin, will you settle for us? We’ve got to go.... Ellie you look terribly pale.”

“It’s just a little hot in here.... Whee, what a relief.... I hate arguments anyway. I never can think of anything to say.”

“That bunch does nothing but chew the rag night after night.”

Eighth Avenue was full of fog that caught at their throats. Lights bloomed dimly through it, faces loomed, glinted in silhouette and faded like a fish in a muddy aquarium.

“Feel better Ellie?”

“Lots.”

“I’m awfully glad.”

“Do you know you’re the only person around here who calls me Ellie. I like it.... Everybody tries to make me seem so grown up since I’ve been on the stage.”

“Stan used to.”

“Maybe that’s why I like it,” she said in a little trailing voice like a cry heard at night from far away along a beach.

Jimmy felt something clamping his throat. “Oh gosh things are rotten,” he said. “God I wish I could blame it all on capitalism the way Martin does.”

“It’s pleasant walking like this ... I love a fog.”

They walked on without speaking. Wheels rumbled through the muffling fog underlaid with the groping distant lowing of sirens and steamboat whistles on the river.

“But at least you have a career.... You like your work, you’re enormously successful,” said Herf at the corner of Fourteenth Street, and caught her arm as they crossed.

“Dont say that.... You really dont believe it. I dont kid myself as much as you think I do.”

“No but it’s so.”

“It used to be before I met Stan, before I loved him.... You see I was a crazy little stagestruck kid who got launched out in a lot of things I didnt understand before I had time to learn anything about life.... Married at eighteen and divorced at twentytwo’s a pretty good record.... But Stan was so wonderful....”

“I know.”

“Without ever saying anything he made me feel there were other things ... unbelievable things....”

“God I resent his craziness though.... It’s such a waste.”

“I cant talk about it.”

“Let’s not.”

“Jimmy you’re the only person left I can really talk to.”

“Dont want to trust me. I might go berserk on you too some day.”

They laughed.

“God I’m glad I’m not dead, arent you Ellie?”

“I dont know. Look here’s my place. I dont want you to come up.... I’m going right to bed. I feel miserably....” Jimmy stood with his hat off looking at her. She was fumbling in her purse for her key. “Look Jimmy I might as well tell you....” She went up to him and spoke fast with her face turned away pointing at him with the latchkey that caught the light of the streetlamp. The fog was like a tent round about them. “I’m going to have a baby.... Stan’s baby. I’m going to give up all this silly life and raise it. I dont care what happens.”

“O God that’s the bravest thing I ever heard of a woman doing.... Oh Ellie you’re so wonderful. God if I could only tell you what I....”

“Oh no.” Her voice broke and her eyes filled with tears. “I’m a silly fool, that’s all.” She screwed up her face like a little child and ran up the steps with the tears streaming down her face.

“Oh Ellie I want to say something to you ...”

The door closed behind her.

Jimmy Herf stood stockstill at the foot of the brownstone steps. His temples throbbed. He wanted to break the door down after her. He dropped on his knees and kissed the step where she had stood. The fog swirled and flickered with colors in confetti about him. Then the trumpet feeling ebbed and he was falling through a black manhole. He stood stockstill. A policeman’s ballbearing eyes searched his face as he passed, a stout blue column waving a nightstick. Then suddenly he clenched his fists and walked off. “O God everything is hellish,” he said aloud. He wiped the grit off his lips with his coatsleeve.

* * * * *

She puts her hand in his to jump out of the roadster as the ferry starts, “Thanks Larry,” and follows his tall ambling body out on the bow. A faint riverwind blows the dust and gasoline out of their nostrils. Through the pearly night the square frames of houses along the Drive opposite flicker like burnedout fireworks. The waves slap tinily against the shoving bow of the ferry. A hunchback with a violin is scratching Marianela.

“Nothing succeeds like success,” Larry is saying in a deep droning voice.

“Oh if you knew how little I cared about anything just now you wouldnt go on teasing me with all these words.... You know, marriage, success, love, they’re just words.”

“But they mean everything in the world to me.... I think you’d like it in Lima Elaine.... I waited until you were free, didnt I? And now here I am.”

“We’re none of us that ever.... But I’m just numb.” The riverwind is brackish. Along the viaduct above 125th Street cars crawl like beetles. As the ferry enters the slip they hear the squudge and rumble of wheels on asphalt.

“Well we’d better get back into the car, you wonderful creature Elaine.”

“After all day it’s exciting isnt it Larry, getting back into the center of things.”

* * * * *

Beside the smudged white door are two pushbuttons marked NIGHT BELL and DAY BELL. She rings with a shaky finger. A short broad man with a face like a rat and sleek black hair brushed straight back opens. Short dollhands the color of the flesh of a mushroom hang at his sides. He hunches his shoulders in a bow.

“Are you the lady? Come in.”

“Is this Dr. Abrahms?”

“Yes.... You are the lady my friend phoned me about. Sit down my dear lady.” The office smells of something like arnica. Her heart joggles desperately between her ribs.

“You understand ...” She hates the quaver in her voice; she’s going to faint. “You understand, Dr. Abrahms that it is absolutely necessary. I am getting a divorce from my husband and have to make my own living.”

“Very young, unhappily married ... I am sorry.” The doctor purrs softly as if to himself. He heaves a hissing sigh and suddenly looks in her eyes with black steel eyes like gimlets. “Do not be afraid, dear lady, it is a very simple operation.... Are you ready now?”

“Yes. It wont take very long will it? If I can pull myself together I have an engagement for tea at five.”

“You are a brave young lady. In an hour it will be forgotten.... I am sorry.... It is very sad such a thing is necessary.... Dear lady you should have a home and many children and a loving husband ... Will you go in the operating room and prepare yourself.... I work without an assistant.”

The bright searing bud of light swells in the center of the ceiling, sprays razorsharp nickel, enamel, a dazzling sharp glass case of sharp instruments. She takes off her hat and lets herself sink shuddering sick on a little enamel chair. Then she gets stiffly to her feet and undoes the band of her skirt.

The roar of the streets breaks like surf about a shell of throbbing agony. She watches the tilt of her leather hat, the powder, the rosed cheeks, the crimson lips that are a mask on her face. All the buttons of her gloves are buttoned. She raises her hand. “Taxi!” A fire engine roars past, a hosewagon with sweatyfaced men pulling on rubber coats, a clanging hookandladder. All the feeling in her fades with the dizzy fade of the siren. A wooden Indian, painted, with a hand raised at the streetcorner.

“Taxi!”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Drive to the Ritz.”

_Third Section_

I. Rejoicing City That Dwelt Carelessly

_There are flags on all the flagpoles up Fifth Avenue. In
the shrill wind of history the great flags flap and tug at
their lashings on the creaking goldknobbed poles up Fifth
Avenue. The stars jiggle sedately against the slate sky,
the red and white stripes writhe against the clouds._

_In the gale of brassbands and trampling horses and
rumbling clatter of cannon, shadows like the shadows of
claws grasp at the taut flags, the flags are hungry tongues
licking twisting curling._

Oh it’s a long way to Tipperary ... Over there! Over there!

_The harbor is packed with zebrastriped skunkstriped
piebald steamboats, the Narrows are choked with bullion,
they’re piling gold sovereigns up to the ceilings in the
Subtreasury. Dollars whine on the radio, all the cables tap
out dollars._

There’s a long long trail awinding ... Over there! Over there!

_In the subway their eyes pop as they spell out_
APOCALYPSE, _typhus, cholera, shrapnel, insurrection, death
in fire, death in water, death in hunger, death in mud._

_Oh it’s a long way to Madymosell from Armenteers, over
there! The Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming. Down
Fifth Avenue the bands blare for the Liberty Loan drive,
for the Red Cross drive. Hospital ships sneak up the harbor
and unload furtively at night in old docks in Jersey. Up
Fifth Avenue the flags of the seventeen nations are flaring
curling in the shrill hungry wind._

O the oak and the ash and the weeping willow tree
And green grows the grass in God’s country.

_The great flags flap and tug at their lashings on the
creaking goldknobbed poles up Fifth Avenue._

Captain James Merivale D.S.C. lay with his eyes closed while the barber’s padded fingers gently stroked his chin. The lather tickled his nostrils; he could smell bay rum, hear the drone of an electric vibrator, the snipping of scissors.

“A little face massage sir, get rid of a few of those blackheads sir,” burred the barber in his ear. The barber was bald and had a round blue chin.

“All right,” drawled Merivale, “go as far as you like. This is the first decent shave I’ve had since war was declared.”

“Just in from overseas, Captain?”

“Yare ... been making the world safe for democracy.”

The barber smothered his words under a hot towel. “A little lilac water Captain?”

“No dont put any of your damn lotions on me, just a little witchhazel or something antiseptic.”

The blond manicure girl had faintly beaded lashes; she looked up at him bewitchingly, her rosebud lips parted. “I guess you’ve just landed Captain.... My you’ve got a good tan.” He gave up his hand to her on the little white table. “It’s a long time Captain since anybody took care of these hands.”

“How can you tell?”

“Look how the cuticle’s grown.”

“We were too busy for anything like that. I’m a free man since eight o’clock that’s all.”

“Oh it must have been terr ... ible.”

“Oh it was a great little war while it lasted.”

“I’ll say it was ... And now you’re all through Captain?”

“Of course I keep my commission in the reserve corps.”

She gave his hand a last playful tap and he got to his feet.

He put tips into the soft palm of the barber and the hard palm of the colored boy who handed him his hat, and walked slowly up the white marble steps. On the landing was a mirror. Captain James Merivale stopped to look at Captain James Merivale. He was a tall straightfeatured young man with a slight heaviness under the chin. He wore a neat-fitting whipcord uniform picked out by the insignia of the Rainbow Division, well furnished with ribbons and service-stripes. The light of the mirror was reflected silvery on either calf of his puttees. He cleared his throat as he looked himself up and down. A young man in civilian clothes came up behind him.

“Hello James, all cleaned up?”

“You betcher.... Say isnt it a damn fool rule not letting us wear Sam Browne belts? Spoils the whole uniform....”

“They can take all their Sam Browne’s belts and hang them on the Commanding General’s fanny for all I care.... I’m a civilian.”

“You’re still an officer in the reserve corps, dont forget that.”

“They can take their reserve corps and shove it ten thousand miles up the creek. Let’s go have a drink.”

“I’ve got to go up and see the folks.” They had come out on Fortysecond Street. “Well so long James, I’m going to get so drunk ... Just imagine being free.” “So long Jerry, dont do anything I wouldnt do.”

Merivale walked west along Fortysecond. There were still flags out, drooping from windows, waggling lazily from poles in the September breeze. He looked in the shops as he walked along; flowers, women’s stockings, candy, shirts and neckties, dresses, colored draperies through glinting plateglass, beyond a stream of faces, men’s razorscraped faces, girls’ faces with rouged lips and powdered noses. It made him feel flushed and excited. He fidgeted when he got in the subway. “Look at the stripes that one has.... He’s a D.S.C.,” he heard a girl say to another. He got out at Seventysecond and walked with his chest stuck out down the too familiar brownstone street towards the river.

“How do you do, Captain Merivale,” said the elevator man.

“Well, are you out James?” cried his mother running into his arms.

He nodded and kissed her. She looked pale and wilted in her black dress. Maisie, also in black, came rustling tall and rosycheeked behind her. “It’s wonderful to find you both looking so well.”

“Of course we are ... as well as could be expected. My dear we’ve had a terrible time.... You’re the head of the family now, James.”

“Poor daddy ... to go off like that.”

“That was something you missed.... Thousands of people died of it in New York alone.”

He hugged Maisie with one arm and his mother with the other. Nobody spoke.

“Well,” said Merivale walking into the living room, “it was a great war while it lasted.” His mother and sister followed on his heels. He sat down in the leather chair and stretched out his polished legs. “You dont know how wonderful it is to get home.”

Mrs. Merivale drew up her chair close to his. “Now dear you just tell us all about it.”

* * * * *

In the dark of the stoop in front of the tenement door, he reaches for her and drags her to him. “Dont Bouy, dont; dont be rough.” His arms tighten like knotted cords round her back; her knees are trembling. His mouth is groping for her mouth along one cheekbone, down the side of her nose. She cant breathe with his lips probing her lips. “Oh I cant stand it.” He holds her away from him. She is staggering panting against the wall held up by his big hands.

“Nutten to worry about,” he whispers gently.

“I’ve got to go, it’s late.... I have to get up at six.”

“Well what time do you think I get up?”

“It’s mommer who might catch me....”

“Tell her to go to hell.”

“I will some day ... worse’n that ... if she dont quit pickin on me.” She takes hold of his stubbly cheeks and kisses him quickly on the mouth and has broken away from him and run up the four flights of grimy stairs.

The door is still on the latch. She strips off her dancing pumps and walks carefully through the kitchenette on aching feet. From the next room comes the wheezy doublebarreled snoring of her uncle and aunt. _Somebody loves me, I wonder who...._ The tune is all through her body, in the throb of her feet, in the tingling place on her back where he held her tight dancing with her. Anna you’ve got to forget it or you wont sleep. Anna you got to forget. Dishes on the tables set for breakfast jingle tingle hideously when she bumps against it.

“That you Anna?” comes a sleepy querulous voice from her mother’s bed.

“Went to get a drink o water mommer.” The old woman lets the breath out in a groan through her teeth, the bedsprings creak as she turns over. Asleep all the time.

_Somebody loves me, I wonder who._ She slips off her party dress and gets into her nightgown. Then she tiptoes to the closet to hang up the dress and at last slides between the covers little by little so the slats wont creak. _I wonder who._ Shuffle shuffle, bright lights, pink blobbing faces, grabbing arms, tense thighs, bouncing feet. _I wonder who._ Shuffle, droning saxophone tease, shuffle in time to the drum, trombone, clarinet. Feet, thighs, cheek to cheek, _Somebody loves me...._ Shuffle shuffle. _I wonder who._

* * * * *

The baby with tiny shut purplishpink face and fists lay asleep on the berth. Ellen was leaning over a black leather suitcase. Jimmy Herf in his shirtsleeves was looking out the porthole.

“Well there’s the statue of Liberty.... Ellie we ought to be out on deck.”

“It’ll be ages before we dock.... Go ahead up. I’ll come up with Martin in a minute.”

“Oh come ahead; we’ll put the baby’s stuff in the bag while we’re warping into the slip.”

They came out on deck into a dazzling September afternoon. The water was greenindigo. A steady wind kept sweeping coils of brown smoke and blobs of whitecotton steam off the high enormous blueindigo arch of sky. Against a sootsmudged horizon, tangled with barges, steamers, chimneys of powerplants, covered wharves, bridges, lower New York was a pink and white tapering pyramid cut slenderly out of cardboard.

“Ellie we ought to have Martin out so he can see.”

“And start yelling like a tugboat.... He’s better off where he is.”

They ducked under some ropes, slipped past the rattling steamwinch and out to the bow.

“God Ellie it’s the greatest sight in the world.... I never thought I’d ever come back, did you?”

“I had every intention of coming back.”

“Not like this.”

“No I dont suppose I did.”

“S’il vous plait madame ...”

A sailor was motioning them back. Ellen turned her face into the wind to get the coppery whisps of hair out of her eyes. “C’est beau, n’est-ce pas?” She smiled into the wind into the sailor’s red face.

“J’aime mieux Le Havre ... S’il vous plait madame.”

“Well I’ll go down and pack Martin up.”

The hard chug, chug of the tugboat coming alongside beat Jimmy’s answer out of her ears. She slipped away from him and went down to the cabin again.

They were wedged in the jam of people at the end of the gangplank.

“Look we could wait for a porter,” said Ellen.

“No dear I’ve got them.” Jimmy was sweating and staggering with a suitcase in each hand and packages under his arms. In Ellen’s arms the baby was cooing stretching tiny spread hands towards the faces all round.

“D’you know it?” said Jimmy as they crossed the gangplank, “I kinder wish we were just going on board.... I hate getting home.”

“I dont hate it.... There’s H ... I’ll follow right along.... I wanted to look for Frances and Bob. Hello....” “Well I’ll be ...” “Helena you’ve gained, you’re looking wonderfully. Where’s Jimps?” Jimmy was rubbing his hands together, stiff and chafed from handles of the heavy suitcases.

“Hello Herf. Hello Frances. Isn’t this swell?”

“Gosh I’m glad to see you....”

“Jimps the thing for me to do is go right on to the Brevoort with the baby ...”

“Isn’t he sweet.”

“... Have you got five dollars?”

“I’ve only got a dollar in change. That hundred is in express checks.”

“I’ve got plenty of money. Helena and I’ll go to the hotel and you boys can come along with the baggage.”

“Inspector is it all right if I go through with the baby? My husband will look after the trunks.”

“Why surely madam, go right ahead.”

“Isnt he nice? Oh Frances this is lots of fun.”

“Go ahead Bob I can finish this up alone quicker.... You convoy the ladies to the Brevoort.”

“Well we hate to leave you.”

“Oh go ahead.... I’ll be right along.”

“Mr. James Herf and wife and infant ... is that it?”

“Yes that’s right.”

“I’ll be right with you, Mr. Herf.... Is all the baggage there?”

“Yes everything’s there.”

“Isnt he good?” clucked Frances as she and Hildebrand followed Ellen into the cab.

“Who?”

“The baby of course....”

“Oh you ought to see him sometimes.... He seems to like traveling.”

A plainclothesman opened the door of the cab and looked in as they went out the gate. “Want to smell our breaths?” asked Hildebrand. The man had a face like a block of wood. He closed the door. “Helena doesn’t know prohibition yet, does she?”

“He gave me a scare ... Look.”

“Good gracious!” From under the blanket that was wrapped round the baby she produced a brownpaper package.... “Two quarts of our special cognac ... gout famille ’Erf ... and I’ve got another quart in a hotwaterbottle under my waistband.... That’s why I look as if I was going to have another baby.”

The Hildebrands began hooting with laughter.

“Jimp’s got a hotwaterbottle round his middle too and chartreuse in a flask on his hip.... We’ll probably have to go and bail him out of jail.”

They were still laughing so that tears were streaming down their faces when they drew up at the hotel. In the elevator the baby began to wail.

As soon as she had closed the door of the big sunny room she fished the hotwaterbottle from under her dress. “Look Bob phone down for some cracked ice and seltzer.... We’ll all have a cognac a l’eau de selz....”

“Hadn’t we better wait for Jimps?”

“Oh he’ll be right here.... We haven’t anything dutiable.... Much too broke to have anything.... Frances what do you do about milk in New York?”

“How should I know, Helena?” Frances Hildebrand flushed and walked to the window.

“Oh well we’ll give him his food again.... He’s done fairly well on it on the trip.” Ellen had laid the baby on the bed. He lay kicking, looking about with dark round goldstone eyes.

“Isnt he fat?”

“He’s so healthy I’m sure he must be halfwitted.... Oh Heavens and I’ve got to call up my father.... Isnt family life just too desperately complicated?”

Ellen was setting up her little alcohol stove on the washstand. The bellboy came with glasses and a bowl of clinking ice and White Rock on a tray.

“You fix us a drink out of the hotwaterbottle. We’ve got to use that up or it’ll eat the rubber.... And we’ll drink to the Café d’Harcourt.”

“Of course what you kids dont realize,” said Hildebrand, “is that the difficulty under prohibition is keeping sober.”

Ellen laughed; she stood over the little lamp that gave out a quiet domestic smell of hot nickel and burned alcohol.

* * * * *

George Baldwin was walking up Madison Avenue with his light overcoat on his arm. His fagged spirits were reviving in the sparkling autumn twilight of the streets. From block to block through the taxiwhirring gasoline gloaming two lawyers in black frock coats and stiff wing collars argued in his head. If you go home it will be cozy in the library. The apartment will be gloomy and quiet and you can sit in your slippers under the bust of Scipio Africanus in the leather chair and read and have dinner sent in to you.... Nevada would be jolly and coarse and tell you funny stories.... She would have all the City Hall gossip ... good to know.... But you’re not going to see Nevada any more ... too dangerous; she gets you all wrought up.... And Cecily sitting faded and elegant and slender biting her lips and hating me, hating life.... Good God how am I going to get my existence straightened out? He stopped in front of a flowerstore. A moist warm honied expensive smell came from the door, densely out into the keen steelblue street. If I could at least make my financial position impregnable.... In the window was a minature Japanese garden with brokenback bridges and ponds where the goldfish looked big as whales. Proportion, that’s it. To lay out your life like a prudent gardener, plowing and sowing. No I wont go to see Nevada tonight. I might send her some flowers though. Yellow roses, those coppery roses ... it’s Elaine who ought to wear those. Imagine her married again and with a baby. He went into the store. “What’s that rose?”

“It’s Gold of Ophir sir.”

“All right I want two dozen sent down to the Brevoort immediately.... Miss Elaine ... No Mr. and Mrs. James Herf.... I’ll write a card.”

He sat down at the desk with a pen in his hand. Incense of roses, incense out of the dark fire of her hair.... No nonsense for Heaven’s sake ...

DEAR ELAINE,

I hope you will allow an old friend to call on you and your
husband one of these days. And please remember that I am
always sincerely anxious--you know me too well to take this
for an empty offer of politeness--to serve you and him in any
way that could possibly contribute to your happiness. Forgive
me if I subscribe myself your lifelong slave and admirer

GEORGE BALDWIN

The letter covered three of the florists’ white cards. He read it over with pursed lips, carefully crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s. Then he paid the florist from the roll of bills he took from his back pocket and went out into the street again. It was already night, going on to seven o’clock. Still hesitating he stood at the corner watching the taxis pass, yellow, red, green, tangerinecolored.

* * * * *

The snubnosed transport sludges slowly through the Narrows in the rain. Sergeant-Major O’Keefe and Private 1st Class Dutch Robertson stand in the lee of the deckhouse looking at the liners at anchor in quarantine and the low wharfcluttered shores.

“Look some of em still got their warpaint--Shippin Board boats.... Not worth the powder to blow em up.”

“The hell they aint,” said Joey O’Keefe vaguely.

“Gosh little old New York’s goin to look good to me....”

“Me too Sarge, rain or shine I dont care.”

They are passing close to a mass of steamers anchored in a block, some of them listing to one side or the other, lanky ships with short funnels, stumpy ships with tall funnels red with rust, some of them striped and splashed and dotted with puttycolor and blue and green of camouflage paint. A man in a motorboat waved his arms. The men in khaki slickers huddled on the gray dripping deck of the transport begin to sing

Oh the infantry, the infantry,
With the dirt behind their ears ...

Through the brightbeaded mist behind the low buildings of Governors Island they can make out the tall pylons, the curving cables, the airy lace of Brooklyn Bridge. Robertson pulls a package out of his pocket and pitches it overboard.

“What was that?”

“Just my propho kit.... Wont need it no more.”

“How’s that?”

“Oh I’m goin to live clean an get a good job and maybe get married.”

“I guess that’s not such a bad idear. I’m tired o playin round myself. Jez somebody must a cleaned up good on them Shippin Board boats.” “That’s where the dollar a year men get theirs I guess.”

“I’ll tell the world they do.”

Up forward they are singing

Oh she works in a jam factoree
And that may be all right ...

“Jez we’re goin up the East River Sarge. Where the devil do they think they’re goin to land us?”

“God, I’d be willin to swim ashore myself. An just think of all the guys been here all this time cleanin up on us.... Ten dollars a day workin in a shipyard mind you ...”

“Hell Sarge we got the experience.”

“Experience ...”

Apres la guerre finee
Back to the States for me....

“I bet the skipper’s been drinkin beaucoup highballs an thinks Brooklyn’s Hoboken.”

“Well there’s Wall Street, bo.”

They are passing under Brooklyn Bridge. There is a humming whine of electric trains over their heads, an occasional violet flash from the wet rails. Behind them beyond barges tugboats carferries the tall buildings, streaked white with whisps of steam and mist, tower gray into sagged clouds.

* * * * *

Nobody said anything while they ate the soup. Mrs. Merivale sat in black at the head of the oval table looking out through the half drawn portières and the drawingroom window beyond at a column of white smoke that uncoiled in the sunlight above the trainyards, remembering her husband and how they had come years ago to look at the apartment in the unfinished house that smelled of plaster and paint. At last when she had finished her soup she roused herself and said: “Well Jimmy, are you going back to newspaper work?”

“I guess so.”

“James has had three jobs offered him already. I think it’s remarkable.”

“I guess I’ll go in with the Major though,” said James Merivale to Ellen who sat next to him. “Major Goodyear you know, Cousin Helena.... One of the Buffalo Goodyears. He’s head of the foreign exchange department of the Banker’s Trust.... He says he can work me up quickly. We were friends overseas.”

“That’ll be wonderful,” said Maisie in a cooing voice, “wont it Jimmy?” She sat opposite slender and rosy in her black dress.

“He’s putting me up for Piping Rock,” went on Merivale.

“What’s that?”

“Why Jimmy you must know.... I’m sure Cousin Helena has been out there to tea many a time.”

“You know Jimps,” said Ellen with her eyes in her plate. “That’s where Stan Emery’s father used to go every Sunday.”

“Oh did you know that unfortunate young man? That was a horrible thing,” said Mrs. Merivale. “So many horrible things have been happening these years.... I’d almost forgotten about it.”

“Yes I knew him,” said Ellen.

The leg of lamb came in accompanied by fried eggplant, late corn, and sweet potatoes. “Do you know I think it is just terrible,” said Mrs. Merivale when she had done carving, “the way you fellows wont tell us any of your experiences over there.... Lots of them must have been remarkably interesting. Jimmy I should think you’d write a book about your experiences.”

“I have tried a few articles.”

“When are they coming out?”

“Nobody seems to want to print them.... You see I differ radically in certain matters of opinion ...”

“Mrs. Merivale it’s years since I’ve eaten such delicious sweet potatoes.... These taste like yams.”

“They are good.... It’s just the way I have them cooked.”

“Well it was a great war while it lasted,” said Merivale.

“Where were you Armistice night, Jimmy?”

“I was in Jerusalem with the Red Cross. Isn’t that absurd?”

“I was in Paris.”

“So was I,” said Ellen.

“And so you were over there too Helena? I’m going to call you Helena eventually, so I might as well begin now.... Isn’t that interesting? Did you and Jimmy meet over there?”

“Oh no we were old friends.... But we were thrown together a lot.... We were in the same department of the Red Cross--the Publicity Department.”

“A real war romance,” chanted Mrs. Merivale. “Isn’t that interesting?”

* * * * *

“Now fellers it’s this way,” shouted Joe O’Keefe, the sweat breaking out on his red face. “Are we going to put over this bonus proposition or aint we?... We fought for em didnt we, we cleaned up the squareheads, didnt we? And now when we come home we get the dirty end of the stick. No jobs.... Our girls have gone and married other fellers.... Treat us like a bunch o dirty bums and loafers when we ask for our just and legal and lawful compensation ... the bonus. Are we goin to stand for it?... No. Are we goin to stand for a bunch of politicians treatin us like we was goin round to the back door to ask for a handout?... I ask you fellers....”

Feet stamped on the floor. “No.” “To hell wid em,” shouted voices.... “Now I say to hell wid de politicians.... We’ll carry our campaign to the country ... to the great big generous bighearted American people we fought and bled and laid down our lives for.”

The long armory room roared with applause. The wounded men in the front row banged the floor with their crutches. “Joey’s a good guy,” said a man without arms to a man with one eye and an artificial leg who sat beside him. “He is that Buddy.” While they were filing out offering each other cigarettes, a man stood in the door calling out, “Committee meeting, Committee on Bonus.”

The four of them sat round a table in the room the Colonel had lent them. “Well fellers let’s have a cigar.” Joe hopped over to the Colonel’s desk and brought out four Romeo and Juliets. “He’ll never miss em.”

“Some little grafter I’ll say,” said Sid Garnett stretching out his long legs.

“Havent got a case of Scotch in there, have you Joey?” said Bill Dougan.

“Naw I’m not drinkin myself jus for the moment.”

“I know where you kin get guaranteed Haig and Haig,” put in Segal cockily--“before the war stuff for six dollars a quart.”

“An where are we goin to get the six dollars for crissake?”

“Now look here fellers,” said Joe, sitting on the edge of the table, “let’s get down to brass tacks.... What we’ve got to do is raise a fund from the gang and anywhere else we can.... Are we agreed about that?”

“Sure we are, you tell em,” said Dougan.

“I know lot of old fellers even, thinks the boys are gettin a raw deal.... We’ll call it the Brooklyn Bonus Agitation Committee associated with the Sheamus O’Rielly Post of the A. L.... No use doin anythin unless you do it up right.... Now are yous guys wid me or aint yer?”

“Sure we are Joey.... You tell em an we’ll mark time.”

“Well Dougan’s got to be president cause he’s the best lookin.”