Chapter III: Part 3

Mme. Rigaud locked the till with a key from the bunch that hung at her belt and went through the glass door in the back of the shop. Emile followed with his hat in his hand.

“Give me your hat Emile.”

“Oh dont trouble yourself.”

The room beyond was a little parlor with yellow flowered wallpaper, old salmon pink portières and, under the gas-bracket from which hung a bunch of crystals, a piano with photographs on it. The pianostool creaked when Mme. Rigaud sat down. She ran her fingers over the keys. Emile sat carefully on the very edge of the chair beside the piano with his hat on his knees and pushed his face forward so that as she played she could see it out of the corner of her eye tilted up towards hers. Madame Rigaud began to sing:

Just a birrd in a geelded cage
A beauteeful sight to see
You’d tink se vas ’appee
And free from all care
Se’s not zo se seems to be....

The bell on the door of the shop jangled loud.

“Permettez,” cried Emile running out.

“Half a pound o bolony sausage sliced,” said a little girl with pigtails. Emile passed the knife across the palm of his hand and sliced the sausage carefully. He tiptoed back into the parlor and put the money on the edge of the piano. Madame Rigaud was still singing:

Tis sad ven you tink of a vasted life
For yout cannot mate vit age
Beautee vas soooold
For an old man’s gooold
Se’s a birrd in a geelded cage.

Bud stood on the corner of West Broadway and Franklin Street eating peanuts out of a bag. It was noon and his money was all gone. The Elevated thundered overhead. Dustmotes danced before his eyes in the girderstriped sunlight. Wondering which way to go he spelled out the names of the streets for the third time. A black shiny cab drawn by two black shinyrumped horses turned the corner sharp in front of him with a rasp on the cobblestones of red shiny wheels suddenly braked. There was a yellow leather trunk on the seat beside the driver. In the cab a man in a brown derby talked loud to a woman with a gray feather boa round her neck and gray ostrich plumes in her hat. The man jerked a revolver up to his mouth. The horses reared and plunged in the middle of a shoving crowd. Policemen elbowing through. They had the man out on the curbstone vomiting blood, head hanging limp over his checked vest. The woman stood tall and white beside him twisting her feather boa in her hands, the gray plumes in her hat nodding in the striped sunlight under the elevated.

“His wife was taking him to Europe.... The _Deutschland_ sailing at twelve. I’d said goodby to him forever. He was sailing on the _Deutschland_ at twelve. He’d said goodby to me forever.”

“Git oute de way dere;” a cop jabbed Bud in the stomach with his elbow. His knees trembled. He got to the edge of the crowd and walked away trembling. Mechanically he shelled a peanut and put it in his mouth. Better save the rest till evenin. He twisted the mouth of the bag and dropped it into his pocket.

* * * * *

Under the arclight that spluttered pink and green-edged violet the man in the checked suit passed two girls. The full-lipped oval face of the girl nearest to him; her eyes were like a knifethrust. He walked a few paces then turned and followed them fingering his new satin necktie. He made sure the horseshoe diamond pin was firm in its place. He passed them again. Her face was turned away. Maybe she was.... No he couldn’t tell. Good luck he had fifty dollars on him. He sat on a bench and let them pass him. Wouldnt do to make a mistake and get arrested. They didnt notice him. He followed them down the path and out of the Park. His heart was pounding. I’d give a million dollars for ... Pray pardon me, isn’t this Miss Anderson? The girls walked fast. In the crowd crossing Columbus Circle he lost sight of them. He hurried down Broadway block after block. The full lips, the eyes like the thrust of a knife. He stared in girls’ faces right and left. Where could she have gone? He hurried on down Broadway.

Ellen was sitting beside her father on a bench at the Battery. She was looking at her new brown button shoes. A glint of sunlight caught on the toes and on each of the little round buttons when she swung her feet out from under the shadow of her dress.

“Think how it’d be,” Ed Thatcher was saying, “to go abroad on one of those liners. Imagine crossing the great Atlantic in seven days.”

“But daddy what do people do all that time on a boat?”

“I dunno ... I suppose they walk round the deck and play cards and read and all that sort of thing. Then they have dances.”

“Dances on a boat! I should think it’d be awful tippy.” Ellen giggled.

“On the big modern liners they do.”

“Daddy why dont we go?”

“Maybe we will some day if I can save up the money.”

“Oh daddy do hurry up an save a lot of money. Alice Vaughan’s mother an father go to the White Mountains every summer, but next summer they’re going abroad.”

Ed Thatcher looked out across the bay that stretched in blue sparkling reaches into the brown haze towards the Narrows. The statue of Liberty stood up vague as a sleepwalker among the curling smoke of tugboats and the masts of schooners and the blunt lumbering masses of brickbarges and sandscows. Here and there the glary sun shone out white on a sail or on the superstructure of a steamer. Red ferryboats shuttled back and forth.

“Daddy why arent we rich?”

“There are lots of people poorer than us Ellie.... You wouldn’t like your daddy any better if he were rich would you?”

“Oh yes I would daddy.”

Thatcher laughed. “Well it might happen someday.... How would you like the firm of Edward C. Thatcher and Co., Certified Accountants?”

Ellen jumped to her feet: “Oh look at that big boat.... That’s the boat I want to go on.”

“That there’s the _Harabic_,” croaked a cockney voice beside them.

“Oh is it really?” said Thatcher.

“Indeed it is, sir; as fahne a ship as syles the sea sir,” explained eagerly a frayed creakyvoiced man who sat on the bench beside them. A cap with a broken patentleather visor was pulled down over a little peaked face that exuded a faded smell of whiskey. “Yes sir, the _Harabic_ sir.”

“Looks like a good big boat that does.”

“One of the biggest afloat sir. I syled on er many’s the tahme and on the _Majestic_ and the _Teutonic_ too sir, fahne ships both, though a bit light’eaded in a sea as you might say. I’ve signed as steward on the Hinman and White Star lahnes these thirty years and now in me old age they’ve lyed me hoff.”

“Oh well, we all have hard luck sometimes.”

“And some of us as it hall the tahme sir.... I’d be a appy man sir, if I could get back to the old country. This arent any plyce for an old man, it’s for the young and strong, this is.” He drew a gout-twisted hand across the bay and pointed to the statue. “Look at er, she’s alookin towards Hengland she is.”

“Daddy let’s go away. I dont like this man,” whispered Ellen tremulously in her father’s ear.

“All right we’ll go and take a look at the sealions.... Good day.”

“You couldn’t fahnd me the price of a cup o coffee, could you now sir? I’m fair foundered.” Thatcher put a dime in the grimy knobbed hand.

“But daddy, mummy said never to let people speak to you in the street an to call a policeman if they did an to run away as fast as you could on account of those horrible kidnappers.”

“No danger of their kidnapping me Ellie. That’s just for little girls.”

“When I grow up will I be able to talk to people on the street like that?”

“No deary you certainly will not.”

“If I’d been a boy could I?”

“I guess you could.”

In front of the Aquarium they stopped a minute to look down the bay. The liner with a tug puffing white smoke against either bow was abreast of them towering above the ferryboats and harborcraft. Gulls wheeled and screamed. The sun shone creamily on the upper decks and on the big yellow blackcapped funnel. From the foremast a string of little flags fluttered jauntily against the slate sky.

“And there are lots of people coming over from abroad on that boat arent there daddy?”

“Look you can see ... the decks are black with people.”

* * * * *

Walking across Fiftythird Street from the East River Bud Korpenning found himself standing beside a pile of coal on the sidewalk. On the other side of the pile of coal a grayhaired woman in a flounced lace shirtwaist with a big pink cameo poised on the curve of her high bosom was looking at his stubbly chin and at the wrists that hung raw below the frayed sleeves of his coat. Then he heard himself speak:

“Dont spose I could take that load of coal in back for you ma’am?” Bud shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

“That’s just what you could do,” the woman said in a cracked voice. “That wretched coal man left it this morning and said he’d be back to bring it in. I suppose he’s drunk like the rest of them. I wonder if I can trust you in the house.”

“I’m from upstate ma’am,” stammered Bud.

“From where?”

“From Cooperstown.”

“Hum.... I’m from Buffalo. This is certainly the city for everyone being from somewhere else.... Well you’re probably a burglar’s accomplice, but I cant help it I’ve got to have that coal in.... Come in my man, I’ll give you a shovel and a basket and if you dont drop any in the passage or on the kitchen floor, because the scrubwoman’s just left ... naturally the coal had to come when the floor was clean.... I’ll give you a dollar.”

When he carried in the first load she was hovering in the kitchen. His caving hungersniff stomach made him totter lightheadedly, but he was happy to be working instead of dragging his feet endlessly along pavements, across streets, dodging drays and carts and streetcars.

“How is it you haven’t got a regular job my man,” she asked as he came back breathless with the empty basket.

“I reckon it’s as I aint caught on to city ways yet. I was born an raised on a farm.”

“And what did you want to come to this horrible city for?”

“Couldn’t stay on the farm no more.”

“It’s terrible what’s going to become of this country if all the fine strong young men leave the farms and come into the cities.”

“Thought I could git a work as a longshoreman, ma’am, but they’re layin’ men off down on the wharves. Mebbe I kin go to sea as a sailor but nobody wants a green hand.... I aint et for two days now.”

“How terrible.... Why you poor man couldn’t you have gone to some mission or something?”

When Bud had brought the last load in he found a plate of cold stew on the corner of the kitchen table, half a loaf of stale bread and a glass of milk that was a little sour. He ate quickly barely chewing and put the last of the stale bread in his pocket.

“Well did you enjoy your little lunch?”

“Thankye ma’am.” He nodded with his mouth full.

“Well you can go now and thank you very much.” She put a quarter into his hand. Bud blinked at the quarter in the palm of his hand.

“But ma’am you said you’d give me a dollar.”

“I never said any such thing. The idea.... I’ll call my husband if you dont get out of here immediately. In fact I’ve a great mind to notify the police as it is....”

Without a word Bud pocketed the quarter and shuffled out.

“Such ingratitude,” he heard the woman snort as he closed the door behind him.

A cramp was tying knots in his stomach. He turned east again and walked the long blocks to the river with his fists pressed tight in under his ribs. At any moment he expected to throw up. If I lose it it wont do me no good. When he got to the end of the street he lay down on the gray rubbish slide beside the wharf. A smell of hops seeped gruelly and sweet out of the humming brewery behind him. The light of the sunset flamed in the windows of factories on the Long Island side, flashed in the portholes of tugs, lay in swaths of curling yellow and orange over the swift browngreen water, glowed on the curved sails of a schooner that was slowly bucking the tide up into Hell Gate. Inside him the pain was less. Something flamed and glowed like the sunset seeping through his body. He sat up. Thank Gawd I aint agoin to lose it.

* * * * *

On deck it’s damp and shivery in the dawn. The ship’s rail is wet when you put your hand on it. The brown harborwater smells of washbasins, rustles gently against the steamer’s sides. Sailors are taking the hatches off the hold. There’s a rattle of chains and a clatter from the donkeyengine where a tall man in blue overalls stands at a lever in the middle of a cloud of steam that wraps round your face like a wet towel.

“Muddy is it really the Fourth of July?”

Mother’s hand has grasped his firmly trailing him down the companionway into the dining saloon. Stewards are piling up baggage at the foot of the stairs.

“Muddy is it really the Fourth of July?”

“Yes deary I’m afraid it is.... A holiday is a dreadful time to arrive. Still I guess they’ll all be down to meet us.”

She has her blue serge on and a long trailing brown veil and the little brown animal with red eyes and teeth that are real teeth round her neck. A smell of mothballs comes from it, of unpacking trunks, of wardrobes littered with tissuepaper. It’s hot in the dining saloon, the engines sob soothingly behind the bulkhead. His head nods over his cup of hot milk just colored with coffee. Three bells. His head snaps up with a start. The dishes tinkle and the coffee spills with the trembling of the ship. Then a thud and rattle of anchorchains and gradually quiet. Muddy gets up to look through the porthole.

“Why it’s going to be a fine day after all. I think the sun will burn through the mist.... Think of it dear; home at last. This is where you were born deary.”

“And it’s the Fourth of July.”

“Worst luck.... Now Jimmy you must promise me to stay on the promenade deck and be very careful. Mother has to finish packing. Promise me you wont get into any mischief.”

“I promise.”

He catches his toe on the brass threshold of the smokingroom door and sprawls on deck, gets up rubbing his bare knee just in time to see the sun break through chocolate clouds and swash a red stream of brightness over the putty-colored water. Billy with the freckles on his ears whose people are for Roosevelt instead of for Parker like mother is waving a silk flag the size of a handkerchief at the men on a yellow and white tugboat.

“Didjer see the sun rise?” he asks as if he owned it.

“You bet I saw it from my porthole,” says Jimmy walking away after a lingering look at the silk flag. There’s land close on the other side; nearest a green bank with trees and wide white grayroofed houses.

“Well young feller, how does it feel to be home?” asks the tweedy gentleman with droopy mustaches.

“Is that way New York?” Jimmy points out over the still water broadening in the sunlight.

“Yessiree-bobby, behind yonder bank of fog lies Manhattan.”

“Please sir what’s that?”

“That’s New York.... You see New York is on Manhattan Island.”

“Is it really on an island?”

“Well what do you think of a boy who dont know that his own home town is on an island?”

The tweedy gentleman’s gold teeth glitter as he laughs with his mouth wide open. Jimmy walks on round the deck, kicking his heels, all foamy inside; New York’s on an island.

“You look right glad to get home little boy,” says the Southern lady.

“Oh I am, I could fall down and kiss the ground.”

“Well that’s a fine patriotic sentiment.... I’m glad to hear you say it.”

Jimmy scalds all over. Kiss the ground, kiss the ground, echoes in his head like a catcall. Round the deck.

“That with the yellow flag’s the quarantine boat.” A stout man with rings on his fingers--he’s a Jew--is talking to the tweedy man. “Ha we’re under way again.... That was quick, what?”

“We’ll be in for breakfast, an American breakfast, a good old home breakfast.”

Muddy coming down the deck, her brown veil floating. “Here’s your overcoat Jimmy, you’ve got to carry it.”

“Muddy, can I get out that flag?”

“What flag?”

“The silk American flag.”

“No dear it’s all put away.”

“Please I’d so like to have that flag cause it’s the Fourth of July an everything.”

“Now dont whine Jimmy. When mother says no she means no.”

Sting of tears; he swallows a lump and looks up in her eyes.

“Jimmy it’s put away in the shawlstrap and mother’s so tired of fussing with those wretched bags.”

“But Billy Jones has one.”

“Look deary you’re missing things.... There’s the statue of Liberty.” A tall green woman in a dressing gown standing on an island holding up her hand.

“What’s that in her hand?”

“That’s a light, dear ... Liberty enlightening the world.... And there’s Governors Island the other side. There where the trees are ... and see, that’s Brooklyn Bridge.... That is a fine sight. And look at all the docks ... that’s the Battery ... and the masts and the ships ... and there’s the spire of Trinity Church and the Pulitzer building.” ... Mooing of steamboat whistles, ferries red and waddly like ducks churning up white water, a whole train of cars on a barge pushed by a tug chugging beside it that lets out cotton steampuffs all the same size. Jimmy’s hands are cold and he’s chugging and chugging inside.

“Dear you mustn’t get too excited. Come on down and see if mother left anything in the stateroom.”

Streak of water crusted with splinters, groceryboxes, orangepeel, cabbageleaves, narrowing, narrowing between the boat and the dock. A brass band shining in the sun, white caps, sweaty red faces, playing Yankee Doodle. “That’s for the ambassador, you know the tall man who never left his cabin.” Down the slanting gangplank, careful not to trip. _Yankee Doodle went to town._... Shiny black face, white enameled eyes, white enameled teeth. “Yas ma’am, yas ma’am” ... _Stucka feather in his hat, an called it macaroni._.... “We have the freedom of the port.” Blue custom officer shows a bald head bowing low ... _Tumte boomboom_ BOOM BOOM BOOM ... _cakes and sugar candy_....

“Here’s Aunt Emily and everybody.... Dear how sweet of you to come.”

“My dear I’ve been here since six o’clock!”

“My how he’s grown.”

Light dresses, sparkle of brooches, faces poked into Jimmy’s, smell of roses and uncle’s cigar.

“Why he’s quite a little man. Come here sir, let me look at you.”

“Well goodby Mrs. Herf. If you ever come down our way.... Jimmy I didn’t see you kiss the ground young man.”

“Oh he’s killing, he’s so oldfashioned ... such an oldfashioned child.”

The cab smells musty, goes rumbling and lurching up a wide avenue swirling with dust, through brick streets soursmelling full of grimy yelling children, and all the while the trunks creak and thump on top.

“Muddy dear, you dont think it’ll break through do you?”

“No dear,” she laughs tilting her head to one side. She has pink cheeks and her eyes sparkle under the brown veil.

“Oh muddy.” He stands up and kisses her on the chin. “What lots of people muddy.”

“That’s on account of the Fourth of July.”

“What’s that man doing?”

“He’s been drinking dear I’m afraid.”

From a little stand draped with flags a man with white whiskers with little red garters on his shirtsleeves is making a speech. “That’s a Fourth of July orator.... He’s reading the Declaration of Independence.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s the Fourth of July.”

Crang! ... that’s a cannon-cracker. “That wretched boy might have frightened the horse.... The Fourth of July dear is the day the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776 in the War of the Revolution. My great grandfather Harland was killed in that war.”

A funny little train with a green engine clatters overhead.

“That’s the Elevated ... and look this is Twentythird Street ... and the Flatiron Building.”

The cab turns sharp into a square glowering with sunlight, smelling of asphalt and crowds and draws up before a tall door where colored men in brass buttons run forward.

“And here we are at the Fifth Avenue Hotel.”

Icecream at Uncle Jeff’s, cold sweet peachy taste thick against the roof of the mouth. Funny after you’ve left the ship you can still feel the motion. Blue chunks of dusk melting into the squarecut uptown streets. Rockets spurting bright in the blue dusk, colored balls falling, Bengal fire, Uncle Jeff tacking pinwheels on the tree outside the apartmenthouse door, lighting them with his cigar. Roman candles you have to hold. “Be sure and turn your face away, kiddo.” Hot thud and splutter in your hands, eggshaped balls soaring, red, yellow, green, smell of powder and singed paper. Down the fizzing glowing street a bell clangs, clangs nearer, clangs faster. Hoofs of lashed horses striking sparks, a fire engine roars by, round the corner red and smoking and brassy. “Must be on Broadway.” After it the hookandladder and the firechief’s highpacing horses. Then the tinkletinkle of an ambulance. “Somebody got his.”

The box is empty, gritty powder and sawdust get under your nails when you feel along it, it’s empty, no there are still some little wooden fire engines on wheels. Really truly fire engines. “We must set these off Uncle Jeff. Oh these are the best of all Uncle Jeff.” They have squibs in them and go sizzling off fast over the smooth asphalt of the street, pushed by sparkling plumed fiery tails, leaving smoke behind some real fire engines.

Tucked into bed in a tall unfriendly room, with hot eyes and aching legs. “Growing pains darling,” muddy said when she tucked him in, leaning over him in a glimmering silk dress with drooping sleeves.

“Muddy what’s that little black patch on your face?”

“That,” she laughed and her necklace made a tiny tinkling, “is to make mother look prettier.”

He lay there hemmed by tall nudging wardrobes and dressers. From outside came the sound of wheels and shouting, and once in a while a band of music in the distance. His legs ached as if they’d fall off, and when he closed his eyes he was speeding through flaring blackness on a red fire engine that shot fire and sparks and colored balls out of its sizzling tail.

The July sun pricked out the holes in the worn shades on the office windows. Gus McNiel sat in the morrischair with his crutches between his knees. His face was white and puffy from months in hospital. Nellie in a straw hat with red poppies rocked herself to and fro in the swivel chair at the desk.

“Better come an set by me Nellie. That lawyer might not like it if he found yez at his desk.”

She wrinkled up her nose and got to her feet. “Gus I declare you’re scared to death.”

“You’d be scared too if you’d had what I’d had wid de railroad doctor pokin me and alookin at me loike I was a jailbird and the Jew doctor the lawyer got tellin me as I was totally in-cap-aciated. Gorry I’m all in. I think he was lyin though.”

“Gus you do as I tell ye. Keep yer mouth shut an let the other guys do the talkin’.”

“Sure I wont let a peep outa me.”

Nellie stood behind his chair and began stroking the crisp hair back from his forehead.

“It’ll be great to be home again, Nellie, wid your cookin an all.” He put an arm round her waist and drew her to him.

“Juss think, maybe I wont have to do any.”

“I don’t think I’d loike that so well.... Gosh if we dont git that money I dunno how we’ll make out.”

“Oh pop’ll help us like he’s been doin.”

“Hope to the Lord I aint goin to be sick all me loife.”

George Baldwin came in slamming the glass door behind him. He stood looking at the man and his wife a second with his hands in his pockets. Then he said quietly smiling:

“Well it’s done people. As soon as the waiver of any further claims is signed the railroad’s attorneys will hand me a check for twelve thousand five hundred. That’s what we finally compromised on.”

“Twelve thousand iron men,” gasped Gus. “Twelve thousand five hundred. Say wait a second.... Hold me crutches while I go out an git run over again.... Wait till I tell McGillycuddy about it. The ole divil’ll be throwin hisself in front of a market train.... Well Mr. Baldwin sir,” Gus propped himself onto his feet.... “you’re a great man.... Aint he Nellie?”

“To be sure he is.”

Baldwin tried to keep from looking her in the eye. Spurts of jangling agitation were going through him, making his legs feel weak and trembly.

“I’ll tell yez what let’s do,” said Gus. “Sposin we all take a horsecab up to ole McGillycuddy’s an have somethin to wet our whistles in the private bar.... My treat. I need a bit of a drink to cheer me up. Come on Nellie.”

“I wish I could,” said Baldwin, “but I’m afraid I cant. I’m pretty busy these days. But just give me your signature before you go and I’ll have the check for you tomorrow.... Sign here ... and here.”

McNiel had stumped over to the desk and was leaning over the papers. Baldwin felt that Nellie was trying to make a sign to him. He kept his eyes down. After they had left he noticed her purse, a little leather purse with pansies burned on the back, on the corner of the desk. There was a tap on the glass door. He opened.

“Why wouldn’t you look at me?” she said breathlessly low.

“How could I with him here.” He held the purse out to her.

She put her arms round his neck and kissed him hard on the mouth. “What are we goin to do? Shall I come in this afternoon? Gus’ll be liquorin up to get himself sick again now he’s out of the hospital.”

“No I cant Nellie.... Business ... business.... I’m busy every minute.”

“Oh yes you are.... All right have it your own way.” She slammed the door.

Baldwin sat at his desk biting his knuckles without seeing the pile of papers he was staring at. “I’ve got to cut it out,” he said aloud and got to his feet. He paced back and forth across the narrow office looking at the shelves of lawbooks and the Gibson girl calendar over the telephone and the dusty square of sunlight by the window. He looked at his watch. Lunchtime. He drew the palm of a hand over his forehead and went to the telephone.

“Rector 1237.... Mr. Sandbourne there?... Say Phil suppose I come by for you for lunch? Do you want to go out right now?... Sure.... Say Phil I clinched it, I got the milkman his damages. I’m pleased as the dickens. I’ll set you up to a regular lunch on the strength of it... So long....”

He came away from the telephone smiling, took his hat off its hook, fitted it carefully on his head in front of the little mirror over the hatrack, and hurried down the stairs.

On the last flight he met Mr. Emery of Emery & Emery who had their offices on the first floor.

“Well Mr. Baldwin how’s things?” Mr. Emery of Emery & Emery was a flatfaced man with gray hair and eyebrows and a protruding wedgeshaped jaw. “Pretty well sir, pretty well.”

“They tell me you are doing mighty well.... Something about the New York Central Railroad.”

“Oh Simsbury and I settled it out of court.”

“Humph,” said Mr. Emery of Emery & Emery.

As they were about to part in the street Mr. Emery said suddenly “Would you care to dine with me and my wife some time?”

“Why ... er ... I’d be delighted.”

“I like to see something of the younger fellows in the profession you understand.... Well I’ll drop you a line.... Some evening next week. It would give us a chance to have a chat.”

Baldwin shook a blueveined hand in a shinystarched cuff and went off down Maiden Lane hustling with a springy step through the noon crowd. On Pearl Street he climbed a steep flight of black stairs that smelt of roasting coffee and knocked on a groundglass door.

“Come in,” shouted a bass voice. A swarthy man lanky in his shirtsleeves strode forward to meet him. “Hello George, thought you were never comin’. I’m hongry as hell.”

“Phil I’m going to set you up to the best lunch you ever ate in your life.”

“Well I’m juss waitin’ to be set.”

Phil Sandbourne put on his coat, knocked the ashes out of his pipe on the corner of a draftingtable, and shouted into a dark inner office, “Goin out to eat, Mr. Specker.”

“All right go ahead,” replied a goaty quavering from the inner office.

“How’s the old man?” asked Baldwin as they went out the door.

“Ole Specker? Bout on his last legs ... but he’s been thataway for years poa ole soul. Honest George I’d feel mighty mean if anythin happened to poa ole Specker.... He’s the only honest man in the city of New York, an he’s got a head on his shoulders too.”

“He’s never made anything much by it,” said Baldwin.

“He may yet.... He may yet.... Man you ought to see his plans for allsteel buildins. He’s got an idea the skyscraper of the future’ll be built of steel and glass. We’ve been experimenting with vitrous tile recently.... cristamighty some of his plans would knock yer eye out.... He’s got a great sayin about some Roman emperor who found Rome of brick and left it of marble. Well he says he’s found New York of brick an that he’s goin to leave it of steel ... steel an glass. I’ll have to show you his project for a rebuilt city. It’s some pipedream.”

They settled on a cushioned bench in the corner of the restaurant that smelled of steak and the grill. Sandbourne stretched his legs out under the table.

“Wow this is luxury,” he said.

“Phil let’s have a cocktail,” said Baldwin from behind the bill of fare. “I tell you Phil, it’s the first five years that’s the hardest.”

“You needn’t worry George, you’re the hustlin kind.... I’m the ole stick in the mud.”

“I don’t see why, you can always get a job as a draftsman.”

“That’s a fine future I muss say, to spend ma life with the corner of a draftintable stuck in ma bally.... Christ-amighty man!”

“Well Specker and Sandbourne may be a famous firm yet.”

“People’ll be goin round in flyin machines by that time an you and me’ll be laid out with our toes to the daisies.”

“Here’s luck anyway.”

“Here’s lead in yer pencil, George.”

They drank down the Martinis and started eating their oysters.

“I wonder if it’s true that oysters turn to leather in your stomach when you drink alcohol with em.”

“Search me.... Say by the way Phil how are you getting on with that little stenographer you were taking out?”

“Man the food an drink an theaters I’ve wasted on that lil girl.... She’s got me run to a standstill.... Honest she has. You’re a sensible feller, George, to keep away from the women.”

“Maybe,” said Baldwin slowly and spat an olive stone into his clenched fist.

* * * * *

The first thing they heard was the quavering whistle that came from a little wagon at the curb opposite the entrance to the ferry. A small boy broke away from the group of immigrants that lingered in the ferryhouse and ran over to the little wagon.

“Sure it’s like a steam engine an its fulla monkeynuts,” he yelled running back.

“Padraic you stay here.”

“And this here’s the L station, South Ferry,” went on Tim Halloran who had come down to meet them. “Up thataway’s Battery Park an Bowling Green an Wall Street an th’ financial district.... Come along Padraic your Uncle Timothy’s goin to take ye on th’ Ninth Avenoo L.”

There were only three people left at the ferrylanding, an old woman with a blue handkerchief on her head and a young woman with a magenta shawl, standing at either end of a big corded trunk studded with brass tacks; and an old man with a greenish stub of a beard and a face lined and twisted like the root of a dead oak. The old woman was whimpering with wet eyes: “Dove andiamo Madonna mia, Madonna mia?” The young woman was unfolding a letter blinking at the ornate writing. Suddenly she went over to the old man, “Non posso leggere,” holding out the letter to him. He wrung his hands, letting his head roll back and forth, saying over and over again something she couldn’t understand. She shrugged her shoulders and smiled and went back to the trunk. A Sicilian with sideburns was talking to the old woman. He grabbed the trunk by its cord and pulled it over to a spring wagon with a white horse that stood across the street. The two women followed the trunk. The Sicilian held out his hand to the young woman. The old woman still muttering and whimpering hoisted herself painfully onto the back of the wagon. When the Sicilian leaned over to read the letter he nudged the young woman with his shoulder. She stiffened. “Awright,” he said. Then as he shook the reins on the horse’s back he turned back towards the old woman and shouted, “Cinque le due.... Awright.”

IV. Tracks

_The rumpetybump rumpetybump spaced out, slackened; bumpers
banged all down the train. The man dropped off the rods. He
couldnt move for stiffness. It was pitchblack. Very slowly
he crawled out, hoisted himself to his knees, to his feet
until he leaned panting against the freightcar. His body
was not his own; his muscles were smashed wood, his bones
were twisted rods. A lantern burst his eyes._

“_Get outa here quick yous. Company detectives is beatin
through de yards._”

“_Say feller, is this New York?_”

“_You’re goddam right it is. Juss foller my lantern; you
kin git out along de waterfront._”

_His feet could barely stumble through the long gleaming
v’s and crisscrossed lines of tracks, he tripped and fell
over a bundle of signal rods. At last he was sitting on the
edge of a wharf with his head in his hands. The water made
a soothing noise against the piles like the lapping of a
dog. He took a newspaper out of his pocket and unwrapped
a hunk of bread and a slice of gristly meat. He ate them
dry, chewing and chewing before he could get any moisture
in his mouth. Then he got unsteadily to his feet, brushed
the crumbs off his knees, and looked about him. Southward
beyond the tracks the murky sky was drenched with orange
glow._

“_The Gay White Way,” he said aloud in a croaking voice.
“The Gay White Way._”

Through the rainstriped window Jimmy Herf was watching the umbrellas bob in the slowly swirling traffic that flowed up Broadway. There was a knock at the door; “Come in,” said Jimmy and turned back to the window when he saw that the waiter wasn’t Pat. The waiter switched on the light. Jimmy saw him reflected in the windowpane, a lean spikyhaired man holding aloft in one hand the dinnertray on which the silver covers were grouped like domes. Breathing hard the waiter advanced into the room dragging a folding stand after him with his free hand. He jerked open the stand, set the tray on it and laid a cloth on the round table. A greasy pantry smell came from him. Jimmy waited till he’d gone to turn round. Then he walked about the table tipping up the silver covers; soup with little green things in it, roast lamb, mashed potatoes, mashed turnips, spinach, no desert either.

“Muddy.” “Yes deary,” the voice wailed frailly through the folding doors.

“Dinner’s ready mother dear.”

“You begin darling boy, I’ll be right in....”

“But I dont want to begin without you mother.”

He walked round the table straightening knives and forks. He put a napkin over his arm. The head waiter at Delmonico’s was arranging the table for Graustark and the Blind King of Bohemia and Prince Henry the Navigator and ...

“Mother who d’you want to be Mary Queen of Scots or Lady Jane Grey?”

“But they both had their heads chopped off honey.... I dont want to have my head chopped off.” Mother had on her salmoncolored teagown. When she opened the folding doors a wilted smell of cologne and medicines seeped out of the bedroom, trailed after her long lacefringed sleeves. She had put a little too much powder on her face, but her hair, her lovely brown hair was done beautifully. They sat down opposite one another; she set a plate of soup in front of him, lifting it between two long blueveined hands.

He ate the soup that was watery and not hot enough. “Oh I forgot the croûtons, honey.”

“Muddy ... mother why arent you eating your soup?”

“I dont seem to like it much this evening. I couldn’t think what to order tonight my head ached so. It doesn’t matter.”

“Would you rather be Cleopatra? She had a wonderful appetite and ate everything that was put before her like a good little girl.”

“Even pearls.... She put a pearl in a glass of vinegar and drank it down....” Her voice trembled. She stretched out her hand to him across the table; he patted her hand manfully and smiled. “Only you and me Jimmy boy.... Honey you’ll always love your mother wont you?”

“What’s the matter muddy dear?”

“Oh nothing; I feel strange this evening.... Oh I’m so tired of never really feeling well.”

“But after you’ve had your operation....”

“Oh yes after I’ve had my operation.... Deary there’s a paper of fresh butter on the windowledge in the bathroom.... I’ll put some on these turnips if you fetch it for me.... I’m afraid I’ll have to complain about the food again. This lamb’s not all it should be; I hope it wont make us sick.”

Jimmy ran through the folding doors and his mother’s room into the little passage that smelled of mothballs and silky bits of clothing littered on a chair; the red rubber tubing of a douche swung in his face as he opened the bathroom door; the whiff of medicines made his ribs contract with misery. He pushed up the window at the end of the tub. The ledge was gritty and feathery specks of soot covered the plate turned up over the butter. He stood a moment staring down the airshaft, breathing through his mouth to keep from smelling the coalgas that rose from the furnaces. Below him a maid in a white cap leaned out of a window and talked to one of the furnacemen who stood looking up at her with his bare grimy arms crossed over his chest. Jimmy strained his ears to hear what they were saying; to be dirty and handle coal all day and have grease in your hair and up to your armpits.

“Jimmee!”

“Coming mother.” Blushing he slammed down the window and walked back to the sittingroom, slowly so that the red would have time to fade out of his face.

“Dreaming again, Jimmy. My little dreamer.”

He put the butter beside his mother’s plate and sat down.

“Hurry up and eat your lamb while it’s hot. Why dont you try a little French mustard on it? It’ll make it taste better.”

The mustard burnt his tongue, brought tears to his eyes.

“Is it too hot?” mother asked laughing. “You must learn to like hot things.... He always liked hot things.”

“Who mother?”

“Someone I loved very much.”

They were silent. He could hear himself chewing. A few rattling sounds of cabs and trolleycars squirmed in brokenly through the closed windows. The steampipes knocked and hissed. Down the airshaft the furnaceman with grease up to his armpits was spitting words out of his wabbly mouth up at the maid in the starched cap--dirty words. Mustard’s the color of ...

“A penny for your thoughts.”

“I wasn’t thinking of anything.”

“We mustn’t have any secrets from each other dear. Remember you’re the only comfort your mother has in the world.”

“I wonder what it’d be like to be a seal, a little harbor seal.”

“Very chilly I should think.”

“But you wouldn’t feel it.... Seals are protected by a layer of blubber so that they’re always warm even sitting on an iceberg. But it would be such fun to swim around in the sea whenever you wanted to. They travel thousands of miles without stopping.”

“But mother’s traveled thousands of miles without stopping and so have you.”

“When?”

“Going abroad and coming back.” She was laughing at him with bright eyes.

“Oh but that’s in a boat.”

“And when we used to go cruising on the _Mary Stuart_.”

“Oh tell me about that muddy.”

There was a knock. “Come.” The spikyhaired waiter put his head in the door.

“Can I clear mum?”

“Yes and bring me some fruit salad and see that the fruit is fresh cut.... Things are wretched this evening.”

Puffing, the waiter was piling dishes on the tray. “I’m sorry mum,” he puffed.

“All right, I know it’s not your fault waiter.... What’ll you have Jimmy?”

“May I have a meringue glacé muddy?”

“All right if you’ll be very good.”

“Yea,” Jimmy let out a yell.

“Darling you mustn’t shout like that at table.”

“But we dont mind when there are just the two of us.... Hooray meringue glacé.”

“James a gentleman always behaves the same way whether he’s in his own home or in the wilds of Africa.”

“Gee I wish we were in the wilds of Africa.”

“I’d be terrified, dear.”

“I’d shout like that and scare away all the lions and tigers.... Yes I would.”

The waiter came back with two plates on the tray. “I’m sorry mum but meringue glacé’s all out.... I brought the young gentleman chocolate icecream instead.”

“Oh mother.”

“Never mind dear.... It would have been too rich anyway.... You eat that and I’ll let you run out after dinner and buy some candy.”

“Oh goody.”

“But dont eat the icecream too fast or you’ll have collywobbles.”

“I’m all through.”

“You bolted it you little wretch.... Put on your rubbers honey.”

“But it’s not raining at all.”

“Do as mother wants you dear.... And please dont be long. I put you on your honor to come right back. Mother’s not a bit well tonight and she gets so nervous when you’re out in the street. There are such terrible dangers....”

He sat down to pull on his rubbers. While he was snapping them tight over his heels she came to him with a dollar bill. She put her arm with its long silky sleeve round his shoulder. “Oh my darling.”

She was crying.

“Mother you mustnt.” He squeezed her hard; he could feel the ribs of her corset against his arms. “I’ll be back in a minute, in the teenciest weenciest minute.”

On the stairs where a brass rod held the dull crimson carpet in place on each step, Jimmy pulled off his rubbers and stuffed them into the pockets of his raincoat. With his head in the air he hurried through the web of prying glances of the bellhops on the bench beside the desk. “Goin fer a walk?” the youngest lighthaired bellhop asked him. Jimmy nodded wisely, slipped past the staring buttons of the doorman and out onto Broadway full of clangor and footsteps and faces putting on shadowmasks when they slid out of the splotches of light from stores and arclamps. He walked fast uptown past the Ansonia. In the doorway lounged a blackbrowed man with a cigar in his mouth, maybe a kidnapper. But nice people live in the Ansonia like where we live. Next a telegraph office, drygoods stores, a dyers and cleaners, a Chinese laundry sending out a scorched mysterious steamy smell. He walks faster, the chinks are terrible kidnappers. Footpads. A man with a can of coaloil brushes past him, a greasy sleeve brushes against his shoulder, smells of sweat and coaloil; suppose he’s a firebug. The thought of firebug gives him gooseflesh. Fire. Fire.

Huyler’s; there’s a comfortable fudgy odor mixed with the smell of nickel and wellwiped marble outside the door, and the smell of cooking chocolate curls warmly from the gratings under the windows. Black and orange crêpepaper favors for Hallowe’en. He is just going in when he thinks of the Mirror place two blocks further up, those little silver steamengines and automobiles they give you with your change. I’ll hurry; on rollerskates it’d take less time, you could escape from bandits, thugs, holdupmen, on rollerskates, shooting over your shoulder with a long automatic, bing ... one of em down! that’s the worst of em, bing ... there’s another; the rollerskates are magic rollerskates, whee ... up the brick walls of the houses, over the roofs, vaulting chimneys, up the Flatiron Building, scooting across the cables of Brooklyn Bridge.

Mirror candies; this time he goes in without hesitating. He stands at the counter a while before anyone comes to wait on him. “Please a pound of sixty cents a pound mixed chocolate creams,” he rattled off. She is a blond lady, a little crosseyed, and looks at him spitefully without answering. “Please I’m in a hurry if you dont mind.”

“All right, everybody in their turn,” she snaps. He stands blinking at her with flaming cheeks. She pushes him a box all wrapped up with a check on it “Pay at the desk.” I’m not going to cry. The lady at the desk is small and grey-haired. She takes his dollar through a little door like the little doors little animals go in and out of in the Small Mammal House. The cash register makes a cheerful tinkle, glad to get the money. A quarter, a dime, a nickel and a little cup, is that forty cents? But only a little cup instead of a steamengine or an automobile. He picks up the money and leaves the little cup and hurries out with the box under his arm. Mother’ll say I’ve been too long. He walks home looking straight ahead of him, smarting from the meanness of the blond lady.

“Ha ... been out abuyin candy,” said the lighthaired bellhop. “I’ll give you some if you come up later,” whispered Jimmy as he passed. The brass rods rang when he kicked them running up the stairs. Outside the chocolate-colored door that had 503 on it in white enameled letters he remembered his rubbers. He set the candy on the floor and pulled them on over his damp shoes. Lucky Muddy wasn’t waiting for him with the door open. Maybe she’d seen him coming from the window.

“Mother.” She wasn’t in the sittingroom. He was terrified. She’d gone out, she’d gone away. “Mother!”

“Come here dear,” came her voice weakly from the bedroom.

He pulled off his hat and raincoat and rushed in. “Mother what’s the matter?”

“Nothing honey.... I’ve a headache that’s all, a terrible headache.... Put some cologne on a handkerchief and put it on my head nicely, and dont please dear get it in my eye the way you did last time.”

She lay on the bed in a skyblue wadded wrapper. Her face was purplish pale. The silky salmoncolored teagown hung limp over a chair; on the floor lay her corsets in a tangle of pink strings. Jimmy put the wet handkerchief carefully on her forehead. The cologne reeked strong, prickling his nostrils as he leaned over her.

“That’s so good,” came her voice feebly. “Dear call up Aunt Emily, Riverside 2466, and ask her if she can come round this evening. I want to talk to her.... Oh my head’s bursting.”

His heart thumping terribly and tears blearing his eyes he went to the telephone. Aunt Emily’s voice came unexpectedly soon.

“Aunt Emily mother’s kinder sick.... She wants you to come around.... She’s coming right away mother dear,” he shouted, “isn’t that fine? She’s coming right around.” He tiptoed back into his mother’s room, picked up the corset and the teagown and hung them in the wardrobe.

“Deary” came her frail voice “take the hairpins out of my hair, they hurt my head.... Oh honeyboy I feel as if my head would burst....” He felt gently through her brown hair that was silkier than the teagown and pulled out the hairpins.

“Ou dont, you are hurting me.”

“Mother I didn’t mean to.”

Aunt Emily, thin in a blue mackintosh thrown over her evening dress, hurried into the room, her thin mouth in a pucker of sympathy. She saw her sister lying twisted with pain on the bed and the skinny whitefaced boy in short pants standing beside her with his hands full of hairpins.

“What is it Lil?” she asked quietly.

“My dear something terrible’s the matter with me,” came Lily Herf’s voice in a gasping hiss.

“James,” said Aunt Emily harshly, “you must run off to bed.... Mother needs perfect quiet.”

“Good night muddy dear,” he said.

Aunt Emily patted him on the back. “Dont worry James I’ll attend to everything.” She went to the telephone and began calling a number in a low precise voice.

The box of candy was on the parlor table; Jimmy felt guilty when he put it under his arm. As he passed the bookcase he snatched out a volume of the American Cyclopædia and tucked it under the other arm. His aunt did not notice when he went out the door. The dungeon gates opened. Outside was an Arab stallion and two trusty retainers waiting to speed him across the border to freedom. Three doors down was his room. It was stuffed with silent chunky darkness. The light switched on obediently lighting up the cabin of the schooner _Mary Stuart_. All right Captain weigh anchor and set your course for the Windward Isles and dont let me be disturbed before dawn; I have important papers to peruse. He tore off his clothes and knelt beside the bed in his pyjamas. Nowilaymedowntosleep Ipraythelordmysoultokeep Ifishoulddiebeforeiwake Ipraythelordmysoultotake.

Then he opened the box of candy and set the pillows together at the end of the bed under the light. His teeth broke through the chocolate into a squashysweet filling. Let’s see ...

A the first of the vowels, the first letter in all written
alphabets except the Amharic or Abyssinian, of which it is
the thirteenth, and the Runic of which it is the tenth....

Darn it that’s a hairy one....

AA, Aachen (see Aix-la-Chapelle).

Aardvark ...

Gee he’s funny looking ...

(orycteropus capensis), a plantigrade animal of the class
mammalia, order edentata, peculiar to Africa.

Abd,

Abd-el-halim, an Egyptian prince, son of Mehmet Ali and a
white slave woman....

His cheeks burned as he read:

The Queen of the White Slaves.

Abdomen (lat. of undetermined etymology) ... the lower part
of the body included between the level of the diaphragm and
that of the pelvis....

Abelard ... The relation of master and pupil was not long
preserved. A warmer sentiment than esteem filled their
hearts and the unlimited opportunities of intercourse
which were afforded them by the canon who confided in
Abelard’s age (he was now almost forty), and in his public
character, were fatal to the peace of both. The condition
of Heloise was on the point of betraying their intimacy....
Fulbert now abandoned himself to a transport of savage
vindictiveness ... burst into Abelard’s chamber with a band
of ruffians and gratified his revenge by inflicting on him
an atrocious mutilation....

Abelites ... denounced sexual intercourse as service of
Satan.