Chapter VIII: Part 8

Thatcher cleared his throat and turned his face away from her to look out the window at the two endless bands of automobiles that passed along the road in front of the station. Dust rose from them and angular glitter of glass enamel and nickel. Tires made a swish on the oily macadam. Ellen dropped onto the davenport and let her eyes wander among the faded red roses of the carpet.

The bell rang. “I’ll go daddy.... How do you do Mrs. Culveteer?”

A redfaced broad woman in a black and white chiffon dress came into the room puffing. “Oh you must forgive my butting in, I’m just dropping by for a second.... How are you Mr. Thatcher?... You know my dear your poor father has really been very poorly.”

“Nonsense; all I had was a little backache.”

“Lumbago my dear.”

“Why daddy you ought to have let me know.”

“The sermon today was most inspiring, Mr. Thatcher.... Mr. Lourton was at his very best.”

“I guess I ought to rout out and go to church now and then, but you see I like to lay round the house Sundays.”

“Of course Mr. Thatcher it’s the only day you have. My husband was just like that.... But I think it’s different with Mr. Lourton than with most clergymen. He has such an uptodate commonsense view of things. It’s really more like attending an intensely interesting lecture than going to church.... You understand what I mean.”

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do Mrs. Culveteer, next Sunday if it’s not too hot I’ll go.... I guess I’m getting too set in my ways.”

“Oh a little change does us all good.... Mrs. Oglethorpe you have no idea how closely we follow your career, in the Sunday papers and all.... I think it’s simply wonderful.... As I was telling Mr. Thatcher only yesterday it must take a lot of strength of character and deep Christian living to withstand the temptations of stage life nowadays. It’s inspiring to think of a young girl and wife coming so sweet and unspoiled through all that.”

Ellen kept looking at the floor so as not to catch her father’s eye. He was tapping with two fingers on the arm of his morrischair. Mrs. Culveteer beamed from the middle of the davenport. She got to her feet. “Well I just must run along. We have a green girl in the kitchen and I’m sure dinner’s all ruined.... Wont you drop in this afternoon...? quite informally. I made some cookies and we’ll have some gingerale out just in case somebody turns up.”

“I’m sure we’d be delighted Mrs. Culveteer,” said Thatcher getting stiffly to his feet. Mrs. Culveteer in her bunchy dress waddled out the door.

“Well Ellie suppose we go eat.... She’s a very nice kindhearted woman. She’s always bringing me pots of jam and marmalade. She lives upstairs with her sister’s family. She’s the widow of a traveling man.”

“That was quite a line about the temptations of stage life,” said Ellen with a little laugh in her throat. “Come along or the place’ll be crowded. Avoid the rush is my motto.”

Said Thatcher in a peevish crackling voice, “Let’s not dawdle around.”

Ellen spread out her sunshade as they stepped out of the door flanked on either side by bells and letterboxes. A blast of gray heat beat in their faces. They passed the stationery store, the red A. and P., the corner drugstore from which a stale coolness of sodawater and icecream freezers drifted out under the green awning, crossed the street, where their feet sank into the sticky melting asphalt, and stopped at the Sagamore Cafeteria. It was twelve exactly by the clock in the window that had round its face in old English lettering, TIME TO EAT. Under it was a large rusty fern and a card announcing Chicken Dinner $1.25. Ellen lingered in the doorway looking up the quivering street. “Look daddy we’ll probably have a thunderstorm.” A cumulus soared in unbelievable snowy contours in the slate sky. “Isnt that a fine cloud? Wouldnt it be fine if we had a riproaring thunderstorm?”

Ed Thatcher looked up, shook his head and went in through the swinging screen door. Ellen followed him. Inside it smelled of varnish and waitresses. They sat down at a table near the door under a droning electric fan.

“How do you do Mr. Thatcher? How you been all the week sir? How do you do miss?” The bonyfaced peroxidehaired waitress hung over them amicably. “What’ll it be today sir, roast Long Island duckling or roast Philadelphia milkfed capon?”

IV. Fire Engine

_Such afternoons the buses are crowded into line like
elephants in a circusparade. Morningside Heights to
Washington Square, Penn Station to Grant’s Tomb.
Parlorsnakes and flappers joggle hugging downtown uptown,
hug joggling gray square after gray square, until they see
the new moon giggling over Weehawken and feel the gusty
wind of a dead Sunday blowing dust in their faces, dust of
a typsy twilight._

They are walking up the Mall in Central Park.

“Looks like he had a boil on his neck,” says Ellen in front of the statue of Burns.

“Ah,” whispers Harry Goldweiser with a fat-throated sigh, “but he was a great poet.”

She is walking in her wide hat in her pale loose dress that the wind now and then presses against her legs and arms, silkily, swishily walking in the middle of great rosy and purple and pistachiogreen bubbles of twilight that swell out of the grass and trees and ponds, bulge against the tall houses sharp gray as dead teeth round the southern end of the park, melt into the indigo zenith. When he talks, forming sentences roundly with his thick lips, continually measuring her face with his brown eyes, she feels his words press against her body, nudge in the hollows where her dress clings; she can hardly breathe for fear of listening to him.

“The Zinnia Girl’s going to be an absolute knockout, Elaine, I’m telling you and that part’s just written for you. I’d enjoy working with you again, honest.... You’re so different, that’s what it is about you. All these girls round New York here are just the same, they’re monotonous. Of course you could sing swell if you wanted to.... I’ve been crazy as a loon since I met you, and that’s a good six months now. I sit down to eat and the food dont have any taste.... You cant understand how lonely a man gets when year after year he’s had to crush his feelings down into himself. When I was a young fellow I was different, but what are you to do? I had to make money and make my way in the world. And so I’ve gone on year after year. For the first time I’m glad I did it, that I shoved ahead and made big money, because now I can offer it all to you. Understand what I mean?... All those ideels and beautiful things pushed down into myself when I was making my way in a man’s world were like planting seed and you’re their flower.”

Now and then as they walk the back of his hand brushes against hers; she clenches her fist sullenly drawing it away from the hot determined pudginess of his hand.

The Mall is full of couples, families waiting for the music to begin. It smells of children and dress-shields and talcum powder. A balloonman passes them trailing red and yellow and pink balloons like a great inverted bunch of grapes behind him. “Oh buy me a balloon.” The words are out of her mouth before she can stop them.

“Hay you gimme one of each color.... And how about one of those gold ones? No keep the change.”

Ellen put the strings of the balloons into the dirtsticky hands of three little monkeyfaced girls in red tarns. Each balloon caught a crescent of violet glare from the arclight.

“Aw you like children, Elaine, dont you? I like a woman to like children.”

Ellen sits numb at a table on the terrace of the Casino. A hot gust of foodsmell and the rhythm of a band playing _He’s a Ragpicker_ swirls chokingly about her; now and then she butters a scrap of roll and puts it in her mouth. She feels very helpless, caught like a fly in his sticky trickling sentences.

“There’s nobody else in New York could have got me to walk that far, I’ll tell you that.... I walked too much in the old days, do you understand, used to sell papers when I was a kid and run errands for Schwartz’s Toystore ... on my feet all day except when I was in nightschool. I thought I was going to be a lawyer, all us East Side fellers thought we were goin to be lawyers. Then I worked as an usher one summer at the Irving Place and got the theater bug.... Not such a bad hunch it turned out to be, but it’s too uncertain. Now I dont care any more, only want to cover my losses. That’s the trouble with me. I’m thirtyfive an I dont care any more. Ten years ago I was still only a kind of clerk in old man Erlanger’s office, and now there’s lots of em whose shoes I used to shine in the old days’d be real glad of the opportunity to sweep my floors on West Forty-eighth.... Tonight I can take you anywhere in New York, I dont care how expensive or how chic it is ... an in the old days us kids used to think it was paradise if we had five plunks to take a couple of girls down to the Island.... I bet all that was different with you Elaine.... But what I want to do is get that old feelin back, understand?... Where shall we go?”

“Why dont we go down to Coney Island then? I’ve never been?

“It’s a pretty rough crowd ... still we can just ride round. Let’s do it. I’ll go phone for the car.”

Ellen sits alone looking down into her coffeecup. She puts a lump of sugar on her spoon, dips it in the coffee and pops it into her mouth where she crunches it slowly, rubbing the grains of sugar against the roof of her mouth with her tongue. The orchestra is playing a tango.

* * * * *

The sun streaming into the office under the drawn shades cut a bright slanting layer like watered silk through the cigarsmoke.

“Mighty easy,” George Baldwin was saying dragging out the words. “Gus we got to go mighty easy on this.” Gus McNiel bullnecked redfaced with a heavy watchchain in his vest sat in the armchair nodding silently, pulling on his cigar. “As things are now no court would sustain such an injunction ... an injunction that seems to me a pure piece of party politics on Judge Connor’s part, but there are certain elements....”

“You said it.... Look here George I’m goin to leave this whole blame thing to you. You pulled me through the East New York dockin space mess and I guess you can pull me through this.”

“But Gus your position in this whole affair has been entirely within the bounds of legality. If it werent I certainly should not be able to take the case, not even for an old friend like you.”

“You know me George.... I never went back on a guy yet and I dont expect to have anybody go back on me.” Gus got heavily to his feet and began to limp about the office leaning on a goldknobbed cane. “Connor’s a son of a bitch ... an honest, you wouldn’t believe it but he was a decent guy before he went up to Albany.”

“My position will be that your attitude in this whole matter has been willfully misconstrued. Connor has been using his position on the bench to further a political end.”

“God I wish we could get him. Jez I thought he was one of the boys; he was until he went up an got mixed up with all those lousy upstate Republicans. Albany’s been the ruination of many a good man.”

Baldwin got up from the flat mahogany table where he sat between tall sheaves of foolscap and put his hand on Gus’s shoulder. “Dont you lose any sleep over it....”

“I’d feel all right if it wasn’t for those Interborough bonds.”

“What bonds? Who’s seen any bonds?... Let’s get this young fellow in here ... Joe ... And one more thing Gus, for heaven’s sakes keep your mouth shut.... If any reporters or anybody comes round to see you tell ’em about your trip to Bermuda.... We can get publicity enough when we need it. Just at present we want to keep the papers out of it or you’ll have all the reformers on your heels.”

“Well aint they friends of yours? You can fix it up with em.”

“Gus I’m a lawyer and not a politician.... I dont meddle in those things at all. They dont interest me.”

Baldwin brought the flat of his hand down on a pushbell. An ivoryskinned young woman with heavy sullen eyes and jetty hair came into the room.

“How do you do Mr. McNeil.”

“My but you’re looking well Miss Levitsky.”

“Emily tell em to send that young fellow that’s waiting for Mr. McNiel in.”

Joe O’Keefe came in dragging his feet a little, with his straw hat in his hand. “Howde do sir.”

“Look here Joe, what does McCarthy say?”

“Contractors and Builders Association’s goin to declare a lockout from Monday on.”

“And how’s the union?”

“We got a full treasury. We’re goin to fight.”

Baldwin sat down on the edge of the desk. “I wish I knew what Mayor Mitchel’s attitude was on all this.”

“That reform gang’s just treadin water like they always do,” said Gus savagely biting the end off a cigar. “When’s this decision going to be made public?”

“Saturday.”

“Well keep in touch with us.”

“All right gentlemen. And please dont call me on the phone. It dont look exactly right. You see it aint my office.”

“Might be wiretappin goin on too. Those fellers wont stop at nothin. Well see ye later Joey.”

Joe nodded and walked out. Baldwin turned frowning to Gus.

“Gus I dont know what I’m goin to do with you if you dont keep out of all this labor stuff. A born politician like you ought to have better sense. You just cant get away with it.”

“But we got the whole damn town lined up.”

“I know a whole lot of the town that isnt lined up. But thank Heavens that’s not my business. This bond stuff is all right, but if you get into a mess with this strike business I couldn’t handle your case. The firm wouldnt stand for it,” he whispered fiercely. Then he said aloud in his usual voice, “Well how’s the wife, Gus?”

Outside in the shiny marble hall, Joe O’Keefe was whistling _Sweet Rosy O’Grady_ waiting for the elevator. Imagine a guy havin a knockout like that for a secretary. He stopped whistling and let the breath out silently through pursed lips. In the elevator he greeted a walleyed man in a check suit. “Hullo Buck.”

“Been on your vacation yet?”

Joe stood with his feet apart and his hands in his pockets. He shook his head. “I get off Saturday.”

“I guess I’ll take in a couple o days at Atlantic City myself.”

“How do you do it?”

“Oh the kid’s clever.”

Coming out of the building O’Keefe had to make his way through people crowding into the portal. A slate sky sagging between the tall buildings was spatting the pavements with fiftycent pieces. Men were running to cover with their straw hats under their coats. Two girls had made hoods of newspaper over their summer bonnets. He snatched blue of their eyes, a glint of lips and teeth as he passed. He walked fast to the corner and caught an uptown car on the run. The rain advanced down the street in a solid sheet glimmering, swishing, beating newspapers flat, prancing in silver nipples along the asphalt, striping windows, putting shine on the paint of streetcars and taxicabs. Above Fourteenth there was no rain, the air was sultry.

“A funny thing weather,” said an old man next to him. O’Keefe grunted. “When I was a boy onct I saw it rain on one side of the street an a house was struck by lightnin an on our side not a drop fell though the old man wanted it bad for some tomatoplants he’d just set out.”

Crossing Twentythird O’Keefe caught sight of the tower of Madison Square Garden. He jumped off the car; the momentum carried him in little running steps to the curb. Turning his coatcollar down again he started across the square. On the end of a bench under a tree drowsed Joe Harland. O’Keefe plunked down in the seat beside him.

“Hello Joe. Have a cigar.”

“Hello Joe. I’m glad to see you my boy. Thanks. It’s many a day since I’ve smoked one of these things.... What are you up to? Aint this kind of out of your beat?”

“I felt kinder blue so I thought I’d buy me a ticket to the fight Saturday.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Hell I dunno.... Things dont seem to go right. Here I’ve got myself all in deep in this political game and there dont seem to be no future in it. God I wish I was educated like you.”

“A lot of good it’s done me.”

“I wouldn’t say that.... If I could ever git on the track you were on I bet ye I wouldn’t lose out.”

“You cant tell Joe, funny things get into a man.”

“There’s women and that sort of stuff.”

“No I dont mean that.... You get kinder disgusted.”

“But hell I dont see how a guy with enough jack can git disgusted.”

“Then maybe it was booze, I dont know.”

They sat silent a minute. The afternoon was flushing with sunset. The cigarsmoke was blue and crinkly about their heads.

“Look at the swell dame.... Look at the way she walks. Aint she a peacherino? That’s the way I like ’em, all slick an frilly with their lips made up.... Takes jack to go round with dames like that.”

“They’re no different from anybody else, Joe.”

“The hell you say.”

“Say Joe you havent got an extra dollar on you?”

“Maybe I have.”

“My stomach’s a little out of order.... I’d like to take a little something to steady it, and I’m flat till I get paid Saturday ... er ... you understand ... you’re sure you dont mind? Give me your address and I’ll send it to you first thing Monday morning.”

“Hell dont worry about it, I’ll see yez around somewheres.”

“Thank you Joe. And for God’s sake dont buy any more Blue Peter Mines on a margin without asking me about it. I may be a back number but I can still tell a goldbrick with my eyes closed.”

“Well I got my money back.”

“It took the devil’s own luck to do it.”

“Jez it strikes me funny me loanin a dollar to the guy who owned half the Street.”

“Oh I never had as much as they said I did.”

“This is a funny place....”

“Where?”

“Oh I dunno, I guess everywhere.... Well so long Joe, I guess I’ll go along an buy that ticket.... Jez it’s goin to be a swell fight.”

Joe Harland watched the young man’s short jerky stride as he went off down the path with his straw hat on the side of his head. Then he got to his feet and walked east along Twentythird Street. The pavements and housewalls still gave off heat although the sun had set. He stopped outside a corner saloon and examined carefully a group of stuffed ermines, gray with dust, that occupied the center of the window. Through the swinging doors a sound of quiet voices and a malty coolness seeped into the street. He suddenly flushed and bit his upper lip and after a furtive glance up and down the street went in through the swinging doors and shambled up to the brassy bottleglittering bar.

* * * * *

After the rain outdoors the plastery backstage smell was pungent in their nostrils. Ellen hung the wet raincoat on the back of the door and put her umbrella in a corner of the dressing room where a little puddle began to spread from it. “And all I could think of,” she was saying in a low voice to Stan who followed her staggering, “was a funny song somebody’d told me when I was a little girl about: And the only man who survived the flood was longlegged Jack of the Isthmus.”

“God I dont see why people have children. It’s an admission of defeat. Procreation is the admission of an incomplete organism. Procreation is an admission of defeat.”

“Stan for Heaven’s sake dont shout, you’ll shock the stagehands.... I oughtnt to have let you come. You know the way people gossip round a theater.”

“I’ll be quiet just like a lil mouse.... Just let me wait till Milly comes to dress you. Seeing you dress is my only remaining pleasure ... I admit that as an organism I’m incomplete.”

“You wont be an organism of any kind if you dont sober up.”

“I’m going to drink ... I’m going to drink till when I cut myself whiskey runs out. What’s the good of blood when you can have whiskey?”

“Oh Stan.”

“The only thing an incomplete organism can do is drink.... You complete beautiful organisms dont need to drink.... I’m going to lie down and go byby.”

“Dont Stan for Heaven’s sake. If you go and pass out here I’ll never forgive you.”

There was a soft doubleknock at the door. “Come in Milly.” Milly was a small wrinklefaced woman with black eyes. A touch of negro blood made her purplegray lips thick, gave a lividness to her verywhite skin.

“It’s eight fifteen dear,” she said as she bustled in. She gave a quick look at Stan and turned to Ellen with a little wry frown.

“Stan you’ve got to go away.... I’ll meet you at the Beaux Arts or anywhere you like afterwards.”

“I want to go byby.”

Sitting in front of the mirror at her dressingtable Ellen was wiping cold cream off her face with quick dabs of a little towel. From her makeup box a smell of greasepaint and cocoabutter melted fatly through the room.

“I dont know what to do with him tonight,” she whispered to Milly as she slipped off her dress. “Oh I wish he would stop drinking.”

“I’d put him in the shower and turn cold water on him deary.”

“How’s the house tonight Milly?”

“Pretty thin Miss Elaine.”

“I guess it’s the bad weather ... I’m going to be terrible.”

“Dont let him get you worked up deary. Men aint worth it.”

“I want to go byby.” Stan was swaying and frowning in the center of the room. “Miss Elaine I’ll put him in the bathroom; nobody’ll notice him there.”

“That’s it, let him go to sleep in the bathtub.”

“Ellie I’ll go byby in the bathtub.”

The two women pushed him into the bathroom. He flopped limply into the tub, and lay there asleep with his feet in the air and his head on the faucets. Milly was making little rapid clucking noises with her tongue.

“He’s like a sleepy baby when he’s like this,” whispered Ellen softly. She stuck the folded bathmat under his head and brushed the sweaty hair off his forehead. He was hardly breathing. She leaned and kissed his eyelids very softly.

“Miss Elaine you must hurry ... curtain’s ringing up.”

“Look quick am I all right?”

“Pretty as a picture.... Lord love you dear.”

Ellen ran down the stairs and round to the wings, stood there, panting with terror as if she had just missed being run over by an automobile grabbed the musicroll she had to go on with from the property man, got her cue and walked on into the glare.

“How do you do it Elaine?” Harry Goldweiser was saying, shaking his calf’s head from the chair behind her. She could see him in the mirror as she took her makeup off. A taller man with gray eyes and eyebrows stood beside him. “You remember when they first cast you for the part I said to Mr. Fallik, Sol she cant do it, didnt I Sol?”

“Sure you did Harry.”

“I thought that no girl so young and beautiful could put, you know ... put the passion and terror into it, do you understand?... Sol and I were out front for that scene in the last act.”

“Wonderful, wonderful,” groaned Mr. Fallik. “Tell us how you do it Elaine.”

The makeup came off black and pink on the cloth. Milly moved discreetly about the background hanging up dresses.

“Do you know who it was who coached me up on that scene? John Oglethorpe. It’s amazing the ideas he has about acting.”

“Yes it’s a shame he’s so lazy.... He’d be a very valuable actor.”

“It’s not exactly laziness ...” Ellen shook down her hair and twisted it in a coil in her two hands. She saw Harry Goldweiser nudge Mr. Fallik.

“Beautiful isn’t it?”

“How’s Red Red Rose going?”

“Oh dont ask me Elaine. Played exclusively to the ushers last week, do you understand? I dont see why it dont go, it’s catchy.... Mae Merrill has a pretty figure. Oh, the show business has all gone to hell.”

Ellen put the last bronze pin in the copper coil of her hair. She tossed her chin up. “I’d like to try something like that.”

“But one thing at a time my dear young lady; we’ve just barely got you started as an emotional actress.”

“I hate it; it’s all false. Sometimes I want to run down to the foots and tell the audience, go home you damn fools. This is a rotten show and a lot of fake acting and you ought to know it. In a musical show you could be sincere.”

“Didnt I tell ye she was nuts Sol? Didnt I tell ye she was nuts?”

“I’ll use some of that little speech in my publicity next week.... I can work it in fine.”

“You cant have her crabbin the show.”

“No but I can work it in in that column about aspirations of celebrities.... You know, this guy is President of the Zozodont Company and would rather have been a fireman and another would rather have been a keeper at the Zoo.... Great human interest stuff.”

“You can tell them Mr. Fallik that I think the woman’s place is in the home ... for the feebleminded.”

“Ha ha ha,” laughed Harry Goldweiser showing the gold teeth in the sides of his mouth. “But I know you could dance and sing with the best of em, Elaine.”

“Wasnt I in the chorus for two years before I married Oglethorpe?”

“You must have started in the cradle,” said Mr. Fallik leering under his gray lashes.

“Well I must ask you gentlemen to get out of here a minute while I change. I’m all wringing wet every night after that last act.”

“We got to get along anyway ... do you understand?... Mind if I use your bathroom a sec?”

Milly stood in front of the bathroom door. Ellen caught the jetty glance of her eyes far apart in her blank white face. “I’m afraid you cant Harry, it’s out of order.”

“I’ll go over to Charley’s.... I’ll tell Thompson to have a plumber come and look at it.... Well good night kid. Be good.”

“Good night Miss Oglethorpe,” said Mr. Fallik creakily, “and if you cant be good be careful.” Milly closed the door after them.

“Whee, that’s a relief,” cried Ellen and stretched out her arms.

“I tell you I was scared deary.... Dont you ever let any feller like that come to the theater with ye. I’ve seen many a good trouper ruined by things like that. I’m tellin ye because I’m fond of you Miss Elaine, an I’m old an I know about the showbusiness.”

“Of course you are Milly, and you’re quite right too ... Lets see if we can wake him up.”

“My God Milly, look at that.”

Stan was lying as they had left him in the bathtub full of water. The tail of his coat and one hand were floating on top of the water. “Get up out of there Stan you idiot.... He might catch his death. You fool, you fool.” Ellen took him by the hair and shook his head from side to side.

“Ooch that hurts,” he moaned in a sleepy child’s voice.

“Get up out of there Stan.... You’re soaked.”

He threw back his head and his eyes snapped open. “Why so I am.” He raised himself with his hands on the sides of the tub and stood swaying, dripping into the water that was yellow from his clothes and shoes, braying his loud laugh. Ellen leaned against the bathroom door laughing with her eyes full of tears.

“You cant get mad at him Milly, that’s what makes him so exasperating. Oh what are we going to do?”

“Lucky he wasnt drownded.... Give me your papers and pocketbook sir. I’ll try and dry em with a towel,” said Milly.

“But you cant go past the doorman like that ... even if we wring you out.... Stan you’ve got to take off all your clothes and put on a dress of mine. Then you can wear my rain cape and we can whisk into a taxicab and take you home.... What do you think Milly?”

Milly was rolling her eyes and shaking her head as she wrung out Stan’s coat. In the washbasin she had piled the soppy remains of a pocketbook, a pad, pencils, a jacknife, two rolls of film, a flask.

“I wanted a bath anyway,” said Stan.

“Oh I could beat you. Well you’re sober at least.”

“Sober as a penguin.”

“Well you’ve got to dress up in my clothes that’s all....”

“I cant wear girl’s clothes.”

“You’ve got to.... You havent even got a raincoat to cover that mess. If you dont I’ll lock you up in the bathroom and leave you.”

“All right Ellie.... Honest I’m terribly sorry.”

Milly was wrapping the clothes in newspaper after wringing them out in the bathtub. Stan looked at himself in the mirror. “Gosh I’m an indecent sight in this dress.... Ish gebibble.”

“I’ve never seen anything so disgusting looking.... No you look very sweet, a little tough perhaps.... Now for God’s sake keep your face towards me when you go past old Barney.”

“My shoes are all squudgy.”

“It cant be helped.... Thank Heaven I had this cape here.... Milly you’re an angel to clear up all this mess.”

“Good night deary, and remember what I said.... I’m tellin ye that’s all....”

“Stan take little steps and if we meet anybody go right on and jump in a taxi.... You can get away with anything if you do it quick enough.” Ellen’s hands were trembling as they came down the steps. She tucked one in under Stan’s elbow and began talking in a low chatty voice.... “You see dear, daddy came round to see the show two or three nights ago and he was shocked to death. He said he thought a girl demeaned herself showing her feelings like that before a lot of people.... Isn’t it killing?... Still he was impressed by the writeups the _Herald_ and _World_ gave me Sunday.... Goodnight Barney, nasty night.... My God.... Here’s a taxi, get in. Where are you going?” Out of the dark of the taxi, out of his long face muffled in the blue hood, his eyes were so bright black they frightened her like coming suddenly on a deep pit in the dark.

“All right we’ll go to my house. Might as well be hanged for a sheep.... Driver please go to Bank Street. The taxi started. They were jolting through the crisscross planes of red light, green light, yellow light beaded with lettering of Broadway. Suddenly Stan leaned over her and kissed her hard very quickly on the mouth.

“Stan you’ve got to stop drinking. It’s getting beyond a joke.”

“Why shouldn’t things get beyond a joke? You’re getting beyond a joke and I dont complain.”

“But darling you’ll kill yourself.”

“Well?”

“Oh I dont understand you Stan.”

“I dont understand you Ellie, but I love you very ... exordinately much.” There was a broken tremor in his very low voice that stunned her with happiness.

Ellen paid the taxi. Siren throbbing in an upward shriek that burst and trailed in a dull wail down the street, a fire engine went by red and gleaming, then a hookandladder with bell clanging.

“Let’s go to the fire Ellie.”

“With you in those clothes.... We’ll do no such thing.”

He followed her silent into the house and up the stairs. Her long room was cool and fresh smelling.

“Ellie you’re not sore at me?”

“Of course not idiot child.”

She undid the sodden bundle of his clothes and took them into the kitchenette to dry beside the gas stove. The sound of the phonograph playing _He’s a devil in his own home town_ called her back. Stan had taken off the dress. He was dancing round with a chair for a partner, her blue padded dressingown flying out from his thin hairy legs.

“Oh Stan you precious idiot.”

He put down the chair and came towards her brown and male and lean in the silly dressingown. The phonograph came to the end of the tune and the record went on rasping round and round.

V. Went to the Animals’ Fair

_Red light. Bell._

_A block deep four ranks of cars wait at the grade
crossing, fenders in taillights, mudguards scraping
mudguards, motors purring hot, exhausts reeking, cars from
Babylon and Jamaica, cars from Montauk, Port Jefferson,
Patchogue, limousines from Long Beach, Far Rockaway,
roadsters from Great Neck ... cars full of asters and wet
bathingsuits, sunsinged necks, mouths sticky from sodas
and hotdawgs ... cars dusted with pollen of ragweed and
goldenrod._

_Green light. Motors race, gears screech into first. The
cars space out, flow in a long ribbon along the ghostly
cement road, between blackwindowed blocks of concrete
factories, between bright slabbed colors of signboards
towards the glow over the city that stands up incredibly
into the night sky like the glow of a great lit tent, like
the yellow tall bulk of a tentshow._

Sarajevo, the word stuck in her throat when she tried to say it....

“It’s terrible to think of, terrible,” George Baldwin was groaning. “The Street’ll go plumb to hell.... They’ll close the Stock Exchange, only thing to do.”

“And I’ve never been to Europe either.... A war must be an extraordinary thing to see.” Ellen in her blue velvet dress with a buff cloak over it leaned back against the cushions of the taxi that whirred smoothly under them. “I always think of history as lithographs in a schoolbook, generals making proclamations, little tiny figures running across fields with their arms spread out, facsimiles of signatures.” Cones of light cutting into cones of light along the hot humming roadside, headlights splashing trees, houses, billboards, telegraph poles with broad brushes of whitewash. The taxi made a half turn and stopped in front of a roadhouse that oozed pink light and ragtime through every chink.

“Big crowd tonight,” said the taximan to Baldwin when he paid him.

“I wonder why,” asked Ellen.

“De Canarsie moider has sumpen to do wid it I guess.”

“What’s that?”

“Sumpen terrible. I seen it.”

“You saw the murder?”

“I didn’t see him do it. I seen de bodies laid out stiff before dey took em to de morgue. Us kids used to call de guy Santa Claus cause he had white whiskers.... Knowed him since I was a little feller.” The cars behind were honking and rasping their klaxons. “I better git a move on.... Good night lady.”

The red hallway smelt of lobster and steamed clams and cocktails.

“Why hello Gus!... Elaine let me introduce Mr. and Mrs. McNiel.... This is Miss Oglethorpe.” Ellen shook the big hand of a rednecked snubnosed man and the small precisely gloved hand of his wife. “Gus I’ll see you before we go....”

Ellen was following the headwaiter’s swallowtails along the edge of the dancefloor. They sat at a table beside the wall. The music was playing _Everybody’s Doing It_. Baldwin hummed it as he hung over her a second arranging the wrap on the back of her chair.

“Elaine you are the loveliest person ...” he began as he sat down opposite her. “It seems so horrible. I dont see how it’s possible.”

“What?”

“This war. I cant think of anything else.”

“I can ...” She kept her eyes on the menu. “Did you notice those two people I introduced to you?”

“Yes. Is that the McNiel whose name is in the paper all the time? Some row about a builders’ strike and the Interborough bond issue.”

“It’s all politics. I bet he’s glad of the war, poor old Gus. It’ll do one thing, it’ll keep that row off the front page.... I’ll tell you about him in a minute.... I dont suppose you like steamed clams do you? They are very good here.”

“George I adore steamed clams.”

“Then we’ll have a regular old fashioned Long Island shore dinner. What do you think of that?” Laying her gloves away on the edge of the table her hand brushed against the vase of rusty red and yellow roses. A shower of faded petals fluttered onto her hand, her gloves, the table. She shook them off her hands.

“And do have him take these wretched roses away George.... I hate faded flowers.”

Steam from the plated bowl of clams uncoiled in the rosy glow from the lampshade. Baldwin watched her fingers, pink and limber, pulling the clams by their long necks out of their shells, dipping them in melted butter, and popping them dripping in her mouth. She was deep in eating clams. He sighed. “Elaine ... I’m a very unhappy man.... Seeing Gus McNiel’s wife. It’s the first time in years. Think of it I was crazy in love with her and now I cant remember what her first name was ... Funny isn’t it? Things had been extremely slow ever since I had set up in practice for myself. It was a rash thing to do, as I was only two years out of lawschool and had no money to run on. I was rash in those days. I’d decided that if I didn’t get a case that day I’d chuck everything and go back to a clerkship. I went out for a walk to clear my head and saw a freightcar shunting down Eleventh Avenue run into a milkwagon. It was a horrid mess and when we’d picked the fellow up I said to myself I’d get him his rightful damages or bankrupt myself in the attempt. I won his case and that brought me to the notice of various people downtown, and that started him on his career and me on mine.”

“So he drove a milkwagon did he? I think milkmen are the nicest people in the world. Mine’s the cutest thing.”

“Elaine you wont repeat this to anyone.... I feel the completest confidence in you.”

“That’s very nice of you George. Isn’t it amazing the way girls are getting to look more like Mrs. Castle every day? Just look round this room.”

“She was like a wild rose Elaine, fresh and pink and full of the Irish, and now she’s a rather stumpy businesslike looking little woman.”

“And you’re as fit as you ever were. That’s the way it goes.”

“I wonder.... You dont know how empty and hollow everything was before I met you. All Cecily and I can do is make each other miserable.”

“Where is she now?”

“She’s up at Bar Harbor.... I had luck and all sorts of success when I was still a young man.... I’m not forty yet.”

“But I should think it would be fascinating. You must enjoy the law or you wouldn’t be such a success at it.”

“Oh success ... success ... what does it mean?”

“I’d like a little of it.”

“But my dear girl you have it.”

“Oh not what I mean.”

“But it isn’t any fun any more. All I do is sit in the office and let the young fellows do the work. My future’s all cut out for me. I suppose I could get solemn and pompous and practice little private vices ... but there’s more in me than that.”

“Why dont you go into politics?”

“Why should I go up to Washington into that greasy backwater when I’m right on the spot where they give the orders? The terrible thing about having New York go stale on you is that there’s nowhere else. It’s the top of the world. All we can do is go round and round in a squirrel cage.”

Ellen was watching the people in light summer clothes dancing on the waxed square of floor in the center; she caught sight of Tony Hunter’s oval pink and white face at a table on the far side of the room. Oglethorpe was not with him. Stan’s friend Herf sat with his back to her. She watched him laughing, his long rumpled black head poised a little askew on a scraggly neck. The other two men she didn’t know.

“Who are you looking at?”

“Just some friends of Jojo’s.... I wonder how on earth they got way out here. It’s not exactly on that gang’s beat.”

“Always the way when I try to get away with something,” said Baldwin with a wry smile.

“I should say you’d done exactly what you wanted to all your life.”

“Oh Elaine if you’d only let me do what I want to now. I want you to let me make you happy. You’re such a brave little girl making your way all alone the way you do. By gad you are so full of love and mystery and glitter ...” He faltered, took a deep swallow of wine, went on with flushing face. “I feel like a schoolboy ... I’m making a fool of myself. Elaine I’d do anything in the world for you.”

“Well all I’m going to ask you to do is to send away this lobster. I dont think it’s terribly good.”

“The devil ... maybe it isn’t.... Here waiter!... I was so rattled I didn’t know I was eating it.”

“You can get me some supreme of chicken instead.”

“Surely you poor child you must be starved.”

“... And a little corn on the cob.... I understand now why you make such a good lawyer, George. Any jury would have burst out sobbing long ago at such an impassioned plea.

“How about you Elaine?”

“George please dont ask me.”

* * * * *

At the table where Jimmy Herf sat they were drinking whiskey and soda. A yellowskinned man with light hair and a thin nose standing out crooked between childish blue eyes was talking in a confidential singsong: “Honest I had em lashed to the mast. The police department is cookoo, absolutely cookoo treating it as a rape and suicide case. That old man and his lovely innocent daughter were murdered, foully murdered. And do you know who by...?” He pointed a chubby cigarettestained finger at Tony Hunter.

“Dont give me the third degree judge I dont know anything about it” he said dropping his long lashes over his eyes.

“By the Black Hand.”

“You tell em Bullock,” said Jimmy Herf laughing. Bullock brought his fist down on the table so that the plates and glasses jingled. “Canarsie’s full of the Black Hand, full of anarchists and kidnappers and undesirable citizens. It’s our business to ferret em out and vindicate the honor of this poor old man and his beloved daughter. We are going to vindicate the honor of poor old monkeyface, what’s his name?”

“Mackintosh,” said Jimmy. “And the people round here used to call him Santa Claus. Of course everybody admits he’s been crazy for years.”

“We admit nothing but the majesty of American citizenhood.... But hell’s bells what’s the use when this goddam war takes the whole front page? I was going to have a fullpage spread and they’ve cut me down to half a column. Aint it the life?”

“You might work up something about how he was a lost heir to the Austrian throne and had been murdered for political reasons.”

“Not such a bad idear Jimmy.”

“But it’s such a horrible thing,” said Tony Hunter.

“You think we’re a lot of callous brutes, dont you Tony?”

“No I just dont see the pleasure people get out of reading about it.”

“Oh it’s all in the day’s work,” said Jimmy. “What gives me gooseflesh is the armies mobilizing, Belgrade bombarded, Belgium invaded ... all that stuff. I just cant imagine it.... They’ve killed Jaures.” “Who’s he?”

“A French Socialist.”

“Those goddam French are so goddam degenerate all they can do is fight duels and sleep with each other’s wives. I bet the Germans are in Paris in two weeks.”

“It couldn’t last long,” said Framingham, a tall ceremonious man with a whispy blond moustache who sat beside Hunter.

“Well I’d like to get an assignment as warcorrespondent.”

“Say Jimmy do you know this French guy who’s barkeep here?”

“Congo Jake? Sure I know him.”

“Is he a good guy?”

“He’s swell.”

“Let’s go out and talk to him. He might give us some dope about this here murder. God I’d like it if I could hitch it on to the World Conflict.”

“I have the greatest confidence,” had begun Framingham, “that the British will patch it up somehow.” Jimmy followed Bullock towards the bar.

Crossing the room he caught sight of Ellen. Her hair was very red in the glow from the lamp beside her. Baldwin was leaning towards her across the table with moist lips and bright eyes. Jimmy felt something glittering go off in his chest like a released spring. He turned his head away suddenly for fear she should see him.

Bullock turned and nudged him in the ribs. “Say Jimmy who the hell are those two guys came out with us?”

“They are friends of Ruth’s. I dont know them particularly well. Framingham’s an interior decorator I think.”

At the bar under a picture of the Lusitania stood a dark man in a white coat distended by a deep gorilla chest. He was vibrating a shaker between his very hairy hands. A waiter stood in front of the bar with a tray of cocktail glasses. The cocktail foamed into them greenishwhite.

“Hello Congo,” said Jimmy.

“Ah bonsoir monsieur ’Erf, ça biche?”

“Pretty good ... Say Congo I want you to meet a friend of mine. This is Grant Bullock of the _American_.”

“Very please. You an Mr. ’Erf ave someting on the ’ouse sir.”

The waiter raised the clinking tray of glasses to shoulder height and carried them out on the flat of his hand.

“I suppose a gin fizz’ll ruin all that whiskey but I’d like one.... Drink something with us wont you Congo?” Bullock put a foot up on the brass rail and took a sip. “I was wondering,” he said slowly, “if there was any dope going round about this murder down the road.”

“Everybody ave his teyorie ...”

Jimmy caught a faint wink from one of Congo’s deepset black eyes. “Do you live out here?” he asked to keep from giggling.

“In the middle of the night I hear an automobile go by very fast wid de cutout open. I tink maybe it run into someting because it stopped very quick and come back much faster, licketysplit.”

“Did you hear a shot?”

Congo shook his head mysteriously. “I ear voices, very angree voices.”

“Gosh I’m going to look into this,” said Bullock tossing off the end of his drink. “Let’s go back to the girls.”

* * * * *

Ellen was looking at the face wrinkled like a walnut and the dead codfish eyes of the waiter pouring coffee. Baldwin was leaning back in his chair staring at her through his eyelashes. He was talking in a low monotone:

“Cant you see that I’ll go mad if I cant have you. You are the only thing in the world I ever wanted.”

“George I dont want to be had by anybody.... Cant you understand that a woman wants some freedom? Do be a sport about it. I’ll have to go home if you talk like that.”

“Why have you kept me dangling then? I’m not the sort of man you can play like a trout. You know that perfectly well.”

She looked straight at him with wide gray eyes; the light gave a sheen of gold to the little brown specks in the iris.

“It’s not so easy never to be able to have friends.” She looked down at her fingers on the edge of the table. His eyes were on the glint of copper along her eyelashes. Suddenly he snapped the silence that was tightening between them.

“Anyway let’s dance.”

* * * * *

J’ai fait trois fois le tour du monde
Dans mes voyages,

hummed Congo Jake as the big shining shaker quivered between his hairy hands. The narrow greenpapered bar was swelled and warped with bubbling voices, spiral exhalations of drinks, sharp clink of ice and glasses, an occasional strain of music from the other room. Jimmy Herf stood alone in the corner sipping a gin fizz. Next him Gus McNiel was slapping Bullock on the back and roaring in his ear:

“Why if they dont close the Stock Exchange ... god-amighty ... before the blowup comes there’ll be an opportunity.... Well begorry dont you forget it. A panic’s the time for a man with a cool head to make money.”

“There have been some big failures already and this is just the first whiff....”

“Opportunity knocks but once at a young man’s door.... You listen to me when there’s a big failure of one o them brokerage firms honest men can bless themselves.... But you’re not putting everythin I’m tellin ye in the paper, are you? There’s a good guy.... Most of you fellers go around puttin words in a man’s mouth. Cant trust one of you. I’ll tell you one thing though the lockout is a wonderful thing for the contractors. Wont be no housebuildin with a war on anyway.” “It wont last more’n two weeks and I dont see what it has to do with us anyway.”

“But conditions’ll be affected all over the world.... Conditions.... Hello Joey what the hell do you want?”

“I’d like to talk to you private for a minute sir. There’s some big news....”

The bar emptied gradually. Jimmy Herf was still standing at the end against the wall.

“You never get drunk, Mr. ’Erf.” Congo Jake sat down back of the bar to drink a cup of coffee.

“I’d rather watch the other fellows.”

“Very good. No use spend a lot o money ave a eadache next day.”

“That’s no way for a barkeep to talk.”

“I say what I tink.”

“Say I’ve always wanted to ask you.... Do you mind telling me?... How did you get the name of Congo Jake?”

Congo laughed deep in his chest. “I dunno.... When I very leetle I first go to sea dey call me Congo because I have curly hair an dark like a nigger. Den when I work in America, on American ship an all zat, guy ask me How you feel Congo? and I say Jake ... so dey call me Congo Jake.”

“It’s some nickname.... I thought you’d followed the sea.”

“It’s a ’ard life.... I tell you Mr. ’Erf, there’s someting about me unlucky. When I first remember on a peniche, you know what I mean ... in canal, a big man not my fader beat me up every day. Then I run away and work on sailboats in and out of Bordeaux, you know?”

“I was there when I was a kid I think....”

“Sure.... You understand them things Mr. ’Erf. But a feller like you, good education, all ’at, you dont know what life is. When I was seventeen I come to New York ... no good. I tink of notten but raising Cain. Den I shipped out again and went everywhere to hell an gone. In Shanghai I learned spik American an tend bar. I come back to Frisco an got married. Now I want to be American. But unlucky again see? Before I marry zat girl her and me lived togedder a year sweet as pie, but when we get married no good. She make fun of me and call me Frenchy because I no spik American good and den she kick no out of the house an I tell her go to hell. Funny ting a man’s life.”

J’ai fait trois fois le tour du monde
Dans mes voyages....

he started in his growling baritone.

There was a hand on Jimmy’s arm. He turned. “Why Ellie what’s the matter?”