Chapter VI: Introduction: The Judges (6)

Josephine was always glad to see her. She would grunt and grumble and fetch out another shuck-bottomed chair. Then Josephine would make coffee. Josephine was rich. She owned her house and a little store that her son-in-law managed; and her married children lived with her, not she with them. She was very, very fat, what with easy living. How the two old women would gossip, the pleasant air stirred with their palmetto fans. Now in “American,” now in French; talk, talk, talk, talk. “Ain’t your tongues ever run down?” Josephine’s daughters-in-law would ask, laughing but respectful.

What grand living and dying there used to be, back in steamboat days! It was like recalling a wedding festival or a Mardi Gras to look back to the yellow-fever scare of 1890. A funeral every day, and sometimes two. She and Josephine had had their hands full.... Shucks! the land was too healthy now, what with draining the swamps and such. The people were getting too uppity, outwitting death like that. Good thing after all that the automobiles bumped some of them off, else they never would quit the earth. What if some day folks should rise up and simply refuse to die! Well, what would God the Father have to say about that?

Sometimes Henriette and Josephine would crack mild little jokes, slapping at the flies with their untiring fans. “I seen Toni last week, at the church. He’s looking feeble.” “_Mais non!_” (A cackle.) “He ain’t here for long.” Sometimes a shrill and sudden chorus of locusts swelled out of Josephine’s trees, and was gone. A sure sign of death. And the two old women would cross themselves. “I wonder who it is _this_ time!”

But after all, what did it matter? Some young fool or other run down by an automobile. Some boy shot at the dance hall, over some girl. Whoever it was wouldn’t want _them_. The only person on Isle Brevelle who would want a singing woman was Toni, old Toni Philbert, who for nearly twenty years, had had one foot in the grave. Looked like he meant to hang on to the earth forever and ever, amen. He had always been like that, a lover of life and living. Heylaw! What a lad old Toni used to be!... What a way with the girls!

* * * * *

It was on a sultry August day that Toni Philbert had a stroke. Henriette’s grandson came in and told her about it. “I hear tell down at the store that Toni is mighty low. He can’t last very long, they tell me.”

Henriette was excited. So Toni was sick, very low! She gulped down some coffee and got her stick, and set out for Josephine’s house, walking down in the ditch. She was so heavy with news she could scarcely breathe. So Toni was on his deathbed.... Thoughts of Toni came to her from the long-ago years.... The August sun was veiled in a mist from the river. Already the cottonwoods were changing colour, and the goldenrod was in bloom. Henriette crowded close into the dusty bushes as an automobile flashed past above her on the highroad. So Toni was dying! Well, sometimes she might forget how many grandchildren she had; sometimes she forgot her age, or what year it was, this and that. But she would never forget the time that Toni had kissed her, nor the dress she had worn when he did it, long, long ago. Little enough she had thought of death or singing for death in those days, sitting under the trees by the river in a pink-sprigged challis. What a gallant, insolent lad he had been, old Toni! Of course, he had kissed every girl on the island. But hers was a sort of a special kiss, she had always felt. She was a slim, pretty, green-eyed thing, just turned seventeen.... Old Henriette groped along, catching against the bushes and the tumbleweeds at her feet. That was in 1852, long ’fore the war.... Old Henriette had warts on her cheeks. “Frogs put ’em there,” she sometimes croaked to curious children. “Toadfrogs, out in the swamp.” But in those days, when Toni had kissed her, her cheeks were yellow and smooth. Toni had led her down to the river to look at herself. “A minute ago, Henriette, your face was a yellow lily. And now--look!--it’s a rose!”

Ah, well, poor Toni was dying! Which one would he want to sing for him, herself or old Josephine? Henriette wondered if Josephine had had any “news.” ... She stopped, heavy with fear. Suppose Josephine had been “asked?” She began to hurry a little.... Heylaw! Who was that a-coming, a-coming through the weeds? She screwed up her eyes and peered. It was Josephine, hobbling along down in the ditch, so fat she could scarcely wobble.

The two old women began screeching at each other when they were yet a great way off, and waving their palmetto fans. “Toni, he’s very sick! They say that this is the end!” They found a nice spot by the roadside, among the weeds and overgrown summer flowers. It took them a minute or two to get settled. How Josephine grunted and took on, trying to sit! How her hips spread all over the place! Well, Henriette was glad she was thin and could get about some.... Butter-and-eggs and Jimson weed grew all around them, giving off rank summer odours. A giant cottonwood reached its arms between them and the sun.... “Is you heard from Toni yet?” Henriette asked, all a-tremble. And Josephine said, “No. Is you?”

Just so, when they were young, they had sat and talked of Toni. “Is you heard from Toni yet?” What a boy he had been for love!... Love? Death, the enchantress, was after him now. “If _I_ get him,” Henriette cackled, “I’ll have two more than you.” And Josephine laughed, sitting fat in the weeds till their purple juice squashed on her clothes. “_Mais non!_ And if _I_ get him, we’ll be even, Etta, my friend.”

A week went by, and another; and it began to look as if old Toni didn’t mean to die after all. It was just like Toni to keep death waiting, to flirt with death like that. He always was a tease: “_Well, my beauty, my proud one--all in good time. Don’t chafe and paw at the bit...._” And not a word had Toni said about getting a wailing woman! That was just like Toni, too, keeping everyone guessing up to the last.

Every night now Henriette got out her funeral book: ninety-nine crosses for herself. A record any singing woman might be proud of! If only she could get one more, to round out her final five! If only she could get Toni. How she would crow over Josephine then: “Me, I got one hundred crosses. One hundred funerals I’ve sung for....”

One night in early September Henriette, sleepless, lay in her bed. Against her window the trees, uneasy with autumn, pushed and drew away, sighing a little. The moon was up, looking drunken and sodden. It was very warm--good funeral weather, Henriette thought; a fine night for death, with cape jessamine still in bloom and baby owls in the trees. Henriette loved hoot owls. She felt they were kin to her, sisters under the skin. They plied the same trade, she and they. She loved owls and bats and all webfooted creatures, things that live in a green underworld. There were sounds on the highway, the chugging of cars; and into her window flashed the light from an automobile; it sought out the Virgin Mary, wheeled through the room, and was gone. Up and down the roads they went, the automobiles full of young folks--clatter-chug, clatter-chug!--past the unnoticed glory of river and moon and swamp. How little they considered death, the boys and girls on the highway!

The sickly moon went out; and there was lightning in the south. That meant the rain was ’way off, hiding in week after next.... Henriette arose very stealthily and crept outdoors to sit on the gallery, where it was cooler. Maybe right now old Toni was dying.... Once while she was sitting there her grandson came and poked his head out the door. “You better come to bed, gran’mammy. You’ll catch cold out there in your nightclothes.” But she shook her head and mumbled, “Let me be.” She began to sing, very low, “_He will die, my beloved, my friend, when the good round fruit is ripe; when the time of courting is at an end; when the fields are bare, and the sky is black with the low, long cry of the heron...._”

* * * * *

Two weeks later old Toni passed away. And Toni’s son came to bid Henriette to the funeral: “Papa, he told us to get you. The funeral’s to-morrow at ten.”

Henriette, who had moped long ago whenever Toni went off to town, could not shed a tear now he was dead. She was so excited she could scarcely speak; she could scarcely put on her clothes. “Come help me fasten my josie!” she called to her children.... So he had wanted _her_, after all, poor old Toni. She had her grandson help her down in the ditch. “Granny!” her grandchildren cried, shocked. “It rained cats and dogs last night. For shame, a old lady like you, walking down in the ditches.”

But they couldn’t do anything with her. She couldn’t rest, she said, until she had seen Josephine. “I must go tell Josie,” she said. “Poor old Josie----”

When Henriette neared Josephine’s house she began to cackle, her voice like a reed. But Josephine, sitting in her chair, cut her short. “I done heard a’ready. You needn’t bother to tell me.... Well, me, I’m glad for you, Etta.”

Old Josephine sat heavily in her chair, sagging over. How fat and sloppy she looked! And Henriette wondered what memories passed behind her lidless old eyes.... Presently Josephine got up and went and made some coffee. “One hundred for you,” she muttered, “and ninety-eight for me. Well....” To-day old Josephine laced the coffee with anisette, peering at Henriette disapprovingly. “You’ll need your strength,” she said gruffly, deep in her throat. “Getting your feet all wet that-a-way. You ought to be ‘shame’, at your age.”

But Henriette smiled. She knew Josephine was trying to dull her own disappointment; she knew that Josephine was low in her mind. Henriette drank of the hot, fragrant coffee. On either side of Josephine’s steps the bunched-up rosettes of the altheas were very pink in the sunshine; and the red yucca shook out its pretty, globular, rain-filled bells.... Henriette didn’t stay very long. “I got lots to do. I got to be up bright and early,” she said.

But in the morning, when Henriette awakened, she found that something terrible had happened to her voice. It was gone; she could not speak. Her grandchildren crowded about her bed, concerned and anxious--an old woman is frail as glass! “You see what we told you, Gran’mammy! You got no call yesterday, getting het up and excited just because old Toni is dead and they want you to sing for his funeral. And didn’t we tell you stay out that ditch? Walking around in water, just like a duck, at your age.”

They scolded and fussed and fumed and put warm flannels on her throat. They gave her a toddy. But it did no good. Her throat hurt, and when she opened her mouth she croaked like a frog--she who in her wailing had had as many stops to her voice as a sounding organ.... “Poor Gran’mammy,” her children said. “Now she can’t sing. And Josephine’ll have to go and wail for old Toni’s funeral.” Henriette lay and moaned a little. If she could only cry as children cry, in her disappointment. But the tears wouldn’t come. They had all dried up long ago.

At dusk the family returned from the burying. But out of respect for her feelings, as Henriette knew, they forbore to talk of the funeral and of how nice Josephine had sung and “carried on.” They merely said, “Josephine was so fat they had to hold her, to keep her from tumbling down in the grave.” But when she thought no one was looking Henriette took her funeral book from under her pillow and made a crossmark under Josephine’s name. Now they were even. Her old hands shook and one yellow tear rolled out of one eye. “Poor Gran’mamma,” her children said, in whispers. “Poor old Granny....”

Sleep did not come to Henriette until nearly daybreak. It began to rain about midnight, a steady rain, long and full of the secrets of autumn. And Henriette lay in her bed and thought about death and dying. She thought about her grandchildren, how good they were. Somehow she always felt sorriest for young people when anyone died. Not for little children, or the very old; but the ones in between. The ones between eighteen and forty, say. They took it hardest. How terrible death was to them, how _everlasting_! If only they could know what _she_ knew, she and the little children.... Of course, she wailed and carried on; that was her business, her calling. But how often, right in the midst of a funeral, even as she stood and gazed in the grave, she had longed to go and whisper to youth’s white, impassioned grief, “There, there, _chère_ ... don’t sorrow so hard. Me, I know. I tell you, I _know_.” But what she knew she could not have said.... Henriette stirred in her bed, sought a new place for her pillow. How often she had longed to say to some bereft mother, she who had buried six, “Do not grieve overmuch, little Mammy. He is not here. See! He is dragging a little tin can for a train, across the white courts of Heaven.”

Henriette slept, and after a time a bell tolled in her dreaming. It awakened her. A gray light had come into the room, and the rain was gone. Well, and who could be dead? Somebody old and rich was dead, the bell had been tolling so long. The light about her bed grew brighter, and the ceiling shone with rose. She dozed again; but when she again awakened the bell was still tolling.... It must be an old person dead.

Suddenly Henriette became aware of a flow, a movement in the house. The windows rattled; a door was opened somewhere and shut. And then there was a swishing of skirts, a running of feet. Her grandchildren! They crowded about her bed, three-deep, tense and excited. The cheeks of the littlest ones glowed, the way they did when there was bad news to be broken; when the sugar was out, or the cat had fallen down in the cistern. “Granny, what you think is happen? Old lady Josephine’s gone!” ... They crowded closer, to see how Henriette “took it.” “Poor Josephine, she got sick in the night and she passed away early this morning.”

Henriette sat up against her pillow, blinking. She looked like the kind of old woman children make out of their knuckles, with black-headed pins for eyes. And now the older ones, her daughters, stole into the room on their tiptoes. They took her hands. “How you feel, Gran’mammy? Is your throat all right? Well, they’ve done sent for you, honey. They said Josephine asked for you in the night, to come and sing for her funeral.... Well, _le bon Dieu_ is love you, sho’, Mammy.”

All day her children were busy, getting Henriette ready: her best alpaca cleaned and pressed; her mourning veil laid out, her gloves and her shoes. Shiny and speckless they must be, to follow the honoured dead. “Mammy,” her daughters said, “you stay in bed and rest, so your voice will be good to-morrow.” They were nice daughters; they were trying to make her feel prideful again.... All day long Henriette lay and gazed out at the white gravelled road, stretching away, on past Josephine’s house. Looked like she could see Josephine, sitting there on her gallery, the fat running over!

Well, she would miss Josephine, her old crony. Toni and Josie both gone. It would be queer, a sort of joke, wailing for Josephine’s funeral. It would be like singing beside her own grave.

* * * * *

The next morning, at the first peep of day, her children came in to help her. “How you feel, Gran’mammy?” They looked at her and shook their heads. She was so thin and so old. With her friends all gone she seemed like something from some other life.... “Well, we won’t have Mammy much longer,” they said. They crowded about her, solicitous.

Old Henriette sat up in bed. “Fetch me my specs,” she grumbled.

They brought her specs, her false teeth, her rosary, and her snake-oil. They washed her feet and rubbed them, and helped her to dress. With her mourning veil on she looked like a little black bride. And when she was dressed and ready they brought her the funeral book. “Now, Mammy, look! Mark it down--one hundred funerals. You’ve sung for more buryings than anyone else in the parish.”

But Henriette stared at the funeral book; she seemed mad about something, offended. “Don’t meddle so much,” she cackled. “You wait till I come home from Josephine’s funeral.”

She set out in the ditch, holding tight to her little black bag and her glasses. The grandchildren, who were to go on in the car, stood and watched her sorrowfully. Once she turned back and waved.... She was so little, so little and thin, so _perverse_! She hobbled along in the ditch. Her funeral shoes felt stiff and heavy, and caught in the Queen Anne’s lace; and whenever an automobile thundered by on the highway, Henriette, terrified, put her hands to her ears.... Once, half fainting, she stopped and clutched at the branch of a cottonwood tree. And a loneliness passed over her, a loneliness and a heartache.... “Josie,” she called, hopelessly, “Josie.... I’m a-coming....”

But when she got to the turn of the road where the willows grew, she faltered, distressed and alarmed. She could get no farther down in the ditch. A freshet poured from a hole in the side of the road, and the ditch in front of her was flooded with water. The black water boiled and licked at her feet, treacherous and angry; and Henriette shrank and backed away. For a moment she stood, trembling, uncertain; and she stared at the road above her that stretched away in the sunlight, on past Josephine’s house. Then, tottering and dizzy and sick with fright, she pulled herself up the embankment, and with her face turned toward Josephine’s house, began to hobble along on the highway.

“Josie--” she whispered, and a numbness, a darkness took hold of her--“Josie.... I mind as how, after all, my friend, you and me ull quit even....”

WITH GLORY AND HONOUR

BY ELISABETH COBB CHAPMAN

From _Century_

In a cross street of the riant fifties stands the Club Levering, an old brownstone building in a brave new coat of tan plaster, with wrought-iron lamps by its doors and an imposing uniformed figure to bow you out politely, or with the force of a strong arm, in nice accordance to the decorum or lack of it that you preserve within the precincts which he guards.

The Club Levering is not a club; it is a cabaret, a dance hall, and a theatre, with a strong attraction for Broadway luminaries. They drop in after the theatre to hear Hal Levering sing his new songs and to watch the swells, strayed from up town East, dance and enjoy themselves. And they love Hal. “He’s a great boy,” they say. “An artist. Some kid. Listen to that now. Boy, how he can put it over!”

Levering, born Lipwitz, had been driven to this place by a dim dream. There was struggle behind him, years of the unbelievable struggle of the poor man, of the immigrant Jew, against a relentless city. He could remember dimly a night in southern Russia, the pogrom, flames and the sounds of shots in the dark, driving out the Jew. He had been held up by his mother, crying, on the deck of an immigrant ship to see the Promised City blazing tall and splendid in the sunlight. They had all been held up to see it, he and Lena and Roziska and Leo and little Moses, even though Moses was too young to know what it was all about--and the Promised Land, as it materialized, a tenement in the crowded ghetto, too hard on the little Moses, who died in a few months.

Behind Hal were the years as a singing waiter in cheap cabarets, as a “song plugger,” small-time vaudeville, and then a revue; and now marvellously he was Hal Levering, star and part owner of the Club Levering, and packing them in at higher prices than any other night club dared charge.

He had done that single-handed. And he had carried the Lipwitz family with him. Lena was now a dancer, a good one; Isaac, a partner in a clothing store. Rosie had married a doctor. Mama kept house for Lena, and if Papa had been alive, Hal would undoubtedly have found something lucrative for him.

Always his dream had driven him. The dream of the artist, inarticulate, clumsy, hunting for the ultimate beauty. He sang jazz now and he wore fine clothes, while around him were the flash of jewels and the white faces of gaudy women and the throb of Bennie Bernstein’s music. Everybody paid him homage, bowing, pounding on the table for Hal Levering, the artist, singing “Abie’s an Irisher Now,” a song whose words were a cry of pain, written by a Jew in contempt of his race. He sang it gorgeously, with exaggerated gestures, flexible hands, and when he did the part where Abie pretends to be the Irish plug-ugly, one saw the cringe of the homeless race that was ingrained in Abie in spite of the defiant throw of an Irish jaw. It was a beautiful bit of mimicking, and even though he was a Jew he did not mind the ugly words at all.

He had one song, “When My Little Baby Boy Says His Prayers to Me,” that never failed to make his hearers cry. And there were tears in his own eyes, when he came off, not because of the song--he knew hokum even when he sang it himself--but because he could “get them” with it. Hal Levering, the artist, his triumph ringing in his ears clapped out by enthusiastic hands.

The grinding afternoon before his new summer show went on; he was in his element. About him were excited waiters arranging their tables, decorators at work on the flowers, Bennie Bernstein in his shirt sleeves, sweating over the new songs, Lilian Laine begging help with the duet they were to sing. And then, as Hal went over his new numbers alone, the waiters and the decorators, Lilian and song-wise Bennie himself, stopped to listen to him.

He had worked that day until his face was gray with fatigue, but when at last he went out for his dinner, he walked bravely, with his head up, a conqueror, Hal Levering of the Club Levering, a king on Broadway.

The opening of the summer show had been an enormous success. The entrance was choked with disappointed people who could not get in, and at the door the page boys battled with the crowd clamouring for tables, among which the lucky ones who had reservations battled their way. And Hal moved from table to table to welcome his guests and receive homage. This was his big night, his triumph, the end, he thought with a choke in his throat, of his struggle toward the ultimate beauty.

* * * * *

Constance Corthwaite came to the Club Levering that night. She had never been there before, but Hal Levering recognized her at once. She was as much a celebrity to Broadway as she was to Fifth Avenue. One saw her everywhere, a pirate of a woman with a face moulded firm in lines of complete and terrible ennui, hunting for amusement, scattering her millions with a disdainful hand. She had been Constance Corthwaite for thirty-five years now, for she had never found a man to hold her interest long enough to marry him.

Levering had gone at once to her table, had been introduced, had accepted a glass of excellent champagne, had bragged, had strutted, had told jokes.

“Your place is quite amusing,” Constance Corthwaite said. “I hear you sing very well.”

Hal Levering laughed. “That’s what they say. Have you ever heard me?”

She shook her head.

“Well, the stuff I do here is--well, no artist can put anything over in a restaurant, but I’m opening in a new act, just a side line, you know, at the Palace next week, and that’s where I knock ’em right out of their seats. We’ve tried it out, and it’s great. Next week--come and see me.” Then in a magnificent burst of cordiality: “Come around during the show and see it from behind. How’d you like that, huh? See, I do a skit, new songs, new patter--it’s a wow!”

She had favoured him with a glance from her long eyes. “Thank you.”

“What would you like to have me sing for you now?” he asked.

“Try something good--I should like to see how it went here.”

He sang “Sweet Siren” and “Pretty Little Mama” for her. She did not applaud. He was disappointed. He had realized that she wasn’t demonstrative, but he had hoped to win her.

Her friends seemed to enjoy themselves, and he took no more trouble with them. He noticed that they laughed, drank, and danced. Later there was an animated discussion; he could see that from the floor as he sang. Constance Corthwaite’s friends were arguing with her. They leaned toward her, protesting. The attitudes were unmistakable. Apparently unmoved, she blew smoke from her nostrils and with a wave of her cigarette turned their attention back to him. They watched him, shrewdly, for a few seconds, and then went off into quiet laughter. Laughter at some joke which that long-eyed woman had designed. From the floor, singing, he saw all this, for his early training had made him observant.

As Constance was leaving she beckoned to him. She stood at the door, wrapped in her dark cloak. He went out at her nod, with alacrity. As he went he wondered what she wanted and decided definitely that he did not like her. “Too damned ritzy,” and he thought her ugly and badly dressed, too, but after all she was Constance Corthwaite. Probably she had fallen for him. Most of ’em did.

She recognized his approach with the smallest possible nod.

“Thank you for the songs. We enjoyed them. As I can’t watch you ‘knock ’em off their seats’ at the Palace, I suggest that you come down to my place in the country next week-end and knock us off our seats down there.”

She was asking him to visit her. So she _had_ fallen for him. They all did. He was inundated with female attentions. But a visit to the Corthwaite place! Well, he had arrived! He accepted blandly.

* * * * *

Mommer and Lena helped him pack. They came from their apartment across the hall to his and favoured him with their advice and assistance. It was a lengthy business. Before he got off, the plush splendour of his rooms was strewn with discarded clothing.

“Take your dress suit, Hermie,” advised his mother. “Your new suit for those swells is none too good.”

“Wear your lavender sport suit for the golfing.”

“A bathing suit.”

“Your silk socks, Hermie. Hermie, you have forgot your silk socks, Hermie.”

“The lavender suit, Hermie.”

* * * * *

He got off at last. His big car seemed to eat the miles, exaltation keeping time to the healthy song of his motor. He went swiftly through the mean towns squatting on the island’s edge out to the rolling hills of the North Shore. He dreamed dreams. Now a new billing suggested itself. “Hal Levering--Society’s Favourite”--or better, “Hal Levering, Society’s Favoured Comedian.” In his mind’s eye he could see an article in _Vanity Fair_--perhaps--“Hal Levering, the erstwhile mammy songster a belated society discovery.”

He turned the nose of the car into the Corthwaite gates and at a reduced speed moved up the driveway. In spite of the explicit directions given him by the policeman in Jonestown, he wasn’t at all sure that this was the place.

He had passed, on his drive from New York, many great stone gates, so high and so formidable that they gave only a niggard glimpse of blue stone road, perhaps the outline of proud roofs upheld above the trees, and he had expected the Corthwaite driveway to be at least as fine as the finest of these.

But this was just a comfortable country road, distinguished from its kind only by a pair of lowly stone pillars and a squat frame cottage doing duty as a gatekeeper’s lodge.

He drove through a small woodland, not pruned or landscaped at all, turned a corner, and found himself facing an expanse of lawn and a rambling frame house, painted a soft faded yellow and adorned with plain white shutters. The Corthwaite house laid claim to no other beauty than that which is inherent in old colonial houses and in ancient Greek vases, the unadorned beauty of line. Hal Levering was disappointed in it. A butler, not in livery, met him at the door. He was an old man and grumpy.

“Mr. Levering?” he asked. Levering had an uncomfortable feeling that his clothes, his car, and his abilities were all being evaluated, but he dismissed the suspicion as absurd, for the old man’s eyes had not moved. He was at the moment holding open the door.

“Miss Corthwaite left word that if she had not returned at the time of your arrival you were to make yourself at home and ask me for anything you might require--sir.”

Levering entered.

“The Car?” he asked, and one had, as always, a feeling that he was thinking of it with at least a capital “C.” “The Car will be all right there?”

“The chauffeur will take it around if you will give me the keys--sir,” said the old man.

“Oh!” There was an appreciative pause from Levering. This place was like one of those English places he had heard of--all service--no show.

The old man led him upstairs, and down a long hall to a bedroom, which like the rest of the house gave the impression of luxury, although the chintz was faded and the old furniture austerely simple.

The windows gave one a view of a garden, a box hedge, and, looming friendly in the rear, fruit trees not bowed as yet with the crop, but holding the green fruit as sturdily as a street lamp its light. That was no drawing room of a garden. The fruit trees were welcome to come in if they liked. “I don’t call that much,” Levering remarked to the air at large. He compared unfavourably the gay simple little flower beds before him to the marble swimming pool and formal terraces of his friend, Isaac Lowenstein, the moving-picture magnate. He carefully dusted his gray tweeds, straightened his tie an infinitesimal fraction, and from his bag searched out a bottle of brilliantine, and, anointing a comb, smoothed his hair.

Downstairs again, Levering found himself in the great room he had first entered, and through which he had passed too quickly for an impression. Now he frankly took its measure. It did not impress him. It was big, to be sure, but the hangings were not velvet, the upholstery was not rich. He decided that the early-American maple was cool looking but plain, and the dim rosy riot of the chintz, comfortable but cheap. He wondered at the house because he was sure that here, if any place in the world, things would be correct, and he had expected to find a glorified Club Levering with more crystal and more plush and more grandeur.

The old butler found him there and offered liquid refreshment, which was accepted gratefully.

“Did Miss Corthwaite say when she’d be home?” asked Levering. It made him lonely to be left to himself. The din of his days had beaten upon his nerves until solitude was a thing abhorred.

“She did not--sir,” said the butler. Hal was offended with his welcome. He was doing Constance Corthwaite a favour in coming all the way down here to the country, and she had made no effort to receive him. Left alone, he looked about him for some source of amusement. Tentatively he opened two small cabinets, hoping vainly that they might contain phonograph or radio. He found only riding gloves, golf balls, a pair of garden shears, and some sheet music. The music offered possibilities, and in that room the big piano was the only piece of furniture that looked like any furniture he had ever seen, but the music was queer stuff. He did not know any of it, nor did he want to.

There were magazines piled on the long centre table, and he looked through them hopefully. Here was the bland impudence of the young intellectuals with their opinions supported by the dignity of a Duncan Phyfe table. If Hal Levering had possessed a subtle mind, he would have fathomed Constance Corthwaite at that instance. Eccentricity upheld by Duncan Phyfe.

Half buried in the pile of papers and magazines he found an old book, _The Book of the Corthwaites_, and in idle curiosity he turned the leaves. There were long lists of names in it, explained by short sentences.

In 1732, Colonel Abednego Corthwaite married Eliza Pepperidge. He
settled in the city of Boston and became one of its most prominent
citizens. His children were Abednego, Elisha, John, Eliza, Aaron, and
Piety. Abednego died in infancy. Elisha married Patience Cabot. Their
children were----

“Good-night!” Levering’s surprise was jolted out of him. “What does anybody care who those dead ones married?” But Constance Corthwaite and her kind must care, or the book would not be here. He carried it out on to the porch that gave a view of the garden and the apple trees.

When Constance Corthwaite and the rest of her house party returned from the golf links, they found Hal Levering reading....

“In 1802 Solomon Corthwaite married Sarah Emerson,” and in his eyes a dazed, bored, yet questioning expression.

“How d’ye do?” said Miss Corthwaite. She did not offer to shake hands. “Sorry to be so late. Golf, you know. Did Lake make you comfortable?” With a little wave of a hand she indicated her other guests, who, apparently without seeing him at all, were settling themselves in the low wicker chairs. “Miss Bromley, Mr.--er--Levering.” Miss Bromley, whose sunburned face and quite frankly dirty hands gave evidence that she had played a hard game, indeed, acknowledged the introduction by not the faintest flicker of an eye. She was seemingly impervious to introductions. Her bow was not to be considered as directed at him at all. She merely happened to be bowing at that moment. Miss Paine and Mrs. Douglass and an Englishwoman, Lady Greville, to whom he was in turn presented, acknowledged his presence with equal enthusiasm. The men were more cordial, “My cousin, Mr. Herton, Lord Greville, Mr. Paine, Mr. Taylor, Mr. Valentine.”

Levering instantly assumed the genial air of the club. That air, half ingratiating, half bold, wholly impudent. From his smiling lips to the bob of the little blue tassels that held up his blue golf stockings, he radiated cordiality.

They stayed out on the porch for a long time, discussing their golf and the long cold drinks. Levering, whose ignorance of the game was abysmal, and whose drink was finished, found himself rather out of this. Sitting as he was in the centre of the group, it seemed as though he were encircled by silence, while beyond there went on a very animated chatter. And as the dusk slid over them he was conscious of being lonelier than he had ever been in his life.

After dinner that night things picked up a bit. They led him to the piano and settled themselves expectantly around the room waiting to be entertained. They were. He sang them new popular songs and old songs that he had written himself, and he “got them” as he always got them at the Club Levering.

He gave them pathos for a finale, “When My Little Baby Boy Lisps His Prayers at Twilight,” and as an encore, “Mamma, Sweet Mamma,” in his rich tenor, “Please don’t hold out on m-e-e.”

Miss Bromley and Mr. Taylor were inspired to do an apache dance. Lady Greville came over to him. “How quaint!” she said in her staccato voice and clipped pronunciation that he found difficult to understand. “Rippin’--teach it me, won’t you?” He made room for her on the piano bench. “See--like this--Ma-ma--sweet Mama--” she picked out the treble with clever trained fingers. In a moment she was playing it very well. “You’re some kid at the piano yourself, ain’t you?” he said enthusiastically, boldly bending his head to look in her eyes. “But you haven’t got it quite. Don’t play it like grand opera--see. It’s got a wow--like this--SWEET MAMA!”

From a corner Constance Corthwaite watched them with amusement. She looked like a cat luxuriously gorging itself with cream. There was on her face exactly that complacent, contented, and cynical expression.

* * * * *

The next morning he came down late. They had kept him at the piano a long time the night before, and besides, not for years had he risen early. He found the house deserted as it had been the afternoon before. Not until the butler told him they were all out riding did he remember dimly that something had been said about riding, that they had suggested he come along.

Out on the porch there were Sunday papers and warm sunshine. Levering settled himself in a comfortable, soft-cushioned wicker chair and picking up a paper turned to the Broadway page, where he found a flattering notice of the Club Levering activities during the past week. Yes, it was a triumph. Such a notice! “Quaintest night club in town.” “Levering’s songs draw the élite.”

Oh! He’d arrived sure enough, and now here he was the guest of honour at the Corthwaites’ house ... kind of a funny way to treat your guest of honour, though, to leave him alone.... But then they knew that an artist had to have time to himself.... Sure, that was it. Levering dropped his paper and lay back comfortably. He closed his eyes and savoured his triumph. He was the Kid himself, and running with all these swells.... Funny kind of a place, though. No dog, no swank ... kind of shabby. Not a patch on lots of places.... And come to think of it, the people ain’t such classy dressers.... Not much jewellery on the dames.... That English duke’s dinner jacket didn’t fit so damn good.... Slow kind of crowd; he didn’t get ’em at all.... Now when he’d sung that nifty song it didn’t go so big ... that Corthwaite dame had acted kinda queer, seemed like she’d almost sneered.... But, foolishness ... she liked him fine, and she liked his stuff, too....

He moved petulantly in his chair.

He wished they’d come back ... this was a bore ... no kind of way to spend Sunday....

He picked up another sheet of the paper, but his attention wandered, and it fluttered from his hand. “What the hell’s the matter with me?”

It was very still out there. Levering had never felt such stillness. It pressed on his eardrums. He could fairly hear the silence. There was no way to escape from one’s self in such quiet. He was acutely uncomfortable. This was nothing like the Lowensteins’ place! Why, Sunday morning at this hour there would be a crowd of good fellows drinking highballs and singing and telling jokes, and the marble pool would be full of people, and like as not someone would climb up one of those Italian statues of old Lowenstein’s and stick a bathing cap on its head. Sure, there’d be things doing all right.

But this stillness that screamed at you, and this funny little garden, and no footman in livery, and no marble statues--hell! This wasn’t such a place, and yet----

The stillness gives you funny ideas!

Now, old Lowenstein, he can’t be all wrong--but Constance Corthwaite’s place can’t be wrong at all. This place is right--for her brand of people. And the house--now, the house must be right, too. It wasn’t what he liked himself, but it was right. It was bound to be right. It wasn’t as if she didn’t always get the best. She could have anything in the world, and she knew what was right--and she had this. And if this was right, the Club Levering was wrong. He turned a little cold at the thought. The club was his creation, it was his dream, it was, in fact, himself, and it was wrong!

He stooped and picked up a sheet of the newspaper and folded it gently and exactly.

Corthwaite--she knows. She’s the kind that don’t make mistakes about houses.

He was not soothed and comforted in the sunlight now. He was acutely and miserably fighting with doubt and distrust. For if the Club Levering was wrong, then he was wrong. He had missed. He was cheated. He was being shown a land that he could never enter, and desolately, and suddenly now, he thought it was the only land worth entering.

Oh, the terrible, silent scorn of this house, in its rightness, scorn for him and his land and his dream! Hal Levering was a poet. It seemed to him now that the house behind him had drawn together and was straining to get away from him, just as the people in it strained away from him and left him alone and outside. He tried to reassure himself. There were all kinds of people in the world, and this was America, and he was as good as anybody.

“It ain’t so; I’m as good as any of ’em. What’d they ask me here for if I ain’t? You big clown you, they asked you here to sing your jazz songs, and so’s they could get a good laugh outa you. That’s what it was for, you big dummy. Didn’t you see that Corthwaite girl sneering? Sure you did. But you wouldn’t admit it! These people are right, and you’re wrong, Hal Levering. You’re a Jew. No, that ain’t it either. It’s because you ain’t a Jew--that’s it--because you’re pretending you ain’t. Because you ain’t real. That’s it. They got their own names and their own people and the things they’ve always had, but you--you’re what they call a dirty Jew....

“That’s what it is about them that’s different--it ain’t just that they got different styles in architecture--but they ain’t pretending nothing. They don’t have to.”

He remembered the smile that had curled Constance Corthwaite’s lips the night before. It grew, it spread, the image of curving lips blotted out all the warm world, and he was alone before them, his heart sick with the humiliation of the degraded artist.

Hal Levering rose from his chair, trembling a little, very white, just as the riding party came strolling through the box hedge.

He looked down at them from the steps of the porch. They came toward him like sublime creatures oblivious of his presence and of his pain, ignoring him as they would always ignore him.

They were talking about someone named Coperbesby. He heard Constance Corthwaite’s clear voice say:

“He has the most intense sense of race. A fierce and proud belief in the Jew, and if you don’t understand that he is a Jew, that everything he does is racial and unsullied, you can’t understand his music at all.”

Levering turned and, blundering against the door, went slowly out of the sun, through the big quiet hall and upstairs. His room had been put in order, and he hated to disarrange it, but he had to hurry, hurry so that he could go quickly, and when you pack in a hurry things get mussed up in spite of you.

* * * * *

The first thing his cronies at the club asked him was if he had had a good time at the Corthwaite place.

Bennie Bernstein, the orchestra leader, Mimi Deland, the specialty dancer, and her lean effeminate partner, surrounded him as soon as he appeared that Monday night.

“Did you have a good time?” they asked him.

“Sure, fine, fine.”

Mimi Deland looked at him curiously. “Well, you don’t look it.”

He turned on her furiously. “What do you mean, I don’t look it? What do you want me to do? Sing a song about it?”

She shrugged. “No,” simply. “But don’t chew my ear off.”

“Say, don’t get the week-end habit,” said Bennie jovially. “That bird you had here last night doing your stuff was awful. We wouldn’t keep open a week with him around.”

“Pretty bad, huh?” pleased.

“Lousy!”

It was time for his first song. As he stepped to the door that led him to the spotlights and the applause, he said over his shoulder, “Don’t worry about me getting the week-end habit; I won’t.”

“Gee,” remarked Deland as he slammed the door on them, “I wonder what they did to him. He’s back early, too.”

He finished his song, and Bennie dipped his violin to his orchestra, and they began the opening bars of “Abie’s an Irisher Now.”

At the sound of the first notes, Levering stiffened as though he had been stung; then, turning on his heel, he called harshly, “Don’t play that song to-night--or ever again.” After which he walked stiffly off the floor, refusing his encore, while the music stopped in the middle of a bar, jarred to a silence that held until Bennie shattered it with his music again.

* * * * *

It was several weeks before Constance Corthwaite came again to the Club Levering. She was quite sure, of course, when Hal Levering fled from her house without a word to any of them, that he had somehow realized his position; but that was not what had kept her from the club. She had been away. Now, to-night, she was in town again and a little bored, and as Hal Levering had once amused her she came to his place in the hope that he might again. He was a hired performer; if she had hurt his feelings, well--she was sorry, but she had no intention of staying away as long as he could give her a moment’s entertainment.

The club had not been doing well for the last few weeks. Even Bennie Bernstein’s saucy music did not hold the crowds. The reason, of course, was that another man was in Hal Levering’s place.

Constance Corthwaite listened to one of his colourless offerings, and then called him to her table.

“Where,” she asked, “is Hal Levering? Isn’t he going to be here to-night?”

“Nope, he’s left for good.”

“Really, how disappointing! Where has he gone?”

“Say, lady, you’ll never believe me when I tell you; it’s the funniest thing you ever heard! You know the money he was getting here--fifteen hundred a week and a rake-off, and he part owner at that----”

“Really?”

“Sure. Well, he came in here one day, nobody expecting it at all, and told ’em he was through--just like that. Through. Told ’em he was going back and be a real Jew, going to give his talent to his people. Can you beat it? They thought he had gone crazy, of course. Fifteen hundred a week and a rake-off--and do you know what he’s done?” The objectionable young man paused dramatically. “Say, he’s studying to be a cantor in a synagogue--can you beat that?--can you?”

* * * * *

It was a year and more before the Club Levering saw its part owner again. A variety of rumours had floated along Broadway--Levering had gone abroad to study, he had taken a position in a synagogue, he was composing highbrow music--but soon the rumours died away, and all that was left of Levering at his old stamping ground was the flashing red and green sign of the club. Business had fallen off; new places had each in turn engaged the fickle attentions of the city’s night-lovers, and the Club Levering was patronized by only a few stragglers. And then the management decided to make one more bid for popular favour with a new revue.

Bennie Bernstein laboured at his piano just as he had the afternoon of Levering’s greatest triumph a year before, but the other performers were new. No one now tried to fill Hal’s shoes; they had to depend on a speeding chorus to cover up a palpable lack. And as Bennie sweated to get the rehearsal into full swing, the service door opened and a familiar voice sang out: “Hel-lo, Bennie, how’ve you been? Making the grade O. K., huh?” It was Hal Levering.

“My--God--Hal!” and Bennie leaped from his stool and seized Levering by the shoulders. The other performers gathered around, and to Hal again was given the once so sweet chorus of praise.

“Cut it out--cut it out. Let’s get to work here. We gotta give ’em something to knock ’em off their chairs!”

Bennie looked at Levering in astonishment. Was he really coming back? It was too good to be true, but here he was, and Bennie ran over to the piano joyfully. His nimble fingers flew up and down the keyboard, and then, triumphantly, he hammered out the first bars of “Abie’s an Irisher Now.” Levering, who had been chatting with the chef, who had come running from the kitchen, whirled about with a white face.

“Bennie!” His voice stopped the music with the player’s hands suspended in the air, such was its savage earnestness. “Never again that number, Bennie. Levering’s a Jewisher now. Don’t forget that, hey?” Hal patted his friend on the shoulder. “S’all right, Bennie, but there’s been some changes made.”

The rehearsal went on under Levering’s direction, and when he was satisfied with it he turned to the piano and handed Bernstein several sheets of manuscript.

“Here’s some new numbers that I’m going to try,” he said.

“Hot dog!” Bernie murmured, as he bent his expert gaze on the neatly written sheets. Then an expression of bewilderment spread over his face. What was this stuff Hal was pulling? He glanced sideways at Levering, who was standing at the edge of the platform, his back turned. With a shake of his head, Bennie played a few bars; then Levering joined in, a new softness, a thrilling timbre, in his rich voice. Again the few in the room stopped their chatter and listened with puzzled expressions, which changed into real wonder and reluctant admiration as Hal sang:

“Set me as a seal upon thine heart,
As a seal upon thine arm,
For love is strong as death,
Jealousy is cruel as the grave.
Stir not up nor awake my love
Until he please.”

When he had finished, a silence hung over the place. Hal turned to Bennie. “Try the next one,” he said quietly.

And again he sang a verse from the Song of Solomon, set to a wailing accompaniment, that died away to a whisper, rose, swelled, and died away again. It was thrilling, strange, but “Can even Hal Levering get away with that stuff in a night club?” wondered Bennie.

One or two jazz numbers followed, and Hal called off rehearsal. The word spread that Levering was back, and that night, when the lights were dimmed and the chorus twinkled through the opening number, the place was crowded beyond seating capacity.

There was no sight of Levering until after Buck and Wing, those whirling cloggers, had done their turn. Then he appeared, and a burst of applause, punctuated by the staccato click of the little wooden hammers on the tables, showed that he still had a loyal following.

Bennie, at the piano, nervously settled himself, waiting for the noise to cease. Then Hal broke into one of his new songs, those songs that are as famous now as “Eli, Eli.” The reaction of the crowd was amazing. Some wept, some applauded, others sat silent, wondering. It was so unexpected, so sudden, that before they realized it Hal had bowed quietly and left the room.

Later he sang several jazz songs, but after the applause he did not join his patrons at their tables; he left the room in spite of clamorous shouts of “C’mere, Hal,” “Have a lil one with us, Hal?” “Draw up a chair, Hal.”

Sitting at one of the tables were Lord and Lady Greville, Nancy Bromley, and John Taylor. If Levering had noticed the presence of these companions of his week-end at Constance Corthwaite’s, he gave no sign.