Summer lay like a Mandarin coat over the city. It was June. Warm, sun-awninged streets glistened with ornamental colors. Women in gaudy fabrics, men in violent hat bands, straws, panamas, striped shirts, sun parasols like huge discs of confetti, freshly painted red and green street cars, pastel tinted automobiles—all these tumbled like a swarm of sprightly incoherent adjectives along the foot of the buildings.
The store windows like deaf and dumb hawkers grimaced at the crowds. Ice creams, silks, swimming suits, and sport paraphernalia; jaunty frocks, white trousers, candies, festive haberdashery, drugs, leather goods, wicker furniture and assortments of lingerie like the symbols of fastidious sins—all these grimaced behind plate glass.
The city was in bloom. People, perspiring and lightly dressed, sauntered by the plate glass orchards. Summer filled the city with reminiscent smells. Sky, water, grass scampered like merry ghosts through the carnival of the shopping center. Warm, sun-awninged streets; ornamental men and women—summer spread itself through the crowds, warmed the bargain hunters, loiterers, clerks, stenographers, business men and housewives into a half sleep.
They peered lazily at each other. Their mysterious preoccupations seemed to have subsided. The sun made holiday in the streets and the high, fluttering windows showered endless tiny suns on the air.The morning held the unreal soul of some forgotten picnic.
Ten o'clock. Fanny Gilchrist turned with an inward sigh and walked out of the crowded business street. This was LaSalle street and, concealed in the buildings around her, were people who knew her and might see her. Accidentally bump into her.
The crowds grew thinner and less familiar types of faces drifted by. This was better. She wasn't exactly afraid. But what if someone did bump into her accidentally? Then she would have to say where she was going and, if she lied, perhaps they would insist upon coming along and discover it. But that was foolishness. One never met people in streets like that.
Men looked at her with casual interest, with insignificant enthusiasm, as she walked by them. A bright-haired, shining-eyed young woman with a body undulating softly under a grey and green trimmed dress; she seemed to light up the dingy pavements. Other women passed lighting them up also. Each new female illuminant was welcomed with thankful, greedy eyes.
Her red sailor jauntily tilted and the silken gleam of her face were like part of a luscious mask. She was a woman hurrying somewhere and men, bored with other women, looked at her enthusiastically. She was one of the many enigmatic ones, one of the many gaudy colored masks behind which sex paraded its mystery through the sun-awninged streets. Eyes ennuied with the memory of sex lighted eagerly in the presence of its masks. The flash of ankles and the swell of thighs under pretty fabrics were diversions even for moralists.
Schroder waiting patiently on a street corner watched the warm crowd. She wouldn't come. Yes, she would. Well, another five minutes would tell.
He saw her and his excitement changed. A leisurely smile came to his face. His body relaxed. He was a connoisseur in rendezvous and his enjoyment of the moment which witnessed her approach was deliberate. Women in themselves did not interest him so much. Their bodies—pleasant, yes. But after all—a finale. And one does not applaud finales.
But now, watching her lithe figure hurrying toward him was a diversion to be sipped at, contemplated in all its emotional detail, and enjoyed. Later it would be this moment he remembered, if he remembered anything—which was uncertain. For his memories which had in his younger days glistened in his thought like a mosaic of eroticism, had of late blurred to a monotone. He could remember women, liaisons, passion phrases and great enthusiasms but, curiously, they seemed all identical. To recall how one woman had sighed in his arms was to recall the whole pack of them. As if the souls of his paramours and the manner of their surrenders were contained completely in the recollection of any one detail.
But despite his ennui, this moment of approach still delighted him. The woman hurrying to his side was not yet a woman. She was still a mystery whose inevitable and never varying sensualism was masked for a final instant behind unfamiliar fabrics. There was a piquant unreality, a diverting strangeness, as she smiled at him. She was somebody he did not know. He was authentically bored with women. But for the moment it was not a woman approaching—rather anew color of cloth, a new combination of dress, a new species of social poise and gesture were presenting themselves for ravishment. In these unfamiliar surfaces lay a tenuous mystery as if it were these externals he was about to embrace. And in the contemplation of this mystery, his interest revived itself. He sighed. It was a mystery which would vanish shortly.
"Hello, dearest."
He greeted her softly, with regret. A quixotic impulse to turn and walk away before she spoke had died in him.
Fanny was staring expectantly. He was familiar with the expression. Not in her, but in others. This took away its charms. Married women were nearly all alike. Full of distressing short cuts, with an irritating and incongruous professionalism behind their bewilderment. What dolts husbands must be to blunt women like that.
As he took her hand and felt her fingers clutch excitedly around his palm he remembered in an instant the predecessors of her type. Full of distressing short cuts. When they gave their hands they withheld nothing. They denuded themselves with a look, with a handclasp. And the subtlety of skirmishing seemed entirely foreign to them. When they embraced it was with an appalling directness. Yes, in intrigue they were all alike—all like precocious children; vague, bewildered children mimicking the precisions of their elders and exclaiming with distressful incongruity:
"Tut, tut. Let's come to the point. Let's get down to brass tacks and stop beating around the bush."
Well, here she was and the scene was on.
"Am I late?"
"No, dearest. I was just a little early so as to enjoy the impatience of waiting for you."
The nuance was lost upon her. Amorous women were a cold audience for technique.
"I'm so upset. Do you mind?"
"Not at all, Fanny. Of course you're upset. But it only adds to your charm."
He had long ago abandoned love-making tactics, sensing that women who came to him were not particularly interested in tender pretenses. They desired flattery, but direct and practical variants. This one was like the others, flushed, eager, frightened and gay. He felt an exhilaration as they walked toward the entrance of the unpretentious hotel around the corner. A sense of conquest. It was nothing to be enjoyed in itself. But if people knew, which they never could, alas, they would be awed by the ease with which he accomplished such things. One, two, three meetings and—here they were again. Paul Schroder entering a hotel with a woman at his side.
"This isn't a bad place," he whispered. "I've already registered. Mr. and Mrs. Paul Johnson. It's better if you know your name, of course."
Fanny stood tremblingly in front of the elevator cage as he walked to the desk. She noticed his carelessness, the unselfconscious way in which he smiled at the clerk and paused to buy some cigars. The fear that had grown in her since she left her home appeared to be reaching a climax. Her knees shivered under her dress and a catch in her throat made breathing difficult.
"There's nothing to be afraid of," she repeated silently to herself, and tried to understand the cause of her trembling. Even if there were consequences—therewas Aubrey. She smiled nervously. It was his fault. He was a fool.
They entered the elevator. A sleepy boy shut the cage door after them. Schroder gripped her arm and his fingers caressed the soft flesh. She turned to him and smiled. She was no longer afraid. A shameless, exultant light kindled in her eyes. She leaned against him with a shiver as the elevator lifted slowly.
... They had decided to check out in time for her to return home for dinner.
"I don't have to go up to the desk with you, do I?" she asked.
Schroder smiled tiredly.
"Oh no," he said, "you wait at the entrance with the property suit case. Then we'll both take a cab and drive a few blocks. I'll get out with the bag and you drive on home. It's simple."
Nevertheless the fear she had experienced in the morning returned as she watched him go to the desk. In another minute it would be all over and everything would be all right. But now—what if someone saw them? Bumped into her accidentally. The lassitude which had filled her when she locked the tumbled hotel room behind her, gave way to a curious panic. Her tired nerves became unhappily alive.
"Why—hello, Mrs. Gilchrist."
She was unable to see the man for an instant. Her mind had darkened. "I mustn't faint," she murmured to herself. She was looking at an unshaven, dissipated face that smiled. As she looked her world seemed to be falling down. Everything gone—ruined. Because a face was smiling. Tom Ramsey.The man's name popped into her thought.
"Hello," she muttered.
Schroder approached and frowned. He took her arm and led her away. She began to cry in the cab.
"He saw us. He knows. He'll tell everybody. Oh my God! Why did you come up when you saw him? If you'd only realized. Oh, why did I do it? Now everything's ruined. I'm lost."
She wept, knowing the futility of tears. An accident that seemed provokingly unreal and soothingly unimportant—Tom Ramsey. Yet the name was like a guillotine block on which her head lay stretched.
Schroder, annoyed, tried to console her.
"Who was it? Listen, pull yourself together. People always imagine themselves guiltier looking than they are. He probably thought nothing wrong."
"Tom Ramsey. Didn't you see how he looked at me? Oh, God, I'm sick."
"Who is he?"
"He used to be my mother's friend. But he went to the dogs. He's just a tramp now. He isn't a gentleman."
Schroder sighed.
"Oh well," he said, "there's no use worrying. Come, put it out of your head."
"I can't. Oh, I can't. Why did I do it. I'll kill myself if ... if anything happens. Aubrey will.... Oh Paul, I feel sick."
He stared glumly at the back of the chauffeur's head. A nuisance. A damned nuisance. His mind played with contrasts. A few hours ago she had been shameless. Now she sat weeping. He thought of her as ungrateful and grew angry.
"I'll step out now," he whispered. "Call me uptomorrow at the office, will you? Nothing will happen. Please, be calm. It's all imagination."
He halted the cab and stepped out with the suitcase. She would feel better, he knew, as soon as he disappeared. She would be able to convince herself then that nothing had happened—that she was coming home from a shopping tour.
"Good-bye. Call me up, dearest."
Fanny sat weeping as the cab moved away. Ramsey had seen her. A misery too heavy for thought brought another burst of tears. She hated Schroder. And herself, too. But most of all the ragged looking, unshaven Ramsey in the lobby. Why had he come at just that moment? If they had left the room ten minutes earlier. It was Paul's fault. He insisted on combing his hair, and reading a story in the newspaper. If he hadn't sent down for the newspaper in the middle of the afternoon. He didn't love her or he wouldn't have thought of sending for it. She had laughed at the time but it was an insult. He was a brute. If he had loved her he wouldn't have wanted to read a newspaper and they wouldn't have met Ramsey. She sat conjuring up dozens of trifling incidents which, had they occurred, would have prevented the fatal meeting with Ramsey.
Then she smiled convulsively through her tears. It was about the story. They had laughed at it in the room. "Judge Basine Launches Vice Quiz. State to Investigate Problem of Immorality Among Women Wage Earners...."
"Why girls go wrong ... why girls go wrong," rumbled through her head now and she laughed hysterically. Oh, that tramp of a Ramsey had spoiled it all. Otherwise it would have been wonderful. Andnext week, too. But perhaps he hadn't noticed anything. Of course he hadn't. Paul was right.
She dried her tears and looked into the twilighted streets. She had planned her homecoming days ago. She would be ill, overcome by the heat and excuse herself from the dinner table. A final chill shot through her heart as the cab stopped.
She found herself entering her home with complete poise. It was almost as if nothing had happened. Here were the familiar things of life. Her home, Aubrey, the rows of books, the walnut library table. Nothing had happened. For a moment she was amazed at the complete unconsciousness of the day. Then smiling delightedly at her husband in a chair, a familiar husband in a familiar chair, she removed her hat and approached him.
Leaning over the back of his chair she kissed him tenderly on the cheek. He was her protector. Good old Aubrey, so familiar, so placid and unchanged. If it only hadn't been for Ramsey everything would be so nice now. But anyway, it wasn't so bad. She had been a bit hysterical.
"Where've you been, Fanny?"
She felt no twinge at the question. Instead an enthusiasm for the situation filled her.
"To the matinee," she laughed. "Oh, I saw the nicest show."
She leaned forward and took his hand. Aubrey regarded her with a petulant stare. Despite their years of marriage, she was still an animal, gross and irritating.
"And I'm just starved," she exclaimed. "I was never so hungry in my life."
She laughed, overjoyed at the truth of the statement and hurried upstairs to prepare for dinner.
The manuscript had been found in the drawer where William Gilchrist kept his collars. It lay underneath a number of loose collars.
With the death of his father a curious love for the man had come to Aubrey. He remembered from day to day things his father had said, or seemed to say. A sad, elderly man who lived secretly in his thoughts. That was his father.
Like him, Aubrey now had a secret life that he lived only in his thoughts, and this was slowly making him kin to the man who had died. In Aubrey's thoughts dwelt a dramatic, startling figure—a gleaming, hawk-faced thunderer; a lean Isaiah of burning phrases with an eagle-winged soul beating its way toward God. This was Aubrey Gilchrist. Not the Aubrey whom life had mysteriously deformed into an advertising man, but an Aubrey triumphant who had risen above the petty turns of Fate and burst upon a world—a voice crying forth astounding phrases against the evil of man's ways.
The inner characterization in which Aubrey was gradually immersing himself remained a vague though warm generality. He was able to visualize the Thunderer and able to enjoy the results of his genius. In his day dreams he pictured this inner one bringing the world to his feet. Books were being written about him, magazines and newspapers were filled with his praises and interpretations, and men and women everywhere discussed his ascent in awe. He was aconqueror—a bloodless Napoleon and a martyrless Jesus. A prophet whose genius was lifting men out of the mire.
What the message was which this inner Aubrey was spreading through the world, what the phrases were that ignited the souls of men, were not contained in his imaginings. He approached them from a critical and not creative angle—his fancies presenting him with descriptive self praises. He composed rambling articles in his mind celebrating his triumphs. This inner Aubrey was eloquent, electrifying, unassailable; men and women wept over his writings and repented; cities reared statues to him, and all places sang his glories. The whole thing had begun as a game, deliberately invented to occupy the leisure of his mind. But he had elaborated on it and it had grown almost by itself. Now it preoccupied him to an alarming degree.
The manuscript in his father's collar drawer had given him a shock. He had kept it from his mother, assuring himself that such a course was for the best. It was an odd document for his father to leave behind.
As he sat in his study a week after the funeral reading it for the first time, Aubrey grew frightened. It seemed to him that he was looking at his father—for the first time, that the man who had till now been a half enigmatic figure to him, stood at last in the room, strong and alive. The thing was a primitive type of novel—discoursive, gentle, Rabelaisian. It recounted the mental and physical adventures of an Elizabethan philosopher in a succession of unrelated episodes. There was a caress in the sentences, a simplicity in the narrative that translated itself into cunning realism.
When he had finished the reading, Aubrey stared at his father's portrait hanging over one of the book cases. The reality of the manuscript held him. He felt bewildered. It had for some three hours lifted him out of the present and immersed him in scenes and amid a company of naive ancients, starkly alive. A dormant literary sense awakened in him. The thing was a work of art, as moving, as authentic as Apuleius or Cervantes. But he would put it away. He hid it in a private drawer.
Its memory, however, grew in his mind. During his day at work the thought of the thing his father had written came to haunt him, as if it demanded something. He felt closer to it than he had ever felt to his father. There was something distasteful, though, about the intimacy.
"That was his soul," he would explain over to himself. "He lived that way inside. It was like writing a biography of secret dreams for him. It's strange. We're all like that. Even I. There was something odd in father. Funny we never guessed. It must have been written a paragraph at a time over years and years. It was a sort of diary."
And he would recall excerpts from the book—gentle skepticisms, childish animalisms. But the tone of the thing which he could never put into words was what haunted him most. Over the naive acrobatics of plot and lively preenings of idea, an unwritten smile spread itself, a pensive tolerance that seemed to say, "Yes, yes, life has been. This tale is a curious jest. An epitaph over an empty grave. Yesterday is unreal and today is even less real. Yet here are fancies, the ghosts of sad and happy folkwho never lived. And among these ghosts I once found life...."
The idea of publishing the manuscript came to Aubrey one evening when his wife returned from the theater in a curious mood. She was late for dinner and this irritated him. But her manner was even more irritating. She was strident, flushed, gross. Her laugh as they ate made his mother frown, he observed. He said little. When they left the table an indignation toward Fanny had come to him.
He retired to his study. Fanny insisted on following him. She hovered about his chair as he tried to read, caressing him in a curious way, as if he were a child with whom she was amused. It occurred to him that she thought him a failure, that there was something condescending in her manner.
"Oh, leave me alone, please, Fanny."
"Hm! We're peevish. Dear me. Poor old Aubrey's working too hard."
"Please."
"But I want to talk to you. I want to tell you about the matinee."
"I'm not interested, Fanny. You know how I hate vaudeville."
"I love it."
"That's your privilege."
"Don't be sarcastic, Aubrey."
"I'm not. I'm just tired."
"Tired? What have you been doing?"
Despite herself she accented the you. The memory of Schroder and their day together had left her. It persisted, however, as a curious elation. The ambiguity of words exhilarated her. She felt a sense of mastery. She wanted also to be tender towardAubrey, to please and charm him. It was necessary to do this in order to disarm him. But he had no suspicions. She was certain of that. Nevertheless it was necessary to make sure he had none. There were many paradoxical things necessary and most curious of them all was the necessity of showing Aubrey that she loved him. Her heart warmed toward him as it hadn't for years. She felt unaccountably grateful to Aubrey. She would have liked to sit at his side whispering love names and caressing his hair.
"Well, for one thing, I've been writing."
He looked at her calmly.
"Writing? You mean books? Why, I didn't know!"
Aubrey smiled, recovering a superiority toward her. But his heart grew heavy almost simultaneously. She had thrown her arms about him and was exclaiming, "Oh, I'm so glad. I'm so glad you're writing again, Aubrey darling. I've wanted you to so much."
He pushed her away slowly. She stood pouting.
"Now I can see where I take a back seat," she sighed. "Yes sir, you won't have time for me at all. But I don't care. As long as you're happy, darling, I'm delighted. I want you to be happy and I know it makes you happy to write."
When she left the room Aubrey remained frowning after her. He would surprise her. He would surprise them all. He would publish the manuscript under his own name. It would create a sensation. It would bring him back in the public eye more glorified than he had been in his literary heyday.
In a few days the idea had grown to obliteratingproportions. For a time he abandoned the contemplation of the inner Aubrey—the gleaming-eyed Thunderer. This other was nearer reality—an Aubrey hymned as a rejuvenated literary figure. But he hesitated. His indecision resulted in a predicament. He had been boasting cautiously of his new work, letting out hints as to its character. There was Cressy, a literary critic and a member of the club where he lunched. He had talked to him about it.
"I'm surprised myself," he explained. "I was rather uncertain whether I could come back. But the rest was evidently just what I needed. The book isn't at all in my old style. More direct, sincere and entirely simple. You'll like it."
Cressy became important in Aubrey's predicament. Cressy was a man whom Aubrey identified as "the more discriminating public." He yearned for the approval of this public. And as his decision to have his father's manuscript printed under his own name grew, Aubrey sought the critic out. It was pleasant to boast to Cressy, to feel oneself part of the superior literary world Cressy inhabited.
Cressy had left the university with the determination to write. He had, however, developed into a scholar, using a knowledge of Greek and Latin to acquire a baggage of classical erudition. For ten years he had been contributing literary essays to magazines and newspapers. In these he wagged his head sorrowfully over the decline of letters. He presented an impregnable front to all new writers. The names of new novelists in the book lists irritated him precisely as the names of new celebrities in the society columns had once irritated Mrs. Basine. Heresented them as intruders and focused a pedantic wrath on them.
In his own mind he pictured himself as being in a continual state of revolt against the inferiority of modern literature. His attacks, however, were entirely a defensive gesture. His literary point of view was inspired by a heroic desire to annihilate contemporary literature. Contemporary books were an insult and a barrier to his egoism. He battled against them. His struggle was the quixotic effort to assert the superiority of his erudition. New novels, new poetries, new philosophies were a conspiracy to minimize him and he went after them with the zeal of one engaged in tracking criminals to their lair.
At forty-five he was a stern-faced man with a greying mustache, heavy glasses behind which gleamed indignant eyes. He was impressive looking. People who never read his fulminations still felt a high regard for his scholarship. He was fearless in the pronunciation of French, Latin and Greek names and invariably functioned as arbiter in all disputes concerning classical quotations and allusions.
His friendship with Aubrey was based chiefly on the certainty he felt that Aubrey was an inferior writer. He was not part of the conspiracy aimed at the minimization of Cressy, the scholar.
"Well, I'm glad to hear that, Aubrey," he congratulated his friend. "Very glad. Writing is a delight few people understand these days."
"I know. And I think you'll be interested particularly, John, because the story is of Elizabethan England. I've modeled the technique on Apuleius and the other later Roman tale-tellers."
"Indeed!" Cressy bristled. "That should be interesting."
"I'd like to have your opinion of it, John. I've always valued what you say, but this time more than ever. Because I feel I've entered your field and you're guarding the fences and all that."
Cressy's face relaxed. Quite right. His field. And if the book was any good he could leap forward as its authentic champion and through it denounce the base modernism of the day. But how did Aubrey who was a superficial dabbler come by Elizabethan England?
Aubrey promised to produce the manuscript within a few days and left the club. A July sun hammered at the streets. The heat added to his inward discomfort. It was too hot to think. Yet it was necessary to think. Something was piling up and unless he thought it out clearly, it would fall on him.
He had made up his mind to publish his father's manuscript as his own. But in the weeks that had passed he had become aware that he was not going to carry out his intention. There were things that kept him from it. A morbid sense that his father was watching him had grown in his mind. He was afraid. At night in bed he conducted himself with a scrupulous politeness toward his wife, certain that his every action was being observed by his father.
There was another restriction. The appearance of the manuscript with his name to it would be a distasteful anti-climax. He had lost himself so long and so ardently in the creation of an inner Aubrey—the hawk-faced Isaiah redeeming men—that the prospect of a frankly sensual volume signed by Aubrey Gilchrist made him uncomfortable.
In the face of the realities that would ensue—the praise for instance, of the healthy animalism of the book—he would have to abandon the secret characterization that had grown almost an essential of his life. He could not go ahead redeeming men and lifting them toward a life of asceticism while people were talking and writing about the fact that Aubrey Gilchrist was a sensual realist. And finally there was a feeling of dishonesty, inseparable from his fear of his father, but adding its weight to the restrictions.
As the feeling that he would never dare to publish the manuscript approached a certainty, Aubrey sought to force his own hand by telling his friends of the book, boasting of it and promising its early appearance. In this way he dimly hoped to make it socially necessary for him to produce the volume and that finally the social necessity of living up to his announcements would overpower the inner restraints. He was desperately throwing up bridges in the hope of being driven across them.
The dilemma slipped out of his mind as he walked toward his home. It was distasteful. The finding of the manuscript had, in fact, upset him more than anything which had ever happened. As he neared his residence a wilted sensation came into his thought. He had been trying eagerly to recover the full image of the inner Aubrey and derive a few hours of surcease in the easy contemplation of that great hero's triumphs. But now it occurred to him that Judge Smith and John Mackay, his partner, Fanny and her relatives and all his world were buzzing with gossip about his return to literature. The dilemma crawled wearily back into his mind.
Yes, they talked about it whenever they came together.There was Basine, the judge. He had seized Aubrey's hand and pumped it heartily when he heard of the book.
"That's the stuff. I like a man who can come back. Go to it, Aubrey."
Basine was a bounder. The way Fanny and the rest of them idolized him was disgusting. His mother-in-law—"Oh, the judge told me the most fascinating things about the situation in Washington." And then for an hour, an idiotic mumble about what the judge did, what he said, what he thought, what he hoped. Nobody ever mentioned Henrietta or the children. As if their existence was not only unimportant but dubious. Basine was an entity. He needed no background.
Aubrey wondered why his thought turned to his brother-in-law. Whenever he felt uncomfortable, or found himself in a distressing situation, his mind usually busied itself with comment on Basine. Anything distressful that happened, no matter how remote from the judge, always seemed to remind Aubrey of the man and recall to him the fact that he was a bounder and an ass and entirely unlikeable.
He entered his home in a dejected mood. Voices attracted him. Fanny was talking to a man. He paused before the opened door.
"Oh, hello Aubrey," Fanny greeted him. She stood up. Aubrey noticed she looked pale. Her eyes seemed to follow his observation.
"Isn't it hot though? I'm almost dead. I'm awfully glad you came home. You remember Mr. Ramsey, don't you?"
"How do you do," said Aubrey. "Yes, I think—"
"At mother's. Long ago. I'm sure you met him. He's an old friend of the family."
"How do you do, sir," Ramsey echoed, rising. The men shook hands. Aubrey stared at the dapper, high-strung figure with its flushed face and cool attire and tried to remember the man.
"If you'll pardon me," he smiled.
"Certainly, Aubrey."
"See you again, I hope," said Aubrey. Ramsey assented with a curious enthusiasm, accenting the situation uncomfortably. Fanny frowned and watched her husband walk to the stairs. As his steps died the two returned to their chairs.
"Oh it's hot," Fanny murmured. "Can't you go away till next month. I'm almost beside myself."
Her voice was low. Ramsey listened with disdain.
"And besides," she continued in a whisper, "I've given you all I can get. I haven't any more money."
"Money!" Ramsey snorted. "I'm not talking about money. I'm not asking for any." He stood up and frowned indignantly at her.
"I know, but—"
"I just dropped in for a talk."
He said this with a meaning smile and lighted a cigarette. He was very casual. She watched him helplessly.
"Oh, why beat around the bush. I'm sick of it. I can't stand it. How much do you want? I've given you three thousand. Surely that's...."
"I don't want any, thank you," he answered with mysterious sarcasm. "Not a nickle."
"Then what do you want?" Her voice was rising despite her fear of being heard. "This is the fourth time you've ... you've hounded me."
"Oh, I hound you?" Again the mysterious sarcasm.
"If you'd only tell me what you want."
He smiled with the air of a man phenomenally at ease and returned to his chair.
"Nothing. Not a thing. I just dropped in for a chat, that's all."
His eyes regarded her triumphantly. Fanny returned their gaze. He was crazy. There was something crazy about him. He had called her on the telephone the day after seeing her in the hotel with Schroder. She had gone downtown to meet him. The whole business seemed like an impossible dream in retrospect. He had whined and begged for money. He was down and out, living from hand to mouth, his friends gone, his clothes in rags. He had known her father. She could save him. And he had never once referred to the incident in the hotel lobby. Neither had she. The conversation had been purely a needy friend and a philanthropically inclined woman. She had asked him how much he needed and he answered $1,500 would start him. A week later he came to her completely rehabilitated—an elderly looking fop swinging a cane and bristling with enthusiasms.
Another $1,500 had increased his enthusiasm. He came a third time to report that he had found employment. She barely listened. Something had happened to Ramsey.
Now as he sat smiling sarcasms at her she realized what it was. Her knowledge of the man was casual but the thing that had happened was unmistakable. He no longer wanted money from her. He was blackmailing her merely because it gave him a senseof power. They had never mentioned Schroder or the lobby incident.
She regarded him in silence and the understanding of the man slowly nauseated her. His polite and affable smiling, his cockiness and his suavity—all these were part of a pose. He called merely to see her wince and because her wincing filled him with this sense of power. And he would go on like that. But she dared not challenge him. He knew about the day with Schroder. He had never mentioned it and now he tried to pretend this his dominance over her had nothing to do with blackmail or Schroder. He tried to pretend it was because of something else—something involved and mysterious.
"Are you going to stay forever," she murmured.
"Perhaps for dinner," he answered. Fanny sighed. There was her mother-in-law—a stone faced woman with gimlet eyes. Old, ferreting eyes. She would sense something. And if they found out. She shuddered. Her eyes implored.
"Please, Tom," she whispered. "You ... you're torturing me."
"Oh no, not at all," he answered with an idiotic cheerfulness, raising his eyebrows and pursing his lips in surprise. He was like a farce actor. She stood up and came to his side. Her hands rested on his shoulder.
"Won't you leave me alone?" she whispered again. "I feel ill."
He looked at her with concern.
"Indeed," he said. "I'm awfully sorry."
He would go on like this forever. It would always grow worse. He wanted to make a victim of her. He was like a crazy man with an obsession. Hissuavity and politeness almost made her scream. She covered her face and wept.
"There, there," he consoled her. She had dropped into a chair and he was patting her back. "It must be the heat. The heat, don't you think? Oh well, I'll go way now. Are you going to be home Tuesday evening?"
She made no answer. Ramsey stood watching her, a smile in his eyes. As she continued to weep he appeared to grow more and more elated. A sternness entered his voice.
"Come now," he ordered her, "sit up."
She obeyed.
"It's ridiculous," he continued. She nodded helplessly. "I'll see you Tuesday evening," he added. There was a pause. Then, "There's something I'd like to discuss with you. Very important. Don't forget. Tuesday evening."
He walked out. Fanny watched him to the door. A rage came to her. He was play-acting. He was making fun of her, of her fear of exposure. Because he was crazy. He didn't want money. He wanted to bulldoze and torture her. He wanted her to think he was somebody—that's why he did it.
She stood up and watched him from the window as he walked down the street. A dapper, good-natured figure smiling with mysterious condescension upon the houses he passed. She rushed to her room and locked the door. Something would have to happen. She had not talked to Schroder about Ramsey since he left her in the cab that first day. She would ask him what to do. No, that would make it worse. He might be like Ramsey. She lay dry-eyed and pondering. The thought slowly grew in her—shewould tell her brother. George would be able to figure out some way to rid her of this blackmailer. She would tell him everything and explain to him how she couldn't stand it any longer.
She lay quietly improvising her conversation with her brother. This brought a relief and she closed her eyes with a sigh.
The ballroom of the Hotel LaSalle had been carefully prepared for the opening of the Vice Investigating Commission's sessions. A corps of janitors had been active for two days introducing folding chairs, cuspidors, tables and wastebaskets. Chairs of varying degrees of importance had been assembled for the witnesses, attorneys, distinguished visitors and members of the press.
The Vice Investigating Commission had been appointed by the governor of the state. It was comprised of ten members including its chairman, Judge Basine. The press with its instinctive dramaturgy had centered its comment around the single figure of Basine. The nine state senators who, as a result of political wire pulling, had wormed their way into the Commission found themselves lost in the shadow of Basine.
It was the Basine Commission. As the time for its sessions approached, the press, having by its own headline reiteration of the man's name impressed itself with the prestige and popularity of Basine, abandoned itself without further scruples to its convenient mania of simplifications. Thus the preliminary deliberations of the Commission were headlined, "Basine to Summon Department Store Heads." "Basine toPlumb Vice Causes." "Basine Charges Dance Hall Evil."
The statements elaborately prepared by the nine senators were invariably attributed in the newspaper columns to Basine. The hopes, plans, fears, threats of the Vice Commission were blazoned to the world as the mingled emotions of Basine. Photographs of Basine, his wife, children, and home, illumined the papers and within a week the name Basine had, in the public mind, become innately synonymous with an immemorial crusade against vice.
The crusade itself remained as yet a vague but promising morsel in the city's thought. The newspapers, enabled by the event to indulge themselves more legitimately than usual in discussing the ever fascinating problem of sex from the unimpeachable standpoint of reform, leaped greedily to the bait.
Photographs of young women boarding street cars and revealing stretches of leg were printed under the caption, "Indecent Way to Board Car, Says Basine." Alongside were photographs, less interesting, but vital to the moral of the layout, showing women boarding street cars without revealing their legs. The caption over them read, "Correct Way to Board Car, Says Basine." The text explained that the carelessness and immodesty of young girls, according to Basine, frequently were the devil's ally and that the Basine Commission called upon all young women who had the welfare of the race at heart to board street cars in the correct way.
Photographs of young women in Indecent Bathing Costumes appeared accompanied by denunciations from prominent clergymen and contrasted, with editorial indignation, to photographs of Decent BathingCostumes recommended by prominent clergymen. Photographs of abandoned young women who effected garter purses, slit skirts; who crossed their legs when they sat down were offered. These were accompanied by outraged pronouncements against such immodesties from prominent statesmen and clergymen.
A private auxiliary crusade started by another enterprising newspaper resulted in a series of photographs of nude paintings to be seen in the shop windows of the loop and Michigan avenue, and called for immediate legislation designed to remove this source of moral danger.
Photographs of the deplorably scanty costumes worn by musical comedy, choruses and dancers in general; photographs pointing out with mute alarm the decline of modesty as instanced in the comparison of the fashions of yesteryear with the fashions of today; photographs of dance-hall scenes showing couples amorously embraced, cheeks together, bodies riveted to each other—these and others too numerous to tabulate cried for the reader's indignant attention out of the newspaper columns.
Every conceivable variant of denunciation which might be legitimately accompanied by a photograph of a woman or a group of women, received publication in interviews with pious divines, alarmed statesmen and serious-minded welfare workers. The newspapers, convinced by the twenty and thirty per cent increases in their week's circulation figures that the crusade was a vital part of the awakened moral sense of the city, devoted themselves with heroic disregard of party politics to acclaiming the Basine commission.
Basine found himself troubled by his sky-rocketing prestige. He went to bed the first night as a "judicialinquirer into the causes of vice." He arose in the morning confronted with the fact that he was a "fearless Galahad on Moral Quest." Before retiring again he found himself a "Vice Solon Attacking Civic Corruption." And on the following morning he was "Basine, Undaunted, Flays Vice Ring."
On the day before the opening session he occupied his chambers and tried to dictate his way through a mass of correspondence that had accumulated. There were thousands of letters from determined church-goers, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, all teeming with excited advice, prayers for success and redundant congratulations. Ruth waited with her pencil on her note book, her knee pressed warmly against his thigh and her eyes looking pensively out of the window at the summer day.
Basine had obtained a three weeks' vacation in order to devote himself to the work of the commission. His words came unevenly as he dictated. Newspaper headlines glared at him from the desk—"Modern Lincoln to Free Vice Slaves." "Basine to Determine Why Girls Go Wrong." "Basine Threatens Fearless Quiz Into Resorts."
His mind was alive with other headlines. Basine ... Basine ... the city was throbbing with his name. He had managed to maintain a skepticism for several days. Doris had kept his mind distressingly clear with her comments. And her friend, Levine. Her words had continued in his thought ... "marvelous, George. The public is wallowing in an orgy of morbidity. I confess, it's beyond my pleasantest expectations...."
He had protested. She was wrong. Indignation was being stirred. People were realizing the menaceof underpaid working girls and unlicensed dance halls. His sister smiled wearily. "Don't be an ass, or you'll spoil it all. Keep your head clear. Follow the newspapers and outwit them in cynicism."
And then Levine. He recalled the man's words and edited them into a rebuking essay—"The public is revelling in the salaciousness of nude photographs, raw statements and your anti-vice propaganda. They're utilizing virtue as a cloak for the sensually tantalizing discussion of immorality. Their indignation is an excuse by which they apologize for their individual erotic thrills by denouncing evil in others. Yes, the mysterious others identified as vice rings, white slavers and immorality in general. The whole business is a cunning debauch offered newspaper readers, a debauch which enables them to appear to themselves and to each other not as debauchees but as high crusaders behind the banners of Basine. And the good clergymen and the statesmen and the welfare workers rushing into print with revelations of immorality are inspired, by nothing more intricate than a desire for publicity and an ambition to pose before the public in the guise of fellow crusaders and civic benefactors. Their benefactions, you see, consist of offering the public lurid sex statistics over which it may gloat in secret. And in the meantime, over these benefactions, over these exciting sex statistics and sexy photos and over the people who discuss them and roll them over on their tongue is thrown a protective fog of indignation."
Basine had derived from these talks in his sister's studio an uncomfortable vision. But the vision had gradually dissolved in his mind. On the day he had awakened to find himself a "Moral ChampionPromises Vice Clean-up" the dignity and high responsibility of his task had overcome him. What appeared to him an authentic fervor mounted in his veins. Hypnotized by the adulatory excitement surrounding his name, he acquired forthwith the characterization foisted on him by the headlines. Basine ... Basine ... the city throbbed with his name. The hope of a great moral rejuvenation was centered upon him. Another St. Patrick was to drive the snakes of evil out of the community. Another Lincoln was to do something—something equally ennobling to himself and his fellowmen.
The change effected his relations with Ruth. For a month he had been engaged in a species of sinless amour. Long walks, long talks, long embraces behind the locked doors of his chambers had resulted in nothing more tangible than a series of headaches and sleepless nights or unusual tenderness towards his piquantly startled wife.
He had excused his infidelity to Ruth while embracing Henrietta—he regarded his exaggerated interest in his wife as a betrayal of the girl—by assuring himself that it was for Ruth's own good. It lessened his desire for her and thus decreased the moral danger into which their love was leading her. In addition to this it was, of course, a convenient substitute for the emotions Ruth's embraces aroused in him and for the sense of guilt which invariably accompanied these embraces.
When he became a crusader Basine felt a further confusion in his attitude toward Ruth. He sat now attempting to dictate letters. Despite the amiable blur which fame had introduced into his thought and which for the past two weeks had obscured the detailsof his day, he found himself studying the situation before him. The situation was Ruth. He would have preferred ignoring it. The scent which came from her summery shirt waist and the coils of her black hair, thrilled him. Her clear youthful face, the contours of her figure, the familiarity of her eyes—all this was pleasing and satisfying.
But the new Basine—the crusader, felt ill at ease. He must explain something to Ruth, explain to her that their love was no more than an ennobling comradeship and must never be more than that, a comradeship which would bring them together in this great cause of moral rejuvenation. He didn't want it put that crudely. But the idea kept repeating itself in his head. He kept thinking of what Doris and her friend Levine would say if they ever found out that in the midst of the Vice Investigation, its chairman had been carrying on with his secretary. It was distasteful and needed immediate attention.
He took her hand and Ruth laid down her pencil. She smiled expectantly at him. Since she had first kissed Basine a month ago she had been trying to understand the situation. The thought of him preoccupied her and this made her certain she loved him. His caresses aroused her senses and left her wondering what was going to happen.
At times she reasoned coolly with herself. She was in love with a married man and the most she could hope for was to become his mistress and end up by making a fool of herself. Or perhaps of both of them. She was, in a measure, grateful for the manner in which he respected her virtue. But, with his arms around her and his keen face alive with passionand his lips on hers, his reserve struck her as uncomplimentary and illogical.
She resented the semi-abandonment of his senses because of the unfulfillment—a physical and spiritual unfulfillment which left her distracted. It appeared to her later, when the distraction ebbed, as an affront to her vanity. She was uncertain when thinking of it coolly whether she would give herself to him. But somehow the affair seemed unreal, at times even a little like some school-girl flirtation, because he failed to ask her. She had always prided herself upon her honesty and spent hours now debating with herself just how much she loved him and if she loved him at all and why she loved him. The idea of leaving his employ, however, never occurred to her. The cautious sensualisms of which she had become an excited victim, held her. There was in these incompleted manœuverings behind the locked doors a curious fascination.
"What is it, George?"
He smiled and shook his head.
"Whew, I'm snowed under." His hands pushed the correspondence from him.
"You mustn't tire yourself, dear."
He nodded and his face assumed a serious air.
"I would like to talk over the work."
"The Commission?"
"Yes."
"Oh, I think it's going to be a wonderful success, George?"
"And you can help me."
He squeezed her hand. This was the note he had been searching for in his mind. He hesitated a moment, nevertheless, feeling an irritating incongruityin what he desired to say. But the headlines glaring at him strengthened him. He was Basine the Moral Champion. The city was throbbing with his name. A hope centered about his name.
"The work is going to be hard," he began. "I intend to go to the bottom of the thing. The Commission after its hearings will be able to recommend legislation that will ... that will...."
"Yes, I know George."
"Wipe out, or at least go a long way toward wiping out...."
His mind seemed to balk at the sentence. The word "immorality" withheld itself from his lips.
"I'll be glad to help where I can, as you know, dear," she whispered.
"I've subpœnaed all the department store heads to bring their books into court, I mean to the hearing, and reveal exactly what the wage scale for shop girls is. I'm convinced it's impossible for a girl to keep decent on $6 and $7 a week."
He thought of the fact that Ruth was receiving $30 a week and grew confused.
"You can help me a lot, dear," he added hurriedly.
Ruth stood up. This standing up had become a habit between them. When they were sitting holding hands, if she stood up, he would draw her to him and she would lower herself into his lap. They had developed a series of similar ruses to which they both adapted themselves like well rehearsed actors and which had for their object the bringing them into positions convenient for kisses and embraces.
As she sat down in his lap the unhappy thought crossed Basine's mind that he was chairman of a commission sworn to wipe out just such incidents as thisfrom the city's life. He winced and her arm around his neck felt uncomfortable. But he remembered that both doors were locked and the image of himself as a crusader partially vanished. They kissed and his hand slipped down to her side and toyed with the hem of her skirt.
"Do you love me, George? Tell me."
"Yes. Why do you ask that?"
"Oh because. Sometimes I think you're so busy that you haven't time to love."
He was pleased by this. Flattered, he answered: "I have time for nothing else. Everything else is sort of part of it. My work, the commission—it's all you, dearest."
His hand was on her, caressingly. He endeavored to remove the significance of the gesture by patting her knee as one might pat the head of a little child, and whispering with an involved frankness:
"You're so nice, darling."
They had sat like this before, sometimes for an hour, whispering to each other. Their whispering would go on for a time, even their kisses. This time, however, she murmured unexpectedly:
"Don't, George."
He was surprised.
"Why not?"
"Because, we mustn't."
"But why?"
"Oh please ... don't!"
Her objection seemed to inspire him in a way her previous silences had failed to do. He grew indignant.
"Please, don't!"
"But why, dearest? I love you."
She paused and he looked at her, aloof arguments in his eyes as if he were pleading not in his own behalf but in behalf of—a somebody else, a client. His knees were trembling under her weight. The crusade had disappeared. A memory of it lingered but in an amusing way. He caught a glimpse of the headlines on his desk and grinned. There was something maliciously unreal about life that one could enjoy.
Suddenly he felt her soften. Her lips brushed against his ear and her arm tightened convulsively around him.
"Please no," she murmured.
Her alarm delighted him. It was a final barrier, this alarm. It enabled him to enjoy the new conquest without having to be logical, without having to go on. Her alarm now was a barrier to be played with for a moment and then utilized. He would stop in a moment but now he could play with her fear, as if he were intent upon overcoming it.
"Please," she whispered, "don't ... it's no use."
The final words irritated him. No use! He felt offended, as if he had been trickily defeated in an argument. What was no use? What did she mean?
"George, please, listen to me. Oh please...."
That was better. But it had come just in time. He could retreat now with honor. For an instant a panic had filled him. Impossible to retreat on the explanation "it's no use." Because—well, because the words were a challenge, not an attack. But now it was easy. He stiffened in his chair. Ruth slipped from his lap and stood up, flushed. She straightened her hair and looked away. Basine felt annoyed with her. She had almost taken him by surprise. She had almost surrendered when the tactics of the game called forher to protest and thus cover his retreat by making it the result of her protests. And not of his—well, of his determination not to forget his position.
But he would restore the tactic she had momentarily abandoned.
"Excuse me," he muttered, a plea in his voice, "I didn't realize. I didn't realize what I was doing. Forgive me, dearest."
He recovered his sense of self respect that, oddly enough, had deserted him, in making this apology. The apology meant that he had ceased only because she had protested too violently. And not because he had been afraid.
Ruth listened with a faint smile on her moist lips. She wanted to laugh.
"I didn't mean anything—really," he was saying. "You must forgive me. Come here—please." An air of soothing innocence rose from his voice and manner. He was reassuring her that he wasn't dangerous, that he wouldn't repeat these intimacies. The desire to laugh continued in her. Excuse him! For what? The laugh almost left her throat. She had given herself to him ... and he had solemnly retreated for no reason at all.
She continued to smile. For the first time the distraction his caresses inspired in her was absent. Instead she felt quite normal. She was becoming indignant but normal. And there was amusement in her anger. She sat down and picked up her pencil. She was amused. She looked at a man who had become almost a stranger and nodded—forgiveness.
"Of course, George," she said. "I know you didn't mean anything, but...."
He frowned. Her tone angered him. She was mocking.
"Hadn't you better answer some of these?" she asked. Basine pursed up his lips importantly.
"You will be a great help, dear," he answered. "Some day I want to talk about something with you. But ... but matters are too rushed now. I'm almost snowed under, I swear." This was putting it all on a different basis. He was a busy man. That's why he had retreated. He was needed for other things of vital interest to the community. He felt uncomfortable, despite the dignity of his frown. She was regarding him with placid eyes. He turned to one of the newspapers whose headlines were proclaiming the plans, and threats of Basine. There was the real Basine—in the headline. This other one, the one who had fumbled and messed things up with a girl—he ended his thought with annoyance. He despised himself. For a moment he glowered at her. He would stand up and seize her. She would realize, then, what his forebearance for her sake had been. His anger continued in his voice as he resumed the tedious dictation: