XVI
Hamilton’s discharge came late the next day and he decided to leave the following morning. He made the rounds of his most intimate friends, wrote a few letters and retired early. He would reach New York by noon, spend the day there, so as to avoid traveling by day as much as possible, and leave at six o’clock for Washington. He would have time to visit the office of the Hamilton Company, see Levin and perhaps even call up Dorothy.
Hamilton left earlier than he had expected and reached New York at eleven o’clock. The city was still in gala mood. There was a committee of women to meet the soldiers with coffee and doughnuts. Hamilton had breakfasted well in camp and expected to eat luncheon shortly, but out of consideration for the plump blonde chairwoman, he managed to gulp down the doughnut and coffee and thank her profusely. A slender, dark girl, evidently Jewish, gave him a package of cigarettes. Hamilton noticed that most of the soldiers, although they had been stuffing on peanut candy and chocolate bars all the way from camp, also took their doughnuts and coffee dutifully.
The streets were still decorated with flags, bunting and signs welcoming the returning soldiers. The many uniforms on the streets, while not enjoying the popularity of a month ago, had not yet become objects of odium. Women, and a few men, still looked with sympathy at soldiers who limped about on crutches or walked about minus an arm.
Hamilton walked leisurely up Broadway, his chest high and his shoulders still squared by custom. The civilians, dodging about, looked pale, round-shouldered and nervous. He peered upward at the tall buildings and felt a glow of pride. He stopped at a cigar store to light a cigarette, watched the men throwing dice, and envied their freedom. It must be splendid not to have to stand reveille, not to have to stand retreat, not to have to eat at a certain hour, notto have to stand or do anything unless one wished to. How happy they must be. Then he suddenly realized that he was one of them, and that though still in uniform he was just as free. He stuck a hand in his pocket in defiance of old military etiquette and in a burst of new-found freedom, thought better of it, withdrew it and walked on.
Hamilton wished he had waited for the noon train and come down with some of the other officers of his regiment. Wandering about New York alone was too big a task for one man. There were so many thoughts he wished to express, so many ideas to exchange. He wondered what McCall would think about the men and women he passed on thestreets—the clerks, the girls with short skirts borrowed from the French, the women who smiled because one was in uniform, the business men who looked away for the same reason, the messenger boys, whose admiration and hero worship had outlived the armistice.
Why had he come alone at the last minute? He had planned to come atnoon—had practically slipped away from camp. His mind reverted to Dorothy, although he had decided not to see her. Dorothy would be surprised to see him and probably chagrined that it was not McCall. Why had not McCall told him anything about the poem or the snapshot? Still, why should he?
Perhaps after all there was no more between them than between himself and her. McCall was on his way back to Chicago. Perhaps he had called on Dorothy while waiting for his train. Had he come alone to New York in order to be able to spend more time with Dorothy?
No, he would not see her. He would not see her. First, because of the emotional character of their farewell in Paris. In a sentimental vein he might again commit the same kind of folly. She might misconstrue his avowal of friendship for something deeper. Secondly, he would not see her because McCall had written that poem to her. He was not jealous. A ridiculous idea.
He reached the office building in which the Hamilton Company was located and rode up in the elevator to hisfloor. He walked to the end of the corridor and was turning the knob of the door when he noticed that the lettering was changed. He stepped back, looked about in bewilderment and finally entered. Yes, the office was differently arranged and there was a strange stenographer at the information desk. He had been here too often to mistake the number; still, if they had moved, his father would undoubtedly have told him something about it.
“Could you please tell me where the Hamilton Company is located?” he asked.
The stenographer, fluffy brown-haired and brown-eyed, looked up, smiled and showed a row of white teeth.
“I don’t know. Been here only a month, but the elevator man might know.”
She looked a moment at his uniform.
“You’re a corporal or something, aren’t you? I can tell by the things on your sleeve. I’ve got a gentleman friend who’s a corporal, too.”
“Thank you,” said Hamilton, about to turn away, when a stout gentleman came up behind the information desk.
“Did you inquire about the Hamilton Company, Captain?” he asked. “We moved in after they left, on the second of January.” The gentleman did not know where the company had moved, but referred Hamilton to the office of the building on the top floor.
On the top floor the secretary knew only that the office had been vacated December thirty-first and that no New York forwarding address had been left. All the mail, he added, was being sent to some southernaddress—Virginia orCarolina—no Corinth, Georgia, that was it.
Hamilton’s mind was in a whirl. Why had the New York office been discontinued? Why had his father not told him about it? He had received a letter from him only a few days ago. The New York office had been opened in 1915, when the rush of war orders had made it advisable to go directly into exporting, instead of dealing through brokers. It had not only saved the brokerage commission (a comparatively small item), but, what was more important,had brought many new orders. Perhaps with the war over, it was no longer needed.
It was nearly twelve now, and Hamilton decided to telephone Levin and eat luncheon with him. He stepped into a cigar store and called up his hotel. Levin had left fifteen minutes before, with a suitcase. They hardly expected him back before night. No, he had not left any instructions. Hamilton hung up the receiver and wondered why he had not thought to wire the night before. This reminded him that he had not yet wired home and he left for the nearest telegraph office where he sent off twomessages—one to his mother and one to Margaret. Then he set out in search of a restaurant.
There was a cold look about the restaurants. They were either too large and imposing or two white and busy. He wondered whether he could find anything like the Black Cat in New York. He wished that he had come with some one else and visited several hotels in the hope of finding some one he knew in the lobby.
He was on the point of telephoning a few of his New York acquaintances when he recalled that they were all still in the service. If this were only Paris, he thought. He could sit down in any café and engage in conversation with whomever he pleased, man or woman, without violating the proprieties. It was about four months since he had eaten at the Black Cat with Dorothy. Four whole months.
Why not have luncheon with her? They could recall their experiences in Paris. They might spend the afternoon together. Hamilton remembered the address. He had said it over and over to himself at odd moments. It was only a mile or so away. No, that would be a weakness on his part. That would be an admission of something that he did not wish to face even in his mind. He would simply write her a note, saying that he had been in New York and had not found time to call.
He walked to the curb and held up his hand to a taxi, gave the driver a number and stepped in. He was still debating whether he should call on Dorothy or not when thecab stopped, the driver opened the door and he found himself actually standing outside her apartment. It would be foolish to turn back now. Perhaps she had seen him through the window.
He paid the chauffeur and climbed the stairs with throbbing heart. It was an oldbuilding—one of a row of old brownstone houses, which had long since been altered into flats, family hotels and specialty shops. It had an air of venerable, picturesque decay, an atmosphere of an older, less feverish, more homogeneous New York. In the heavy oak door, beneath a polished brass knocker, he found a button and pressed it. Presently the door opened and a gray-haired lady, with a piqued face and gold-rimmed spectacles, peered guardedly through the opening and falteringly inquired his business. He told her.
After a moment’s inspection, she let him enter and ushered him into the frontroom—a high-ceilinged one, with a bay window, a white-tiled mantel in one corner and a heavy flowered carpet on the floor. Miss Meadows would be back at one o’clock. It was almost that now and would he sit down there and look at the papers until she came?
Hamilton contented himself with gazing about the room. He walked over to the mantelpiece and idly inspected theornaments—a china clock, an old-fashioned Dresden doll, and a vase containing fresh violets. He remembered that he had neglected to bring Dorothy flowers.
He turned to face the window, across which a heavily upholstered red plush settee extended. Through the lace curtain the spring sunshine fell in a golden stream. The sounds of passing persons and vehicles came to him from the street. Suddenly in the sunlight he noticed anenvelope—a long official envelope. He felt of his pockets, which were bristling with official orders, as he stooped to pick it up. He had probably dropped it in removing his handkerchief. Yes, it bore his name. He was straightening up, when he heard footsteps on the stairs and a voice which he recognized as Dorothy’s. He had time to place the letter in his pocket when the door opened and Dorothy came in,her arms stretched out, a smile on her flushed face. Hamilton noticed that little strands of hair were blowing loose.
“Captain Hamilton, how are you?” she crossed over to him and gave him her hands. Hamilton’s heart beat wildly.
“This is such a surprise. Dr. Levin told me he had seen you.”
Hamilton mumbled something and was conscious of being very red.
“Yes. I’m going back to Corinth tonight and I thought I should like to see you before Ileave—renew our acquaintance.”
“That was splendid of you,” she said.
In a few words they told what had happened since their last meeting and finally Hamilton suggested that they lunch together.
“I don’t suppose we can find a Black Cat here, but perhaps Claridge’s might do for a substitute,” he suggested.
She expressed her delight and excused herself to go into the next room and change to more suitable attire. When she reappeared she seemed more radiantly beautiful than ever. She had slipped on a filmy dress of blue crêpe bordered with silver.
“You look charming!” he said.
“Oh, that’s the conventional thing to say,” she retorted. “That’s what every one says.”
“No wonder every one says it!”
“And that’s conventional, too,” said Dorothy with an arch frown. She was patting her hair into position and taking one last look at herself in the mirror above the mantel. “But today let’s not be conventional. You are going to Corinth. I don’t know when we’ll meet again. So let’s not spend our time in looking at each other through masks.” They were walking down the stairs now. “No, don’t interrupt; and you were going to say, ‘But I meant it.’ It’s like a game. Your partner leads with this remark and you come back with that. Ordinarily, I can tell exactly what a man is going to reply to whatever I say.”
In the taxi, she resumed the thread of her thought.
“Why can’t men and women talk to each other just as two men do?”
“Well, don’t they?”
“No, they simply bandy expressions back and forth like a tennis ball. The man always flatters the woman. She always deprecates his words, and he affirms them.”
She turned to him suddenly.
“What do you talk about when, say, you are with Captain McCall?”
Hamilton smiled.
“Oh, the same things I talk to you about.”
“No you don’t. You don’t say he has a lovely uniform. You discuss things.”
“Has McCall been here?”
“Why no. When will he be discharged?”
“He left the day before yesterday. I was almost certain he’d visit you before leaving for Chicago. It’s queer.”
“Queer? Why should it be? He’s probably forgotten all about me, or was in too much of a hurry to stop off here.”
For some reason Hamilton felt immensely relieved. It was as though a curtain had been lifted from before his eyes. He had been mistaken in thinking that McCall had referred to Dorothy at the café. The poem had not been written to her. Hamilton’s mind ran back to the finding of the snapshot. It, too, probably had no particular significance. McCall had probably a hundred snapshots of Paris. Hamilton talked on without being fully conscious of what either he or Dorothy were saying. It was something about men and women, and Hamilton reflected that any conversation with women invariably resolved itself into the relations of the twosexes—to love, to marriage, to standards of morality.
“And that’s what I admire about Dr. Levin,” Dorothy was saying. Hamilton did not remember what had led to this remark.
“You admire—” he groped.
“Yes, I admire his sex unconsciousness,” she repeated.“He treats me, not exactly like a man, but like an intellectual equal.”
The idea amused Hamilton.
“And what do you talk about?” he asked.
“Oh, we discuss things. Just as two men would. Politics, sociology, literature, art.”
Hamilton laughed.
“Just as two men. You mean just as two Dr. Levins. When two men get together theytalk—well, where I come from, they’d probably talk about hunting, or the cotton crop, or baseball or what would have happened if it hadn’t been for thewar—that is, the Civil War. I called Dr. Levin when I came in, but they told me—”
“Yes, he’s gone for about two days to visit a sister. Oh, yes, and we even discuss such things as intermarriage.”
“That’s a rather dangerous subject, isn’t it?” he asked. His mind went back once more to McCall, who was a Catholic. Still this, too, was probably only part of their intellectual conversation. It was probably impersonal.
“Perhaps.” She changed the subject.
At Claridge’s they watched the people about them. They recognized some of them as actors and actresses, one of them, a Broadway star active in the formation of the new Equity League. In one corner sat a distinguished looking gentleman, with cruel blue eyes and dark hair and beard, surrounded by a group of admirers.
“That’s General Rodzinoff,” said Hamilton, “the Czarist commander whom we saw in Paris. New York is becoming cosmopolitan.”
“Oh, yes, I remember him. He’s probably arousing sympathy for the old régime,” remarked Dorothy. “The town is full of them. The emigrés are tired of Paris and are coming to this country. It’s more fertile.”
For a time they studied their menus. The colored waiter took their order obsequiously and hurried away.
“Don’t look now,” said Dorothy in a low voice, “but your Russian friend seems to be flirting.”
“Has he been practising his charms on you?” asked Hamilton.
“Oh, he’s glanced this way once or twice. But I don’t take it seriously. He’s probably spoiled by too much adulation.”
“And I suppose he’ll finish by marrying some American millionaire’s daughter. Why shouldn’t he? He’s a great war hero.”
“I don’t know about that,” Dorothy’s eyes snapped, “but I do know that he can drink like a good Russian officer. In Paris he was always more or less intoxicated, and if I don’t mistake the symptoms, he’s a little mellow now. That’s one of his favorite pastimes. The others are women and Jew baiting.”
“Jew baiting?”
“Yes. Dr. Levin has told me of some of his activities in Russia. He’s a regularpogromchik. That means an instigator of those horrible massacres in Russia. I’m surprised they tolerate him. I understand that he is spreading his propaganda in this country.”
“What propaganda? Against the Jews?”
“Yes. In Russia when anything went wrong, the ruling class always blamed the Jew. He was the scapegoat. If taxes were high or wages low, it was the Jew who was at fault. Now if General Rodzinoff can spread anti-Semitism in this country, he may succeed also in spreading the false impression that the Jews are the cause of all the trouble in Russia. He may make people forget the oppression of the old Czarist régime against which the people rebelled and from which they went to the other extreme.”
“Oh, no. The American people are too sensible for that. He might get a few fanatics, perhaps. But—” Hamilton shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “Nobody of any standing.”
“Well, has Howard Brooks any standing?”
“Brooks?” Hamilton, like nine hundred and ninety-nine Americans out of a thousand, knew Brooks as the inventor and exploiter to the tune of many millions of the mostwidely-used automobile tire in theworld—a tire which had revolutionized the automobile industry and made it possible for the first time in history for the farmer and small salaried city man to operate his own car. Because of the peculiar hissing sound they made, the tires were called “babbling brooks”—but they did the work and were cheap. Brooks had mobilized thousands of workmen, by paying them a bit more than the other manufacturers, and had then housed them and cared for them with an exacting, paternalistic benevolence. It was as though a super-efficiency man and the Kaiser had decided to go into charity on a vast scale. Wages were higher, hours were shorter, operations were safer than anywhere else; but while the men did work, they worked like machines. Their production was astounding. The lost moments in which workmen wipe their brows, blow their noses or simply rest between processes had been reduced so effectively that whereas seventeen per cent had been the smallest lost time ever achieved in any factory, Brooks had cut the percentage down tosix—the minimum of safety, efficiency engineers agreed. How long a man could work at a six per centrate—or rather a ninety-four per cent rate, of course had never been determined, as the system had been in operation only a few years and the labor turnover was rather large.
Not only were the wages of Brooks’ employees higher than the prevailing standard, but they were required to place a certain percentage of it in the bank each week. There were also numberless rules about conduct, about furnishing the home, about physical care. No Brooks employee was allowed to drink or smoke. Company investigators visited the homes to see if the food was cooked scientifically and if the baby was being fed the proper formula of prepared milk, and, so it was whispered, to smell breaths.
When the European war began Brooks had engaged the best aeronautic engineers to construct an enormous dirigible balloon. The idea was to fly over the Atlantic with it and then over the western front. Brooks and his assistants, selected from representative clubs and associations, woulddrop tons of peace tracts upon the combating armies. Upon reading these, the armies would cease fighting. “Out of the trenches by apple blossom time,” was his motto. Incidentally the balloon would have a powerful advertising value, as the dirigible was to be known as the Brooks Peace Ship. It wouldn’t hurt to get the good-will of foreign motor users for after-the-war trade.
When a Chicago newspaper had poked fun at the plan and Brooks had sued the paper for libel, Brooks had been placed on the witness stand and exhibited a shocking ignorance of the most elementary facts of American history. When asked who Benjamin Franklin was, for instance, he had replied that he was the inventor of an air-cooled automobile motor and Benedict Arnold, an English author.
At the last minute the committee in charge of the airship had fallen out as to where they should fly first, over the French or over the Germans, without offending either of the belligerents. It ended in a tremendous row, with every one calling every one else a pro-German or a pro-Frenchman and going home.
At the vaudeville shows, in the smokers of trains, in the joke columns Brooks’ name appeared frequently. It was a by-word and a signal for laughter. For one person to say to another:
“Say, I see you’ve got a new set of rubber doughnuts on your car,” was a cue for uproariouslaughter—rubber doughnuts of course meaning “babbling brooks.”
For all these reasons the mention of Brooks’ name caused Hamilton to smile involuntarily. He waved his hand in a deprecating gesture.
“Of course that strikes you as funny,” said Dorothy, “but Brookshasstanding—any man with so much money has. Of course he has no culture, in fact is an ignoramus, but he has money and can hire brains. Men will do anything for money.”
Hamilton laughed.
“Hope I’ve heard my last Brooks joke,” he said. “But where did you get all this information?”
“Some of it from Dr. Levin. Some of it—”
“Oh, I see,” he interrupted. “Dr. Levin. Probably a little sensitive. I’ve noticed most Jews are. Even in my company. You say something about English or Irish or Italian and nobody minds. You even say ‘wop’ and an Italian grins good naturedly. But the minute you say something, anything, good or bad, about the Jew, they’re all ears andeyes—all on edge. I think Dr. Levin’s probably supersensitive.”
Hamilton refused to take the matter seriously. At the same time he wondered why she brought Dr. Levin’s name so often into the conversation. She had learned this from Dr. Levin, and that. She quoted him and sometimes even held him up as an example.
They finished their meal and left the Claridge, the Russian general still charming his circle of admirers with his conversation, his cruel blue eyes still circling the room for fresh objects of feminine beauty.