"At the station before he left he tried to get the Rockford bank building on the telephone. He got Rockford and tried for five minutes to make a connection with his superintendent's telephone in the bank building, until the operator's voice came to him over the wire: 'I tell you, you can't get that building, mister. It's burning down!'
"'How do you know?' he besought her.
"'I just went past there and I seen it,' her voice came back at him.
"He got on the train. At first he felt nothing but a queer dizzy vacuum where his brain should have been; the landscape outside the windows jumbled together like a nightmare landscape thrown up on a moving-picture screen. For fifty miles he merely sat rigidly still, but in reality he was plunging down like a drowning man to the very bottom of despair. And then, like the drowning man, he began to come up to the surface again. The instinct for self-preservation stirred in him and broke the grip of that hypnotizing despair. At first slowly and painfully, but at last with quickening facility, he began to think, to plan. Stations went past; a man he knew spoke to him and then walked on, staring; but he was deaf and blind. He was planning for the future. Already he had plumbed, measured, and put behind him the fact of the fire; what he occupied himself with now was what he could save from the ashes to make a new start with. And he told me afterwards that actually, at the end of two hours of the liveliest thinking he had ever done in his life, he began to enjoy himself! His fighting blood began to tingle; his head steadied and grew cool; his mind reached out and examined every aspect of his stupendous failure, not to indulge himself in the weakness of regret, but to find out the surest and quickest way to get on his feet again. Figuring on the margins of timetables, going over the contracts he had in hand, weighing every asset he possessed in the world, he worked out in minute detail a plan to save his credit and his future. When he got off the train at Boston he was a man that had already begun life over again; he was a general that was about to make the first move in a long campaign, every move and counter-move of which he carried in his brain. Even as he crossed the station he was rehearsing the speech he was going to make at the meeting of his creditors he intended to hold that afternoon. Then, as he hastened toward a telephone-booth, he ran into a newsboy. A headline caught his eye. He snatched at the paper, read the headlines, standing there in the middle of the room. And then he suddenly sat down on the nearest bench, weak and shaking.
"On the front page of the paper was a half-page picture of the Rockford bank building with the flames curling up against its west wall, and underneath it a caption that he read over and over before he could grasp what it meant to him. The White Elephant had not burned; in fact, at the last it had turned into a good elephant, for it had not only not burned but it had stopped the progress of what threatened to be a very disastrous conflagration, according to a jubilant despatch from Rockford. And Robert, reading these lines over and over, felt an amazing sort of indignant disappointment to think that now he would not have a chance to put to the test those plans he had so minutely worked out. He was in the position of a man that has gone through the painful process of readjusting his whole life; who has mentally met and conquered a catastrophe that fails to come off. He felt quite angry and cheated for a few minutes, until he regained his mental balance and saw how absurd he was, and then, feeling rather foolish and more than a little shaky, he caught a train and went up to Rockford.
"There he found out that the report had been right; beyond a few cracked wire-glass windows—for which, as one last painful detail, he had to pay—and a blackened side wall, the Elephant was unharmed. The men putting the finishing touches to the inside had not lost an hour's work. All that dreadful journey up from New York had been merely one last turn of the screw.
"Two weeks later he turned the Elephant over to the owners, finished, a good, workmanlike job from roof to foundation-piers. He had lost money on it; for months he had worked overtime his courage, his ingenuity, his nerve, and his strength. But that did not matter. He had delivered the goods. I believe he treated himself to an afternoon off and went to a ball-game; but that was all, for by this time other jobs were under way, a whole batch of new problems were waiting to be solved; in a week the Elephant was forgotten."
Mrs. Trask pushed back her chair and walked to the west window. A strange quiet had fallen upon the sky-scraper now; the workmen had gone down the ladders, the steam-riveters had ceased their tapping. Mrs. Trask opened the window and leaned out a little.
Behind her the three women at the tea-table gathered up their furs in silence. Cornelia Blair looked relieved and prepared to go on to dinner at another club, Mrs. Bullen avoided Mrs. Van Vechten's eye. In her rosy face faint lines had traced themselves, as if vaguely some new perceptiveness troubled her. She looked at her wristwatch and rose from the table hastily.
"I must run along," she said. "I like to get home before John does. You going my way, Sally?"
Mrs. Van Vechten shook her head absently. There was a frown between her dark brows; but as she stood fastening her furs her eyes went to the west window, with an expression in them that was almost wistful. For an instant she looked as if she were going over to the window beside Mary Trask; then she gathered up her gloves and muff and went out without a word.
Mary Trask was unaware of her going. She had forgotten the room behind her and her friends at the tea-table, as well as the other women drifting in from the adjoining room. She was contemplating, with her little, absent-minded smile, her husband's name on the builder's sign halfway up the unfinished sky-scraper opposite.
"Good work, old Rob," she murmured. Then her hand went up in a quaint gesture that was like a salute. "To all good jobs and the men behind them!" she added.
FOOTNOTES:[11]Copyright, 1920, by Charles Scribner's Sons.Copyright, 1921, by Grace Sartwell Mason.
[11]Copyright, 1920, by Charles Scribner's Sons.Copyright, 1921, by Grace Sartwell Mason.
[11]Copyright, 1920, by Charles Scribner's Sons.Copyright, 1921, by Grace Sartwell Mason.
There is a bitter moment in youth, and this moment had come to Paul. He had passed his mother's door without entering or even calling out to her, and had climbed on doggedly to the top floor. Now he was shut in his sanctuary, his room, sitting at his table. His head rested on a hand, his dark eyes had an expression of confused anguish, a look of guilt and sternness mingled.... He could no more have visited his mother, he told himself, than he could voluntarily have chopped off his hand. And yet he was amazed at the cruelty in himself, a hard cold cruelty which prompted the thought: "Even if this means her death or my death, I shall go through with this."
It was because of such a feeling that he couldn't talk to his mother. Paul was one of those sensitive youths who are delivered over to their emotions—swept now and then by exaltation, now by despair, now by anguish or rage, always excessive, never fully under control. He was moody, and always seemed unable to say the right thing or do the right thing. Suddenly the emotion used him as a mere instrument and came forth in a shameful nakedness. But the present situation was by all odds the most terrible he had faced: for against the cold cruelty, there throbbed, warm and unutterably sweet, like a bird in a nest of iron, an intense childish longing and love....
You see, Paul was nineteen, the eldest son in a family of four, and his mother was a widow. She was not poor; they lived in this large comfortable house on a side street east of Central Park. But neither was she well off, and Paul was very magnanimous; he had given up college and gone to work as a clerk. Perhaps it wasn't only magnanimity, but also pride. He was proud to be the oldest son, to play father, to advise with his mother about the children, to be the man of the house. Yet he was always a mere child, living, as his two sisters and his brother lived, in delicate response to his mother's feelings and wishes. And he wanted to be a good son: he thought nothing was more wonderful than a child who was good to his mother. She had given all for her children, they in return must give all to her. But against this spirit of sacrifice there arose a crude, ugly, healthy, monstrous force, a terrible thing that kept whispering to him: "You can't live your mother's life: you must live your own life."
Once, when he had said something conceited, his mother had flashed out at him: "You're utterly selfish." This stung and humiliated him. Yet this terrible monster in himself seemed concerned about nothing but self. It seemed a sort of devil always tempting him to eat of forbidden fruit. Lovely fruit, too. There was Agnes, for instance: Agnes, a mere girl, with a pigtail down her back, daughter of the fishman on Third Avenue.
His mother held Agnes in horror. That her son should be in love with a fishman's daughter! And all the child in Paul, responding so sensitively to his mother's feelings, agreed to this. He had contempt for himself, he struggled against the romantic Thousand and One Nights glamour, which turned Third Avenue into a Lovers' Lane of sparkling lights. He struggled, vainly. Poetry was his passion: and he steeped himself in Romeo and Juliet, and in Keats's St. Agnes' Eve and The Pot of Basil.... It was then the great struggle with his mother began, and the large house became a gloomy vault, something dank, damp, sombre, something out of Poe, where a secret duel to the death was being fought, mostly in undertones and sometimes with sharp cries and stabbing words.
Now, this evening, with his head in his hand, he knew that the end had already been reached. To pass his mother's door without a greeting, especially since he was well aware that she was ill, was so unprecedented, so violent an act, that it seemed to have the finality of something criminal. His mother had said two days ago: "This can't go on. It is killing me."
"All right," he flashed. "It sha'n't. I'll get out."
"I suppose you'll marry," she said, "on fifteen a week."
He spoke bitterly:
"I'll get out of New York altogether. I'll work my way through college...."
She almost sneered at the suggestion. And this sneer rankled. He telegraphed his friend, at a little freshwater college, and Samuel telegraphed back: "Come." That day he drew his money from the bank, and got his tickets for the midnight sleeper. And he did all this with perfect cruelty....
But now the time had come to go, and things were different. An autumn wind was blowing out of the park, doubtless carrying seeds and dead leaves, and gusting down the street, blowing about the sparkling lamps, eddying in the area-ways, rapping in passing on the loose windows.... The lights in the houses were all warm, because you saw only the glowing yellow shades: Third Avenue was lit up and down with shop-windows, and people were doing late marketing. It was a night when nothing seemed so sweet, or sane, or comfortable, as a soft-lighted room, and a family sitting together. Soft voices, familiarity, warm intimacy, the feeling of security and ease, the unspoken welling of love and understanding: these belonged to such a night, when the whole world seemed dying and there was only man to keep the fires burning against death.
And so, out of its tomb, the little child in Paul stepped out again, beautiful and sweet with love and longing. And this little child said to him: "Sacrifice—surrender—let the hard heart melt with pity.... There is no freedom except in love, which gives all." For a moment Paul's vivid imagination, which presented everything to him like works of dramatic art, pictured himself going down the steps, as once he had done, creeping to his mother's bed, flinging himself down, sobbing and moaning, "Forgive me. Forgive me."
But just then he heard the stairs creak and thought that his eldest sister was coming up to question him. His heart began a frightened throbbing: he shook with a guilty fear, and at once he saved himself with a bitter resurgence of cruel anger. He hated his sister, he told himself, with a livid hatred. She always sided with his mother. She was bossy and smart and high and mighty. He knew what he would do. He jumped up, went to the door, and locked it. So—she could beat her head on the door, for all he cared!
He packed. He got out his valise, and filled it with his necessaries. He would let the rest go: the books, the old clothes. He was going to start life all over again He was going to wipe out the past....
When he was finished, he anxiously opened his pocket-book to see if the tickets were safe. He looked at them. It was now ten o'clock. Two hours—and then the long train would pull out, and he would be gone.... To-morrow morning they'd come downstairs. His sister probably would sit at the foot of the table, instead of himself. The table would seem small with himself gone. Perhaps the house would seem a little empty. Automatically they would wait for the click of his key in the front door lock at seven in the evening. He would not come home at all....
His mother might die. She had told him this was killing her.... It was so easy for him to go, so hard for her to stay.... She had invested most of her capital of hopes and dreams and love in him: he was the son; he was the first man. And now he was shattering the very structure of her life....
Easy for him to go! He slumped into the chair again, at the table.... The wind blew strongly, and he knew just how the grey street looked with its spots of yellow sparkling lamplight; its shadows, its glowing windows.... He knew the smell of the fish-shop, the strange raw sea-smell, the sight of glittering iridescent scales, the beauty of lean curved fishes, the red of broiled lobsters, the pink-cheeked swarthy fishman, the dark loveliness of Agnes.... He had written to Agnes. His mother didn't know of it, but he was done with Agnes. Agnes meant nothing to him. She had only been a way out, something to cling to, something to fight for in this fight for his life....
Fight for his life! Had he not read of this in books, how the young must slay the old in order that life might go on, just as the earth must die in autumn so that the seeds of spring may be planted? Had he not read Ibsen's Master Builder, where the aging hero hears the dread doom which youth brings, "the younger generation knocking at the door"? He was the younger generation, he was the young hero. And now, at once, a vivid dramatization took place in his brain: it unwound clear as hallucination. He forgot everything else, he sat there as a writer sits, living his fiction, making strange gestures with face and hands, muttering words under his breath....
In this phantasy, he saw himself rising, appearing a little older, a little stronger, and on his face a look of divine compassion and understanding, yet a firmness inexorable as fate. He repeated Hamlet's words: "For I am cruel only to be kind." Blame life, fate, the gods who decree that a man must live his own life: don't blame me.
He unlocked the door, crossed the big hall, stepped down the stairs. His mother's door was shut. The younger generation must knock at it. He knocked. A low, sad voice said: "Come." He opened the door.
This was the way it always was: a pin-point of light by the western window, a newspaper pinned to the glass globe of the gas-jet to shield his mother's eyes, the wide range of warm shadow, and in the shadow the two beds. But his sister was not in one of them. His mother was alone....
He went to the bedside....
"Mother!"
"Paul!"
He took her hand.
"Are you feeling better?" he asked.
"A little more quiet, Paul...."
"I am very glad...."
Now there was silence.... Then he spoke quietly, honestly, candidly. It was the only way. Why can't human beings be simple with one another, be sweetly reasonable? Isn't a little understanding worth more than pride and anger? To understand is to forgive. Surely any one must know that.
Starting to speak, he sat down on the chair beside the bed, still holding her hand....
"Mother, come let's talk to one another. You think perhaps I have stopped loving you. It isn't true. I love you deeply. All this is breaking my heart. But how can I help it? Can't you see that I am young, and my life all before me? The best of your life is behind you. You have lived, I haven't. You have tasted the sweet mysteries of love, the agonies of death and birth, the terrors of lonely struggle. And I must have these, too. I am hungry for them. I can't help myself. I am like a leaf in the wind, like a rain-drop in the storm.... How can you keep me here? If you compel me, I'll become a shadow, all twisted and broken. I won't be a man, but a helpless child. Perhaps I shall go out of my mind. And what good will that do you? You will suffer more if I stay, than if I go. Oh, understand me, mother, understand me!"
His mother began to cry. She spoke at first as she always spoke, and then more like a mother in a poem.
"Understand? What do you understand? You know nothing about life. Oh, I only wish you had children and your children turned against you! That's the only way that you will ever learn.... I worked for you so hard. I gave up everything for my children. And your father died, and I went on alone, a woman with a great burden.... What sort of life have I had? Sacrifice, toil, tears.... I skimped along. I wore the same dress year after year, for five, six years.... I hung over your sickbeds, I taught you at my knees. I have known the bitterness of child-bearing, and the bitter cry of children.... I have fought alone for my little ones.... And you, Paul! You who were the darling of my heart, my little man, you who said you would take your father's place and take care of me and of your sisters and brother! You who were to repay me for everything; to give me a future, to comfort my old age, the staff I leaned on, my comfort, my son! I was proud of you as you grew up: so proud to see your pride, and your ambition. I knew you would succeed, that you would have fame and power and wealth, and I should be the proudest mother in the world! This was my dream.... Now I see you a failure, one who cares for nothing but self-indulgence and pleasure, a rolling stone, a flitter from place to place, and I—I am an old woman, deserted, left alone to wither in bitterness.... I gave everything to you—and you—you give back despair, loneliness, anguish. I gave you life: you turn on me and destroy me for the gift.... Oh, mother-love! What man will understand it—the piercing anguish, the roots that clutch the deep heart?... I feel the chill of death creeping over me...."
The tears rolled down Paul's cheeks. He pressed her hand now with both of his.
"Oh, mother, but I do understand! I have understood always, I have tried so hard to help you. I have tried so hard to be a good son. But this is something greater than I. We are in the hands of God, mother, and it is the law that the young must leave the old. Why do parents expect the impossible of their children? Does not the Bible say, 'You must leave father and mother, and cleave to me'? Didn't you leave grandmother and grandpa, to go to your husband? Can't you remember when you were young, and your whole soul carried you away to your own life and your own future? Mother, let us part with understanding, let us part with love."
"But when are you going, Paul?"
"To-night."
His mother flung her arms about him desperately and clung to him....
"I can't let you go, Paul," she moaned.
"Oh, mother," he sobbed. "This is breaking my heart...."
"It is Agnes you are going to," she whispered.
"No, mother," he cried. "It is not Agnes. I am going to college. I shall never marry. I shall still take care of you. Think—every vacation I will be back here...."
She relaxed, lay back, and his inventions failed. He had a confused sense of soothing her, of gentleness and reconciliation, of a last good-bye....
And now he sat, head on hand, slowly realizing again the little gas-lit room, the shaking window, the autumn wind. A throb of fear pulsed through his heart. He had passed his mother's door without greeting her. And there was his valise, and here his tickets. And the time? It was nearly eleven.... A great heaviness of futility and despair weighed him down. He felt incapable of action. He felt that he had done some terrible deed—like striking his mother in the face—something unforgivable, unreversible, struck through and through with finality.... He felt more and more cold and brutal, with the sullenness of the criminal who can't undo his crime and won't admit his guilt....
Was it all over, then? Was he really leaving? Fear, and a prophetic breath of the devastating loneliness he should yet know, came upon him, paralyzed his mind, made him weak and aghast. He was going out into the night of death, launching on his frail raft into the barren boundless ocean of darkness, leaving the last landmarks, drifting out in utter nakedness and loneliness.... All the future grew black and impenetrable; but he knew shapes of terror, demons of longing and grief and guilt loomed there, waiting for him. He knew that he was about to understand a little of life in a very ancient and commonplace way: the way of experience and of reality: that at first hand he was to have the taste against his palate of that bitterness and desolation, that terror and helplessness, which make the songs and fictions of man one endless tragedy.... Destiny was taking him, as the jailer who comes to the condemned man's cell on the morning of the execution. There was no escape. No end, but death....
He was leaving everything that was comfort in a bleak world, everything that was safe and tried and known in a world of unthinkable perils and mysteries. Only this he knew, still a child, still on the inside of his mother's house.... He knew now how terrible, how deep, how human were the cords that bound him to his mother, how fierce the love, by the fear and deadly helplessness he felt.... What could he have been about all these months of darkening the house, of paining his mother and the children, of bringing matters to such inexorable finalities? Was he sane? Was he now possessed of some demon, some beast of low desire? Freedom? What was freedom? Could there be freedom without love?
And now, as he sat there, there came slow deliberate footsteps on the stairs. There was no mistaking the sounds. It was Cora, his older sister.... His heart palpitated wildly, he shook with fear, the colour left his cheeks, and he tried to set his face and his throat like flint not to betray himself. She came straight on. She knocked.
"Paul," she said in a peremptory tone, clothed with all the authority of his mother....
He grew cold all over, his eyelids narrowed; he felt brutal....
"What is it?" he asked hard.
"Mother wants you to come right down."
"I will come," he said.
Her footsteps departed.... He rose slowly, heavily, like the man who must now face the executioner.... He stuck his pocketbook back in his coat and picked up his valise. Mechanically he looked about the room. Then he unlocked and opened the door, shut off the gas, and went into the lighted hall.
And as he descended the steps he felt ever smaller before the growing terror of the world. Never had he been more of a child than at this moment: never had he longed more fiercely to sob and cry out and give over everything.... How had this guilt descended upon him? What had he done? Why was all this necessary? Who was forcing him through this strange and frightful experience? He went on, lower and lower....
The door of his mother's room was a little open. It was all as it had always been—the pin-point of light, the shading newspaper, the sick-room silence, the warm shadow.... He paused a second to summon up strength, to combat the monster of fear and guilt in his heart. He tried with all his little boyish might to smooth out his face, to set it straight and firm. He pushed the door, set down the valise, entered: pale, large-eyed, looking hard and desperate.
He did not see his sister at all, though she sat under the light. His mother he hardly saw: had the sense of a towel binding her head, and the dim form under the bedclothes. He stepped clumsily—he was trembling so—to the foot of her bed, and grasped the brass rail for support....
His mother's voice was low and thick; a terrible voice. Her throat was swollen, and she could speak only with difficulty. The voice accused him. It said plainly: "It was you did this."
She said: "Paul, this has got to end."
His tongue seemed the fork of a snake, his words came with such deadly coldness....
"It will end to-night."
"How ... to-night?"
"I'm leaving.... I'm going west...."
"West.... Where?"
"To Sam's...."
"Oh," said his mother....
There was a long cruel silence. He shut his eyes, overcome with a sort of horror.... Then she turned her face a little away, and he heard the faintly breathed words....
"This is the end of me...."
Still he said nothing. She turned toward him, with a groan.
"Have you nothing to say?"
Again he spoke with deadly coldness....
"Nothing...."
She waited a moment: then she spoke....
"You have no feelings. When you set out to do a thing, you will trample over every one. I have never been able to do anything with you. You may become a great man, Paul: but I pity any one who loves you, any one who gets in your path. You will kill whatever holds you—always.... I was a fool to give birth to you: a great fool to count on you.... Well, it's over.... You have your way...."
He was amazed: he trembling there, guilty, afraid, horrified, his whole soul beseeching the comfort of her arms! He a cold trampler?
He stood, with all the feeling of one who is falsely condemned, and yet with all the guilt of one who has sinned....
And then, suddenly, a wild animal cry came from his mother's throat....
"Oh," she cried, "how terrible it is to have children!"
His heart echoed her cry.... The executioner's knife seemed to strike his throat....
He stood a long while in the silence.... Then his mother turned in the bed, sideways, and covered her face with the counterpane.... His sister rose up stiffly, whispering:
"She's going to sleep."
He stood, dead.... He turned like a wound-up mechanism, went to the door, picked up his valise, and fumbled his way through the house.... The outer door he shut very softly....
He must take the Lexington Avenue car. Yes; that was the quickest way. He faced west. The great wind of autumn came with a glorious gusto, doubtless with flying seeds and flying leaves, chanting the song of the generations, and of them that die and of them that are born.
FOOTNOTES:[12]Copyright, 1920, by The Dial Publishing Company.Copyright, 1921, by James Oppenheim.
[12]Copyright, 1920, by The Dial Publishing Company.Copyright, 1921, by James Oppenheim.
[12]Copyright, 1920, by The Dial Publishing Company.Copyright, 1921, by James Oppenheim.
There were many women on East Fourteenth Street. With the seeing eye of the artist, the dummy-chucker looked them over and rejected them. Kindly-seeming, generously fat, the cheap movie houses disgorged them. A dozen alien tongues smote the air, and every one of them hinted of far lands of poverty, of journeys made and hardships undergone. No better field for beggary in all Manhattan's bounteous acreage.
But the dummy-chucker shook his head and shuffled ever westward. These were good souls, but—they thought in cents. Worse than that, they translated their financial thoughts into the pitiful coinage of their birthplaces. And in the pocket of the dummy-chucker rested a silver dollar.
A gaunt man, who towered high, and whose tongue held the cadences of the wide spaces, had slipped this dollar into the receptive hand of the dummy-chucker. True, it was almost a fortnight ago, and the man might have gone back to his Western home—but Broadway had yielded him up to the dummy-chucker. Broadway might yield up such another.
At Union Square, the dummy-chucker turned north. Past the Flatiron Building he shuffled, until, at length, the Tenderloin unfolded itself before him. These were the happy hunting-grounds!
Of course—and he glanced behind him quickly—there were more fly cops on Broadway than on the lower East Side. One of them had dug his bony fingers between the shabby collar of the dummy-chucker's coat and the lank hair that hung down his neck. He had yanked the dummy-chucker to his feet. He had dragged his victim to a patrol-box; he had taken him to a police station, whence he had been conveyed to Jefferson Market Court, where a judge had sentenced him to a sojourn on Blackwell's Island.
That had been ten days ago. This very day, the municipal ferry had landed the dummy-chucker, with others of his slinking kind, upon Manhattan's shores again. Not for a long time would the memory of the Island menu be effaced from the dummy-chucker's palate, the locked doors be banished from his mental vision.
A man might be arrested on Broadway, but he might also get the money. Timorously, the dummy-chucker weighed the two possibilities. He felt the dollar in his pocket. At a street in the Forties, he turned westward. Beyond Eighth Avenue there was a place where the shadow of prohibition was only a shadow.
Prices had gone up, but, as Finisterre Joe's bartender informed him, there was more kick in a glass of the stuff that cost sixty cents to-day than there had been in a barrel of the old juice. And, for a good customer, Finisterre Joe's bartender would shade the price a trifle. The dummy-chucker received two portions of the crudely blended poison that passed for whisky in exchange for his round silver dollar. It was with less of a shuffle and more of a stride that he retraced his steps toward Broadway.
Slightly north of Times Square, he surveyed his field of action. Across the street, a vaudeville house was discharging its mirth-surfeited audience. Half a block north, laughing groups testified that the comedy they had just left had been as funny as its press-agent claimed. The dummy-chucker shook his head. He moved south, his feet taking on that shuffle which they had lost temporarily.
"She Loved and Lost"—that was the name of the picture being run this week at the Concorde. Outside was billed a huge picture of the star, a lady who received more money for making people weep than most actors obtain for making them laugh. The dummy-chucker eyed the picture approvingly. He took his stand before the main entrance. This was the place! If he tried to do business with a flock of people that had just seen Charlie Chaplin, he'd fail. He knew! Fat women who'd left the twins at home with the neighbor's cook in order that they might have a good cry at the Concorde—these were his mutton-heads.
He reeled slightly as several flappers passed—just for practise. Ten days on Blackwell's hadn't spoiled his form. They drew away from him; yet, from their manners, he knew that they did not suspect him of being drunk. Well, hurrah for prohibition, after all! Drunkenness was the last thing people suspected of a hard-working man nowadays. He slipped his hand in his pocket. They were coming now—the fat women with the babies at home, their handkerchiefs still at their eyes. His hand slipped to his mouth. His jaws moved savagely. One thing was certain: out of to-day's stake he'd buy some decent-tasting soap. This awful stuff that he'd borrowed from the Island——
The stoutest woman paused; she screamed faintly as the dummy-chucker staggered, pitched forward, and fell at her short-vamped feet. Excitedly she grasped her neighbor's arm.
"He's gotta fit!"
The neighbor bent over the prostrate dummy-chucker.
"Ep'lepsy," she announced. "Look at the foam on his lips."
"Aw, the poor man!"
"Him so strong-looking, too!"
"Ain't it the truth? These husky-looking men sometimes are the sickliest."
The dummy-chucker stirred. He sat up feebly. With his sleeve, he wiped away the foam. Dazedly he spoke.
"If I had a bite to eat——"
He looked upward at the first stout woman. Well and wisely had he chosen his scene. Movie tickets cost fractions of a dollar. There is always some stray silver in the bead bag of a movie patron. Into the dummy-chucker's outstretched palm fell pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters. There was present to-day no big-hearted Westerner with silver dollars, but here was comparative wealth. Already the dummy-chucker saw himself again at Finisterre Joe's, this time to purchase no bottled courage but to buy decantered ease.
"T'ank, ladies," he murmured. "If I can get a bite to eat and rest up——"
"'Rest up!'" The shrill jeer of a newsboy broke in upon his pathetic speech. "Rest up again on the Island! That's the kind of a rest up you'll get, y' big tramp."
"Can't you see the man's sick?" The stoutest one turned indignantly upon the newsboy. But the scoffer held his ground.
"'Sick?' Sure he's sick! Eatin' soap makes anyone sick. Youse dames is easy. He's chuckin' a dummy."
"'A dummy?'"
The dummy-chucker sat a bit straighter.
"Sure, ma'am. That's his game. He t'rows phony fits. He eats a bit of soap and makes his mouth foam. Last week, he got pinched right near here——"
But the dummy-chucker heard no more. He rolled sidewise just as the cry: "Police!" burst from the woman's lips. He reached the curb, rose, burst through the gathering crowd, and rounded a corner at full speed.
He was half-way to Eighth Avenue, and burning lungs had slowed him to a jog-trot, when a motor-car pulled up alongside the curb. It kept gentle pace with the fugitive. A shrewd-featured young man leaned from its fashionably sloped wheel.
"Better hop aboard," he suggested. "That policeman is fat, but he has speed."
The dummy-chucker glanced over his shoulder. Looming high as the Woolworth Building, fear overcoming the dwarfing tendency of distance, came a policeman. The dummy-chucker leaped to the motor's running-board. He climbed into the vacant front seat.
"Thanks, feller," he grunted. "A li'l speed, please."
The young man chuckled. He rounded the corner into Eighth Avenue and darted north among the trucks.
At Columbus Circle, the dummy-chucker spoke.
"Thanks again, friend," he said. "I'll be steppin' off here."
His rescuer glanced at him.
"Want to earn a hundred dollars?"
"Quitcher kiddin'," said the dummy-chucker.
"No, no; this is serious," said the young man.
The dummy-chucker leaned luxuriously back in his seat.
"Take meanywhere, friend," he said.
Half-way round the huge circle at Fifty-ninth Street, the young man guided the car. Then he shot into the park. They curved eastward. They came out on Fifth Avenue, somewhere in the Seventies. They shot eastward another half-block, and then the car stopped in front of an apartment-house. The young man pressed the button on the steering-wheel. In response to the short blast of the electric horn, a uniformed man appeared. The young man alighted. The dummy-chucker followed suit.
"Take the car around to the garage, Andrews," said the young man. He nodded to the dummy-chucker. In a daze, the mendicant followed his rescuer. He entered a gorgeously mirrored and gilded hall. He stepped into an elevator chauffeured by a West Indian of the haughtiest blood. The dummy-chucker was suddenly conscious of his tattered garb, his ill-fitting, run-down shoes. He stepped, when they alighted from the lift, as gingerly as though he trod on tacks.
A servant in livery, as had been the waiting chauffeur downstairs, opened a door. If he was surprised at his master's choice of guest, he was too well trained to show it. He did not rebel even when ordered to serve sandwiches and liquor to the dummy-chucker.
"You seem hungry," commented the young man.
The dummy-chucker reached for another sandwich with his left hand while he poured himself a drink of genuine Scotch with his right.
"Andthirsty," he grunted.
"Go to it," observed his host genially.
The dummy-chucker went to it for a good ten minutes. Then he leaned back in the heavily upholstered chair which the man servant had drawn up for him. He stared round him.
"Smoke?" asked his host.
The dummy-chucker nodded. He selected a slim panetela and pinched it daintily between the nails of his thumb and forefinger. His host watched the operation with interest.
"Why?" he asked.
"Better than cuttin' the end off," explained the dummy-chucker. "It's a good smoke," he added, puffing.
"You know tobacco," said his host. "Where did you learn?"
"Oh, we all have our ups and downs," replied the dummy-chucker. "But don't get nervous. I ain't goin' to tell you that I was a millionaire's son, educated at Harvard. I'm a bum."
"Doesn't seem to bother you," said his host.
"It don't," asserted the dummy-chucker. "Except when the police butt into my game. I just got off Blackwell's Island this morning."
"And almost went back this afternoon."
The dummy-chucker nodded.
"Almost," he said. His eyes wandered around the room. "Somedump!" he stated. Then his manner became business-like. "You mentioned a hundred dollars—what for?"
The young man shrugged.
"Not hard work. You merely have to look like a gentleman, and act like——"
"Like a bum?" asked the dummy-chucker.
"Well, something like that."
The dummy-chucker passed his hand across his stubby chin.
"Shoot!" he said. "Anything short of murder—anything, friend."
His host leaned eagerly forward.
"There's a girl—" he began.
The dummy-chucker nodded.
"There always is," he interrupted. "I forgot to mention that I bar kidnaping, too."
"It's barred," said the young man. He hitched his chair a trifle nearer his guest. "She's beautiful. She's young."
"And the money? The coin? The good red gold?"
"I have enough for two. I don't care about her money."
"Neither do I," said the dummy-chucker; "so long as I get my hundred. Shoot!"
"About a year ago," resumed the host, "she accepted, after a long courtship, a young man by the name of—oh, let's call him Jones."
The dummy-chucker inhaled happily.
"Call him any darned thing you like," he said cheerily.
"Jones was a drunkard," said the host.
"And she married him?" The dummy-chucker's eyebrows lifted slightly.
"No. She told him that if he'd quit drinking she'd marry him. She stipulated that he go without drink for one year."
The dummy-chucker reached for a fresh cigar. He lighted it and leaned back farther in the comfortable chair.
"Jones," continued the young man, "had tried to quit before. He knew himself pretty well. He knew that, even with war-time prohibition just round the corner, he couldn't keep away from liquor. Not while he stayed in New York. But a classmate of his had been appointed head of an expedition that was to conduct exploration work in Brazil. He asked his classmate for a place in the party. You see, he figured that in the wilds of Brazil there wouldn't be any chance for drunkenness."
"A game guy," commented the dummy-chucker. "Well, what happened?"
"He died of jungle-fever two months ago," was the answer. "The news just reached Rio Janeiro yesterday."
The dummy-chucker lifted his glass of Scotch.
"To a regular feller," he said, and drank. He set his glass down gently. "And the girl? I suppose she's all shot to pieces?"
"She doesn't know," said the host quietly.
The dummy-chucker's eyebrows lifted again.
"I begin to get you," he said. "I'm the messenger from Brazil who breaks the sad news to her, eh?"
The young man shook his head.
"The news isn't to be broken to her—not yet. You see—well, I was Jones' closest friend. He left his will with me, his personal effects, and all that. So I'm the one that received the wire of his death. In a month or so, of course, it will be published in the newspapers—when letters have come from the explorers. But, just now, I'm the only one that knows it."
"Except me," said the dummy-chucker.
The young man smiled dryly.
"Except you. And you won't tell. Ever wear evening clothes?"
The dummy-chucker stiffened. Then he laughed sardonically.
"Oh, yes; when I was at Princeton. What's the idea?"
His host studied him carefully.
"Well, with a shave, and a hair-cut, and a manicure, and the proper clothing, and the right setting—well, if a person had only a quick glance—that person might think you were Jones."
The dummy-chucker carefully brushed the ashes from his cigar upon a tray.
"I guess I'm pretty stupid to-night. I still don't see it."
"You will," asserted his host. "You see, she's a girl who's seen a great deal of the evil of drink. She has a horror of it. If she thought that Jones had broken his pledge to her, she'd throw him over."
"'Throw him over?' But he'sdead!" said the dummy-chucker.
"She doesn't know that," retorted his host.
"Why don't you tell her?"
"Because I want to marry her."
"Well, I should think the quickest way to get her would be to tell her about Jones——"
"You don't happen to know the girl," interrupted the other. "She's a girl of remarkable conscience. If I should tell her that Jones died in Brazil, she'd enshrine him in her memory. He'd be a hero who had died upon the battle-field. More than that—he'd be a hero who had died upon the battle-field in a war to which she had sent him. His death would be upon her soul. Her only expiation would be to be faithful to him forever."
"I won't argue about it," said the dummy-chucker. "I don't know her. Only—I guess your whisky has got me. I don't see it at all."
His host leaned eagerly forward now.
"She's going to the opera to-night with her parents. But, before she goes, she's going to dine with me at the Park Square. Suppose, while she's there, Jones should come in. Suppose that he should come in reeling, noisy,drunk! She'd marry me to-morrow."
"I'll take your word for it," said the dummy-chucker. "Only, when she's learned that Jones had died two months ago in Brazil——"
"She'll be married to me then," responded the other fiercely. "What I get, I can hold. If she were Jones' wife, I'd tell her of his death. I'd know that, sooner or later, I'd win her. But if she learns now that he died while struggling to make himself worthy of her, she'll never give to another man what she withheld from him."
"I see," said the dummy-chucker slowly. "And you want me to——"
"There'll be a table by the door in the main dining-room engaged in Jones' name. You'll walk in there at a quarter to eight. You'll wear Jones' dinner clothes. I have them here. You'll wear the studs that he wore, his cuff-links. More than that, you'll set down upon the table, with a flourish, his monogrammed flask. You'll be drunk, noisy, disgraceful——"
"How long will I be all that—in the hotel?" asked the dummy-chucker dryly.
"That's exactly the point," said the other. "You'll last about thirty seconds. The girl and I will be on the far side of the room. I'll take care that she sees you enter. Then, when you've been quietly ejected, I'll go over to themâitre d'hôtelto make inquiries. I'll bring back to the girl the flask which you will have left upon the table. If she has any doubt that you are Jones, the flask will dispel it.
"And then?" asked the dummy-chucker.
"Why, then," responded his host, "I propose to her. You see, I think it was pity that made her accept Jones in the beginning. I think that she cares for me."
"And you really think that I look enough like Jones to put this over?"
"In the shaded light of the dining-room, in Jones' clothes—well, I'm risking a hundred dollars on it. Will you do it?"
The dummy-chucker grinned.
"Didn't I say I'd doanything, barring murder? Where are the clothes?"
One hour and a half later, the dummy-chucker stared at himself in the long mirror in his host's dressing-room. He had bathed, not as Blackwell's Island prisoners bathe, but in a luxurious tub that had a head-rest, in scented water, soft as the touch of a baby's fingers. Then his host's man servant had cut his hair, had shaved him, had massaged him until color crept into the pale cheeks. The sheerest of knee-length linen underwear touched a body that knew only rough cotton. Silk socks, heavy, gleaming, snugly encased his ankles. Upon his feet were correctly dull pumps. That the trousers were a wee bit short mattered little. In these dancing-days, trousers should not be too long. And the fit of the coat over his shoulders—he carried them in a fashion unwontedly straight as he gazed at his reflection—balanced the trousers' lack of length. The soft shirt-bosom gave freely, comfortably as he breathed. Its plaited whiteness enthralled him. He turned anxiously to his host.
"Will I do?" he asked.
"Better than I'd hoped," said the other. "You look like a gentleman."
The dummy-chucker laughed gaily.
"I feel like one," he declared.
"You understand what you are to do?" demanded the host.
"It ain't a hard part to act," replied the dummy-chucker.
"And youcanact," said the other. "The way you fooled those women in front of the Concorde proved that you——"
"Sh-sh!" exclaimed the dummy-chucker reproachfully. "Please don't remind me of what I was before I became a gentleman."
His host laughed.
"You're all right." He looked at his watch. "I'll have to leave now. I'll send the car back after you. Don't be afraid of trouble with the hotel people. I'll explain that I know you, and fix matters up all right. Just take the table at the right hand side as you enter——"
"Oh, I've got it all right," said the dummy-chucker. "Better slip me something on account. I may have to pay something——"
"You get nothing now," was the stern answer. "One hundred dollars when I get back here. And," he added, "if it should occur to you at the hotel that you might pawn these studs, or the flask, or the clothing for more than a hundred, let me remind you that my chauffeur will be watching one entrance, my valet another, and my chef another."
The dummy-chucker returned his gaze scornfully.
"Do I look," he asked, "like the sort of man who'dsteal?"
His host shook his head.
"You certainly don't," he admitted.
The dummy-chucker turned back to the mirror. He was still entranced with his own reflection, twenty minutes later, when the valet told him that the car was waiting. He looked like a millionaire. He stole another glance at himself after he had slipped easily into the fur-lined overcoat that the valet held for him, after he had set somewhat rakishly upon his head the soft black-felt hat that was the latest accompaniment to the dinner coat.
Down-stairs, he spoke to Andrews, the chauffeur.
"Drive across the Fifty-ninth Street bridge first."
The chauffeur stared at him.
"Who you given' orders to?" he demanded.
The dummy-chucker stepped closer to the man.
"You heard my order?"
His hands, busily engaged in buttoning his gloves, did not clench. His voice was not raised. And Andrews must have outweighed him by thirty pounds. Yet the chauffeur stepped back and touched his hat.
"Yes, sir," he muttered.
The dummy-chucker smiled.
"The lower classes," he said to himself, "know rank and position when they see it."
His smile became a grin as he sank back in the limousine that was his host's evening conveyance. It became almost complacent as the car slid down Park Avenue. And when, at length, it had reached the center of the great bridge that spans the East River, he knocked upon the glass. The chauffeur obediently stopped the car. The dummy-chucker's grin was absolutely complacent now.
Down below, there gleamed lights, the lights of ferries, of sound steamers, and—of Blackwell's Island. This morning, he had left there, a lying mendicant. To-night, he was a gentleman. He knocked again upon the glass. Then, observing the speaking-tube, he said through it languidly:
"The Park Square, Andrews."
An obsequious doorman threw open the limousine door as the car stopped before the great hotel. He handed the dummy-chucker a ticket.
"Number of your car, sir," he said obsequiously.
"Ah, yes, of course," said the dummy-chucker. He felt in his pocket. Part of the silver that the soft-hearted women of the movies had bestowed upon him this afternoon found repository in the doorman's hand.
A uniformed boy whirled the revolving door that the dummy-chucker might pass into the hotel.
"The coat-room? Dining here, sir? Past the news-stand, sir, to your left. Thank you, sir." The boy's bow was as profound as though the quarter in his palm had been placed there by a duke.
The girl who received his coat and hat smiled as pleasantly and impersonally upon the dummy-chucker as she did upon the whiskered, fine-looking old gentleman who handed her his coat at the same time. She called the dummy-chucker's attention to the fact that his tie was a trifle loose.
The dummy-chucker walked to the big mirror that stands in the corner made by the corridor that parallels Fifty-ninth Street and the corridor that separates the tea-room from the dining-room. His clumsy fingers found difficulty with the tie. The fine-looking old gentleman, adjusting his own tie, stepped closer.
"Beg pardon, sir. May I assist you?"
The dummy-chucker smiled a grateful assent. The old gentleman fumbled a moment with the tie.
"I think that's better," he said. He bowed as one man of the world might to another, and turned away.
Under his breath, the dummy-chucker swore gently.
"You'd think, the way he helped me, that I belonged to the Four Hundred."
He glanced down the corridor. In the tea-room were sitting groups who awaited late arrivals. Beautiful women, correctly garbed, distinguished-looking men. Their laughter sounded pleasantly above the subdued strains of the orchestra. Many of them looked at the dummy-chucker. Their eyes rested upon him for that well-bred moment that denotes acceptance.
"One of themselves," said the dummy-chucker to himself.
Well, why not? Once again he looked at himself in the mirror. There might be handsomer men present in this hotel, but—was there any one who wore his clothes better? He turned and walked down the corridor.
Themâitre d'hôtelstepped forward inquiringly as the dummy-chucker hesitated in the doorway.
"A table, sir?"
"You have one reserved for me. This right-hand one by the door."
"Ah, yes, of course, sir. This way, sir."
He turned toward the table. Over the heads of intervening diners, the dummy-chucker saw his host. The shaded lights upon the table at which the young man sat revealed, not too clearly yet well enough, the features of a girl.
"A lady!" said the dummy-chucker, under his breath. "The real thing!"
As he stood there, the girl raised her head. She did not look toward the dummy-chucker, could not see him. But he could see the proud line of her throat, the glory of her golden hair. And opposite her he could see the features of his host, could note how illy that shrewd nose and slit of a mouth consorted with the gentle face of the girl. And then, as themâitre d'hôtelbeckoned, he remembered that he had left the flask, the monogrammed flask, in his overcoat pocket.
"Just a moment," he said.
He turned and walked back toward the corner where was his coat. In the distance, he saw some one, approaching him, noted the free stride, the carriage of the head, the set of the shoulders. And then, suddenly, he saw that the "some one" was himself. The mirror was guilty of the illusion.
Once again he stood before it, admiring himself. He summoned the face of the girl who was sitting in the dining-room before his mental vision. And then he turned abruptly to the check-girl.
"I've changed my mind," he said. "My coat, please."
He was lounging before the open fire when three-quarters of an hour later his host was admitted to the luxurious apartment. Savagely the young man pulled off his coat and approached the dummy-chucker.
"I hardly expected to find you here," he said.
The dummy-chucker shrugged.
"You said the doors were watched. I couldn't make an easy getaway. So I rode back here in your car. And when I got here, your man made me wait, so—here we are," he finished easily.
"'Here we are!' Yes! But when you were there—I saw you at the entrance to the dining-room—for God's sake, why didn't you do what you'd agreed to do?"
The dummy-chucker turned languidly in his chair. He eyed his host curiously.
"Listen, feller," he said: "I told you that I drew the line at murder, didn't I?"
"'Murder?' What do you mean? What murder was involved?"
The dummy-chucker idly blew a smoke ring.
"Murder of faith in a woman's heart," he said slowly. "Look at me! Do I look the sort who'd play your dirty game?"
The young man stood over him.
"Bannon," he called. The valet entered the room. "Take the clothes off this—this bum!" snapped the host. "Give him his rags."
He clenched his fists, but the dummy-chucker merely shrugged. The young man drew back while his guest followed the valet into another room.
Ten minutes later, the host seized the dummy-chucker by the tattered sleeve of his grimy jacket. He drew him before the mirror.
"Take a look at yourself, you—bum!" he snapped. "Do you look, now, like the sort of man who'd refuse to earn an easy hundred?"
The dummy-chucker stared at himself. Gone was the debonair gentleman of a quarter of an hour ago. Instead, there leered back at him a pasty-faced, underfed vagrant, dressed in the tatters of unambitious, satisfied poverty.
"Bannon," called the host, "throw him out!"
For a moment, the dummy-chucker's shoulders squared, as they had been squared when the dinner jacket draped them. Then they sagged. He offered no resistance when Bannon seized his collar. And Bannon, the valet, was a smaller man than himself.
He cringed when the colored elevator-man sneered at him. He dodged when little Bannon, in the mirrored vestibule raised a threatening hand. And he shuffled as he turned toward Central Park.
But as he neared Columbus Circle, his gait quickened. At Finisterre Joe's he'd get a drink. He tumbled in his pockets. Curse the luck! He'd given every cent of his afternoon earnings to doormen and pages and coat-room girls!
His pace slackened again as he turned down Broadway. His feet were dragging as he reached the Concorde moving-picture theater. His hand, sunk deep in his torn pocket, touched something. It was a tiny piece of soap.
As the audience filed sadly out from the teary, gripping drama of "She Loved And Lost," the dummy-chucker's hand went from his pocket to his lips. He reeled, staggered, fell. His jaws moved savagely. Foam appeared upon his lips. A fat woman shrank away from him, then leaned forward in quick sympathy.
"He's gotta fit!" she cried.
"Ep'lepsy," said her companion pityingly.