Third Section (continued 3)

“We was goin to play injuns, but now I guess we’ll play tramps,” said Joe warming up a little. The tramp brought a newspaper package out of the formless pocket of his weathergreened coat and began unwrapping it carefully. A good smell began to come from the sizzling ham. Skinny sat down again, still keeping as far away as he could without missing anything. The tramp divided up his chicken and they began to eat together.

“Gabriel old scout will you just look at that?” The tramp started his singsong shouting that made the boys feel scared again. It was beginning to get dark. The tramp was shouting with his mouth full pointing with a drumstick towards the flickering checkerboard of lights going on up Riverside Drive. “Juss set here a minute an look at her Gabriel.... Look at the old bitch if you’ll pardon the expression. Earthquake insurance, gosh they need it dont they? Do you know how long God took to destroy the tower of Babel, folks?

“Joseph Cameron Parker.... We live in Union.”

“An what’s yours?”

“Antonio Camerone ... de guys call me Skinny. Dis guy’s my cousin. His folks dey changed deir name to Parker, see?”

“Changing your name wont do no good ... they got all the aliases down in the judgment book.... And verily I say unto you the Lord’s day is at hand.... It was only yesterday that Gabriel says to me ‘Well Jonah, shall we let her rip?’ an I says to him, ‘Gabriel ole scout think of the women and children an the little babies that dont know no better. If you shake it down with an earthquake an fire an brimstone from heaven they’ll all be killed same as the rich people an sinners,’ and he says to me, ‘All right Jonah old horse, have it your own way.... We wont foreclose on em for a week or two.’ ... But it’s terrible to think of, folks, the fire an brimstone an the earthquake an the tidal wave an the tall buildins crashing together.”

Joe suddenly slapped Skinny on the back. “You’re it,” he said and ran off. Skinny followed him stumbling along the narrow path among the bushes. He caught up to him on the asphalt. “Jez, that guy’s nuts,” he called.

“Shut up cant ye?” snapped Joe. He was peering back through the bushes. They could still see the thin smoke of their little fire against the sky. The tramp was out of sight. They could just hear his voice calling, “Gabriel, Gabriel.” They ran on breathless towards the regularly spaced safe arclights and the street.

Jimmy Herf stepped out from in front of the truck; the mudguard just grazed the skirt of his raincoat. He stood a moment behind an L stanchion while the icicle thawed out of his spine. The door of a limousine suddenly opened in front of him and he heard a familiar voice that he couldnt place.

“Jump in Meester ’Erf.... Can I take you somewhere?” As he stepped in mechanically he noticed that he was stepping into a Rolls-Royce.

The stout redfaced man in a derby hat was Congo. “Sit down Meester ’Erf.... Very pleas’ to see you. Where were you going?”

“I wasnt going anywhere in particular.” “Come up to the house, I want to show you someting. Ow are you today?”

“Oh fine; no I mean I’m in a rotten mess, but it’s all the same.”

“Tomorrow maybe I go to jail ... six mont’ ... but maybe not.” Congo laughed in his throat and straightened carefully his artificial leg.

“So they’ve nailed you at last, Congo?”

“Conspiracy.... But no more Congo Jake, Meester ’Erf. Call me Armand. I’m married now; Armand Duval, Park Avenue.”

“How about the Marquis des Coulommiers?”

“That’s just for the trade.”

“So things look pretty good do they?”

Congo nodded. “If I go to Atlanta which I ’ope not, in six mont’ I come out of jail a millionaire.... Meester ’Erf if you need money, juss say the word.... I lend you tousand dollars. In five years even you pay it back. I know you.”

“Thanks, it’s not exactly money I need, that’s the hell of it.”

“How’s your wife?... She’s so beautiful.”

“We’re getting a divorce.... She served the papers on me this morning.... That’s all I was waiting in this goddam town for.”

Congo bit his lips. Then he tapped Jimmy gently on the knee with his forefinger. “In a minute we’ll get to the ’ouse.... I give you one very good drink.” ... “Yes wait”, Congo shouted to the chauffeur as he walked with a stately limp, leaning on a goldknobbed cane, into the streaky marble hallway of the apartmenthouse. As they went up in the elevator he said, “Maybe you stay to dinner.” “I’m afraid I cant tonight, Con ... Armand.”

“I have one very good cook.... When I first come to New York maybe twenty years ago, there was a feller on the boat.... This is the door, see A. D., Armand Duval. Him and me ran away togedder an always he say to me, ‘Armand you never make a success, too lazy, run after the leetle girls too much....’ Now he’s my cook ... first class chef, cordon bleu, eh? Life is one funny ting, Meester ’Erf.”

“Gee this is fine,” said Jimmy Herf leaning back in a highbacked Spanish chair in the blackwalnut library with a glass of old Bourbon in his hand. “Congo ... I mean Armand, if I’d been God and had to decide who in this city should make a million dollars and who shouldnt I swear you’re the man I should have picked.”

“Maybe by and by the misses come in. Very pretty I show you.” He made curly motions with his fingers round his head. “Very much blond hair.” Suddenly he frowned. “But Meester ’Erf, if dere is anyting any time I can do for you, money or like dat, you let me know eh? It’s ten years now you and me very good frien.... One more drink?”

On his third glass of Bourbon Herf began to talk. Congo sat listening with his heavy lips a little open, occasionally nodding his head. “The difference between you and me is that you’re going up in the social scale, Armand, and I’m going down.... When you were a messboy on a steamboat I was a horrid little chalkyfaced kid living at the Ritz. My mother and father did all this Vermont marble blackwalnut grand Babylonian stuff ... there’s nothing more for me to do about it.... Women are like rats, you know, they leave a sinking ship. She’s going to marry this man Baldwin

“Looks like,” said Congo filling the little glasses again with a slow smile, “Meester ’Erf you tink too much.”

“Of course I do Congo, of course I do, but what the hell am I going to do about it?”

“Well when you need a little money remember Armand Duval.... Want a chaser?”

Herf shook his head. “I’ve got to chase myself.... So long Armand.”

In the colonnaded marble hall he ran into Nevada Jones. She was wearing orchids. “Hullo Nevada, what are you doing in this palace of sin?”

“I live here, what do you think?... I married a friend of yours the other day, Armand Duval. Want to come up and see him?”

“Just been.... He’s a good scout.”

“He sure is.”

“What did you do with little Tony Hunter?”

She came close to him and spoke in a low voice. “Just forget about me and him will you?... Gawd the boy’s breath’d knock you down.... Tony’s one of God’s mistakes, I’m through with him.... Found him chewing the edges of the rug rolling on the floor of the dressing room one day because he was afraid he was going to be unfaithful

“I cant. Good luck Nevada.” The whisky warm in his stomach, tingling in his fingers, Jimmy Herf stepped out into seven o’clock Park Avenue, whirring with taxicabs, streaked with smells of gasoline and restaurants and twilight.

It was the first evening James Merivale had gone to the Metropolitan Club since he had been put up for it; he had been afraid, that like carrying a cane, it was a little old for him. He sat in a deep leather chair by a window smoking a thirtyfive cent cigar with the Wall Street Journal on his knee and a copy of the Cosmopolitan leaning against his right thigh and, with his eyes on the night flawed with lights like a crystal, he abandoned himself to reverie: Economic Depression.... Ten million dollars.... After the war slump. Some smash I’ll tell the world. BLACKHEAD & DENSCH FAIL FOR $10,000,000.... Densch left the country some days ago.... Blackhead incommunicado in his home at Great Neck. One of the oldest and most respected import and export firms in New York, $10,000,000. O it’s always fair weather When good fellows get together. That’s the thing about banking. Even in a deficit there’s money to be handled, collateral. These commercial propositions always entail a margin of risk. We get ’em coming or else we get ’em going, eh Merivale? That’s what old Perkins said when Cunningham mixed him that Jack Rose.... With a stein on the tabul And a good song ri-i-inging clear. Good connection that feller. Maisie knew what she was doing after all.... A man in a position like that’s always likely to be blackmailed. A fool not to prosecute.... Girl’s crazy he O Sinbad was in bad in Tokio and Rome ... that’s what Jerry used to sing. Poor old Jerry never had the feeling of being in good right in on the ground floor of the Metropolitan Club.... Comes of poor stock. Take Jimmy now ... hasnt even that excuse, an out and out failure, a misfit from way back.... Guess old man Herf was pretty wild, a yachtsman. Used to hear mother say Aunt Lily had to put up with a whole lot. Still he might have made something of himself with all his advantages ... dreamer, wanderlust ... Greenwich Village stuff. And dad did every bit as much for him as he did for me.... And this divorce now. Adultery ... with a prostitute like as not. Probably had syphilis or something. Ten Million Dollar Failure.

Failure. Success.

Ten Million Dollar Success.... Ten Years of Successful Banking.... At the dinner of the American Bankers Association last night James Merivale, president of the Bank & Trust Company, spoke in answer to the toast ‘Ten Years of Progressive Banking.’ ... Reminds me gentlemen of the old darky who was very fond of chicken.... But if you will allow me a few serious words on this festive occasion (flashlight photograph) there is a warning note I should like to sound ... feel it my duty as an American citizen, as president of a great institution of nationwide, international in the better sense, nay, universal contacts and loyalties (flashlight photograph).... At last making himself heard above the thunderous applause James Merivale, his stately steelgray head shaking with emotion, continued his speech.... Gentlemen you do me too much honor.... Let me only add that in all trials and tribulations, becalmed amid the dark waters of scorn or spurning the swift rapids of popular estimation, amid the still small hours of the night, and in the roar of millions at noonday, my staff, my bread of life, my

The long ash from his cigar had broken and fallen on his knees. James Merivale got to his feet and gravely brushed the light ash off his trousers. Then he settled down again and with an intent frown began to read the article on Foreign Exchange in the Wall Street Journal.

They sit up on two stools in the lunchwaggon.

“Say kid how the hell did you come to sign up on that old scow?”

“Wasnt anything else going out east.”

“Well you sure have dished your gravy this time kid, cap’n ’s a dopehead, first officer’s the damnedest crook out o Sing Sing, crew’s a lot o bohunks, the ole tub aint worth the salvage of her.... What was your last job?”

“Night clerk in a hotel.”

“Listen to that cookey ... Jesus Kerist Amighty look at a guy who’ll give up a good job clerkin in a swell hotel in Noo York City to sign on as messboy on Davy Jones’ own steam yacht.... A fine seacook you’re goin to make.” The younger man is flushing. “How about that Hamburgher?” he shouts at the counterman.

After they have eaten, while they are finishing their coffee, he turns to his friend and asks in a low voice, “Say Rooney was you ever overseas ... in the war?”

“I made Saint Nazaire a couple o times. Why?”

“I dunno.... It kinder gave me the itch.... I was two years in it. Things aint been the same. I used to think all I wanted was to get a good job an marry an settle down, an now I dont give a damn.... I can keep a job for six months or so an then I get the almighty itch, see? So I thought I ought to see the orient a bit....”

“Never you mind,” says Rooney shaking his head. “You’re goin to see it, dont you worry about that.”

“What’s the damage?” the young man asks the counterman.

“They must a caught you young.”

“I was sixteen when I enlisted.” He picks up his change and follows Rooney’s broad shambling back into the street. At the end of the street, beyond trucks and the roofs of warehouses, he can see masts and the smoke of steamers and white steam rising into the sunlight.

“Pull down the shade,” comes the man’s voice from the bed.

“I cant, it’s busted.... Oh hell, here’s the whole business down.” Anna almost bursts out crying when the roll hits her in the face, “You fix it,” she says going towards the bed.

“What do I care, they cant see in,” says the man catching hold of her laughing.

“It’s just those lights,” she moans, wearily letting herself go limp in his arms.

It is a small room the shape of a shoebox with an iron bed in the corner of the wall opposite the window. A roar of streets rises to it rattling up a V shaped recess in the building. On the ceiling she can see the changing glow of electric signs along Broadway, white, red, green, then a jumble like a bubble bursting, and again white, red, green.

“Oh Dick I wish you’d fix that shade, those lights give me the willies.”

“The lights are all right Anna, it’s like bein in a theater.... It’s the Gay White Way, like they used to say.”

“That stuff’s all right for you out of town fellers, but it gives me the willies.”

“So you’re workin for Madame Soubrine now are you Anna?”

“You mean I’m scabbin.... I know it. The old woman trew me out an it was get a job or croak....”

“A nice girl like you Anna could always find a boyfriend.”

“God you buyers are a dirty lot.... You think that because I’ll go with you, I’d go wid anybody.... Well I wouldnt, do you get that?”

“I didnt mean that Anna.... Gee you’re awful quick tonight.”

“I guess it’s my nerves.... This strike an the old woman trowin me out an scabbin up at Soubrine’s ... it’d get anybody’s goat. They can all go to hell for all I care. Why wont they leave you alone? I never did nothin to hurt anybody in my life. All I want is for em to leave me alone an let me get my pay an have a good time now and then.... God Dick it’s terrible.... I dont dare go out on the street for fear of meetin some of the girls of my old local.”

“Hell Anna, things aint so bad, honest I’d take you West with me if it wasnt for my wife.”

Anna’s voice goes on in an even whimper, “An now ’cause I take a shine to you and want to give you a good time you call me a goddam whore.”

“I didnt say no such thing. I didnt even think it. All I thought was that you was a dead game sport and not a kewpie above the ears like most of ’em.... Look if it’ll make ye feel better I’ll try an fix that shade.”

Lying on her side she watches his heavy body move against the milky light of the window. At last his teeth chattering he comes back to her. “I cant fix the goddam thing.... Kerist it’s cold.”

“Never mind Dick, come on to bed.... It must be late. I got to be up there at eight.”

He pulls his watch from under the pillow. “It’s half after two.... Hello kitten.”

On the ceiling she can see reflected the changing glare of the electric signs, white, red, green, then a jumble like a bubble bursting, then again white, green, red.

“An he didn’t even invite me to the wedding.... Honestly Florence I could have forgiven him if he’d invited me to the wedding,” she said to the colored maid when she brought in the coffee. It was a Sunday morning. She was sitting up in bed with the papers spread over her lap. She

“He su’ is miss.... But wasn’t there anything you could do to stop ’em, miss?”

“Not a thing.... You see he said he’d have me committed to an asylum if I tried.... He knows perfectly well a Yucatan divorce isn’t legal.”

Florence sighed.

“Menfolks su’ do dirt to us poor girls.”

“Oh this wont last long. You can see by her face she’s a nasty selfish spoiled little girl.... And I’m his real wife before God and man. Lord knows I tried to warn her. Whom God has joined let no man put asunder ... that’s in the Bible isnt it?... Florence this coffee is simply terrible this morning. I cant drink it. You go right out and make me some fresh.”

Frowning and hunching her shoulders Florence went out the door with the tray.

Mrs. Cunningham heaved a deep sigh and settled herself among the pillows. Outside churchbells were ringing. “Oh Jack you darling I love you just the same,” she said to the picture. Then she kissed it. “Listen, deary the churchbells sounded like that the day we ran away from the High School Prom and got married in Milwaukee.... It was a lovely Sunday morning.” Then she stared in the face of the second Mrs. Cunningham. “Oh you,” she said and poked her finger through it.

When she got to her feet she found that the courtroom was very slowly sickeningly going round and round; the white fishfaced judge with noseglasses, faces, cops, uniformed attendants, gray windows, yellow desks, all going round and round in the sickening close smell, her lawyer with his white hawk nose, wiping his bald head, frowning, going round and

“... And now as a man and a citizen of this great city I want to say a few words to the defendants. Briefly this sort of thing has got to stop. The unalienable rights of human life and property the great men who founded this republic laid down in the constitootion have got to be reinstated. It is the dooty of every man in office and out of office to combat this wave of lawlessness by every means in his power. Therefore in spite of what those sentimental newspaper writers who corrupt the public mind and put into the head of weaklings and misfits of your sort the idea that you can buck the law of God and man, and private property, that you can wrench by force from peaceful citizens what they have earned by hard work and brains ... and get away with it; in spite of what these journalistic hacks and quacks would call extentuating circumstances I am going to impose on you two highwaymen the maximum severity of the law. It is high time an example was made....”

The judge took a drink of water. Francie could see the little beads of sweat standing out from the pores of his nose.

“It is high time an example was made,” the judge shouted. “Not that I dont feel as a tender and loving father the misfortunes, the lack of education and ideels, the lack of a loving home and tender care of a mother that has led this young woman into a life of immorality and misery, led away by the temptations of cruel and voracious men and the excitement and wickedness of what has been too well named, the jazz age. Yet at the moment when these thoughts are about to temper with mercy the stern anger of the law, the importunate recollection rises of other young girls, perhaps hundreds of them at this moment in this great city about to fall

Francie felt a cold tingling that began at her fingertips and ran up her arms into the blurred whirling nausea of her body. “Twenty years,” she could hear the whisper round the court, they all seemed licking their lips whispering softly “Twenty years.” “I guess I’m going to faint,” she said to herself as if to a friend. Everything went crashing black.

Propped with five pillows in the middle of his wide colonial mahogany bed with pineapples on the posts Phineas P. Blackhead his face purple as his silk dressing gown sat up and cursed. The big mahogany-finished bedroom hung with Javanese print cloth instead of wallpaper was empty except for a Hindu servant in a white jacket and turban who stood at the foot of the bed, with his hands at his sides, now and then bowing his head at a louder gust of cursing and saying “Yes, Sahib, yes, Sahib.”

“By the living almighty Jingo you goddam yellow Babu bring me that whiskey, or I’ll get up and break every bone in your body, do you hear, Jesus God cant I be obeyed in my own house? When I say whiskey I mean rye not orange juice. Damnation. Here take it!” He picked up a cutglass pitcher off the nighttable and slung it at the Hindu. Then he sank back on the pillows, saliva bubbling on his lips, choking for breath.

Silently the Hindu mopped up the thick Beluchistan rug and slunk out of the room with a pile of broken glass in his hand. Blackhead was breathing more easily, his eyes sank into their deep sockets and were lost in the folds of sagged green lids.

He seemed asleep when Gladys came in wearing a raincoat with a wet umbrella in her hand. She tiptoed to the window and stood looking out at the gray rainy street and the old tomblike brownstone houses opposite. For a splinter of a second she was a little girl come in her nightgown to have Sunday morning breakfast with daddy in his big bed.

He woke up with a start, looked about him with bloodshot eyes, the heavy muscles of his jowl tightening under the ghastly purplish skin.

“Well Gladys where’s that rye whiskey I ordered?”

“Oh daddy you know what Dr. Thom said.”

“He said it’d kill me if I took another drink.... Well I’m not dead yet am I? He’s a damned ass.”

“Oh but you must take care of yourself and not get all excited.” She kissed him and put a cool slim hand on his forehead.

“Havent I got reason to get excited? If I had my hands on that dirty lilylivered bastard’s neck.... We’d have pulled through if he hadnt lost his nerve. Serve me right for taking such a yellow sop into partnership.... Twentyfive, thirty years of work all gone to hell in ten minutes.... For twentyfive years my word’s been as good as a banknote. Best thing for me to do’s to follow the firm to Tophet, to hell with me. And by the living Jingo you, my own flesh, tell me not to drink.... God almighty. Hay Bob.... Bob.... Where’s that goddam officeboy gone? Hay come here one of you sons of bitches, what do you think I pay you for?”

A nurse put her head in the door.

“Get out of here,” shouted Blackhead, “none of your starched virgins around me.” He threw the pillow from under his head. The nurse disappeared. The pillow hit one of the posts and bounced back on the bed. Gladys began to cry.

“Oh daddy I cant stand it ... and everybody always respected you so.... Do try to control yourself, daddy dear.”

“And why should I for Christ’s sake...? Show’s over,

He began to laugh deliriously, then he was choking, fighting for breath with clenched fists again. At length he said in a broken voice, “Don’t you see that it’s only the whiskey that was keeping me going? Go away and leave me Gladys and send that damned Hindu to me. I’ve always liked you better than anything in the world.... You know that. Quick tell him to bring me what I ordered.”

Gladys went out crying. Outside her husband was pacing up and down the hall. “It’s those damned reporters ... I dont know what to tell ’em. They say the creditors want to prosecute.”

“Mrs. Gaston,” interrupted the nurse, “I’m afraid you’ll have to get male nurses.... Really I cant do anything with him....” On the lower floor a telephone was ringing, ringing.

When the Hindu brought the bottle of whiskey Blackhead filled a highball glass and took a deep gulp of it.

“Ah that makes you feel better, by the living Jingo it does. Achmet you’re a good fellow.... Well I guess we’ll have to face the music and sell out.... Thank God Gladys is settled. I’ll sell out every goddam thing I’ve got. I wish that precious son-in-law wasnt such a simp. Always my luck to be surrounded by a lot of capons.... By gad I’d just as soon go to jail if it’ll do em any good; why not? it’s all in a lifetime. And afterwards when I come out I’ll get a job as a bargeman or watchman on a wharf. I’d like that. Why not take it easy after tearing things up all my life, eh Achmet?”

“Yes Sahib,” said the Hindu with a bow.

Blackhead mimicked him, “Yes Sahib.... You always say yes, Achmet, isn’t that funny?” He began to laugh with a choked rattling laugh. “I guess that’s the easiest way.” He laughed and laughed, then suddenly he couldnt laugh any more. A perking spasm went through all his limbs. He twisted his mouth in an effort to speak. For a second his

“Oh Achmet I’m so glad,” she said and looked back to her magazine.

Ellen got off the bus at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fiftythird Street. Rosy twilight was gushing out of the brilliant west, glittered in brass and nickel, on buttons, in people’s eyes. All the windows on the east side of the avenue were aflame. As she stood with set teeth on the curb waiting to cross, a frail tendril of fragrance brushed her face. A skinny lad with towhair stringy under a foreignlooking cap was offering her arbutus in a basket. She bought a bunch and pressed her nose in it. May woods melted like sugar against her palate.

The whistle blew, gears ground as cars started to pour out of the side streets, the crossing thronged with people. Ellen felt the lad brush against her as he crossed at her side. She shrank away. Through the smell of the arbutus she caught for a second the unwashed smell of his body, the smell of immigrants, of Ellis Island, of crowded tenements. Under all the nickelplated, goldplated streets enameled with May, uneasily she could feel the huddling smell, spreading in dark slow crouching masses like corruption oozing from broken sewers, like a mob. She walked briskly down the cross-street. She went in a door beside a small immaculately polished brass plate.

Madame Soubrine ROBES

She forgot everything in the catlike smile of Madame Soubrine herself, a stout blackhaired perhaps Russian woman who came out to her from behind a curtain with outstretched arms, while other customers waiting on sofas in a sort of Empress Josephine parlor, looked on enviously.

“My dear Mrs. Herf, where have you been? We’ve had your dress for a week,” she exclaimed in too perfect English. “Ah my dear, you wait ... it’s magnificent.... And how is Mr. Harrpiscourt?”

“I’ve been very busy.... You see I’m giving up my job.”

Madame Soubrine nodded and blinked knowingly and led the way through the tapestry curtains into the back of the shop.

“Ah ça se voit.... Il ne faut pas trravailler, on peut voir dejà des toutes petites rrides. Mais ils dispareaitront. Forgive me, dear.” The thick arm round her waist squeezed her. Ellen edged off a little.... “Vous la femme la plus belle de New Yorrk.... Angelica Mrs. Herf’s evening dress,” she shouted in a shrill grating voice like a guineahen’s.

A hollowcheeked washedout blond girl came in with the dress on a hanger. Ellen slipped off her gray tailored walkingsuit. Madame Soubrine circled round her, purring. “Angelica look at those shoulders, the color of the hair.... Ah c’est le rêve,” edging a little too near like a cat that wants its back rubbed. The dress was pale green with a slash of scarlet and dark blue.

“This is the last time I have a dress like this, I’m sick of always wearing blue and green....” Madame Soubrine, her mouth full of pins, was at her feet, fussing with the hem.

“Perfect Greek simplicity, wellgirdled like Diana.... Spiritual with Spring ... the ultimate restraint of an Annette Kellermann, holding up the lamp of liberty, the wise virgin,” she was muttering through her pins.

She’s right, Ellen was thinking, I am getting a hard look.

“Regardez-moi ça, cherrie;” said the dressmaker getting to her feet and taking the pins out of her mouth “C’est le chef-dœuvre de la maison Soubrine.”

Ellen suddenly felt hot, tangled in some prickly web, a horrible stuffiness of dyed silks and crêpes and muslins was making her head ache; she was anxious to be out on the street again.

“I smell smoke, there’s something the matter,” the blond girl suddenly cried out. “Sh-sh-sh,” hissed Madame Soubrine. They both disappeared through a mirrorcovered door.

Under a skylight in the back room of Soubrine’s Anna Cohen sits sewing the trimming on a dress with swift tiny stitches. On the table in front of her a great pile of tulle rises full of light like beaten white of egg. Charley my boy, Oh Charley my boy, she hums, stitching the future with swift tiny stitches. If Elmer wants to marry me we might as well; poor Elmer, he’s a nice boy but so dreamy. Funny he’d fall for a girl like me. He’ll grow out of it, or maybe in the Revolution, he’ll be a great man.... Have to cut out parties when I’m Elmer’s wife. But maybe we can save up money and open a little store on Avenue A in a good location, make better money there than uptown. La Parisienne, Modes.

I bet I could do as good as that old bitch. If you was your own boss there wouldn’t be this fightin about strikers and scabs.... Equal Opportunity for All. Elmer says that’s all applesauce. No hope for the workers but in the Revolution. Oh I’m juss wild about Harree, And Harry’s juss wild about me.... Elmer in a telephone central in a dinnercoat, with eartabs, tall as Valentino, strong as Doug. The Revolution is declared. The Red Guard is marching up Fifth Avenue. Anna in golden curls with a little kitten under her arm leans with him out of the tallest window. White tumbler pigeons flutter against the city below them. Fifth Avenue bleeding red flags, glittering with marching ELMER DUSKIN FOR MAYOR. And they’re dancing the Charleston in all the officebuildings.... Thump. Thump. That Charleston dance.... Thump. Thump.... Perhaps I do love him. Elmer take me. Elmer, loving as Valentino, crushing me to him with Doug-strong arms, hot as flame, Elmer.

Through the dream she is stitching white fingers beckon. The white tulle shines too bright. Red hands clutch suddenly out of the tulle, she cant fight off the red tulle all round her biting into her, coiled about her head. The skylight’s blackened with swirling smoke. The room’s full of smoke and screaming. Anna is on her feet whirling round fighting with her hands the burning tulle all round her.

Ellen stands looking at herself in the pierglass in the fitting room. The smell of singed fabrics gets stronger. After walking to and fro nervously a little while she goes through the glass door, down a passage hung with dresses, ducks under a cloud of smoke, and sees through streaming eyes the big workroom, screaming girls huddling behind Madame Soubrine, who is pointing a chemical extinguisher at charred piles of goods about a table. They are picking something moaning out of the charred goods. Out of the corner of her eye she sees an arm in shreds, a seared black red face, a horrible naked head.

“Oh Mrs. Herf, please tell them in front it’s nothing, absolutely nothing.... I’ll be there at once,” Madame Soubrine shrieks breathlessly at her. Ellen runs with closed eyes through the smokefilled corridor into the clean air of the fitting room, then, when her eyes have stopped running, she goes through the curtains to the agitated women in the waiting room.

“Madame Soubrine asked me to tell everybody it was nothing, absolutely nothing. Just a little blaze in a pile of rubbish.... She put it out herself with an extinguisher.”

“Nothing, absolutely nothing,” the women say one to another settling back onto the Empress Josephine sofas.

Ellen goes out to the street. The fireengines are arriving. Policemen are beating back the crowds. She wants to go away but she cant, she’s waiting for something. At last she hears it tinkling down the street. As the fireengines go clanging away, the ambulance drives up. Attendants carry in the folded stretcher. Ellen can hardly breathe. She stands beside the ambulance behind a broad blue policeman. She tries to puzzle out why she is so moved; it is as if some part of her were going to be wrapped in bandages, carried away on a stretcher. Too soon it comes out, between the routine faces, the dark uniforms of the attendants.

“Was she terribly burned?” somehow she manages to ask under the policeman’s arm.

“She wont die ... but it’s tough on a girl.” Ellen elbows her way through the crowd and hurries towards Fifth Avenue. It’s almost dark. Lights swim brightly in night clear blue like the deep sea.

Why should I be so excited? she keeps asking herself. Just somebody’s bad luck, the sort of thing that happens every day. The moaning turmoil and the clanging of the fireengines wont seem to fade away inside her. She stands irresolutely on a corner while cars, faces, flicker clatteringly past her. A young man in a new straw hat is looking at her out of the corners of his eyes, trying to pick her up. She stares him blankly in the face. He has on a red, green, and blue striped necktie. She walks past him fast, crosses to the other side of the avenue, and turns uptown. Seven thirty. She’s got to meet some one somewhere, she cant think where. There’s a horrible tired blankness inside her. O dear what shall I do? she whimpers to herself. At the next corner she hails a taxi. “Go to the Algonquin please.”

She remembers it all now, at eight o’clock she’s going to have dinner with Judge Shammeyer and his wife. Ought to have gone home to dress. George’ll be mad when he sees me come breezing in like this. Likes to show me off all dressed up like a Christmas tree, like an Effenbee walking talking doll, damn him.

She sits back in the corner of the taxi with her eyes

When the taxi stops and the tall doorman opens the door, she steps out with dancing pointed girlish steps, pays, and turns, her cheeks a little flushed, her eyes sparkling with the glinting seablue night of deep streets, into the revolving doors.

As she goes through the shining soundless revolving doors, that spin before her gloved hand touches the glass, there shoots through her a sudden pang of something forgotten. Gloves, purse, vanity case, handkerchief, I have them all. Didn’t have an umbrella. What did I forget in the taxicab? But already she is advancing smiling towards two gray men in black with white shirtfronts getting to their feet, smiling, holding out their hands.

Bob Hildebrand in dressing gown and pyjamas walked up and down in front of the long windows smoking a pipe. Through the sliding doors into the front came a sound of glasses tinkling and shuffling feet and laughing and Running Wild grating hazily out of a blunt needle on the phonograph.

“Why dont you park here for the night?” Hildebrand was

“No thanks,” said Jimmy. “They’ll start talking psychoanalysis in a minute and they’ll be here till dawn.”

“But you’d much better take a morning train.”

“I’m not going to take any kind of a train.”

“Say Herf did you read about the man in Philadelphia who was killed because he wore his straw hat on the fourteenth of May?”

“By God if I was starting a new religion he’d be made a saint.”

“Didnt you read about it? It was funny as a crutch.... This man had the temerity to defend his straw hat. Somebody had busted it and he started to fight, and in the middle of it one of these streetcorner heroes came up behind him and brained him with a piece of lead pipe. They picked him up with a cracked skull and he died in the hospital.”

“Bob what was his name?”

“I didnt notice.”

“Talk about the Unknown Soldier.... That’s a real hero for you; the golden legend of the man who would wear a straw hat out of season.”

A head was stuck between the double doors. A flushfaced man with his hair over his eyes looked in. “Cant I bring you fellers a shot of gin.... Whose funeral is being celebrated anyway?”

“I’m going to bed, no gin for me,” said Hildebrand grouchily.

“It’s the funeral of Saint Aloysius of Philadelphia, virgin and martyr, the man who would wear a straw hat out of season,” said Herf. “I might sniff a little gin. I’ve got to run in a minute.... So long Bob.”

“So long you mysterious traveler.... Let us have your address, do you hear?”

The long front room was full of ginbottles, gingerale bottles, ashtrays crowded with half smoked cigarettes, couples dancing, people sprawled on sofas. Endlessly the phonograph Lady ... lady be good. A glass of gin was pushed into Herf’s hand. A girl came up to him.

“We’ve been talking about you.... Did you know you were a man of mystery?”

“Jimmy,” came a shrill drunken voice, “you’re suspected of being the bobhaired bandit.”

“Why dont you take up a career of crime, Jimmy?” said the girl putting her arm round his waist. “I’ll come to your trial, honest I will.”

“How do you know I’m not?”

“You see,” said Frances Hildebrand, who was bringing a bowl of cracked ice in from the kitchenette, “there is something mysterious going on.”

Herf took the hand of the girl beside him and made her dance with him. She kept stumbling over his feet. He danced her round until he was opposite to the halldoor; he opened the door and foxtrotted her out into the hall. Mechanically she put up her mouth to be kissed. He kissed her quickly and reached for his hat. “Good night,” he said. The girl started to cry.

Out in the street he took a deep breath. He felt happy, much more happy than Greenwich Village kisses. He was reaching for his watch when he remembered he had pawned it.

The golden legend of the man who would wear a straw hat out of season. Jimmy Herf is walking west along Twentythird Street, laughing to himself. Give me liberty, said Patrick Henry, putting on his straw hat on the first of May, or give me death. And he got it. There are no trollycars, occasionally a milkwagon clatters by, the heartbroken brick houses of Chelsea are dark.... A taxi passes trailing a confused noise of singing. At the corner of Ninth Avenue he notices two eyes like holes in a trianglewhite of paper, a woman in a raincoat beckons to him from a doorway. Further on two English sailors are arguing in drunken cockney. The air becomes milky with fog as he nears the river. He can hear the great soft distant lowing of steamboats.

He sits a long time waiting for a ferry in the seedy ruddy-lighted

Before the ferry leaves a horse and wagon comes aboard, a brokendown springwagon loaded with flowers, driven by a little brown man with high cheekbones. Jimmy Herf walks round it; behind the drooping horse with haunches like a hatrack the little warped wagon is unexpectedly merry, stacked with pots of scarlet and pink geraniums, carnations, alyssum, forced roses, blue lobelia. A rich smell of maytime earth comes from it, of wet flowerpots and greenhouses. The driver sits hunched with his hat over his eyes. Jimmy has an impulse to ask him where he is going with all those flowers, but he stifles it and walks to the front of the ferry.

Out of the empty dark fog of the river, the ferryslip yawns all of a sudden, a black mouth with a throat of light. Herf hurries through cavernous gloom and out to a fog-blurred street. Then he is walking up an incline. There are tracks below him and the slow clatter of a freight, the hiss of an engine. At the top of a hill he stops to look back. He can see nothing but fog spaced with a file of blurred

Sunrise finds him walking along a cement road between dumping grounds full of smoking rubbishpiles. The sun shines redly through the mist on rusty donkeyengines, skeleton trucks, wishbones of Fords, shapeless masses of corroding metal. Jimmy walks fast to get out of the smell. He is hungry; his shoes are beginning to raise blisters on his big toes. At a cross-road where the warning light still winks and winks, is a gasoline station, opposite it the Lightning Bug lunchwagon. Carefully he spends his last quarter on breakfast. That leaves him three cents for good luck, or bad for that matter. A huge furniture truck, shiny and yellow, has drawn up outside.

“Say will you give me a lift?” he asks the redhaired man at the wheel.

“How fur ye goin?”

“I dunno.... Pretty far.”

THE END