Manhattan Transfer E-Book

John Dos Passos

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 645

Beschreibung

Manhattan Transfer, considered to be one of Dos Passos' most important works, describes the development of urban life in New York City from the Gilded Age to the Jazz Age as told through a series of overlapping individual stories, primarily, of four people living in Manhattan from the 1890s to the late 1920s. The book attacks the consumerism and social indifference of contemporary urban life, portraying a Manhattan that is merciless yet teeming with energy and restlessness. The book shows some of Dos Passos' experimental writing techniques and narrative collages.

Leseprobe

LUNATA

Manhattan Transfer

John Dos Passos

Manhattan Transfer

© 1925 by John Dos Passos

First Published in 1922

ISBN 9783753497792

Herstellung und Verlag: BoD - Books on Demand, Norderstedt

© Lunata Berlin 2021

Contents

FIRST SECTION

Ferryslip

Metropolis

Dollars

Tracks

Steamroller

SECOND SECTION

Great Lady on a White Horse

Long-Legged Jack of the Isthmus

Nine Days’ Wonder

Fire Engine

Went to the Animals’ Fair

Five Statutory Questions

Rollercoaster

One More River to Jordan

THIRD SECTION

Rejoicing City That Dwelt Carelessly

Nickelodeon

Revolving Doors

Skyscraper

The Burthen of Nineveh

FIRST SECTION

Ferryslip

Three gulls wheel above the broken orange-rinds, spoiled cabbage heads that heave between the splintered plank walls, the green waves spume under the round bow as the ferry, skidding on the tide, crashes, gulps the broken water, slides, settles slowly into the slip. Hand-winches whirl with jingle of chains. Gates fold upwards, feet step out across the crack, men and women press through the manure-smelling wooden tunnel of the ferry house, crushed and jostling like apples fed down a chute into a press.

The nurse, holding the basket at arm’s length as if it were a bedpan, opened the door to a big dry hot room with greenish distempered walls where in the air tinctured with smells of alcohol and iodoform hung writhing a faint sourish squalling from other baskets along the wall. As she set her basket down she glanced into it with pursed-up lips. The newborn baby squirmed in the cotton-wool feebly like a knot of earthworms.

On the ferry there was an old man playing the violin.

He had a monkey’s face puckered up in one corner and kept time with the toe of a cracked patent-leather shoe. Bud Korpenning sat on the rail watching him, his back to the river. The breeze made the hair stir round the tight line of his cap and dried the sweat on his temples. His feet were blistered, he was leaden-tired, but when the ferry moved out of the slip, bucking the little slapping scalloped waves of the river he felt something warm and tingling shoot suddenly through all his veins. “Say, friend, how fur is it into the city from where this ferry lands?” he asked a young man in a straw hat wearing a blue and white striped necktie who stood beside him.

The young man’s glance moved up from Bud’s road-swelled shoes to the red wrist that stuck out from the frayed sleeves of his coat, past the skinny turkey’s throat and slid up cockily into the intent eyes under the broken-visored cap.

“That depends where you want to get to.”

“How do I get to Broadway? … I want to get to the center of things.”

“Walk east a block and turn down Broadway and you’ll find the center of things if you walk far enough.”

“Thank you sir. I’ll do that.”

The violinist was going through the crowd with his hat held out, the wind ruffling the wisps of gray hair on his shabby bald head. Bud found the face tilted up at him, the crushed eyes like two black pins looking into his. “Nothin,” he said gruffly and turned away to look at the expanse of river bright as knife-blades. The plank walls of the slip closed in, cracked as the ferry lurched against them; there was rattling of chains, and Bud was pushed forward among the crowd through the ferry-house. He walked between two coal wagons and out over a dusty expanse of street towards yellow streetcars. A trembling took hold of his knees. He thrust his hands deep in his pockets.

EAT on a lunch-wagon halfway down the block. He slid stiffly onto a revolving stool and looked for a long while at the price-list.

“Fried eggs and a cup o coffee.”

“Want ’em turned over?” asked the red-haired man behind the counter who was wiping off his beefy freckled forearms with his apron. Bud Korpenning sat up with a start.

“What?”

“The eggs? Want em turned over or sunny side up?”

“Oh sure, turn ’em over.” Bud slouched over the counter again with his head between his hands.

“You look all in, feller,” the man said as he broke the eggs into the sizzling grease of the frying pan.

“Came down from upstate. I walked fifteen miles this mornin.”

The man made a whistling sound through his eyeteeth. “Comin to the big city to look for a job, eh?”

Bud nodded. The man flopped the eggs sizzling and netted with brown out onto the plate and pushed it towards Bud with some bread and butter on the edge of it. “I’m goin to slip you a bit of advice, feller, and it won’t cost you nutten. You go an git a shave and a haircut and brush the hayseeds out o yer suit a bit before you start lookin. You’ll be more likely to git somethin. It’s looks that count in this city.”

“I kin work all right. I’m a good worker,” growled Bud with his mouth full.

“I’m tellin yez, that’s all,” said the red-haired man and turned back to his stove.

When Ed Thatcher climbed the marble steps of the wide hospital entry he was trembling. The smell of drugs caught at his throat. A woman with a starched face was looking at him over the top of a desk. He tried to steady his voice.

“Can you tell me how Mrs. Thatcher is?”

“Yes, you can go up.”

“But please, miss, is everything all right?”

“The nurse on the floor will know anything about the case. Stairs to the left, third floor, maternity ward.”

Ed Thatcher held a bunch of flowers wrapped in green waxed paper. The broad stairs swayed as he stumbled up, his toes kicking against the brass rods that held the fiber matting down. The closing of a door cut off a strangled shriek. He stopped a nurse.

“I want to see Mrs. Thatcher, please.”

“Go right ahead if you know where she is.”

“But they’ve moved her.”

“You’ll have to ask at the desk at the end of the hall.”

He gnawed his cold lips. At the end of the hall a red-faced woman looked at him, smiling.

“Everything’s fine. You’re the happy father of a bouncing baby girl.”

“You see it’s our first and Susie’s so delicate,” he stammered with blinking eyes.

“Oh yes, I understand, naturally you worried.... You can go in and talk to her when she wakes up. The baby was born two hours ago. Be sure not to tire her.”

Ed Thatcher was a little man with two blond wisps of mustache and washed-out gray eyes. He seized the nurse’s hand and shook it showing all his uneven yellow teeth in a smile.

“You see it’s our first.”

“Congratulations,” said the nurse.

Rows of beds under bilious gaslight, a sick smell of restlessly stirring bedclothes, faces fat, lean, yellow, white; that’s her. Susie’s yellow hair lay in a loose coil round her little white face that looked shriveled and twisted. He unwrapped the roses and put them on the night table. Looking out the window was like looking down into water. The trees in the square were tangled in blue cobwebs. Down the avenue lamps were coming on marking off with green shimmer brick-purple blocks of houses; chimney pots and water tanks cut sharp into a sky flushed like flesh. The blue lids slipped back off her eyes.

“That you Ed? .... Why Ed they are Jacks. How extravagant of you.”

“I couldn’t help it dearest. I knew you liked them.”

A nurse was hovering near the end of the bed.

“Couldn’t you let us see the baby, miss?”

The nurse nodded. She was a lantern jawed gray-faced woman with tight lips.

“I hate her,” whispered Susie. “She gives me the fidgets that woman does; she’s nothing but a mean old maid.”

“Never mind dear, it’s just for a day or two.” Susie closed her eyes.

“Do you still want to call her Ellen?”

The nurse brought back a basket and set it on the bed beside Susie.

“Oh isn’t she wonderful!” said Ed. “Look she’s breathing.... And they’ve oiled her.” He helped his wife to raise herself on her elbow; the yellow coil of her hair unrolled, fell over his hand and arm. “How can you tell them apart nurse?”

“Sometimes we cant,” said the nurse, stretching her mouth in a smile. Susie was looking querulously into the minute purple face. “You’re sure this is mine.”

“Of course.”

“But it hasn’t any label on it.”

“I’ll label it right away.”

“But mine was dark.” Susie lay back on the pillow, gasping for breath.

“She has lovely little light fuzz just the color of your hair.”

Susie stretched her arms out above her head and shrieked: “It’s not mine. It’s not mine. Take it away.... That woman’s stolen my baby.”

“Dear, for Heaven’s sake! Dear, for Heaven’s sake!” He tried to tuck the covers about her.

“Too bad,” said the nurse, calmly, picking up the basket. “I’ll have to give her a sedative.”

Susie sat up stiff in bed. “Take it away,” she yelled and fell back in hysterics, letting out continuous frail moaning shrieks.

“O my God!” cried Ed Thatcher, clasping his hands.

“You’d better go away for this evening, Mr. Thatcher.... She’ll quiet down, once you’ve gone.... I’ll put the roses in water.”

On the last flight he caught up with a chubby man who was strolling down slowly, rubbing his hands as he went. Their eyes met.

“Everything all right, sir?” asked the chubby man.

“Oh yes, I guess so,” said Thatcher faintly.

The chubby man turned on him, delight bubbling through his thick voice. “Congradulade me, congradulade me; mein vife has giben birth to a poy.”

Thatcher shook a fat little hand. “Mine’s a girl,” he admitted, sheepishly.

“It is fif years yet and every year a girl, and now dink of it, a poy.”

“Yes,” said Ed Thatcher as they stepped out on the pavement, “it’s a great moment.”

“Vill yous allow me sir to invite you to drink a congradulation drink mit me?”

“Why with pleasure.”

The latticed half-doors were swinging in the saloon at the corner of Third Avenue. Shuffling their feet politely they went through into the back room.

“Ach,” said the German as they sat down at a scarred brown table, “family life is full of vorries.”

“That it is sir; this is my first.”

“Vill you haf beer?”

“All right anything suits me.”

“Two pottles Culmbacher imported to drink to our little folk.” The bottles popped and the sepiatinged foam rose in the glasses. “Here’s success.... Prosit,” said the German, and raised his glass. He rubbed the foam out of his mustache and pounded on the table with a pink fist. “Vould it be indiscreet meester …?”

“Thatcher’s my name.”

“Vould it be indiscreet, Mr. Thatcher, to inquvire vat might your profession be?”

“Accountant. I hope before long to be a certified accountant.”

“I am a printer and my name is Zucher—Marcus Antonius Zucher.”

“Pleased to meet you Mr. Zucher.”

They shook hands across the table between the bottles.

“A certified accountant makes big money,” said Mr. Zucher.

“Big money’s what I’ll have to have, for my little girl.”

“Kids, they eat money,” continued Mr. Zucher, in a deep voice.

“Won’t you let me set you up to a bottle?” said Thatcher, figuring up how much he had in his pocket. Poor Susie wouldn’t like me to be drinking in a saloon like this. But just this once, and Pm learning, learning about fatherhood.

“The more the merrier,” said Mr. Zucher. “… But kids, they eat money.... Don’t do nutten but eat and vear out clothes. Vonce I get my business on its feet.... Ach! Now vot mit hypothecations and the difficult borrowing of money and vot mit vages going up und these here crazy trade-union socialists and bomsters …”

“Well here’s how, Mr. Zucher.” Mr. Zucher squeezed the foam out of his mustache with the thumb and forefinger of each hand. “It ain’t every day ve pring into the voirld a papy poy, Mr. Thatcher.”

“Or a baby girl, Mr. Zucher.”

The barkeep wiped the spillings off the table when he brought the new bottles, and stood near listening, the rag dangling from his red hands.

“And I have the hope in mein heart that ven my poy drinks to his poy, it vill be in champagne vine. Ach, that is how things go in this great city.”

“I’d like my girl to be a quiet homey girl, not like these young women nowadays, all frills and furbelows and tight lacings. And I’ll have retired by that time and have a little place up the Hudson, work in the garden evenings.... I know fellers downtown who have retired with three thousand a year. It’s saving that does it.”

“Ain’t no good in savin,” said the barkeep. “I saved for ten years and the savings bank went broke and left me nutten but a bankbook for my trouble. Get a close tip and take a chance, that’s the only system.”

“That’s nothing but gambling,” snapped Thatcher.

“Well sir it’s a gamblin game,” said the barkeep as he walked back to the bar swinging the two empty bottles.

“A gamblin game. He ain’t so far out,” said Mr.

Zucher, looking down into his beer with a glassy meditative eye. “A man vat is ambeetious must take chances. Ambeetions is vat I came here from Frankfort mit at the age of tvelf years, und now that I haf a son to vork for … Ach, his name shall be Vilhelm after the mighty Kaiser.”

“My little girl’s name will be Ellen after my mother.” Ed Thatcher’s eyes filled with tears.

Mr. Zucher got to his feet. “Veil goodby Mr. Thatcher. Happy to have met you. I must go home to my little girls.”

Thatcher shook the chubby hand again, and thinking warm soft thoughts of motherhood and fatherhood and birthday cakes and Christmas watched through a sepiatinged foamy haze Mr. Zucher waddle out through the swinging doors. After a while he stretched out his arms. Well poor little Susie wouldn’t like me to be here.... Everything for her and the bonny wee bairn.

“Hey there yous how about settlin?” bawled the barkeep after him when he reached the door.

“Didn’t the other feller pay?”

“Like hell he did.”

“But he was t-t-treating me....”

The barkeep laughed as he covered the money with a red lipper. “I guess that bloat believes in savin.”

A small bearded bandy-legged man in a derby walked up Allen Street, up the sun-striped tunnel hung with sky-blue and smoked-salmon and mustard-yellow quilts, littered with second hand gingerbread-colored furniture. He walked with his cold hands clasped over the tails of his frock-coat, picking his way among packing boxes and scuttling children. He kept gnawing his lips and clasping and unclasping his hands. He walked without hearing the yells of the children or the annihilating clatter of the L trains overhead or smelling the rancid sweet huddled smell of packed tenements.

At a yellow-painted drugstore at the corner of Canal, he stopped and stared abstractedly at a face on a green advertising card. It was a highbrowed clean-shaven distinguished face with arched eyebrows and a bushy neatly trimmed mustache, the face of a man who had money in the bank, poised prosperously above a crisp wing collar and an ample dark cravat. Under it in copybook writing was the signature King C. Gillette. Above his head hovered the motto no stropping no honing. The little bearded man pushed his derby back off his sweating brow and looked for a long time into the dollar-proud eyes of King C. Gillette. Then he clenched his fists, threw back his shoulders and walked into the drugstore.

His wife and daughters were out. He heated up a pitcher of water on the gas-burner. Then with the scissors he found on the mantel he clipped the long brown locks of his beard. Then he started shaving very carefully with the new nickel- bright safety razor. He stood trembling running his fingers down his smooth white cheeks in front of the stained mirror. He was trimming his mustache when he heard a noise behind him. He turned towards them a face smooth as the face of King C. Gillette, a face with a dollar-bland smile. The two little girls’ eyes were popping out of their heads. “Mommer … it’s popper,” the biggest one yelled. His wife dropped like a laundry-bag into the rocker and threw the apron over her head.

“Oyoy! Oyoy!” she moaned rocking back and forth.

“Vat’s a matter? Don’t ye like it?” He walked back and forth with the safety razor shining in his hand now and then gently fingering his smooth chin.

Metropolis

There were Babylon and Nineveh: they were built of brick. Athens was gold marble columns. Rome was held up on broad arches of rubble. In Constantinople the minarets flame like great candles round the Golden Horn … Steel, glass, tile, concrete will be the materials of the skyscrapers. Crammed on the narrow island the million windowed buildings will jut glittering, pyramid on pyramid like the white cloud-head above a thunderstorm.

When the door of the room closed behind him, Ed Thatcher felt very lonely, full of prickly restlessness. If Susie were only here he’d tell her about the big money he was going to make and how he’d deposit ten dollars a week in the savings bank just for little Ellen; that would make five hundred and twenty dollars a year.... Why in ten years without the interest that’d come to more than five thousand dollars. I must compute the compound interest on five hundred and twenty dollars at four per cent. He walked excitedly about the narrow room. The gas jet purred comfortably like a cat. His eyes fell on the headline on a Journal that lay on the floor by the coal-scuttle where he had dropped it to run for the hack to take Susie to the hospital.

MORTON SIGNS THE GREATER NEW YORK BILL

Complete the Act Making New Your World’s Second Metropolis

Breathing deep he folded the paper and laid it on the table.

The world’s second metropolis.... And dad wanted me to stay in his ole fool store in Onteora. Might have if it hadn’t been for Susie.... Gentlemen tonight that you do me the signal honor of offering me the junior partnership in your firm I want to present to you my little girl, my wife. I owe everything to her.

In the bow he made towards the grate his coat-tails flicked a piece of china off the console beside the bookcase. He made a little clicking noise with his tongue against his teeth as he stooped to pick it up. The head of the blue porcelain Dutch girl had broken off from her body. “And poor Susie’s so fond of her knickknacks. I’d better go to bed.”

He pushed up the window and leaned out. An L train was rumbling past the end of the street. A whiff of coal smoke stung his nostrils. He hung out of the window a long while looking up and down the street. The world’s second metropolis. In the brick houses and the dingy lamplight and the voices of a group of boys kidding and quarreling on the steps of a house opposite, in the regular firm tread of a policeman, he felt a marching like soldiers, like a sidewheeler going up the Hudson under the Palisades, like an election parade, through long streets towards something tall white full of colonnades and stately. Metropolis.

The street was suddenly full of running. Somebody out of breath let out the word Fire.

“Where at?”

The group of boys melted off the stoop across the way. Thatcher turned back into the room. It was stifling hot. He was all tingling to be out. I ought to go to bed. Down the street he heard the splattering hoof beats and the frenzied bell of a fire engine. Just take a look. He ran down the stairs with his hat in his hand.

“Which way is it?”

“Down on the next block.”

“It’s a tenement house.”

It was a narrow-windowed six-story tenement. The hook-and-ladder had just drawn up. Brown smoke, with here and there a little trail of sparks was pouring fast out of the lower windows. Three policemen were swinging their clubs as they packed the crowd back against the steps and railings of the houses opposite. In the empty space in the middle of the street the fire engine and the red hose-wagon shone with bright brass. People watched silent staring at the upper windows where shadows moved and occasional light flickered. A thin pillar of flame began to flare above the house like a roman-candle.

“The air-shaft,” whispered a man in Thatcher’s ear. A gust of wind filled the street with smoke and a smell of burning rags. Thatcher felt suddenly sick. When the smoke cleared he saw people hanging in a kicking cluster, hanging by their hands from a window-ledge. The other side firemen were helping women down a ladder. The flame in the center of the house flared brighter. Something black had dropped from a window and lay on the pavement shrieking. The policemen were shoving the crowd back to the ends of the block. New fire engines were arriving.

“They’ve got five alarms in,” a man said. “What do you think of that? Everyone of ’em on the two top floors was trapped. It’s an incendiary done it. Some goddam firebug.”

A young man sat huddled on the curb beside the gas lamp. Thatcher found himself standing over him pushed by the crowd from behind.

“He’s an Italian.”

“His wife’s in that buildin’.”

“Cops won’t let him get by.” “His wife’s in a family way. He cant talk English to ask the cops.”

The man wore blue suspenders tied up with a piece of string in back. His back was heaving and now and then he left out a string of groaning words nobody understood.

Thatcher was working his way out of the crowd. At the corner a man was looking into the fire alarm box. As Thatcher brushed past him he caught a smell of coal-oil from the man’s clothes. The man looked up into his face with a smile. He had tallowy sagging cheeks and bright pop-eyes. Thatcher’s hands and feet went suddenly cold. The firebug. The papers say they hang round like that to watch it. He walked home fast, ran up the stairs, and locked the room door behind him. The room was quiet and empty. He’d forgotten that Susie wouldn’t be there waiting for him. He began to undress. He couldn’t forget the smell of coal-oil on the man’s clothes.

Mr. Perry flicked at the burdock leaves with his cane. The real-estate agent was pleading in a singsong voice:

“I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Perry, it’s an opportunity not to be missed. You know the old saying sir … opportunity knocks but once on a young man’s door. In six months I can virtually guarantee that these lots will have doubled in value. Now that we are a part of New York, the second city in the world, sir, don’t forget that.... Why the time will come, and I firmly believe that you and I will see it, when bridge after bridge spanning the East River have made Long Island and Manhattan one, when the Borough of Queens will be as much the heart and throbbing center of the great metropolis as is Astor Place today.”

“I know, I know, but I’m looking for something dead safe. And besides I want to build. My wife hasn’t been very well these last few years....”

“But what could be safer than my proposition? Do you realize Mr. Perry, that at considerable personal loss I’m letting you in on the ground floor of one of the greatest real-estate certainties of modern times. I’m putting at your disposal not only security, but ease, comfort, luxury. We are caught up Mr. Perry on a great wave whether we will or no, a great wave of expansion and progress. A great deal is going to happen in the next few years. All these mechanical inventions—telephones, electricity, steel bridges, horseless vehicles—they are all leading somewhere. It’s up to us to be on the inside, in the forefront of progress.... My God! I cant begin to tell you what it will mean....” Poking amid the dry grass and the burdock leaves Mr. Perry had moved something with his stick. He stooped and picked up a triangular skull with a pair of spiral-fluted horns. “By gad 1” he said. “That must have been a fine ram.”

Drowsy from the smell of lather and bay-rum and singed hair that weighed down the close air of the barbershop, Bud sat nodding, his hands dangling big and red between his knees. In his eardrums he could still feel through the snipping of scissors the pounding of his feet on the hungry road down from Nyack.

“Next!”

“Whassat? … All right I just want a shave an a haircut.”

The barber’s pudgy hands moved through his hair, the scissors whirred like a hornet behind his ears. His eyes kept closing; he jerked them open fighting sleep. He could see beyond the striped sheet littered with sandy hair the bobbing hammerhead of the colored boy shining his shoes.

“Yes sir” a deep-voiced man droned from the next chair, “it’s time the Democratic party nominated a strong....”

“Want a neck-shave as well?” The barber’s greasy-skinned moon-face poked into his.

He nodded.

“Shampoo?”

“No.”

When the barber threw back the chair to shave him he wanted to crane his neck like a mud-turtle turned over on its back. The lather spread drowsily on his face, prickling his nose, filling up his ears. Drowning in featherbeds of lather, blue lather, black, slit by the faraway glint of the razor, glint of the grubbing hoe through blue-black lather clouds. The old man on his back in the potato-field, his beard sticking up lathery white full of blood. Full of blood his socks from those blisters on his heels. His hands gripped each other cold and horny like a dead man’s hands under the sheet. Lemme git up.... He opened his eyes. Padded fingertips were stroking his chin. He stared up at the ceiling where four flies made figure eights round a red crepe-paper bell. His tongue was dry leather in his mouth. The barber righted the chair again. Bud looked about blinking. “Four bits, and a nickel for the shine.”

ADMITS KILLING CRIPPLED MOTHER …

“D’yous mind if I set here a minute an read that paper?” he hears his voice drawling in his pounding ears.

“Go right ahead.”

PARKER’S FRIENDS PROTECT …

The black print squirms before his eyes. Russians … MOB STONES … (Special Dispatch to the Herald) Trenton, N. J.

Nathan Sibbetts, fourteen years old, broke down today after two weeks of steady denial of guilt and confessed to the police that he was responsible for the death of his aged and crippled mother, Hannah Sibbetts, after a quarrel in their home at Jacob’s Creek, six miles above this city. Tonight he was committed to await the action of the Grand Jury.

RELIEVE PORT ARTHUR IN FACE OF ENEMY … Mrs. Rix Loses Husband’s Ashes.

On Tuesday May 24 at about half past eight o’clock I came home after sleeping on the steam roller all night, he said, and went upstairs to sleep some more. I had only gotten to sleep when my mother came upstairs and told me to get up and if I didn’t get up she would throw me downstairs. My mother grabbed hold of me to throw me downstairs. I threw her first and she fell to the bottom. I went downstairs and found that her head was twisted to one side. I then saw that she was dead and then I straightened her neck and covered her up with the cover from my bed.

Bud folds the paper carefully, lays it on the chair and leaves the barbershop. Outside the air smells of crowds, is full of noise and sunlight. No more’n a needle in a haystack … “An I’m twenty-five years old,” he muttered aloud. Think of a kid fourteen.... He walks faster along roaring pavements where the sun shines through the Elevated striping the blue street with warm seething yellow stripes. No more’n a needle in a haystack.

Ed Thatcher sat hunched over the piano-keys picking out the Mosquito Parade. Sunday afternoon sunlight streamed dustily through the heavy lace curtains of the window, squirmed in the red roses of the carpet, filled the cluttered parlor with specks and splinters of light. Susie Thatcher sat limp by the window watching him out of eyes too blue for her sallow face. Between them, stepping carefully among the roses on the sunny field of the carpet, little Ellen danced. Two small hands held up the pink-frilled dress and now and then an emphatic little voice said, “Mummy watch my expression.”

“Just look at the child,” said Thatcher, still playing. “She’s a regular little ballet-dancer.”

Sheets of the Sunday paper lay where they had fallen from the table; Ellen started dancing on them, tearing the sheets under her nimble tiny feet.

“Don’t do that Ellen dear,” whined Susie from the pink plush chair.

“But mummy I can do it while I dance.”

“Don’t do that mother said.” Ed Thatcher had slid into the Barcarole. Ellen was dancing to it, her arms swaying to it, her feet nimbly tearing the paper.

“Ed for Heaven’s sake pick the child up; she’s tearing the paper.”

He brought his fingers down in a lingering chord. “Deary you mustn’t do that. Daddy’s not finished reading it.”

Ellen went right on. Thatcher swooped down on her from the piano-stool and set her squirming and laughing on his knee. “Ellen you should always mind when mummy speaks to you, and dear you shouldn’t be destructive. It costs money to make that paper and people worked on it and daddy went out to buy it and he hasn’t finished reading it yet. Ellie’ understands don’t she now? We need con-struction and not de-struction in this world.” Then he went on with the Barcarole and Ellen went on dancing, stepping carefully among the roses on the sunny field of the carpet.

There were six men at the table in the lunch room eating fast with their hats on the backs of their heads.

“Jiminy crickets!” cried the young man at the end of the table who was holding a newspaper in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. “Kin you beat it?”

“Beat what?” growled a long-faced man with a toothpick in the corner of his mouth.

“Big snake appears on Fifth Avenue.... Ladies screamed and ran in all directions this morning at eleven thirty when a big snake crawled out of a crack in the masonry of the retaining wall of the reservoir at Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street and started to cross the sidewalk....”

“Some fish story....”

“That ain’t nothin,” said an old man. “When I was a boy we used to go snipe-shootin on Brooklyn Flats....”

“Holy Moses! it’s quarter of nine,” muttered the young man folding his paper and hurrying out into Hudson Street that was full of men and girls walking briskly through the ruddy morning. The scrape of the shoes of hairy-hoofed drayhorses and the grind of the wheels of produce-wagons made a deafening clatter and filled the air with sharp dust. A girl in a flowered bonnet with a big lavender bow under her pert tilted chin was waiting for him in the door of M. Sullivan & Co., Storage and Warehousing. The young man felt all fizzy inside, like a freshly uncorked bottle of pop.

“Hello Emily! … Say Emily I’ve got a raise.”

“You’re pretty near late, d’you know that?”

“But honest injun I’ve got a two-dollar raise.”

She tilted her chin first to one-side and then to the other.

“I don’t give a rap.”

“You know what you said if I got a raise.” She looked in his eyes giggling.

“An this is just the beginnin …”

“But what good’s fifteen dollars a week?”

‘Why it’s sixty dollars a month, an I’m learning the import business.”

“Silly boy you’ll be late.” She suddenly turned and ran up the littered stairs, her pleated ball-shaped skirt swishing from side to side.

“God! I hate her. I hate her.” Sniffing up the tears that were hot in his eyes, he walked fast down Hudson Street to the office of Winkle & Gulick, West India Importers.

The deck beside the forward winch was warm and briny damp. They were sprawled side by side in greasy denims talking drowsily in whispers, their ears full of the seethe of broken water as the bow shoved bluntly through the long grass-gray swells of the Gulf Stream.

“J’te dis mon vieux, moi j’fou l’camp a New York.... The minute we tie up I go ashore and I stay ashore. I’m through with this dog’s life.” The cabin-boy had fair hair and an oval pink-and-cream face; a dead cigarette butt fell from between his lips as he spoke. “Merde!” He reached for it as it rolled down the deck. It escaped his hand and bounced into the scuppers.

“Let it go. I’ve got plenty,” said the other boy who lay on his belly kicking a pair of dirty feet up into the hazy sunlight. “The consul will just have you shipped back.”

“He won’t catch me.”

“And your military service?”

“To hell with it. And with France too for that matter.”

“You want to make yourself an American citizen?”

“Why not? A man has a right to choose his country.”

The other rubbed his nose meditatively with his fist and then let his breath out in a long whistle. “Emile you’re a wise guy,” he said.

“But Congo, why don’t you come too? You don’t want to shovel crap in a stinking ship’s galley all your life.”

Congo rolled himself round and sat up cross-legged, scratching his head that was thick with kinky black hair.

“Say how much does a woman cost in New York?”

“I dunno, expensive I guess.... I’m not going ashore to raise hell; I’m going to get a good job and work. Cant you think of nothing but women?”

“What’s the use? Why not?” said Congo and settled himself flat on the deck again, burying his dark soot-smudged face in his crossed arms.

“I want to get somewhere in the world, that’s what I mean. Europe’s rotten and stinking. In America a fellow can get ahead. Birth don’t matter, education don’t matter. It’s all getting ahead.”

“And if there was a nice passionate little woman right here now where the deck’s warm, you wouldn’t like to love her up?”

“After we’re rich, we’ll have plenty, plenty of everything.”

“And they don’t have any military service?”

“Why should they? It’s the coin they’re after. They don’t want to fight people; they want to do business with them.”

Congo did not answer.

The cabin boy lay on his back looking at the clouds. They floated from the west, great piled edifices with the sunlight crashing through between, bright and white like tinfoil. He was walking through tall white high piled streets, stalking in a frock coat with a tall white collar up tinfoil stairs, broad, clean swept, through blue portals into streaky marble halls where money rustled and clinked on long tinfoil tables, banknotes, silver, gold.

“Merde v’la l’heure.” The paired strokes of the bell in the crow’s-nest came faintly to their ears. “But don’t forget, Congo, the first night we get ashore …” He made a popping noise with his lips. “We’re gone.”

“I was asleep. I dreamed of a little blonde girl. I’d have had her if you hadn’t waked me.” The cabin boy got to his feet with a grunt and stood a moment looking west to where the swells ended in a sharp wavy line against a sky hard and abrupt as nickel. Then he pushed Congo’s face down against the deck and ran aft, the wooden clogs clattering on his bare feet as he went.

Outside, the hot June Saturday was dragging its frazzled ends down 110th Street. Susie Thatcher lay uneasily in bed, her hands spread blue and bony on the coverlet before her. Voices came through the thin partition. A young girl was crying through her nose:

“I tell yer mommer I ain’t agoin back to him.”

Then came expostulating an old staid Jewish woman’s voice: “But Rosie, married life ain’t all beer and skittles. A vife must submit and vork for her husband.”

“I won’t. I cant help it. I won’t go back to the dirty brute.”

Susie sat up in bed, but she couldn’t hear the next thing the old woman said.

“But I ain’t a Jew no more,” suddenly screeched the young girl. “This ain’t Russia; it’s little old New York. A girl’s got some rights here.” Then a door slammed and everything was quiet.

Susie Thatcher stirred in bed moaning fretfully. Those awful people never give me a moment’s peace. From below came the jingle of a pianola playing the Merry Widow Waltz. O Lord! why don’t Ed come home? It’s cruel of them to leave a sick woman alone like this. Selfish. She twisted up her mouth and began to cry. Then she lay quiet again, staring at the ceiling watching the flies buzz teasingly round the electric-light fixture. A wagon clattered by down the street. She could hear children’s voices screeching. A boy passed yelling an extra. Suppose there’d been a fire. That terrible Chicago theater fire. Oh I’ll go mad! She tossed about in the bed, her pointed nails digging into the palms of her hands. I’ll take another tablet. Maybe I can get some sleep. She raised herself on her elbow and took the last tablet out of a little tin box. The gulp of water that washed the tablet down was soothing to her throat. She closed her eyes and lay quiet.

She woke with a start. Ellen was jumping round the room, her green tarn falling off the back of her head, her coppery curls wild.

“Oh mummy I want to be a little boy.”

“Quieter dear. Mother’s not feeling a bit well.”

“I want to be a little boy.”

“Why Ed what have you done to the child? She’s all wrought up.”

“We’re just excited, Susie. We’ve been to the most wonderful play. You’d have loved it, it’s so poetic and all that sort of thing. And Maude Adams was fine. Ellie loved every minute of it.”

“It seems silly, as I said before, to take such a young child …”

“Oh daddy I want to be a boy.”

“I like my little girl the way she is. We’ll have to go again Susie and take you.”

“Ed you know very well I won’t be well enough.” She sat bolt upright, her hair hanging a straight faded yellow down her back. “Oh, I wish I’d die … I wish I’d die, and not be a burden to you any more.... You hate me both of you. If you didn’t hate me you wouldn’t leave me alone like this.” She choked and put her face in her hands. “Oh I wish I’d die,” she sobbed through her fingers.

“Now Susie for Heaven’s sakes, it’s wicked to talk like that.” He put his arm round her and sat on the bed beside her.

Crying quietly she dropped her head on his shoulder. Ellen stood staring at them out of round gray eyes. Then she started jumping up and down, chanting to herself, “Ellie’s goin to be a boy, Ellie’s goin to be a boy.”

With a long slow stride, limping a little from his blistered feet, Bud walked down Broadway, past empty lots where tin cans glittered among grass and sumach bushes and ragweed, between ranks of billboards and Bull Durham signs, past shanties and abandoned squatters’ shacks, past gulches heaped with wheel scarred rubbish piles where dumpcarts were dumping ashes and clinkers, past knobs of gray outcrop where steam drills continually tapped and nibbled, past excavations out of which wagons full of rock and clay toiled up plank roads to the street, until he was walking on new sidewalks along a row of yellow brick apartment houses, looking in the windows of grocery stores, Chinese laundries, lunchrooms, flower and vegetable shops, tailors’, delicatessens. Passing under a scaffolding in front of a new building, he caught the eye of an old man who sat on the edge of the sidewalk trimming oil lamps. Bud stood beside him, hitching up his pants; cleared his throat:

“Say mister you couldn’t tell a feller where a good place was to look for a job?”

“Ain’t no good place to look for a job, young feller.... There’s jobs all right.... I’ll be sixty-five years old in a month and four days an I’ve worked since I was five I reckon, an I ain’t found a good job yet.”

“Anything that’s a job’ll do me.”

“Got a union card?”

“I ain’t got nothin.”

“Cant git no job in the buildin trades without a union card,” said the old man. He rubbed the gray bristles of his chin with the back of his hand and leaned over the lamps again. Bud stood staring into the dust-reeking girder forest of the new building until he found the eyes of a man in a derby hat fixed on him through the window of the watchman’s shelter. He shuffled his feet uneasily and walked on. If I could git more into the center of things....

At the next corner a crowd was collecting round a high slung white automobile. Clouds of steam poured out of its rear end. A policeman was holding up a small boy by the armpits. From the car a red-faced man with white walrus whiskers was talking angrily.

“I tell you officer he threw a stone.... This sort of thing has got to stop. For an officer to countenance hoodlums and rowdies....”

A woman with her hair done up in a tight bunch on top of her head was screaming, shaking her fist at the man in the car, “Officer he near run me down he did, he near run me down.”

Bud edged up next to a young man in a butcher’s apron who had a baseball cap on backwards.

“Wassa matter?”

“Hell I dunno.... One o them automobile riots I guess. Ain’t you read the paper? I don’t blame em do you? What right have those golblamed automobiles got racin round, the city knockin down wimen an children?”

“Gosh do they do that?”

“Sure they do.”

“Say … er … kin you tell me about where’s a good place to find out about gettin a job?” The butcher boy threw back head and laughed.

“Kerist I thought you was goin to ask for a handout....I guess you ain’t a New Yorker.... I’ll tell you what to do. You keep right on down Broadway till you get to City Hall....”

“Is that kinder the center of things?”

“Sure it is.... An then you go upstairs and ask the Mayor.... Tell me there are some seats on the board of aldermen …”

“Like hell they are,” growled Bud and walked away fast.

“Roll ye babies … roll ye lobsided sons o bitches.”

“That’s it talk to em Slats.”

“Come seven!” Slats shot the bones out of his hand, brought the thumb along his sweaty fingers with a snap. “Aw hell.”

“You’re some great crap-shooter I’ll say, Slats.”

Dirty hands added each a nickel to the pile in the center, of the circle of patched knees stuck forward. The five boys were sitting on their heels under a lamp on South Street.

“Come on girlies we’re waitin for it.... Roll ye little bastards, goddam ye, roll.”

“Cheeze it fellers! There’s Big Leonard an his gang acomin down the block.”

“I’d knock his block off for a …”

Four of them were already slouching off along the wharf, gradually scattering without looking back. The smallest boy with a chinless face shaped like a beak stayed behind quietly picking up the coins. Then he ran along the wall and vanished into the dark passageway between two houses. He flattened himself behind a chimney and waited. The confused voices of the gang broke into the passageway; then they had gone on down the street. The boy was counting the nickels in his hand. Ten. “Jez, that’s fifty cents.... I’ll tell ’em Big Leonard scooped up the dough.” His pockets had no bottoms, so he tied the nickels into one of his shirt tails.

A goblet for Rhine wine hobnobbed with a champagne glass at each place along the glittering white oval table. On eight glossy white plates eight canapes of caviar were like rounds of black beads on the lettuce leaves, flanked by sections of lemon, sprinkled with a sparse chopping of onion and white of egg. “Beaucoup de soing and don’t you forget it,” said the old waiter puckering up his knobbly forehead. He was a short waddling man with a few black strands of hair plastered tight across a domed skull.

“Awright.” Emile nodded his head gravely. His collar was too tight for him. He was shaking a last bottle of champagne into the nickel-bound bucket of ice on the serving table.

“Beaucoup de soing, sporca madonna.... Thisa guy trows money about lika confetti, see.... Gives tips, see. He’s a verra rich gentleman. He don’t care how much he spend.” Emile patted the crease of the tablecloth to flatten it. “Fais pas, como, qa.... Your hand’s dirty, maybe leava mark.”

Resting first on one foot then on the other they stood waiting, their napkins under their arms. From the restaurant below among the buttery smells of food and the tinkle of knives and forks and plates, came the softly gyrating sound of a waltz.

When he saw the headwaiter bow outside the door Emile compressed his lips into a deferential smile. There was a long toothed blond woman in a salmon opera cloak swishing on the arm of a moon-faced man who carried his top hat ahead of him like a bumper; there was a little curly haired girl in blue who was showing her teeth and laughing, a stout woman in a tiara with a black velvet ribbon round her neck, a bottlenose, a long cigar colored face … shirtfronts, hands straightening white ties, black gleams on top hats and patent leather shoes; there was a weazlish man with gold teeth who kept waving his arms spitting out greetings in a voice like a crow’s and wore a diamond the size of a nickel in his shirtfront. The red-haired cloakroom girl was collecting the wraps. The old waiter nudged Emile. “He’s de big boss,” he said out of the corner of his mouth as he bowed. Emile flattened himself against the wall as they shuffled rustled into the room. A whiff of patchouli when he drew his breath made him go suddenly hot to the roots of his hair.

“But where’s Fifi Waters?” shouted the man with the diamond stud.

“She said she couldn’t get here for a half an hour. I guess the Johnnies won’t let her get by the stage door.”

“Well we cant wait for her even if it is her birthday; never waited for anyone in my life.” He stood a second running a roving eye over the women round the table, then shot his cuffs out a little further from the sleeves of his swallowtail coat, and abruptly sat down. The caviar vanished in a twinkling. “And waiter what about that Rhine wine coupe?” he croaked huskily. “De suite monsieur....” Emile holding his breath and sucking in his cheeks, was taking away the plates. A frost came on the goblets as the old waiter poured out the coupe from a cut glass pitcher where floated mint and ice and lemon rind and long slivers of cucumber.

“Aha, this’ll do the trick.” The man with the diamond stud raised his glass to his lips, smacked them and set it down with a slanting look at the woman next him. She was putting dabs of butter on bits of bread and popping them into her mouth, muttering all the while:

“I can only eat the merest snack, only the merest snack.”

“That don’t keep you from drinkin Mary does it?”

She let out a cackling laugh and tapped him on the shoulder with her closed fan. “O Lord, you’re a card, you are.”

“Allume moi ga, sporca madonna,” hissed the old waiter in Emile’s ear.

When he lit the lamps under the two chafing dishes on the serving table a smell of hot sherry and cream and lobster began to seep into the room. The air was hot, full of tinkle and perfume and smoke. After he had helped serve the lobster Newburg and refilled the glasses Emile leaned against the wall and ran his hand over his wet hair. His eyes slid along the plump shoulders of the woman in front of him and down the powdered back to where a tiny silver hook had come undone under the lace rushing. The baldheaded man next to her had his leg locked with hers. She was young, Emile’s age, and kept looking up into the man’s face with moist parted lips. It made Emile dizzy, but he couldn’t stop looking.

“But what’s happened to the fair Fifi?” creaked the man with the diamond stud through a mouthful of lobster. “I suppose that she made such a hit again this evening that our simple little party don’t appeal to her.”

“It’s enough to turn any girl’s head.”

“Well she’ll get the surprise of her young life if she expected us to wait. Haw, haw, haw,” laughed the man with the diamond stud. “I never waited for anybody in my life and I’m not going to begin now.”

Down the table the moon-faced man had pushed back his plate and was playing with the bracelet on the wrist of the woman beside him. “You’re the perfect Gibson girl tonight, Olga.”

“I’m sitting for my portrait now,” she said holding up her goblet against the light.

“To Gibson?”

“No to a real painter.”

“By Gad I’ll buy it.”

“Maybe you won’t have a chance.”

She nodded her blond pompadour at him.

“You’re a wicked little tease, Olga.”

She laughed keeping her lips tight over her long teeth.

A man was leaning towards the man with the diamond stud, tapping with a stubby finger on the table.

“No sir as a real estate proposition, Twenty-third Street has crashed.... That’s generally admitted.... But what I want to talk to you about privately sometime Mr. Godalming, is this.... How’s all the big money in New York been made? Astor, Vanderbilt, Fish.... In real estate of course. Now it’s up to us to get in on the next great cleanup.... It’s almost here.... Buy

Forty....”

The man with the diamond stud raised one eyebrow and shook his head. “For one night on Beauty’s lap, O put gross care away … or something of the sort.... Waiter why in holy hell are you so long with the champagne?” He got to his feet, coughed in his hand and began to sing in his croaking voice:

O would the Atlantic were all champagne

Bright billows of champagne.

Everybody clapped. The old waiter had just divided a baked Alaska and, his face like a beet, was prying out a stiff champagne cork. When the cork popped the lady in the tiara let out a yell. They toasted the man in the diamond stud.

For he’s a jolly good fellow …

“Now what kind of a dish d’ye call this?” the man with the bottlenose leaned over and asked the girl next to him. Her black hair parted in the middle; she wore a pale-green dress with puffy sleeves. He winked slowly and then stared hard into her black eyes.

“This here’s the fanciest cookin I ever put in my mouth.... D’ye know young leddy, I don’t come to this town often.... He gulped down the rest of his glass. An when I do I usually go away kinder disgusted… His look bright and feverish from the champagne explored the contours of her neck and shoulders and roamed down a bare arm. “But this time I kinder think....”

“It must be a great life prospecting,” she interrupted flushing.

“It was a great life in the old days, a rough life but a man’s life.... I’m glad I made my pile in the old days.... Wouldn’t have the same luck now.”

She looked up at him. “How modest you are to call it luck.”

Emile was standing outside the door of the private room. There was nothing more to serve. The red-haired girl from the cloakroom walked by with a big flounced cape on her arm. He smiled, tried to catch her eye. She sniffed and tossed her nose in the air. Won’t look at me because I’m a waiter. When I make some money I’ll show ’em.

“Dis; tella Charlie two more bottle Moet and Chandon, Gout Americain,” came the old waiter’s hissing voice in his ear.

The moon-faced man was on his feet. “Ladies and Gentlemen....”

“Silence in the pigsty …” piped up a voice.

“The big sow wants to talk,” said Olga under her breath.

“Ladies and gentlemen owing to the unfortunate absence of our star of Bethlehem and full-time act....”

“Gilly don’t blaspheme,” said the lady with the tiara.

“Ladies and gentlemen, unaccustomed as I am....”

“Gilly you’re drunk.”

“ … Whether the tide … I mean whether the waters be with us or against us...”

Somebody yanked at his coat-tails and the moon-faced man sat down suddenly in his chair.

“It’s terrible,” said the lady in the tiara addressing herself to a man with a long face the color of tobacco who sat at the end of the table … “It’s terrible, Colonel, the way Gilly gets blasphemous when he’s been drinking…”

The Colonel was meticulously rolling the tinfoil off a cigar. “Dear me, you don’t say?” he drawled. Above the bristly gray mustache his face was expressionless. “There’s a most dreadful story about poor old Atkins, Elliott Atkins who used to be with Mansfield…”

“Indeed?” said the Colonel icily as he slit the end of the cigar with a small pearl handled penknife.

“Say Chester did you hear that Mabie Evans was making a hit?”

“Honestly Olga I don’t see how she does it. She has no figure…”

“Well he made a speech, drunk as a lord you understand, one night when they were barnstorming in Kansas…”

“She cant sing…”

“The poor fellow never did go very strong in the bright lights…”

“She hasn’t the slightest particle of figure…”

“And made a sort of Bob Ingersoll speech…”

“The dear old feller.... Ah I knew him well out in Chicago in the old days…”

“You don’t say.” The Colonel held a lighted match carefully to the end of his cigar…

“And there was a terrible flash of lightning and a ball of fire came in one window and went out the other.”

“Was he … er … killed?” The Colonel sent a blue puff of smoke towards the ceiling.

“What, did you say Bob Ingersoll had been struck by lightning?” cried Olga shrilly. “Serve him right the horrid atheist.”

“No not exactly, but it scared him into a realization of the important things of life and now he’s joined the Methodist church.”

“Funny how many actors get to be ministers.”

“Cant get an audience any other way,” creaked the man with the diamond stud.

The two waiters hovered outside the door listening to the racket inside. “Tas de sacrés cochons … sporca madonna!” hissed the old waiter. Emile shrugged his shoulders. “That brunette girl make eyes at you all night…” He brought his face near Emile’s and winked. “Sure, maybe you pick up somethin good.”

“I don’t want any of them or their dirty diseases either.”

The old waiter slapped his thigh. “No young men nowadays.... When I was young man I take heap o chances.”

“They don’t even look at you…” said Emile through clenched teeth. “An animated dress suit that’s all.”

“Wait a minute, you learn by and by.”

The door opened. They bowed respectfully towards the diamond stud. Somebody had drawn a pair of woman’s legs on his shirtfront. There was a bright flush on each of his cheeks. The lower lid of one eye sagged, giving his weasle face a quizzical lobsided look.

“Wazzahell, Marco wazzahell?” he was muttering. “We ain’t got a thing to drink... . Bring the Atlantic Ozzshen and two quarts.”

“De suite monsieur....” The old waiter bowed. “Emile tell Auguste, immediatement et bien frappe.”

As Emile went down the corridor he could hear singing.

O would the Atlantic were all champagne

Bright bi-i-i....

The moon-faced and the bottlenose were coming back from the lavatory reeling arm in arm among the palms in the hall.

“These damn fools make me sick.”

“Yessir these ain’t the champagne suppers we used to have in Frisco in the ole days.”

“Ah those were great days those.”

“By the way,” the moon-faced man steadied himself against the wall, “Holyoke ole fella, did you shee that very nobby little article on the rubber trade I got into the morning papers.... That’ll make the investors nibble … like lil mishe”

“Whash you know about rubber? … The stuff ain’t no good.”

“You wait an shee, Holyoke ole fella or you looshing opportunity of your life.... Drunk or sober I can smell money … on the wind.”

“Why ain’t you got any then?” The bottle-nosed man’s beef red face went purple; he doubled up letting out great hoots of laughter.

“Because I always let my friends in on my tips,” said the other man soberly. “Hay boy where’s zis here private dinin room?”

“Par ici monsieur.”

A red accordion pleated dress swirled past them, a little oval face framed by brown flat curls, pearly teeth in an openmouthed laugh.

“Fifi Waters,” everyone shouted. “Why my darlin lil Fifi, come to my arms.”

She was lifted onto a chair where she stood jiggling from one foot to the other, champagne dripping out of a tipped glass.

“Merry Christmas.”

“Happy New Year.”

“Many returns of the day…”

A fair young man who had followed her in was reeling intricately round the table singing:

O we went to the animals’ fair

And the birds and the beasts were there

And the big baboon

By the light of the moon

Was combing his auburn hair.

“Hoopla,” cried Fifi Waters and mussed the gray hair of the man with the diamond stud. “Hoopla.” She jumped down with a kick, pranced round the room, kicking high with her skirts fluffed up round her knees.

“Oh la la ze French high kicker!”

“Look out for the Pony Ballet.”

Her slender legs, shiny black silk stockings tapering to red rosetted slippers flashed in the men’s faces.

“She’s a mad thing,” cried the lady in the tiara.

Hoopla. Holyoke was swaying in the doorway with his top hat tilted over the glowing bulb of his nose. She let out a whoop and kicked it off.

“It’s a goal,” everyone cried.

“For crissake you kicked me in the eye.”

She stared at him a second with round eyes and then burst into tears on the broad shirtfront of the diamond stud. “I won’t be insulted like that,” she sobbed.

“Rub the other eye.”

“Get a bandage someone.”

“Goddam it she may have put his eye out.”

“Call a cab there waiter.”

“Where’s a doctor?”

“That’s hell to pay ole fella.”

A handkerchief full of tears and blood pressed to his eye the bottle-nosed man stumbled out. The men and women crowded through the door after him; last went the blond young man, reeling and singing:

An’ the big baboon by the light of the moon

Was combing his auburn hair.

Fifi Waters was sobbing with her head on the table.

“Don’t cry Fifi,” said the Colonel who was still sitting where he had sat all the evening. “Here’s something I rather fancy might do you good.” He pushed a glass of champagne towards her down the table.

She sniffled and began drinking it in little sips. “Hullo Roger, how’s the boy?”

“The boy’s quite well thank you.... Rather bored, don’t you know? An evening with such infernal bounders....”

“I’m hungry.”

“There doesn’t seem to be anything left to eat.”

“I didn’t know you’d be here or I’d have come earlier, honest.”

“Would you indeed? … Now that’s very nice.”

The long ash dropped from the Colonel’s cigar; he got to his feet. “Now Fifi, I’ll call a cab and we’ll go for a ride in the Park....”

She drank down her champagne and nodded brightly. “Dear me it’s four o’clock.…” “You have the proper wraps haven’t you?”

She nodded again.

“Splendid Fifi … I say you are in form.” The Colonel’s cigar colored face was unraveling in smiles. “Well, come along.”

She looked about her in a dazed way. “Didn’t I come with somebody?”

“Quite unnecessary!”

In the hall they came upon the fair young man quietly vomiting into a fire bucket under an artificial palm.

“Oh let’s leave him,” she said wrinkling up her nose.

“Quite unnecessary,” said the Colonel.

Emile brought their wraps. The red-haired girl had gone home.

“Look here, boy.” The Colonel waved his cane. “Call me a cab please.... Be sure the horse is decent and the driver is sober.”

“De suite monsieur.”