Title: Ninth Avenue
Author: Bodenheim, Maxwell
Language: English
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NINTH AVENUE



  ·NINTH·
  AVENUE

  _By_
  MAXWELL
  BODENHEIM

  [Illustration]

  _New York_
  BONI & LIVERIGHT
  1926



  COPYRIGHT 1926 :: BY
  BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC.
  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES

  [Illustration]



PART ONE



NINTH AVENUE



CHAPTER I


When the light of morning touches the buildings and pavements of a
city, it always seems to borrow their hardness and to lose in some
degree its quality of flowing detachment. The Sunday morning that
fell upon Ninth Avenue, New York City, gave you a sense of invisible
stiffness in its very air. The buildings, with their smudged, flat
fronts and tops, presented the impression of huge warehouses stretching
down both sides of the street--the appearance of holding commodities
rather than human beings. Most of them were five or six stories in
height, and their curtained, oblong windows and the bright, tawdry
shops at their base had an oddly lifeless aspect, in spite of the
sounds and animations which occurred within and around them. The iron
elevated-railroad structure that extended down the street, with all of
its roar and rush of trains, could not destroy the spirit of silent
inertia that lurked within the scene.

Blanche Palmer stood in front of a bureau, in one of the apartments
that lined the street, and combed her dark red, bobbed hair, as
though it were a sacred and perilous performance. She was only
partially dressed, and the mild light that came in through a rear
window from the courtyard brought an extra vividness to her semiplump
arms, abruptly rounded shoulders and moderately swelling bosom.
Their freshness stood out, a little forlorn and challenging, in the
disordered room with its half drab and half gaudy arrangements.
The brass bed, the magazine-posters of pretty women against the
pink-flowered wallpaper, the red plush chair with the most infinitely
smug of shapes, the white chintz, half-dirty curtain and dark green
shade at the window--all of them seemed to be meanly contending against
the youth and life of her body.

She was fairly tall, with most of the weight of her body centered below
her waist and with an incongruously small torso, but this effect was
not as clumsy as it might have been, since it was relieved by a bold
approach to symmetry. Something of a child and an amazon met in her
body. Her face was not pretty if you examined each of its features
separately--the overwide lips, the nose tilting out too suddenly at the
tip, and the overstraight, shaved eyebrows--but the whole of it had a
piquant and enticing irregularity, and it was redeemed by her large,
deeply set, bluish-gray eyes and the fine smoothness of her cream-white
skin.

Her twenty years of life had given her a self-consciousness, and a
hasty worldly wisdom, and a slightly complacent sexual alertness, and
these three qualities blended into the customary expressions on her
face. Yet at odd moments it showed questioning and dissatisfied shades.
She was just a little more frank and wondering than the other girls in
her environment--just a little distressed and seeking beneath all of
the affected wrigglings, and ignorances, and small, cruel impulses that
ruled her heart and mind. As she stood before the bureau, the treble of
a child’s voice emerged from the babble of sounds in the surrounding
apartments, lifting the words: “Well, it ain’t gonna rain no mo-ore,
it ain’t gonna rain no mo-ore; how in the heck can I wash my neck when
it ain’t gonna rain no mo-ore.” Blanche took up the song, half humming
it as she slipped on an old, black, sleeveless evening gown which she
still kept to wear about the apartment when visitors were not present
or expected. It had a big, scarlet satine flower sewed at the side of
the waist and was extremely low-necked and gave her a near-courtesan
touch, increased by the over-thick rouge and lipstick on her face. She
could not dispense with cosmetics, even before her family, because
they were too inherently a part of the shaky sexual pride within her,
which always needed to be glossed and protected because it had been
frequently hurt and discountenanced in competitions and comparisons
with the other girls in her life.

She stepped down the dark hallway and entered the living-room, where
her family sat and pored over the Sunday papers. The hour was verging
on noon, and the debris and confusion of a past breakfast stood on the
square, uncovered table in the middle of the room. Blanche eyed it
peevishly.

“Oh, for Gawd’s sake, what a dump,” she said. “How’m I going to sit
down with gue and coffee all over the chairs?”

“Too bad about you,” her brother, Harry, answered, with an amiable jeer
in his voice. “Too bad. We’ll move up on the Drive an’ get a lotta
servunts for you, huh?”

“Sure, go ahead, but as long’s we’re not there yet you c’n move your
big legs and help clean off the table,” she replied.

“Whatsamatter, you parulyzed?” he asked, still genial as he rose and
picked up some of the dishes.

Her sister Mabel and her oldest brother, Philip, joined in the slangy,
waggish repartee as Blanche went to the kitchen and came back with
a cup of coffee and a fried egg. The father chortled behind the
comic-section of one of the papers, oblivious to this usual Sunday
morning “kidding-match,” and the mother was busy in the kitchen.
Harry Palmer, known to the bantam-class of the prize-fighting ring as
Battling Murphy, was a youth of twenty-two, with a short body whose
shoulders and chest were full, hard lumps, and whose legs were thinly
crooked but steel-like. His small, black eyes had a dully fixed,
suspicious, partly dumb and partly cunning look that never left them,
even in the midst of his greatest smiles and laughters, and his nose
was shaped like the beginning of a corkscrew, and his thick lips just
touched each other, with the lower one slightly protruding. His moist
black hair was brushed backward; his skin was a dark brown with a dab
of red running through it. The start of a primitive man, forced to
become tricky and indirect as it escaped from the traps and ways of
city streets, but still longing for direct blows and curses, showed
on every inch of him. He was cruel without wit enough to know that
he was cruel, and in his most lenient and joking moments the little
imagination and sentiment that he had grew large in its own estimation
and made him feel that he was as decent and kind as he could be in a
life where you had to “put it over” the other fellow, or go under.

He prided himself especially on his generous and affectionate attitude
toward his family. They were the only people who had any actual
claims on him--his own flesh and blood, yep--but he felt that it was
necessary to hurt them whenever they objected to his actions, or tried
to hold him down, or did anything that they should not have done. His
idea of superiority was not to allow any one to boss him unless it
contributed to his material gain, and to order people around whenever
he could. Part of his family-pride was a real emotion and part of it
was a dogged peace-offering to his more openly selfish and cruel words
and actions to other people. He looked upon women as creatures made
for his particular enjoyment, but they alone were able to revive the
streak of surlily shamefaced tenderness within him, and if they were
exceptionally good-looking, and besieged by troubles, he wanted to pet
them and give them money. He intended to avoid marriage until he met a
pretty girl of his own age, who would refuse to give herself to him,
and who could hold her own in the rough parryings of conversation, and
show a practical disposition and a sense of the value of money.

He had fought in preliminary six-round bouts--with erratic
success--since he was twenty, and he was known to the ring as a
courageous but unscientific fighter, whose main fault was that he would
not train rigorously for his encounters. On the side he was associated
with a gang of bootleggers, in the position of a guard who often went
with them to protect their deliveries, receiving a small share of the
profits. The Palmer family was mainly dependent on his support, since
his other brothers and sisters did little more than pay their own
expenses, and his earnings for the past two years had really lifted
them to a point where they could have deserted their upper-proletarian
life. His parents preferred the Ninth Avenue apartment and its
surroundings, because it had been stamped into their spirits for years,
and because they liked the boisterous freedoms, the lack of etiquette,
and the semiunderworld plainness of their environment. He and his
brothers and sisters would not have been averse to moving to “a sweller
joint,” but the desire was not yet sufficiently deep to stir them to
any action.

His older brother, Philip, who was twenty-five, was looked upon as the
most “high-toned” member of the family. Philip worked in a neighboring
drug store and studied at night to become a pharmacist, and had had two
years of a high-school education. He was a tall man of much less sturdy
physique than his brother, and he dressed in the manner of a lower
dandy, with much fussing over cravats, shirts and suits of clothes. He
had a weak face beneath his curly brown hair--the face of a sneaking
philanderer, invaded a bit by kindly impulses which he tried to
suppress but which often led to his undoing. His brown, bulging eyes,
soft mouth that tried to be hard, and tilting out nose inherited from
his mother--these features disputed the sneering nonchalance with which
he strove to become one with the life around him. He was not naturally
studious, but his brain was cautious enough to realize that he was not
adapted for the more arduously physical tasks in life, and that he
would have to learn--at any cost--some sheltering and fairly profitable
profession. For this reason he applied himself to absorbing the details
of pharmacy, with much laboring and many secret groans.

His sister Mabel was the adored young coquette of the family. They
regarded Blanche as a silly, fluctuating, and slightly queer person in
comparison to her sister, for Blanche made no serious effort “to play”
men for their money and favors, and often went out with the poorer and
more ordinary youths of the neighborhood, and revealed, in the opinion
of her family, a spirit that was too jauntily reckless--too “easy.”
Mabel, on the other hand, was reckless enough, with her cabaret,
private club and automobile parties, but the recklessness was more a
patent exuberance used to cover up an excellent canniness. Her people
had the feeling that she could not be taken advantage of, and that she
would play the game carefully until she landed a wealthy man willing
to marry her. Physically, she was a girl of eighteen years, with her
body in that fetching state of transition between budding and maturity;
mentally, she was twelve years old; and emotionally, she was a woman
of fifty. Girls of her kind, whose environment has been split between
their homes in an almost slummy district and the falsetto battle of
Broadway, become sensually wise overnight. At eighteen, Mabel was
literally stuffed with tricks, and informations, and cool wiles picked
up on streets and in cabarets, and her mind merely functioned as an
assistant in this process. At the very bottom she was sentimental and
fearful, but only an actually dire predicament could have extracted
these qualities--an unexpected danger or calamity. She was close to
medium height, with a slenderness made charming by an unusually full
bosom, and a pale brown skin that had a sheen upon it like that on the
surface of a pond, and black, bobbed hair that was curled for three or
four days after each visit to the beauty parlor. Her little nose was
almost straight, with hardly a trace of the Palmer curve, and her lips
were loosely parted and petite, and her big, black eyes assumed the
most vacantly innocent of stares, unless she was angry, when the lids
half closed between dancing sparks.

Her father, William Palmer, had worked as a bartender, during the
days when his country had not yet established a new and widespread
class of criminals, and he had once owned a small saloon, afterwards
lost through his dice and poker-playing lusts. After the advent of
prohibition, he had branched out as a bootlegger, in a very modest way,
but he lacked the vigor and acumen necessary to such an occupation--he
was now a man of fifty-five--and the arrest of some of his cronies had
frightened him into giving up his illegal trade. Then he became the
ostensible manager of his prize-fighting son, and now he did little
more than hang around the gymnasiums where his son trained, dicker for
a few minutes with the owners of boxing clubs, loaf around his home,
and sit in all-night drinking and poker parties. He still had the
remains of a once powerful body, in spite of his lowered shoulders and
grayish-black hair slowly turning to baldness, and he was one of those
men who hold out against dissipation with an inhuman tenacity, until
near seventy, when their hearts or stomachs abruptly collapse, and they
die. He was of average height and always tried to carry himself with
a great, chipper bluff at youthful spryness. Upon his brown face the
twisted nose which he had given to his son, Harry, stood above broad
and heavy lips, and there was a piggish fixity to his often bloodshot
eyes that were too little for the ample size of his head.

He was a man who lived in two worlds at the same time--that of verbal
bluffing, uttered to soothe and shun the sore spots and cruel resolves
in his nature, and that one in which he endlessly schemed for money
and ease, and was willing to commit any legal or well-hidden crime to
procure them. He would have grown wrathful if you had accused him of
being dishonest, and his rage would have been quite sincere. He had
practiced self-deception for such a long time that each part of him
was genuinely blind to the tactics and purposes of the other part. His
children were, to him, the great, living boast with which he could
dismiss the world’s and his own allegations of failure. “I never got
what I wanted but I’ll be damned if they don’t,” he sometimes muttered
to himself, and the excuse that he gave himself was that their better
advantages, and his own guidance, would enable them to win out in the
virtues which he had transplanted within them. He had lost his own
parents at an early age and had been raised in a public institution,
and had been forced to work hard when he was not yet fifteen, and he
doted on citing these beginnings as an explanation for all of his
material failures. He had punished and commanded his children when
they were still in knee trousers and short skirts--often shouting at
them and beating them about the legs--and he had struggled outragedly
against their gradual assumption of authority and independence, but
his delight in remaining their master had finally subsided to an
even stronger pleasure--that of a man who was watching the masterful
qualities which his children had derived from him.

“They get it honest, all right,” he had once said to himself, after
a squabble in which his son Harry, then seventeen, had threatened to
knock him out. “I never took any sass from anybody myself, you bet I
didn’t. They’ll never learn to fight for themselves ’f I take all the
spunk and pep outa them.”

Now he clung to the gruff pose of ordering them about, but never really
cared when they disregarded most of his words, or talked back to him,
as long as the boys kept out of arrest and the girls did not seem to
be openly or particularly unvirtuous. He suspected that his daughters
had probably “gone the limit” with one or two men whom they knew, but
the absence of feminine virtue to him was not a matter for agitation
unless it was persistent, complete and loudly flaunted. He wanted
his daughters to be “wise” and to end up in decent marriages, but he
was not averse to their “cutting up” a bit, as long as they kept it
well hidden. His favorite children were Harry and Mabel and he never
overlooked any chance to flatter and serve them in some manner.

His wife, Kate, was the least aggressive member of the family, and
her children, Philip and Blanche, held in a much-qualified way many
of her characteristics. Two years younger than her husband, she was
a lean and not oversturdy woman whose head rose only an inch above
his shoulders. She had been a servant girl just migrated from Ireland
when he--a bartender in the block in which she lived--had married her
because of his inability to seduce her in spite of her meek worship
of him, and because her turn of figure and her tart, fresh face had
appealed to him. She had toiled most of her life, with only a short
period of intermission before the birth of her first child, and she
had frequently taken his drunken blows and his palpable faithlessness
after the first two years of their marriage, and they had often lived
in the dirtiest and most hellish of poverties when his gambling losses
had reduced them to pennilessness, but something like a mangled dream
had never left her spirit--not plaintive, and not precisely wistful,
but more the quietness of a peasant girl never quite living in her
surroundings and always longing for the strong peace of village and
hill. The dream was stupid, maligned, numb--but still it persisted. She
had little courage, and yet a stubborn flare of it often shot out when
she was driven into a corner, and her main reliances were obstinacy and
endurance. Unlike her husband, she did not share the bragging illusions
which he had concerning their children, and she felt that her sons and
daughters were imperfect, overwild and far too selfish, and she cared
for them more because life had deprived her of all other opportunities
for compensation. She favored Blanche most because Blanche seemed to
her to be more of a reproduction of what she, the mother, had been in
her own girlhood. It was not that she had any keen insight into her
daughter’s character and needs--it was only the very cloudy but warm
feeling that Blanche was more honest and “fine” than the rest of her
children. Mrs. Palmer had long since ceased to love her husband, or
to respect anything about him except his physical strength and his
masculine braveries, but she had fallen into a rut of obedience to him,
from which she lacked even the desire to extricate herself, and she
preserved an attitude of bare affection, to impress her children and
to keep him in good humor whenever she could. She had rigid notions
concerning honesty and morality not held by the rest of her family,
and she often weakly complained against their “looseness” and accepted
it only because she could not change it. Below her still abundant,
grayish-red hair, her face was like the seamed and puffed and violated
copy of Blanche’s countenance, with much the same eyes, lips and nose,
but without the hopeful smiles and uncertain questions on the other’s
face.

As the family gathered in the living-room on this Sunday noon,
chaffing and listening to the latest fox-trot and waltz records from
the slightly nasal phonograph that stood on a shaky table in a corner
of the room, and reading the papers with the jealous, spellbound
attention with which obscure people greet the notorieties and “stunts”
of other men and women, the mother still worked in the kitchen,
cleaning the breakfast dishes and preparing the five o’clock Sunday
dinner. Kate Palmer usually refused to allow her girls to help her
with the housework, for more or less selfish reasons, because of her
pitiful pride in the fact that she could manage things herself--the
elderly housewife, to whom work had become an only distraction and
importance--and because she really dreaded the possibility of their
attractive, feminine hands becoming “chapped and ugly-like.” On
Sundays the Palmers, in varying degrees, were always in their best
mood. They had all slept later than on other days, and the Sabbath-day
was associated in their spirits with “sorta making up for what you
pulled off during the week”--the faint, uncomprehended return of
conscience and forgotten religious precepts--and with more peaceful
forms of enjoyment. Early every Sunday morning the mother went to
a Presbyterian church on the outskirts of their neighborhood, and
sometimes her husband or one of her daughters would accompany her,
both of them stiffly empty and ill-at-ease. If you had asked all of
the Palmers whether they believed in God and in Christianity, they
would instantly have replied in the affirmative, after giving you
a wondering, suspicious look, and yet their belief was merely the
snubbed but never-quite-relinquished shield which their fears became
conscious of at rare and odd moments. In case you died, you wanted to
know that you were on the right side of things and in line for some
possible reward--this was the only shape that religion had to them.
Its exhortations and restrictions were jokes that could not possibly
survive in the sordidness, and strain, and sensual longing of your
life--you knew that at the bottom but you never admitted it to yourself
on the top. Again, there was a consolation, dim and yet imperative, in
feeling that a vast, hazy, grand Father was controlling their days,
and in moments of sore need, or danger, or pain, they would have
instinctively and even beseechingly called out His name.

When the papers were exhausted, the conversation of the Palmers became
more steady and personal.

“Guess you’re goin’ out to-night with that Jew-kike uh yours,” said
Harry, trying to get a rise out of Blanche. “Can’t you pick out
somethin’ better than a Christ-killer, huh?”

“What’s it to you?” she asked, coolly. “Show you a good-looking Jewish
girl and you’ll fall all over yourself trying to date her up. I know
you.”

“Sure, but I’d just play her for what I could get,” answered Harry.
“I’ve got a notion you’re kinda sweet on that Loo-ee Rosenberg, ’r
whatever his name is.”

“Well, she’d better not be,” said the father, with a scowl. “I don’t
mind when some kike takes her out for a good time--their jack’s as good
as any other guy’s--but I’m not lettin’ any Jews get into this family.”

Blanche gave them a scornful smile. She was far from being in love with
Rosenberg, and the matter was neither pressing nor irritating, but she
felt a general defiance against their masculine habit of laying down
the law to women.

“I guess I’m old enough to tend my own business, pa,” she said.

“Oh, you are, huh,” answered her father. “Well, maybe we’ll see about
that.”

“Aw, I know what’s eating both of you,” said Mabel, in her
expressionless, thinly liquid voice. “You’re sore ’cause Harry lost to
a Jew in that fight he had up in Harlem. Kid Goldman, that’s the one.
When you going to beat him up, Harry?”

“I’ll get him, I’ll get him, don’t worry,” her brother answered,
frowning as he remembered the affront to his vanity. “I was outa
condition that night, and my left wasn’t workin’ good, that’s all.
Wait’ll I get him in the ring again.”

“You know what I’ve always told you--you got the makin’s of a champion
’f you’ll only get down to business,” said his father. “You’re trailin’
around too much with that bootleggin’ gang uh yours. No fighter ever
got to the top with a bottle in his hand, I’m tellin’ you.”

“G’wan, you know damn well I’m down to the gym five days a week,”
answered Harry, who realized the truth of his father’s words, but
wanted to minimize it with his own reply. “An’ what’s more, I don’t see
any of you turnin’ down that fifty they slip me ev’ry Monday. Money
don’t lay around on the street--you got to get it any place you can.”

“Well, I ain’t any too anxious ’bout hearin’ the cops knockin’ on this
door some day,” his father responded, peevishly.

“Go ahead, drink your fool self to death--who cares,” said Mabel, who
had become petulant at the thought of the grand style in which they
could all live if her brother would only rise to the head of his class.
“You’ve got plenty of muscle but no sense, that’s the trouble with you.”

“Say, how many times ’ve you seen me drunk, how many?” Harry asked,
beginning to be angry at this exposure of his weakest trait. “Ev’ry one
in this joint’s always lappin’ up all I bring home, an’ I never touch
it myself. ’F I do go on a jag once’n a while it’s my business. You
can’t get up in the fight game unless you’re on the inside--there’s too
many big crooks higher up fixin’ things.”

“I don’t believe it--you’re just looking for a way out,” said Blanche,
to whom Harry was a generous but conceited brother--a strong, vicious
baby who imagined himself to be a model of shrewdness. At the bottom
she disliked his bulldozing, prying ways, but her dislike was not yet
strong enough to overcome the more enforced feelings of gratitude and
blood-ties within her heart. Harry always suspected that Blanche was
the one member of his family not impressed by his prowess and his
knowledge of the world, and he never gave up his efforts to increase
her respect, with all the argument and repartee at his command.

“I am, huh,” he said, answering her last remark. “What do you know
about it? I suppose you get all that info’ uh yours punchin’ the cash
register down at the cafeteria. The only way you’re wise is with your
mouth. That middle-weight champ fight down at the Terrace was fixed up
a week ago and I’ve got it straight. Just watch the papers tuhmorrow
night.”

“Aw, I’ve heard a lotta roomors goin’ around, but that’s hot air,”
said his father. “Garvey’d be a damn fool to sell his title for any
amount--I don’t care ’fit’s one hundred thousan’. He ain’t had it a
year yet, an’ there’s plenty uh holes left in the meal-ticket.”

“Listen to somethin’, will yuh,” answered Harry, who really knew what
he was talking about in this matter. “Garvey’s gonna give up the title
now and then win it back in a return bout. Lose it on a foul an’ raise
a big holler--that’s the scheme. Young Anderson’ll keep it f’r a year
’r so, an’ make a pile of dough cleanin’ up all the suckers in the
sticks. With the movie stuff an’ the easy pickin’s he’ll rake in three
times ’s much as his manager give Garvey’s tuh fix it all up. I got it
from a guy who was there when they all talked it over, only I can’t say
his name ’cause I’d get my bean drilled through ’f they ever found out
I told.”

“Are you kiddin’ me?” demanded his father.

“I hope to croak if I am!”

“Oh, boy, watch me put thirty dollars on that fight,” cried Philip, who
had been sitting beside his father and listening avidly.

“Well, go slow, go slow,” advised his father. “I know Harry wouldn’t
give us a bum stir, but them agreements ’r’ often bungled up ’r
double-crossed at the last minnit.”

The men began a discussion of prize-fighting conditions in general,
with much vehemence and a comical contrast of naive and foxy opinions,
and the two girls brought out manicure-sets of flashy celluloid,
and fiddled with their nails. Something that was not depression but
unobtrusively akin to it, stirred inside of Blanche. She had felt it
at times before and had never been able to fathom it beyond her sense
that life was too underhanded, and that she didn’t like this aspect of
it. As she listened to the men, with their endless recitals of frauds
and machinations, the little weight moved within her breast. Fake,
fake, fake--that was all you ever heard. Wasn’t there anything honest
and good in the world? It sure didn’t look like there was, most of the
time. Oh, well, why bother so much about it? You could never get along
in this world unless you “belonged”--unless you were like the things
around you.

She started to think of Louis Rosenberg, the man with whom she had an
engagement for the coming night. She didn’t love him, sure not, but
he wasn’t a bad fellow at that. He seemed to be an honest boy, and
sometimes he talked about big, fancy things, like why people hated
each other so much, and why the world wasn’t better than it was, and
he used a word now and then that he called art--something that made
people write books and do paintings and statuary, and get wild over
nothing that any one else could see. He certainly was different from
most men all right. He kissed her sometimes, but he never tried to “get
fresh” (getting fresh, to Blanche, was the placing of a man’s hands
upon any covered part of her body except the arms). Maybe that was why
she didn’t love him. He was too darn good, and a girl wanted a fellow
to “try something” now and then, if he was slow about it and didn’t act
as though he expected her to fall for him (respond to him) immediately.
Then, when he did try it, she could tell just how much she cared for
him, and she repulsed him, or accepted him to some extent, according
to how nervous and glad he made her feel. Well, anyway, there were
always enough men who tried to make advances to her, and Rosenberg was
something of a relief.

She met him that night on the corner of Broadway and Forty-second
Street, where the theater lights clustered like bits of a soul burning
in oil, and an endless, crawling stream of automobiles and taxicabs hid
the pavement, and where the tall, rectangular buildings and the suavely
gaudy shops seemed to be the only unexcited and unsensual objects of
the scene. Rosenberg scarcely ever called for her at the apartment,
and when he did he waited outside on the stoop, because Blanche felt
that she would be “mortified to death” if her father and her brothers
should choose to act unfriendly toward him, and she didn’t want to
run the risk of such an occurrence. She was wearing a very thin,
short-sleeved, georgette dress that extended only two inches below
her knees and was of dull white with a dark red flower-pattern, and
semi-transparent, flesh-colored stockings, and brown shoes with high
heels, and a black felt hat shaped like an upside-down cup, with a red
bow at the side. Like many girls in her environment, she dressed with a
combination of unconscious artistry and cheap, over-flashy display.

Rosenberg was a youth of twenty-three, who worked at the receiving desk
in one of the Public Library branches, and was beginning to think a bit
too much for his happiness, prodded by the “higher literature” that
he was reading for the first time. Previous to his Library job he had
worked as a shoe salesman and had given it up because he had failed
to see that he was “getting anywhere” and because he wanted to do
something out of the ordinary but didn’t know quite what it should be.
He lived with a family of brothers and sisters, and they, together with
his parents, regarded him as a pleasant “schlemiel,” who was always
talking about things but never accomplishing anything, though they were
willing to let him alone as long as he worked and supported himself.
He had met Blanche at the cafeteria where she worked as a cashier on
weekdays, through the expedient of opening a gradual conversation with
her as he paid his check each noon. Finally he had grown bold enough
to ask if he could “take her out” and she had assented because she had
liked the diffident style in which his request was worded.

He was tall and narrow-shouldered, but he was wiry and his arms were
not unmuscular. His light brown face, with its hooked nose, dark,
large-lidded eyes, and thin mouth, often had the look of a puzzled
dreamer, bowing to practical barriers but still trying, half-heartedly,
to peer beyond them. In his attire he wavered between negligence and
neatness, his tastes running to dark suits and loose collars and
brightly striped shirts, and his leading vanity was his wavy black
hair, which he often combed for ten minutes at a stretch.

Since the hour was only eight o’clock--still too early for them to
visit the lower Broadway dance-hall which they frequented--Blanche
and Rosenberg walked over to Bryant Park and sat on one of the
wooden-iron benches along the cement walk and looking out on the
orderly, clipped levels of grass. The late spring night, with its
warm air that had the barest threat of coolness in it, and its
cloudless sky dotted with stars and a moon at which you could glance
now and then with the feeling that they were pretty and a bit
mystifying, and the more immediate lights around you, with their
warm, come-on-and-see-what’s-under-me winks, and all the sounds of
pleasure-seeking traffic--these things brought Blanche a light-hearted,
knowing mood. She was a girl, young and rather handsome, and there was
nothing that she couldn’t make men do if she had only cared enough
about it.

“Tell you what we’ll do, Lou, we’ll take that ferry ride over to Staten
Island,” she said. “I love to get out on the water when it’s night.”

“Let’s not and say we did,” he answered, moodily.

“Gee, I never saw a fellow like you,” she replied. “Dance, dance,
that’s all you care about. Here I know you’re short on money, and
here I’m giving you a chance to get away with forty cents for the
night--four thin dimes--and you turn it down.”

“Don’t always rub in how poor I am,” he said, nettled. “’F I was so
darn crazy about money, like other guys are, I’d get it all right.
There’s other things I’m interested in--books, and good plays, and
watching what other people do. They all call me lazy at home, but it
don’t bother me any. I don’t see that they get so much out of life by
working their heads off all the time.”

Blanche felt a little scornful and a little inquiring as she listened
to him. Who ever heard of saying that people shouldn’t work--what would
become of them if they didn’t? Besides, what did he get out of all his
reading and this “think-ing” of his? He was a boob in many respects,
and in a way she was wasting her time with him. She could have been in
the company of men who could show her an actual good time--high-class
cabarets and automobile parties, and the best theaters and restaurants.
Yet, after she went out with these men for a while she always grew
tired of them. They all got down to what they wanted from her, and
it became a bald question of taking or rejecting them--you couldn’t
“string them along” forever--and they all lacked something that she
was unable to put her finger on--something “classy” and aboveboard and
decent without being goody-goodish. When she “let them go too far,”
under the hilarious urge of liquor, she never felt quite right about
it afterwards. She could never rid herself of the feeling that the
man had not deserved what he had received and that she had been just
another girl on his list. Rosenberg was the one man who came nearest
to fulfilling this mysterious lack, but he was deficient in all of the
other requisites, and his physical appeal was weak to her.

“Well, you don’t read a book when you dance, do you?” she asked at
last, desiring to take a mild jab at him. “Gee, but you’re the cat’s
something. I wish you had more get-up about you.”

“Yeh, it’s too bad I haven’t got a roll,” he answered. “Sometimes I
b’lieve that’s all you girls think about.”

An anger mounted within her.

“Say, ’f I did, why’d I have to pick you out?” she asked. “You make me
sick and tired!”

“Aw, don’t get so sore,” he replied. “I’m touchy in one spot, that’s
all. Let’s talk about something else. I was reading a book called First
Street the other day--it’s highbrow, you know, but it’s darn popular,
too. I hear they’ve sold a hundred thousand. It tells all about how
gossipy-like and narrow-minded and, oh, just small, people are--the
people that live in those little burgs.... Say, the more I find out
about this world of ours the less I like it. Why the devil can’t
people leave each other alone, and do what they want, long’s they’re
not hurting anybody.”

His last words made Blanche sympathize with him, in spite of the fact
that, to her, there was an unmanly element in what he said. Real men,
now, went out and fought with each other, and “stood the gaff” and “got
what was coming to them” and made people obey them. Still there was too
darn much bossing in the world, with ev’rybody sticking his finger in
the other person’s pie. Her family was always nagging at her, and the
owner of the cafeteria was always telling her what to do--thought he
owned her for his measly twenty-two a week--and the cop on the corner
gave you a rotten look if he saw you walking alone late at night ...
yes, too darn much bossing to suit her.

“What’s that there word, narruh-mindud, ’r something like that--what’s
it mean?” she asked.

“It means when you don’t see nothing except what’s right in front of
your eyes,” he answered, delighted at the chance to show his wisdom.
“That’s what ails most of us, all right. When you’re narrow-minded, you
see, you want everybody to be like you are and you go right up in the
air when people don’t act the way you do. That’s what it means.”

“But you’ve got to be like other people ’r else you’ll never get
anywheres,” she said, uncertainly.

“Well, yes, in lots of things,” he answered, “but just the same you
can’t be arrested for what’s going on in your head. You c’n have all
the ideas you want to, ’s long as you don’t pull off any crime, ’r
bother anybody.”

She liked the queerness of his words, for no discernible reason other
than that he seemed to be in favor of “standing up for yourself,”
and not always believing what people told you. Not so bad at that,
only--try--and--do--it! Oh, well, what did all this have to do with the
night ahead of them? This funny boy was her escort for the night, and
she was a desirable woman, and she wished that he would “cut out” all
of the heavy stuff and make love to her, or pay her some compliments,
or do something that men did when they were “gone” on a girl.

“Say, you never kill yourself paying any attention to _me_,” she said,
after a pause. “It’s always them i-i-deeuhs uh yours. Why, I know piles
uh men that would jump all over themselves just for the chance to sit
’longside uh me here.”

He had been looking away from her, and now he turned his head, stung,
and sorrowfully hungry, and much more upset than he dared to confess
to himself, as he took in the appetizing, fresh sauciness of her
face, and the suggestive witchcraft of her pent-up breast. There was
a come-and-get-me-if-you’re-able, and an almost smiling expression
on her face. Without realizing it, he always made an additional
effort to talk about “deep things” when he was with her, to escape
from the unsteadying influence which she had upon his emotions. The
other girls whom he occasionally took to moving-picture theaters and
dances, were more or less inviting to him according to the shape of
their faces--he was fond of very plump cheeks and lips with a large
fullness to them--and whether they had ample but not too corpulent
forms--but otherwise he did not differentiate them, except in the
light of whether they were “good kidders” (brightly loquacious about
nothing in particular) or unduly silent and tiresome. Blanche, however,
incited within him a quick-rhythmed trouble and respect which he could
not explain, outside of his desire to embrace her. She never seemed to
have much “brains,” but still he felt that there was something to her
that life hadn’t given her a chance to develop--something honest and
undismayed.

He had no actual ability at clear thinking, in spite of all of his poor
little defiances and boldnesses abstracted from this book and that,
but he did have a questioning, dissatisfied spirit--a spirit prone to
quick melancholies and even quicker hopes, and always trying to “find
out what it all meant.” He had the desire to make Blanche worthy of
him, and to give her the knowledges and bystandish rebukes toward life
on which he prided himself. He told himself that he was an idealist
in sexual matters and that he was waiting for a girl who could show
him a clean, aspiring, beautiful love, free from all coquetries and
hagglings, and he used the impressive adjectives to serenade his sense
of sexual frustration. In reality, he was oversexed, and not bold
enough to capture the girls whom he secretly desired, but that was not
the whole of it--far beneath him he really did long for a physical
outlet that would be much less sordid and common than the ones within
his reach. At rare intervals he would visit some professional woman,
whose card had been given to him by one of his more rakish friends, and
go away from her with a relieved but downcast mood.

While he felt that he was in love with Blanche, he didn’t want to be
too quick about telling her--you had to wait and be sure that some
other girl, even more alluring, wouldn’t come along--and since she
didn’t seem to be in love with him, his pride made him silent at the
thought of a probable rejection. Often, when he kissed her good-night,
his longing to “go farther” would be close to overpowering him, but at
this moment she always slipped efficiently out of his arms and said her
last farewell. To Blanche, kisses of any length were equivalents to
saying “yes.”

As Rosenberg sat beside Blanche now, after her girlishly taunting
words, he lost control of himself for the first time, and his hand
dropped tightly on one of her knees, but she rose instantly from the
bench. She wasn’t angry at his having become “fresh” because she blamed
herself for it, but at the same time she didn’t want to encourage him.
He was a nice enough kid, but somehow when he touched her she didn’t
get any “kick” out of it.

“Not here, Lou--c’mon, let’s go,” she said, trying to put a look of
cajoling promise on her face.

They walked over to “Dreamland,” the place where they usually danced.
It was a moderately large hall, where the admission price was only
two dollars for couples, and it catered to a nondescript array of
patrons. Those who attended it regularly were in the main young blades
with small salaries and gay ambitions, and working-girls who desired
to “step out” at night, but you could spy a variety of other people
who dropped in occasionally. The place hired twelve professional
girl dancers, who sat on a row of green wicker chairs and waited for
customers, and there was a booth wherein a lady, who looked like a
middle-aged, superannuated burlesque actress, dispensed tickets, each
of which entitled the bearer to a dance with one of the hired girls.
Three or four professional male dancers in tuxedoes lolled opposite
the girls and waited for feminine patrons. They were mostly in demand
for the tango and the Charleston--more intricate dances which most
of the other men present had not mastered. Prosperous, middle-aged
business men frequently dropped in to dance with the girl “hostesses”
and a buxom, overripe, overdressed, smirking woman--who supervised this
part of the hall’s activities--went through the respectable farce of
inquiring each gentleman’s name and introducing him to his “hostess”
partner. Many youths, “hard up” for the evening and desiring an
excellent and “swell-looking” dancer, and many out-of-town visitors,
pining for deviltry during the vacation from their families, were also
frequent patrons. In addition, a large number of unattached men drifted
about the hall and solicited dances from single girls, who accepted or
rejected them according to whether they were well-dressed and talked
with the proper confident, wise-cracking inflections. The dance floor
covered almost one-half of the hall’s space and was separated by a
wooden railing from the remainder of the place.

With its bright green wicker armchairs, and floor of dark red plush,
and varicolored electric lights hanging in bunches from the ceiling,
and badly done paintings of women and cherubs and flowers on the
surface of the walls, and canopied, bedecked platform at one side of
the dance floor, where eight jazz players performed, the hall gave you
the general effect of spurious romance putting on its best front to
hide the decay of its heart. The aura of respectability that hung over
the place was an amusing and desperate deception. Two guards stood on
the dance floor and reprimanded couples when they shimmied, or moved
with a too undulating slowness, and other attendants watched the rows
of wicker chairs and censored any open “spooning” among the patrons,
and yet the hall was quite patently an inception-ground for rendezvous,
and assignations, and flirtations, and covert flesh-pressures. The
“hostesses” took soft drinks with their steadiest partners, at one
end of the hall, with much touching of knees and flitting of hands
under the tables, to induce the men to spend more freely--overrouged
and lip-sticked girls, with bobbed hair and plump faces where sex had
become the most automatic and shallow of signals. They wore short
evening gowns, sleeveless and with low necks, and they “innocently”
crossed their legs to show an inch or two of bare flesh above their
rolled-up, thinnest stockings, and then uncrossed them again when they
perceived that some man was staring at the exposure, keeping up these
back-and-forth movements as though an innuendo with springs and wheels
had replaced all of the sexual spontaneity within them.

Blanche and Rosenberg danced again and again to the jerky, moaning,
truculently snickering ache and dementia of the music. To Blanche,
dancing was the approved, indirect way in which you could relieve your
sex without compromising it, and as she was hugged tightly against
Rosenberg, he became desirable to her because the music and steps
transformed him and cast a rhythmical glamor upon his body. She had the
same feeling with any man with whom she danced, unless he was old or
inept, and when she danced with a man who was physically attractive off
the dance floor as well, the sensation rose to an all-conquering and
haughty semiecstasy. Then she held her head high, and closed her eyes
occasionally, and wished that darkness would suddenly descend on the
floor.

After their first few dances, Blanche and Rosenberg sat down,
breathless, and without a thought in their heads. To Rosenberg,
dances were opportunities to embrace a girl without interference or
remonstrance, but beyond that the music made him feel that he was
capering on the divine top of the world, where such dull and mournful
things as jobs, and money worries, and alarm clocks, and family
quarrels had been deliciously left behind.

In front of Blanche, a bulky, short man, in a dark suit with the latest
wide-bottomed trousers, was trying “to make” a dark, barely smiling
girl, slender and dressed in a clinging gray gown, who refused to
answer his remarks.

“Gee, I’m as popular around here as the German measles,” he said loudly.

The girl smiled more apparently but failed to answer him.

“Listen, just try me once,” he begged. “Just one dance. I’ll pay the
doctor bills if I make you sick. I’m a good sport.”

The girl smiled more widely but still remained silent.

“Will somebody tell me why I’m living?” he queried to the air above her
head. “Boy, but it’s cold to-night! I left the old automatic at home so
I can’t die just yet, girlie. Come on, just one dance, will you?”

By this time the girl was fully convinced of his glib-tongued,
regular-guy status, and felt that he had implored enough to serve as
a sufficient payment for his dance. She rose, without a word, and
accompanied him to the floor. Similar episodes were being enacted
around Blanche and Rosenberg, and he said, with a grin: “It sure gets
me when I listen to what you girls fall for. That’s why I lose out--I
hate to talk that kind of line.”

“Oh, go on, you’d do it if you could,” answered Blanche. “A girl always
likes a fellow ’f he knows how to be funny and don’t carry it too far.
You know what I mean. I never was so crazy ’bout this kidding stuff
myself, but then maybe that’s why you like me, isn’t it, Lou?”

“You’ve got something in you, all right,” he replied. “You don’t know
so much more’n other girls, but you make me feel that you’re diff’rent,
anyway. I guess it’s because you don’t put up so much bluffing and
leading a fellow on, like other girls do.”

She laughed to hide her pleasure at the compliment, and because another
part of her said inaudibly: “Oh, I don’t, eh? Well, I’ll show you,
before I’m through!”

“You’re a funny fellow, but I’ve met them worse than you,” she said.

They danced until 1 A.M., after which he escorted her to the apartment.
As they stood in the musty, narrow, dimly lit hallway, an emotion like
a Roman-candle spun around in his breast, and for the first time he
grasped her with rough, active hands, and breathed hard as he whispered
short, incoherent pleadings. She pushed him back with an undeniable
anger and force which made him grow still and dismayed, and they stood
for a moment, looking at each other.

“So, you’re like all the rest of ’em,” she said. “What do you think I
am? You’ve got your nerve, you have. You can’t put your hands on me
that way, and don’t forget it!”

“Well, I’m sorry,” he answered, downcast. “I didn’t mean to act like
that, but something got the better of me. I couldn’t think of anything
except I wanted you. I’m in love with you, Blanche, and I guess I
didn’t know it till just now. I’d ask you to marry me to-morrow ’f I
had money enough to keep us going.”

She softened at this switch to a “decent” proposal, and she reproached
herself for having flirted too much with him without loving him or
caring a great deal for his embraces. She liked to hear him talk, but
when he touched her he was awkward and hasty, and without that winning
blend of confidence and gradual boldness which she liked in a man’s
approaches.

“I s’pose it’s my fault, too,” she said. “I don’t love you, Lou, but
I do like you lots. Maybe I will some time. How c’n any girl be sure
about that? I don’ want to stop going with you ’f you’ll just try to be
friends with me, Lou.”

He stood for a moment without answering--discouraged and resentful.
Somehow he never seemed to get anything that he really wanted--what
was the use of it all. She li-iked the way he talked, oh, yes, but
she preferred to save herself for some empty-pated cake-eater, some
know-it-all fellow with a straight nose and a bunch of bum jokes and a
string of promises about what he was going to do for her.

“Oh, I’ll try,” he said at last, “but I can’t see why you don’t care
for me. I’ve got just as good a head as any one else you know, and I’m
not so terrible looking, and I know you wouldn’t turn me down just
’cause I’m poor.”

“I cert’nly wouldn’t,” she replied. “I can’t tell you why I don’t love
you--it’s just not there, that’s all. I think you’re a nice boy, really
I do, and I want to keep seeing you, but what’s the use of letting you
do things to me when it don’t mean nothing?... I’ve got to go upstairs
now--I feel like I could sleep ten hours. We sure did dance a lot
to-night. Listen, call me up next Thursday noon, at the caf’, and
we’ll go some place Thursday night.”

“All right, I’ll give you a ring,” he answered, dully. “I guess you
can’t help how you feel, Blanche.”

He kissed her good-night, and she let his lips stay for a while, out
of pity, and then broke away from him. As she went to bed, she had a
muddled, wondering feeling--why did she always turn down boys that
were “good” and willing to marry her, and why didn’t she object to the
embraces of “bad” men, who were just looking for an easy prospect?
Maybe she was a little “bad” herself--a little like May Harrigan, whose
name was the jest of the neighborhood, and who grabbed any young fellow
that came along.... Her perturbations faded out into sleep.

On the next morning she was still a bit glum at the cafeteria, but it
was no more than the least of shadows as she exchanged glances and
repartee with various customers who paid their checks. When she sat
before the cash register, her business-like tension extended even to
the sexual side of her, and she uttered her set phrases merely to
dispose of the men who talked to her, and with little interest in their
faces and words. During the lull-hours, however, between two and four
in the afternoon, she relaxed, and the appraising tingles of her sex
came back, and she entered into badinage with the proprietor and the
counter-men and stray customers whom she knew. Her confined perch on
the cashier’s stool had to be forgotten in some way.

The cafeteria had rows of brightly varnished chairs with broad arms,
and tables with white, enameled tops, and a sprinkle of sawdust on the
tiled floor. Pyramids of oranges and grapefruit stood in the windows,
and the glass-walled food counters were heaped with pastry, cold meats
and trays of salads and puddings. The smell of soggy, overspiced food
and body-odors possessed the air, and a spirit of dreamless, hasty,
semidirty devouring hung over the place. On this afternoon, Blanche was
chatting with the proprietor, a tall Jew of forty years, with a jowled,
bloodless face, killed black eyes that were always shifting about in
the fear that they might be missing something, and the thickest of
lips. His coat was off and he wore an expensive, monogramed silk shirt
of green and white stripes, and had a cigar forever in his mouth or
hand.

“Check up yet on the accounts?” he asked.

“Yep, ev’rything’s straight,” she answered.

“Say, I bought a beauty of uh coat f’r my wiff yesterday,” he said.
“She can’t say I ever hold out on _her_.”

“Well, isn’t that nice--she must be tickled to death,” said Blanche,
giving him the flattering words that he wanted to hear. “Nobody ever
slips me any swell coats.”

“Well, if they don’t it’s your fault,” he replied. “You could work a
fellow f’r anything you wanted--you’ve got the goods, all right.”

“Aw, quit your kidding,” she said. “I wouldn’t take no prizes in a
beauty show.”

“You would if I was one uh the judges,” he answered.

He poked her in the side, playfully, and she smiled carefully. You had
to take such things from your boss--it was all in the game--but you
wished that he would keep his hands to himself--the fat old lobster.

“Any time you wanna take a little ride in my machine, it’s there,” he
said.

“Gee, I’d be afraid of you,” she retorted. “I think you’re _some_
devil, you are.”

He chuckled at the praise of his masculine gifts, and walked back to
the kitchen in response to a call. The cafeteria was located in a
manufacturing and wholesale district where practically all of the trade
occurred around the noon hour, and it closed its doors at 6 P.M. When
Blanche returned to the apartment, Harry, Philip and Mabel were sitting
at the supper-table (the father happened to be visiting one of his
cronies uptown).

“Say, I met a guy to-day said he saw you at Dreamland las’ night,” said
Philip, when Blanche came to the table.

“Uh-huh, I was there,” said Blanche.

“Well, I wouldn’t be seen in a bum joint like that,” Mabel commented.
“You certainly have a gift f’r pickin’ out the penny-squeezers, Blanie.
Me f’r the Club Breauville, ’r places like that. They put on the best
show you ever saw--Hawkins ’n Dale, straight from the Palace Theater,
and a big, A-number-one chorus.”

“Aw, rats, you’re always worrying what a fella’s going to spend on
you,” said Blanche. “They’ve got a peach of a jazz-band at Dreamland,
and a dandy floor--that’s all I care about.”

“Your tastes ’r sim-ply aw-ful,” Mabel answered, “and what’s more, why
shouldn’t a girl go with high-class fellas and have ’em spend piles on
her? That’s what they’re made for.”

“Well, I don’t blame you none,” said Philip, “but believe me, I’d never
pick out a wife like you. You sure would keep a fella on the go digging
it up for you.”

“Mabel don’t mean anything by it,” said his mother, who had come in
from the kitchen, “but I wish she wouldn’t stay out so late. I get to
worryin’ when she comes home three an’ four an’ five in the mornin’.
You never can tell what’ll happen to a girl in this city.”

“Aw, ma, don’t fret, I can take care of myself,” Mabel said.

“That’s what they all say,” Harry broke in. “I was talkin’ to a fella
to-day, said his kid sister got into a scrape out in Jersey. Two guys
started scrappin’ over her in a machine, and one of ’em’s dyin’ in the
hospital, and the bulls ’r after her. It was in the papers yesterday.
You better watch y’r step, Mabe.”

“Listen, no girl ’cept a fool would go out in a machine with two guys,”
answered Mabel. “I’ll take ’em one at a time, believe me.”

“Well, I do think you’re too free with the men, an’ you only eighteen,”
her mother said, looking at Mabel in a ruefully helpless way. “It’s I
that can’t hold you down, and it’s I that never could, but I’m wishin’
you’d stay home once’n a while. How’ll you ever get a decint man to
make a decint proposal to you, how’ll you ever, runnin’ round with that
fast crowd uh yours?”

“G’wan, she’ll land a big one yet, ’fore she’s through,” said Harry.
“Mabe’s a wise girlie, and I’m with her all the time!”

“Same here,” Mabel answered affectionately, as she pulled her brother’s
hair.

“I s’pose I’m the boob uh this fam’ly,” said Blanche, “but I won’t lose
no sleep over it. ’F I like the way a man talks, ’n how he looks, I
don’t care what’s the size of his roll.”

“You got it from me, you did,” her mother said, with a dully soft look.
“It’s I that married your father when he hadn’t a cent to his name.
’Twas the way he could blarney, ’twas that, and ’twas the face of him
that made me take him.”

“Aw, pa’s all right, but he’s shy on brains,” Mabel said. “’F I ever
get hooked up with any man he’s got to have plenty uh money, and then
some. I’m worth all the dough in the world ’cordin’ to my way uh
thinkin’, and I’m not scrubbin’ floors for no fella this year ’r next.
This lovin’-up stuff don’t get you much.”

“Yeh, Blanche is a mut with alla her Rosinburgs, ’n Kellies, ’n all the
rest uh them tin-horn pikers,” said Harry. “I know how she’ll wind up,
all right. Some guy’ll have her washin’ his clothes an makin’ her like
it!”

“Ma’s been washing yours and pa’s for years, but you’re not kicking
about that,” answered Blanche. “Anyway it won’t be some one like you.
You think that row-mance is something people clean their shoes with,
you do. You’ve got a heart like a oyster, I’ll say.”

“Row-ma-ance, that’s good,” answered Harry, derisively. “Try an’ cash
in on it at the butcher shop an’ see what you get.”

“Well, I’m on Blanie’s side,” said Philip, who liked his older sister
because she was “softer” than the other members of the family. “When I
marry a girl she’s got to love me, first, last, ’n’ all the time. I’m
strong for the jack, sure, but there’s other things hanging around.”

“Say, isn’t Joe Campbell comin’ up to-night?” asked Mabel, turning to
Blanche.

“Yeh, I’ve got a date with him f’r eight-thirty.”

“Now there’s a guy you oughta play up to,” said Harry. “He takes down a
good three hundred a week f’r that turn he does up at The Golden Mill.
Joe’s as wise as they make ’em--a wise-crackin’ baby. I’m gonna stick
around when he comes up here to-night. He c’n get a laugh outa me any
day in the year.”

“Joe’s there, all right,” Mabel said. “I wish he wasn’t so sweet on
Blanche.”

“Well, go after him, dearie, if that’s how you feel,” Blanche answered.
“It won’t be breaking my heart.”

As she dressed herself for the coming engagement, Blanche had
an uneven, up-in-the-air song in her blood. Another man would
soon be courting her, and casting “I’d-like-to-get-you” looks at
her, and deferring to her just as much as if she had been famous
or wealthy, and praising her to lead up to attempted caresses,
while she sat in judgment on the proceedings, with a queenly
“I’ll-have-to-see-about-this” sensation, and remarks made of “slams”
and retirings to put him on his mettle, and the feeling of owning the
world for a few, high-keyed hours, until she returned to her bed and
the more level-headed endurance-test at the cafeteria. Her head was
totally empty for a time, and she sang the popular tunes of the day,
in a low, contralto voice, as she fussed about with her toilette.
Then glimpses of Joe Campbell appeared in her head, and she wondered
whether she would ever marry him. She liked him physically, and she
respected his money-making talents, but her response toward him was
much stronger when he was with her. His absence seemed to remove a
black-art spell, and to leave in its place doubts and confusions.
Then, beneath all of his good-humors and effulgent generosities, she
divined an insincerity and something that spoke of shrouded, patiently
crouching intentions. What they were she did not know. Her mind was not
capable of delving into this reaction, and it told her only that he
wasn’t “coming out” with his real self. Her brother had introduced him
to her six months previous to this night, and since then Campbell had
pursued her in an irregular way, since he frequently left New York on
vaudeville-bookings. She had allowed him certain physical liberties and
had admonished herself afterwards for being “too easy,” but the matter
had rested there, since he had never been remarkably insistent in his
efforts to vanquish her.

When he came up, and airily saluted her, Harry and Mabel, who were in
the living-room, greeted him effusively. They considered it an honor
that this minor Broadway favorite, whose name was occasionally in
electric lights, should be so willing to visit them and “step out of
his class.”

“’Lo, Joe, still bringin’ down the house?” asked Mabel.

“Nothing but,” he replied. “The bulls came running into the place last
night, looking for a free-for-all fight, the clapping was that loud.”

Mabel and Harry laughed, and Harry said: “C’mon, I bet you coulda heard
a maxim-silencer after you got through.”

“That’s the same gun they shoot off when you get through fighting,
isn’t it?” asked Campbell, with a solemn look.

“You win,” answered Harry, laughing again.

“Well, I’ve got to go now,” Mabel said. “Papa doesn’t like to be kept
waitin’, you know.”

“Be sure and don’t leave him anything,” Campbell replied. “A girl got
expelled from the Flappers’ Union the other day--they all got sore at
her because she overlooked a ten-spot in the upper vest-pocket.”

“You’re talkin’ to the president of the Union--don’t be funny,”
answered Mabel.

Blanche joined in the laughter now and then--Campbell’s humor was
hard to resist. A stocky man of medium height, whose feet were always
tapping the floor as though they had a light itch to be dancing, he
rarely ever departed from the bon-mots that constituted his chief
stock-in-trade. His mind was intelligent in worldly ways, and a blank
otherwise, but he was quite aware of his ignorances and careful not to
expose them. He had a long, narrow face, with a slanting nose, mobile
lips, and a twinkling, lazy cruelty in his eyes. His thick brown hair
was burnished and pasted down on his head, and he wore the latest,
loose-trousered clothes, in shades of gray and brown, with multicolored
scarves, and a diamond ring on one of his fingers. He was a coarse
sensualist grown careless from many feminine captures, and he had held
back in Blanche’s regard from the feeling that she would “have to come
to him first.” Still, he was becoming aware of an increasing urge
toward her, moved by something in her face and figure that “hit it off
just right.” She wasn’t nearly as pretty as tens of Broadway girls whom
he knew, but she had an unspoiled swerve and sturdiness that attracted
him, and in addition, he felt that she knew much more than many other
women of his acquaintance--that she was not quite as shallow, or as
palpably scheming, as most of his retinue were.

He left the apartment with her, and they hailed a taxicab and were
driven to his cabaret off Upper Broadway. His turn only came on at
eleven o’clock when the after-theater crowd poured into the place, and
he sat with Blanche at one of the tables, and endlessly greeted his
“friends,” and adulterated glasses of ginger-ale with the contents of a
silver flask carried in his hip-pocket.

The Golden Mill was a resplendent, baroque cabaret, with a large,
electrically lit windmill, made of gold silk stretched over a
framework, standing over the stage. The jazz-band sat just below the
stage, between the carpeted runways on which the performers descended
to the dance floor. Men and women, half of them in evening clothes,
chattered and laughed at the surrounding tables, with a macabre
heartiness that sometimes lessened to betrayals of the underlying
dullness.

The whisky began to knock about in Blanche’s heart to a cruelly
victorious feeling--Campbell thought he was so darn smart, didn’t he?
Well, he’d have to go some to get her, just the same. Girls were always
falling for a celebrity of his kind, and she’d treat him to a novelty.
Still, he made her laugh and forget the rest of her world, and she
didn’t mind if he caressed her to a certain extent (not too much and
not too little).

“Y’know, you’re a royal-flush to me,” said Campbell. “I’d win the pot
with you, any day in the year.”

“You’ll win the air ’f you get too gay,” she answered, merrily.

“Now is that nice?” he queried, in tones of mock-reproach. “Daddy’ll do
anything for you--anything you want.”

“I’m not taking things from men this year,” she replied.

“Isn’t she smart--keeps count of the years ’n’ everything,” he said.
“You’ll stop counting when you get to be thirty, old dear.”

“Is that the place where you stopped?” she asked.

Campbell winced secretly--he was thirty-five and not particularly
elated about it. Blanche always talked better under the influence of
liquor--it loosened her tongue and unearthed an effervescence in her
mind: keen as far as it went.

“Take that knife away, Annette;--it’s killing me,” he responded, in
quavering, melodramatic tones.

Blanche took another sip from her highball.

“D’y’know, I may get crazy some time and ask you to marry me,” he said.

“That’s too bad--it must be worrying you a lot,” answered Blanche. “I
never lose my head that way, so look out.”

“But really, I’m strong for you,” he went on. “It’s all in fun most of
the time with me, but you’re at the top of the list.”

“I’d hate to bet on your meaning it,” said Blanche, a bit more softly.

“Don’t do it, you couldn’t get any odds,” he answered.

He chucked her under the chin and she slapped his hand.

“What nervous ha-ands you’ve got,” she said.

“Come on, act as though you didn’t like it,” he retorted.

“That’s the best thing I do,” she replied.

They continued the bantering, with the occasional interruption of
a fox-trot, until his “turn” came on, when he left her with an
acquaintance of his--a harmless, hero-worshiping chorus man in a dark
suit, whose ruddy, regular-featured face had a look that was perilously
near to a pout. Then Campbell appeared in white duck trousers, a dark
blue coat, black shoes, and a panama-straw hat, and did clog-dances,
and sang in a hard tenor voice, at the head of a bare-legged chorus
dressed in very short boyish trousers of red, and indigo low-necked
vests, and gaudy caps slanting on their heads. He was a nimble dancer
and had a powerful voice, and could have risen to a point near the head
of his profession, if laziness and undue dissipation had not held him
down. When his act had finished and he had cleaned the make-up from his
face, he returned to the table and remained there with Blanche until 2
A. M. After they left the place they entered a cab and he said: “What
d’you say to coming up to my joint for a while--I’m harmless, girlie, I
won’t make you cry on mother’s shoulder.”

“You are, and you’re going to stay that way,” she answered. “C’mon now,
tell James to drive over to Ninth Avenue, old dear.”

He made a grimace and did as she requested. He’d get her yet, no
fear, but there was no need for hurrying. It was always a fatal move
to expostulate with a woman at such a juncture. Again, she wasn’t
important enough to _him_ for any come-downs.

In the taxicab, he hugged and kissed her, and though she made little
resistance, an alertness contended against the liquor-fumes in her head
and counseled her to “look out.” As they stood in the hallway of her
building he became a trifle bolder, and she was passive for a while
and then stopped him. It wasn’t easy to hold out against him, and she
had barely been able to check the rising dizziness within her, but she
simply couldn’t let him win her as lightly as this. She had not drunk
sufficiently to reach a gigglingly helpless mood, although everything
_did_ seem to be jovially unimportant, and a dislike of him rose within
her. He was too confident, he was. She’d teach him a lesson, she would,
in spite of all of his physical appeal and his pleasant nerviness.

“You’re a little too fast--I can’t keep up with you,” she said.
“Besides, I’m getting the willies standing here all the time. Be a good
boy now, and let me go upstairs.”

“All right, girlie--game’s over,” he replied, gracefully taking his
defeat. “How about next Saturday--eight ’r so?”

“That suits, I’ll be on deck,” she said.

He kissed her again and went out to the waiting taxicab. As she entered
her room she had a droopy, misty feeling. Oh, well, another man turned
down--what did _she_ get out of it, anyway? It was funny, you wanted to
and you didn’t want to at the same time. She blinked at herself in the
mirror, and then turned out the light and went to sleep.



CHAPTER II


The late spring evening extracted lights from the twilight on Ninth
Avenue, like some pacing conjurer producing tiny, molten rabbits from
his trailing, unseen sleeves. Blanche walked along the street, on her
way home from the cafeteria, and her high heels scuffed on the dirty
cement sidewalk with a weary evenness. It was all right to say that
sitting on a stool all day rested your legs, but the energy that went
from your arms and head drew its penalty from all of your body. That
cafeteria was finally “getting on her nerves”--the place had changed
proprietors a few weeks before, and the new owner, a furtive-faced man
of thirty, who considered himself to be an invincible Don Juan, always
hovered about Blanche’s stand as much as he could and continually
touched her in ways that made it hard for her to conceal her ire. She
had run out of all of her tactfully laughing withdrawals, and momentary
submissions when the gesture was not “too raw,” and the situation had
reached a straining-point. It would not have been so bad if he had been
good-looking, or if he had sought to lavish gifts upon her, but here he
was a man with a long nose and a spindly body, making advances to her
because she was an employee of his at twenty-three a week--the nerve of
him! She would quit the place to-morrow if he tried another thing.

A year had passed since her last spring night with Campbell at The
Golden Mill, and she was now a little over twenty-one. Her figure had
grown less bottom-heavy, and her bosom had curved out a bit, and her
face was more resolved and inquiring beneath the many ignorances that
still remained. A deeper, half hopeless question had crept into her
bluish-gray eyes--an untutored I’d-like-to-know-what-it’s-all-about
look--and her wide lips had come together more closely and lost some
of their loose thoughtlessness. Very dimly, she had even commenced
to see flaws and credulities in her hitherto uninspected family,
especially in her father and her brother Harry, whose endless strut
and domineering words had become more of a palpable bluff to her. Yet,
at the same time, she still accepted her environs without much anger
or revolt, because, after all, they were real, and near-at-hand, and
seemingly permanent, and because they still held nightly escapes, and
laughing conquests at parties, and dance halls, and cabarets. The
only one possibility of a change was marriage, and she dreaded this
loophole because it meant being tied down to one man and losing the
delicious sense of juggling several men to the stress of her whims. At
times she toyed with the dream of becoming the mistress of a wealthy
and at least endurable man--plenty of women “got away with it,” and
what was hindering her?--but it never more than flitted through her
mind because her life had always pounded into her the fact that a girl
had to be “respectable” at all costs, had to cling to an indignant
pose of keeping men at arm’s length, so that she could look the
world in the face with the glad knowledge that it was unaware of her
“personal” relentings and sins. Otherwise, the girl definitely cut
herself off from all safeguards and reassurances, and was regarded with
contemptuous smiles, and lightly spoken of. Again, Blanche had just
insight enough to see what the outcome might be if she lived with such
a man or allowed him to maintain an apartment for her--to see a hint
of the querulous boredoms and the eventual separation that would ensue
unless she was really “crazy” about the man. Of course, she merely
translated it into the statement that she was not “cut out” for such a
life.

During the past year, Campbell had been away twice on long vaudeville
tours, and while he was in New York, her refusals to succumb to him had
piqued him to a point where he called her up at much longer intervals.
What the devil--he wasn’t so “hard up” that he had to chase after a
cafeteria cashier who was probably merely intent on getting a “good
time” out of him. He could not quite dismiss her from his mind--she
had a proud twist to her which he liked in spite of himself, and his
vanity always made him believe that he would eventually subdue her--and
the impulse to see her again came back to him during his weariest
moods--after an unusually pronounced jag, for instance, when he was
“sore at the world” and when his head throbbed heavily, for at such
times she always beckoned to him as a fresher and less solved feminine
variation.

Blanche’s attitude toward him had narrowed down to a sentence which
she had once said to herself: “’F he ever asks me to marry him, maybe
I will, maybe, but he’s not going to get me like he does other girls,
not ’f he was the Prince uh Wales himself!” During the past year she
had been more steadily in the company of Rosenberg--he was a necessity
to her because he “knew more” than the other men in her life and could
assist the feeble stirrings and problems that were beginning to spring
up in her mind. He was still unattractive to her in a physical way--a
very bright, good boy, but not the broad-chested, wise and yet tender
man who constituted her hazy ideal--but she had permitted him embraces
of greater intimacy, out of the feeling that it wasn’t right to take so
much from him and give him nothing in return, although she refrained
from any semblance of a full surrender. He frequently loaned her books,
through which she stumbled with amusement and awe--she could not
understand most of what they said (it sure was “bughouse”), but when he
sought to explain it to her it grew a bit clearer, and she had glimpses
of men and women in the novels, who lived more freely and searchingly
than she did, and who saw and spoke of “all sorts of strange things”
that she had never dreamt of--com-plex-es, and inhibishuns, and hunting
for bee-oo-ty, and boldly telling life how double-faced it was, and
living your own life with a laugh at the objections of other people,
and always looking for something that stood behind something else. They
formed themselves into perplexing lures that could never be quite
banished from her mind, and became “stronger” when she was in her
“bluest” moods.

Rosenberg had found another girl--a blonde, slim chatterer, who tried
to write poetry between her labors as a stenographer, and worshiped his
“won-der-ful brain,” but although this girl had become his mistress, he
never regarded her with more than a flattered satisfaction and still
saw Blanche once a week. He could not rid himself of the hope that
Blanche might finally love him and marry him, and the other girl’s glib
professions of culture and creative aspiration were never as appealing
as Blanche’s stumbling and honest questions. He saw “something big”
in Blanche and wanted to extract it from her and bask in its warm
emancipations.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Blanche entered the living-room of her home she found that Harry
and her father were in her bedroom, engaging in a highly secret confab
with another man. Still resenting her day at the cafeteria, and vexed
at this invasion of her private domain, she burst into anger before
Philip and Mabel, who were seated at the table and waiting for the
mother to bring the supper in.

“Say, what right’ve they to go in my room?” she asked. “Think I want
some fella to see my slip-ons ’n’ things hanging around, and maybe
sitting on my bed? I’m not going to stand for it!”

“Hush up, don’t let them hear you,” said Mabel. “I know how you feel,
sure, but then it don’t happen ev’ry night. They got something up their
sleeves, and they don’t even want the resta us to hear about it. I
don’t see why Harry and pa can’t trust their own fam’ly, though.”

“They’re cooking up something about Harry’s next scrap,” said Philip.
“He’s in there with Bill Rainey, and Rainey’s managing this here Young
Thomas, the kid Harry’s gonna fight Friday night.”

“Well, I’ll stand it once, but they’d better not pull it off again,”
Blanche responded, as she removed her hat and her spring coat. “My
room’s my own place and I don’t want any strange men looking it over.”

Her anger had gone down to a quieter sullenness.

“Come on, Blan, get off the high perch,” Philip said. “We’ll all be
rolling in money if the thing comes through.”

“B’lieve me, Harry’s going to get into trouble yet with all this
crooked stuff of his,” Blanche replied. “He can’t even fight on the
level any more.”

“Well, I don’t blame Harry one bit,” Mabel said. “He’s just got to play
the old game, that’s all. He won his las’ bout hands down and they went
and give the verdict to the other fellow.”

“You can’t be a goody-goody and come out on top in this burg,” Philip
said, moodily. “I don’t b’lieve in stealing ’r holding anybody up, but
just the same you’ve got to be as tricky as the other side, I’m telling
you.”

“That’s always the line around here, but I’m not so sure about it,”
Blanche answered. “There’s plenty of people that get by ’cause they can
do things better’n other people--’cause they’ve got brains in their
heads and not a lotta excuses. ’F ev’rybody was dishonest all the
time, they couldn’t make jails large enough to hold ’em. I’m getting
tired of all this fake and fake and fake around here. It looks like a
bum excuse to me.”

“Since when’ve you become so up’n the air?” asked Mabel. “You’ve been
listenin’ some more to your Rosinburgs, ’n Smiths, ’n all the resta
them--fellas that walk round without a cent in their pockets, ’n’ tell
you how stra-aight they are, ’n’ talk like they owned the earth. They
give me a pain in the back. Harry’s tryin’ to make some real money so
we c’n all move outa this shack here, but _you_ never give him any
credit.”

“Have it your own way,” Blanche replied, with a light disgust. “You
won’t talk like that ’f the p’lice ever come up here looking for him.”

“That’s what I’m always afraid of,” said the mother, who had come in
from the kitchen. “I get turribul dreams all the time, turribul, an’ I
c’n always see your father an’ Harry sittin’ in jail. I’ve always said
it’s no use bein’ dishonest, no use. It’s not the right way uh actin’,
it’s not, an’ you always get punished for it. I’d much rather live just
like we are, plain an’ decint-like, an’ not be worryin’ all the time.”

“I know how you feel ’bout it, ma,” said Blanche, patting her mother’s
shoulder and stroking her hair, “but there’s no use in saying anything.
Try and tell something to Harry and pa--just try!”

“Aw, ma, don’t be so foolish,” Mabel said, with affection and
condescending pity mingled, as she pinched her mother’s cheek. “’F
you went round like I do, an’ saw what was goin’ on, you wouldn’t be
so worried. Why, there’s fellas gettin’ away with murder all the time,
an’ nobody touches them. Big ones, too, the bigges’ they’ve got in this
burg.”

“Well, I think ma’s right, in a way,” said Philip, cautiously, “but
she don’t know what Harry’s up against. You can’t be straight in this
scrapping game.”

“It’s I that always tried to raise all of you to be honest an’
good--it’s no fault uh mine, it’s not,” his mother said, mournfully, as
she returned to the kitchen.

The door of Blanche’s room opened and the two Palmers emerged with
Rainey, the rival manager. Rainey was a tall, beefy man with a paunch,
who wore an immaculate suit of brown checks and sported a gray derby
hat and a heavy gold chain on his white linen vest. He was almost
totally bald, and his smoothly ruddy face had the look of a politician
who had just kissed an unusually homely infant, in the interest of his
election. He uttered a few brightly bovine compliments to the women and
then departed, after a last whispered talk with the father outside of
the apartment door.

“Say, what’s the idea of keepin’ us outside?” asked Mabel, peevishly,
after her father had returned. “You oughta know we’re safe, you ought.”

“What you don’t know won’t hurt you none,” her father answered, rubbing
a finger over his thick lips. “Anybody’ll start blabbin’ when he gets a
little booze in him--’specially a woman.”

“Aw, we know what it’s all about,” said Philip. “They’re pointing
Thomas f’r a go with the champion, and Harry’s one guy _he_ can’t beat,
an’ he knows it. What’s Rainey going to hand out f’r Harry’s putting
the wraps on, that’s what I’d like to know.”

“Listen, talk about somethin’ else,” Harry said, surlily.

He was a bit ashamed of his rôle in the affair--not from a sense of
guilt but because it was a refutation of his two-fisted supremacy--and
a bit childishly fearful that the “frame-up” would be discovered if any
one, even a member of his family, conversed on the subject.

“You people sure hate to mind your own business,” he went on.

“That’s right, lay off,” said the father. “We’ll be havin’ thousands
nex’ week, ’f ev’rythin’ goes right--I’ll tell yuh that much--but I
don’t want none of yuh to start blah-blahin’ all over the place. You
girls wanna keep a close mouth, d’yuh hear me?”

“Oh, hush up, you never give us a chance to say anythin’--you’re always
gabbin’ yourself,” Mabel said, petulantly, as she went into her room.

“I’ll bet both of you get into a peck of trouble before you’re
through, but it’s not my funeral,” said Blanche, in a spirit of weary
indifference.

“Stop croakin’ all the time, will yuh,” answered Harry. “You talk like
you was anxious f’r us to get in bad, you do.”

“Oh, let’s drop it--you never pay any attention to what I say,” she
replied. “I’m just looking on--don’t mind me.”

“Well, see that yuh don’t do nothin’ but look,” her father admonished.
“You’ve been havin’ too damn much to say, these days.”

Blanche repressed her irritation and retired to prepare for her night’s
engagement. She was to meet a boy named Fred Roper at the corner drug
store, and hints of coming gayety strove to dispel her darker feelings.
She’d get away from her family some time, even if she had to wind up
by marrying a hunchback with one eye, never fear, but in the meantime
there was nothing that she could do. Almost unconsciously, she had
begun to classify the members of her family in general ways that were
far from complimentary. Her mother was a weak, abused woman; her father
was brainless, and conceited, and bossy; Harry was an ill-tempered
bully and gangster; Mabel thought of nothing but deceiving men and
landing a wealthy one; and Phil was afraid of his shadow, and never
taking sides. Still, they were _her_ family, and it was necessary to
“stick up” for them--a great deal to other people and even a little
to herself--and in spite of their faults they _did_ love each other,
and they _were_ generous to each other, and, after all, they were no
worse than most of the people in the world, as far as she could see.
She would always be loyal to them, sure, but she did want to get off by
herself, and be independent, and not bear the brunt of their orders,
and displeasures, and knaveries, and to achieve this she would probably
have to pay the penalty of marrying some man whom she did not love, but
who could comfortably provide for her. What could she do herself--she
had no particular talent or ability (she was getting wise to that),
and it seemed to be a toss-up between working like a Turk and doing
more as she pleased in a home of her own. She would never accept any
large sums of money from her family, even if her brother’s dishonest
schemes should succeed, because she would never be able to feel right
about it--she didn’t want money that was “dirty” and not her own.

Her mood was unduly reckless as she walked down Ninth Avenue to meet
her “boy-friend,” for she had a reaction to “forget the whole thing”
for the night, at least. In her light brown coat, thinly trimmed with
cheap white rabbit-fur at the bottom and top, and her short black and
lavender crêpe-de-chine dress, and the round, gray hat snugly fitting
over her bobbed hair, she had the self-contained, jauntily ordinary
look of scores of other girls tripping down the street. Her escort of
the evening, Fred Roper, was a pimply-faced, stocky youth, with sandy
hair and lascivious eyes. He dressed in expensive gray-checked suits,
and wore a narrow-brimmed, black derby hat, and regarded himself as one
of the Beau Brummells of the neighborhood. He worked on and off as a
clerk in a Ninth Avenue cigar store, but his main passion and source
of revenue was playing the races, and his financial state varied from
hundreds of dollars on one week to being “broke” and borrowing money
on the next. On this night he had “cleaned up” on a ten-to-one shot at
Belmont Park, and he had the truculent swagger of the successful and
not yet hardened gambler, who feels that he is the darling of chance
and need only lift a finger to cow anything in the world. Blanche
considered him to be an aimless fool--one of the hordes of bozoes who
were always trying to get something for nothing--but since he was
willing to spend money freely for her entertainment, she saw no reason
for refusing to accompany him now and then. Also, he was a good dancer,
and so far had never sought to do more than kiss her--a contact which
always had to be endured as a payment for your evening’s fun. She knew,
of course, that he was “laying for her,” and would sooner or later
attempt to seduce her, but that was the element of lurking risk that
prevented such occurrences from becoming too stale and peaceful--it
gave you the watchful tingle, and the sought-after feeling, that
established your feminine importance, even though you disdained the man
in question and had no intention of responding to him.

“’Lo, Blanche, how’s the girlie?” he asked, when she had walked up to
him at the drug-store entrance.

“Fine as silk,” she answered.

They stepped to the curb-stone and looked for an empty taxicab among
those that rolled by.

“What d’you wanna do to-night?” he asked.

“Well, let’s see, I guess I’d better leave you car-fare,” said Blanche,
impudently.

“I can’t laugh to-night, my lip hurts,” he responded. “I raked in a
coupla hundred on the fifth race to-day, so don’t let that part of it
worry you none.”

“How about a show, and then the Breauville afterwards?” asked Blanche.

“You’re on,” he replied. “You’ll meet a lotta guys before you find
one’s loose as I am, girlie.”

“I know--you’re a peach, Fred,” she answered, putting a note of
cajoling praise in her voice.

They rode in a cab to a Broadway theater, where he purchased the
best orchestra seats. The show was one of those musical revues--“The
Strolling Models of 1925”--where fully endowed, and slenderly
semi-chubby, chorus girls revealed everything except the extreme middle
portion of their anatomies, and pranced and kicked about the stage,
with a manufactured blitheness and a perfect cohesion; and where male
and female dancers pounded, leapt, and whirled, like inhumanly nimble
and secretly bored manikins; and where the scenes were rococo or
minutely simple--multicolored Chinese scenes, Oriental harem scenes,
streets on the Bowery, Russian peasant festivals; and where the music
and songs were either sweetly languorous or full of a rattling,
tattling sensuality. The music had a precarious charm, a charm that
could not bear much reiteration but just failed to be obvious at a
first hearing.

Blanche sat, transported, and sorry that she had to return to her
partner between the scenes. This was the life--throwing up your head
and winking an eye at all invitations, like you had a first mortgage
on the earth! She envied the girls on the stage, even though she knew
something of the labors and uncertainties attached to their profession.
How she wished that she, too, could do something different, and get
applauded for it, and lose the buried sense that often recurred to her.

After the show she went with Roper to the Club Breauville, a private
hang-out off upper Broadway. The place was plastered with frescoes
and decorations in gilt, red, and purple, and had a jazz-orchestra
of ten men. It prided itself upon its air of gleeful informality--a
spirit of natural good-fellowship--although you divined that all of
the uproar was doing its best to hide the passage of money, and a
less humorous sensual game. Theatrical celebrities were hailed at the
tables and asked to make speeches, or give impromptu performances,
and people spoke to each other without an introduction, and a stout
hostess in a black and silver jet evening gown wandered among the
tables and made witty remarks to everybody, and never lost her
“I’m-doing-it-to-keep-you-amused” mien. As Blanche and Roper followed
the head waiter to a table, the hostess, who had chemically yellowed,
abundant hair, and a round, fake-babyish face, was bandying words with
a group of tall, rakish men in tuxedoes.

“D’you hear the latest?” she asked. “They’re going to give all the
chorines a machine and a diamond bracelet to keep them honest.”

“Rockefeller’s donating a million to the cause.”

“Pass that pipe around and we’ll all take a whiff,” answered one of the
men.

“I’ll give you the needle instead--I sold the pipe to a stock-broker
this morning,” she answered.

The man laughed at this jibe at their profession, and the hostess
turned to another table.

Champagne was sold at fifteen dollars a bottle, and Roper spent his
money lavishly, in the effort to impress Blanche. When the second
bottle came she drank sparingly--you grew too darn careless if you
drank too much, and then you frankly “bawled out” the fellow with you,
or let him take too many liberties. Sometimes the matter passed out of
your control and you became merrily hazy about everything, but you had
to fight against such an ending. Roper drank freely and passed into an
inebriated condition that was sullen and hilarious at different times.
This girl would have to be good to him to-night--he had played around
with her long enough--but he would have to laugh it off for a few
hours, until his chance came.

As they rode away in a cab, he kissed her, and she made no
remonstrances. It was all part of the system--a kiss or two at the
start of the evening, and allowing the man to hug you a little too
closely sometimes, while you were dancing, and then some more kisses
during the ride home, with a few “Don’t, please don’ts” thrown in to
provide the proper touch of objection. Then Roper became more daringly
insistent, and she spoke indignantly over an inner sigh. Here it was
again, the old finale.

“You musn’t do that to me,” she said. “I don’t like you well enough
for that, Fred. I mean it. I’m not a bad sport, and I’m willing to go
so far, but I won’t give in to a fellow ’less I really care for him.
That’s the way I’m made.”

Roper’s drunkenness gave him an irresistible anger--if this girl
thought he was a “sucker” he’d soon correct her.

“You’re gonna come across with me,” he said. “I’m jes’ as good’s any
other fellow, ’n’ I’ve been treatin’ you white, an’ you know it. What’s
the idea, stringin’ me along like this?”

“’F you can’t talk decent to me I’ll leave the cab,” she replied,
really aggravated this time. “I never promised you anything, and ’f you
wanted to take me out, that was up to you.”

For a moment, caution contended against Roper’s drunkenness.

“Aw, can’t you be nice to me?” he asked, trying to resume his
overtures. “You know I’m crazy ’bout you, you know that.”

“I can’t be like you want me to,” she answered, as she pushed him away.

This time, a rage took full possession of his muddled head.

“Suppose I stop the cab an’ let you get out,” he said. “You’re too damn
stuck-up to suit me, an’ I won’t stand f’r any more of it, see? You’re
nothin’ but a lousy gold-digger, you are!”

A cool sneer rose up within Blanche--she’d “call his bluff” this time,
and show him that he couldn’t insult _her_ with impunity. She tapped
on the glass panel and stopped the cab. Roper tried to detain her, but
she shook off his hands and stepped out to the pavement. The cab driver
looked on with a quizzical ennui--this thing happened in his cab at
least once every night.

“C’m on back, Blanche, I’ll be good,” Roper cried, but she ignored him
and strode down the street.

He followed her in the cab to the next corner, repeating his entreaties
and not quite daring to leap after her, but the presence of an
inquisitive policeman caused him to abandon the chase, with a final
oath. As she walked home, Blanche had a feeling of relief and of
self-reproach. She had taught this fellow a lesson, but what was the
sense of such happenings? She couldn’t dismiss a twinge of guilt at
having taken his entertainment and then rejected him, but what could a
girl do--sit at home all the time and watch the walls? Oh, darn, it was
all a mess, all right.

On the following morning at the cafeteria, she had a heavy head and
a scarcely veiled sulkiness. If Harrison, the proprietor, started
anything now, she’d have to quit her job--it was about time that men
found out that they couldn’t treat her as though she were a bag of
oatmeal! Nothing occurred until the middle of the afternoon, when
Harrison, a tall, thin man with a long nose and blinking eyes beneath
his curly brown hair, hung around her desk.

“Wanna go somewheres to-night?” he asked.

“No, thanks, I’ve got ’n engagement,” she replied, trying to make her
voice a little cordial.

“Say, you’re always turnin’ me down,” he said. “What’s the matter,
don’t I look good to you?”

“Oh, you’re all right,” she answered, “but I can’t help it ’f I’m
usually dated up. There’s a lot of men in this town, you’d be
surprised, and there’s only seven days in the week, y’ know.”

“Don’t stall around so much,” he said. “Come on, let’s go to a show
to-night, what do you say? You know you like me, Blanche, sure you do.
You just wanted to see how often I’d ask you, that’s it.”

He accompanied his words by placing a hand upon one of her hips, and
this time her endurance fled.

“I’m leaving to-night--you’ll have to find another cashier,” she said,
coolly. “Try all of this stuff on some other girl and see how she likes
it.”

He looked at her for a moment, with a heavy incredulity, and then broke
into wrath--this girl thought she was better than he was, eh?

“You can’t leave too soon to suit me,” he said. “You act like you was
Queen of Hoboken, ’r something like that! I’ll pay you off to-night,
and good riddance!”

“’F I had your conceit I’d think I was a queen, all right,” she
replied, as she went on punching the register.

“You give me a pain,” he retorted, as he walked away.

She looked after him with an immense relief. Thank the Lord, this was
over at last.

As she walked to her home that night, she felt an emboldened mood, as
though she had asserted herself for the first time in her life. When
she broke the news to Mabel, who was sitting in the living-room, her
sister was sympathetic.

“You’re a darn sight better off away from that place,” Mabel said.
“Stop workin’ for a while an’ just step out, Blan. You’ve got a rest
comin’ to you.”

“I’ll say I have,” answered Blanche.

For the next week Blanche hung around the apartment, and enjoyed the
luxury of rising at ten in the morning and losing the old feeling of
drowsy, meek bondage, and went to moving-picture theaters or read
some of Rosenberg’s books during the afternoon, and romped about with
men every other night, but at the end of the week, the relish in her
freedom disappeared, and a nervous weariness took its place. She wanted
to be doing something again, and to feel that she was earning the
right to her nightly pleasures, and to rid herself of the sense that
she “didn’t amount to anything” and was just hugging her bed to forget
about it. To be sure, work was disagreeable and often exhausting, but
if you had no other gifts, what else could you do? That phrase that
Rosenberg was always using--“expressing yourself”--it kind of got under
your skin. Why couldn’t she write things, or be an actress, or learn
something and teach it to other people, like the men and women whom she
read of in the borrowed novels? Well, maybe she would some day, if she
ever found out just how to go about it. She was still a mere girl and
she didn’t intend to be kept down forever. In the meantime, working
could prevent her from getting “too blue” about everything--a brisk
distraction which was the only one within her reach.

She secured a position in a beauty parlor, giving “waves” to the hair
of young women fidgeting over their allurements, and _passé_ women
rescuing the vanished or vanishing charm, and on the evening of her
first working day she met Rosenberg at their usual street-corner
rendezvous.

“Let’s just have a talk and not go anywheres to-night,” she said, as
they walked down the glittering hardness of Forty-second Street.

“I’m with you,” he answered, with an elation upon his narrow face.

When a girl didn’t want you to spend anything on her, and yet desired
to be with you, it was an exquisitely promising sign, and perhaps
Blanche had begun to fall in love with him. They sat on one of the
stone benches in front of the Public Library building and beneath one
of the huge carved lions that guard its portals, and they looked out
at Fifth Avenue, with its endless stream of crawling, shiny, smoothly
soulless automobiles and busses.

“Look at all those machines, going somewhere and nowhere at the same
time,” he said, dreamily. “Don’t they all look important though, all
rolling along in two directions, and still they’re just filled with all
kinds of people hunting for an evening’s fun, that’s all.”

“S’pose they are, what of it?” she asked. “You’ve got to get some
amusement outa life, haven’t you?”

“Oh, if that’s all you’re after then you’re just like an animal,” he
answered, importantly. “D’you know, sometimes I wonder why people have
heads--they hardly ever use them.”

“Well, I don’t know--I’ve been using my head some lately but I don’t
seem to be getting anywheres,” she said, dully.

“Maybe you don’t see where you ought to go,” he replied.

“I cert’nly don’t,” she responded. “’Less a girl knows how to do
something big, she hasn’t got a chance. Gee, I wish I was clever and
could put it over, like some girls do.”

“Why don’t you try to write, or go to school and study something?” he
asked. “You’ve got it in you, Blanche, I know you have, but you just
don’t believe in yourself.”

“Me--write?” she queried, with a laugh. “Don’t be foolish, Lou. I can’t
even spell most words straight!”

“You could, ’f you put yourself to it,” he answered. “Piles of times
you say something with a lot of meaning to it, piles of times, but you
don’t know what’s in you, Blanche. You need to be pushed along and to
get some confidence in yourself.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t like to believe you, huh?” she asked, wistfully.
“I feel like I could do things when you talk to me, Lou, and then
afterwards it all goes away.”

They were silent for a while, and then she said: “Oh, let’s forget
about it. We’re sitting here like a couple of dopes and letting off a
lot of easy talking. Talking, that’s about all I’m good for, I guess.
Let’s take a bus ride and see the Avenue.”

They boarded one of the green, lumbering busses and sat on the
uncovered top. He curved an arm around her waist, and she made no
objections. He had a peaceful, heartening influence on her, and she
wondered whether it might not be best to marry him, in spite of the
fact that he was physically negative to her. He might help her to make
something out of herself. But no, it never worked out. You had to be
thrilled and light-headed and upside-down when a man touched you, and
if you weren’t, you’d soon get tired of having him near you, no matter
how much you liked to hear him talk, and how encouraging he was.

When they lingered in the hallway of her building, she let his embraces
become more determined, for the first time in many months, moved by
her troubled compassion for him. Then she stopped him, and gave him a
sorrowful look.

“I’d like to love you, Lou--I’m not kidding,” she said.

“Aren’t you a lot nearer to it now than you ever were?” he asked,
eagerly. “Aren’t you?”

“A little bit, maybe,” she answered. “You’re a good boy, Lou, you are,
and I’m always going to be straight with you. I’ll never tell you
nothing but the truth.”

They kissed again, and after they had arranged to meet on the following
Monday he walked down the hallway, wondering whether he should dare to
hope, and hoping in spite of his wondering.

When Blanche returned from her work, on the next evening, she
immediately perceived the downcast looks on the faces of her mother,
Philip, and Mabel, who were seated around the living-room table.

“What’s this, anyway--’n Irish wake?” she asked. “What’s happened?”

“I just couldn’t say nothin’ this mornin’, you’d have been that
worried,” her mother replied, dolefully.

“Anyway, don’t you read the papers?” asked Mabel. “They’ve got it on
the second page of the Herald to-night, an’ the Courier, too.”

“Harry’s been called up before the Boxing Commission,” said Philip.
“He and pa went down this afternoon, and we’re expecting them back any
minnit now. There musta been a leak somewhere ’bout that fake scrap he
pulled night before last. They’re after him hot and heavy, and the Club
wouldn’t pay him off to-day, and I think Rainey’s double-crossed him in
the bargain. It looks bad all right for poor Harry!”

“Didn’t I know this was going to happen,” Blanche exclaimed. “I did
think he’d get away with it once ’r twice, though, before they caught
him. You’ve got to have brains ’f you want to be a crook in this world.”

“Oh, stop this I-told-yuh-so line,” answered Mabel. “Harry was only
trying to look out for the rest of us, and I’m darn sorry for him.”

“Well, I’m not,” Blanche replied, determinedly. “He needed something to
take the swelled head out of him, he did, and I’ll say it even ’f he is
my own brother.”

“I only hope it’ll make all of you listen more to your ma,” said Mrs.
Palmer. “There’s never no good in tryin’ to make money dishonest-like.
It’s happy I’ll feel ’f Harry’ll only go to work now, an’ give up alla
that fightin’ and bummin’ around like he does.”

“Well, Harry’s not down yet, I’m saying,” Philip interposed. “B’lieve
me, he’ll fix the guys that did him dirty, and he’ll do a good job of
it, too!”

“Yeh, and get into jail for doing it,” said Blanche, as she walked into
her room.

“Don’t talk like you wished it on him,” Mabel called after her,
irritably.

As Blanche changed to a kimono, she tried to feel sympathetic toward
Harry, but she could not down her sneaking satisfaction at his
misfortune. Somehow, it was difficult to engender affection toward
this rough-neck, never-seeing, cocksure brother of hers. Of course,
a man wasn’t a man unless he used his fists and his voice with a
hard efficiency, but Harry carried his masculinity to an overbearing
extreme, and never paid any attention to your side of the question, and
seemed to have a meanness--a go-to-hell spirit--which could instantly
be awakened by the slightest opposition. His dishonesty didn’t annoy
her particularly, but she disliked the lame excuses that he always
made for it. If he had been an out-and-out hold-up man, she would
have respected him far more. Oh, well, he was her brother after all,
and maybe this happening would make him more subdued and considerate.
Funny, she and her family would be disgraced now, and yet, if he hadn’t
been found out, they’d still be holding their heads high in the air.
“Getting away with it”--that was all people ever seemed to care about.

She heard the voice of her father and brother, and went out to the
living-room. They sat slumped down in chairs, with their hands in
their pockets, and scowled down at the linoleum-covered floor.

“It gets my goat, that bastard on the Commish, Murvaney, tellin’ me
‘Y’r a dis-gra-ace to the ring, Mis-ter Palmer.’ Didn’t he wink his eye
and give Callahan a clean bill when they had all that fuss about the
welter champ fight? Sure he did! I’d like to have the coin they slipped
him f’r that little stunt.”

“What’s the use uh beefin’--we’re in f’r it,” his father answered,
dully.

“What did they do to Harry?” Blanche asked.

“They went an’ barred him from the ring indef’nitely, the skunks,” her
father answered. “Thomas an’ Rainey only got three months, an’ there’s
somethin’ rotten somewhere. ’F we find out they flimflammed us we’ll
make ’em wish they hadn’t! A guy they call Carnavan come down an’ swore
he’d listened to Rainey an’ me fix it all up in the Club on the night
of the fight. I saw him hangin’ around that night, I saw him, but
Rainey said he was a good friend uh his.”

“Those two guys’ll be in the hospital before the end uh the week,” said
Harry. “Watch what I said.”

“Oh, what good will it do you ’f you beat them up?” asked Blanche. “I
don’t want to rub it in, Harry, but you’ll get into worse trouble than
this, ’f you don’t tone down.”

“Keep your mouth shut, that’s all I want from you,” Harry answered.
“You’re too good to live, you are.”

“Well, I think it’s a darn shame, Harry,” said Mabel, putting an arm
around his shoulders.

He squeezed her chin, and his scowl lessened a bit--he had a “soft
spot” for Mabel. She knew that you couldn’t get along in this world
without being as rotten as the next fellow was, and she appreciated his
generosity and his manly qualities, and knew that he was usually the
victim of bad luck and that he hardly ever received a “square deal.”
Blanche, on the other hand, was a coward, always trying to preach at
him, and she thought that she was better than he was, and she needed to
be “taken down.”

“You’re the one in this fam’ly I’m strong for,” he said to Mabel. “You
c’n have my las’ dime any time you want it!”

“Same here,” Mabel replied. “Blanche is gettin’ too stuck-up these
days, an’ she thinks she knows it all.”

“Well, she’d better lay offa me,” he said, ominously.

“You just can’t stand it when any one tells you you’re wrong,” Blanche
retorted.

“How about me, Harry, you know I’m always with you,” Philip said.

“Oh, you’re all right, but you need more guts,” Harry answered. “You
don’t know enough to go out an’ get what’s comin’ to you.”

“’F I was a scrapper like you, maybe I would,” said Philip. “I don’t
take any sass from anybody ’f I can help it, you know that, Harry.”

“It’s not right f’r you an’ Blanche to be always fightin’ like this,”
said Mrs. Palmer, turning to Harry. “It’s I that wish you’d be nice to
each other, like a brother an’ sister should. I don’t think you done
right, I don’t, but it’s no good pitchin’ into you now. Maybe you’ll
be a good, honest boy from now on, maybe you will.”

“You mean well, ma, but you don’t know what I’m up against,” Harry
answered, as he patted her head in a clumsy, reluctant way.

“You make me sick, Kate,” the father broke in. “Didn’t you an’ me work
hard f’r years, didn’t we, an’ what did we get out of it, what did we
get? Nothin’ but trouble, I’ll say! You an’ Blanche leave Harry alone,
’r you’ll hear from me. He got a bum deal this time, but he’ll be out
on top, ’fore it’s over.”

“Yeh, I’ve got confidence in Harry,” said Philip, giving his brother a
look of respect tempered with more secret annoyance. “He knows how to
handle himself.”

“Well, I don’t want my own boy to get behind the bars, an’ he will ’f
he don’t behave himself more,” Mrs. Palmer said, in a weakly lamenting
voice, as she shuffled back to the kitchen.

Blanche, who had no engagement for the night, went to a neighboring
moving-picture show and saw a film called “Nell of the Yukon,” in
which a dimpled statuesque actress named Dorothy Darling--a lady in
her desperately preserved, early thirties--smiled, and frowned, and
struggled, without subtlety but with much animal abandonment wasted on
the impossible tale. She played the part of a speckled but not quite
approachable dance-hall girl in a mining camp in Alaska, and she was
in love with a handsome young gambler who had incurred the enmity of
the saloon and dance-hall proprietor. Of course, the gambler was
the only honest one in the place, and, of course, he protected her
from the proprietor, whose intentions toward her were, alas, horribly
immoral, and, of course, the gambler was also loved by another jealous
dance-hall girl, who became the tool of the unscrupulous proprietor.
The second girl trapped the gambler in her room and, after he had
gently repulsed her pleadings, delivered him to the ambuscade of the
villainous proprietor and his cohorts. He was about to be slain by this
oddly hesitant and delaying villain when Nell of the Yukon rescued him,
at the head of a band of his mining-camp friends.

As Blanche looked on at the film, she had an excited interest that
sometimes lessened to a sense of the absurd. It _was_ “sort uh silly,”
to be sure, especially that scene where Nell fought against the
proprietor, in her room, and suffered no casualties except the tearing
of the upper part of her waist, and the loosening of her hair. No
girl ever got off that easy when a strapping fellow had her cornered
and was out to do her wrong! But still, the story was a glimpse into
another fabricated world, far more enticing than her own, and in her
eagerness to forget the immediate facts in her life, Blanche devoured
the colossal unreality of the film with only an occasional qualm.
Afterwards, as she walked down Ninth Avenue, she had an odd mood--too
tired to be discontented, and yet carrying the suggestion that life was
purposeless and that there was “nothing much to it.” The mood stayed
with her as she rested prone on the bed in her little room.



CHAPTER III


In the twenties, years slip by with the flimsy rapidity of soap-bubbles
blown from the breath of time, unless the person experiencing them has
found an unusually cloistered or passionless existence. As Blanche sat
in the Beauty Parlor where she worked as a hair-curler, she remembered
that she was twenty-two and that her birthday was only twenty-four
hours distant.

The year which had elapsed since her brother’s expulsion as a
prize-fighter seemed to be little more than a crowded and instructive
month. As she sat in the Parlor, during an afternoon’s pause between
patrons, she said to herself: “Gee, here I am, already twenty-two! I’ll
be ’n old dame before I know it. It’s enough to give you the jimjams,
it is.” Something that was not wisdom but rather an engrossed search
for wisdom rested on the smooth plumpness of her face. Again, a light
within her eyes came near to the quality of self-possessed skepticism
and shifted against the survival of former hesitations and faiths.
Life to her was no longer a conforming welter of sexual advances and
retreats, with moments of self-disapproval bearing the indistinct
desire “to get somewhere”--thoughts and emotions had snapped within
her; problems were assuming a more unmistakable shape; the people in
life were displaying to her more indisputable virtues and faults; and
a spirit of revolt was simply waiting for some proper climax. Her
past year of argument and contact with Rosenberg had given her a more
assured tongue and a more informed head. The books that he had supplied
her with had now crystallized to specific inducements--tales about men
and women whose lives were brave, or distressed, pursuits of truth,
and an ever keener knowledge of each other, and a sexual freedom that
was not merely the dodging of lust to an eventual marriage ceremony,
and a dislike for the shams and kowtowings of other men and women.
Frequently, she invited the scoffing of her family by remaining at home
and reading some novel until well after midnight, with her eyes never
leaving the pages. Her sister and brothers, and her parents, felt that
she was getting “queer in the dome,” wasting her time like that when
she might have been picking up some fellow with serious intentions,
or enjoying herself, and though she still went out with men three or
four nights of every week, the family were beginning to fear that she
was not a “regular” girl and that silly, unwomanly ideas had gotten
into her head. In their opinion twenty-two was the age at which a
woman should either be married or be moving toward that end, and they
couldn’t understand her apathy in this matter. They cast most of the
blame on Rosenberg--that dopey mut that she was always afraid to bring
around had evidently turned her against her family and filled her with
junk from the foolish books he loaned her.

Even her mother had begged her to stop going with him and had
complained: “It’s you that’s not me own sweet girl any more. You oughta
stop traipsin’ around with that Jew boy, you oughta. He won’t never
marry you, and it’s I that wouldn’t let you, anyways. He’s got no money
and he’s not right in his head, he’s not!”

Harry had threatened to “beat up” Rosenberg, if he ever saw him, and
her father had railed at her, but she had seemed to look upon their
objections as a huge joke, which had angered them all the more but
left them powerless to do anything except to lock her in her room at
night--an expedient that could hardly be tried on a twenty-two-year-old
daughter who earned her own living and could leave the family roof
whenever she pleased.

On her own part, Blanche had treated their railings with a perverse
resentment. “I’ll go on seeing him just to spite them--who’re they to
boss me around,” she had said to herself. In reality, she had lost much
of her old respect for Rosenberg’s mind and verbal talents, and she was
beginning to see flaws in his make-up.

“He never does anything but talk--he’s a wonder there,” she had said
to herself once. “He takes it all out in wind. I’ll bet you he’ll be
working in that library for the rest of his life, ’r in some other
place just like it. ’N’ again, he always says he’s going to write big
things, but I never see him doing it. I’d like to meet a fellow that’s
doing something--making a name for himself. Gee, ’f I could ever run
across one of those nov’lists, for instance. That man, Ronald Urban,
who wrote Through The Fields--wouldn’t it be all to the mustard to talk
to him! He could tell me all kinds of things I’ve never dreamt of.”

Still, she continued to see Rosenberg because he was the best prospect
at hand, and because she pitied his longings for her, and to show her
family that she could not be intimidated.

Harry was still barred from the ring, and the family had lapsed back
to its old tilts with poverty. Both Blanche and Philip had to give
part of their earnings toward the maintenance of the apartment, as
well as Mabel, who had gone to work as a dress-model for a wholesale
cloak-and-suit firm. She pronounced it “cluck ’n soot,” and affected
a great disdain for her environs and her Jewish employers, but she
was not at all averse to dining and dancing with some of the more
prosperous buyers who frequented her place. Harry had become more of
a wastrel, and did little except loaf around during the day, with
an occasional bootlegging venture and sojourns with women, while
the father loitered about poolrooms and complained of his son’s
persecution, or sat in poker and pinochle games.

As Blanche lolled in the Beauty Parlor, tinkering with her nails, the
image of Joe Campbell was in her head. He had ignored her for six
months and then had bobbed up again on the previous day, and she had an
engagement with him for the coming night. “It’s no use--I can’t get you
out of my head,” he had told her over the telephone. “I stopped seeing
you because I thought you were playing me for a sucker, but go right
ahead, girlie, I’ll bite again. You’re deuces wild and the sky for a
limit with me!” “You didn’t get hoarse telling me that for the last few
months,” she had replied, amused and a little flattered. “Sure not, I
was trying to forget you,” he had responded. “It can’t be done, little
girl. Come on now, let daddy act like a millionaire to-night--he’s good
that way.”

When she had mentioned his call to her family, they had all urged her
to “make a play for him” and angle for a proposal of marriage.

“He must be nuts about you ’r else he wouldn’t always come back for
more,” Mabel had said. “I’ll bet you’re always freezin’ him out, that’s
the trouble. You’ll be a fool ’f you don’t try to land him this time.
He’s loaded with jack, and he’s got a rep, and he’s not so bad-lookin’
at that. What more d’you want, I’d like to know--you’re no Ziegfeld
Follies girl yourself.”

Now, as she sat and polished her finger-nails, Blanche wondered whether
it might not be best to marry Campbell after all. Most of his past
glamor to her had been rubbed away, and she saw him as a second-rate
actor, always laughing to hide what he wanted to get from a girl, and
drinking and spending his money because he wanted people to believe
that he was much more important than he really was, and caring nothing
for the “fine” part of life which she had begun to realize--books, and
paintings, and such things. Still, if she married him he would give
her a leisure and an independence in which she could find out whether
anything was in her or not, and whether she was gifted for something
better than marcelling hair or punching registers. Then she would be
able to sit most of the day and just read and think, or maybe go to
some school and learn something, and meet new kinds of people. How
could she ever make something out of herself if she had to work hard
every day, and give half of her limited dollars to her family, and
listen to their naggings and pesterings? Of course, she did not love
Campbell, and the thought of continuous physical relations with him was
not as pleasant as it had once been--somehow, when you began to “see
through” a man’s blusterings and boastings, his hands and his kisses
lost part of their thrill--but still, he _was_ physically agreeable
to her, and it might be idle to hope for more than that from any man.
He wouldn’t talk about the new things that she was interested in, or
sympathize with her desires for knowledge and expression, but when, oh,
when, would she ever find a man who had these responses? Such men lived
and moved in a different world, and were hardly likely to meet, or to
care for, a questioning Beauty Parlor girl--they could easily procure
women who were more their equals. Besides, it was silly to sit and
mope around and wait for your “ideal” to arrive. You might wind up by
becoming a dull old maid, with nothing accomplished.

The one thing that counseled against marriage to Campbell was her
unfounded but instinctive distrust of him. She could never rid herself
of the feeling that he was secretly cruel and heartless, and that there
was something “phony” about all of his smiles and laughters, and that
he was not nearly as intelligent as he seemed to be, but knew how to
manipulate an all-seeing pose.

The Beauty Parlor was a sweetly smirking, pink and whitish, overdraped
place, trying so hard to look femininely dainty and insipidly refined
and still preserve something of a business-like air. Cream-colored
satin panels were nailed to the walls and pink rosebud arrangements
shaded all of the electric lights except the green-shaded, practical
ones placed beside the tables and the chairs where the work was done.
There were Persian rugs on the hardwood floor, and amateurishly piquant
batiks, and the reek of cheap incense and dryly dizzy perfume was in
the air. Outside of three prosaic, ordinary barber-chairs, the place
had several dressing-tables with long mirrors, enameled in shades of
ivory and pink with thin, curved legs. Bottles of perfume and jars
of paste and powder were scattered over the place, and many framed
photographs of actresses were on the walls, most of them signed: “With
affection (or with regards) to my dear friend, Madame Jaurette” (some
of them had cost Madame a nice penny). These picture-testimonials
had a potent effect upon the Beauty Parlor’s clientele, owing to the
humorous misconception on the part of many women that actresses and
society queens alone are acquainted with the mysteries and abracadabras
of remaining physically young, beautiful, and unwrinkled. Photographs
of society women were much more difficult for Madame to procure--money
was of no avail in their case, ah, _mais non_!--but she did have one of
Mrs. Frederick Van Armen, one of the reigning upper-hostesses of the
day, which she had secured after a year of plotting, and of pleading
notes.

The entire shop had an air of sex running to an artificial restoration
place to repair the ravages of time, or to add an irresistible
exterior to its youth, but there was something hopeless and thickly
pathetic attached to the atmosphere. It was sex that had lost its
self-confidence and its unashamed hungers--sex that hunted for tiny
glosses and protections, and had a partly mercenary fear and precision
in all of its movements.

Blanche’s thoughts of Campbell were interrupted by the advent of the
proprietress, Madame Jaurette, and a young patroness. Madame was fat,
and too short for her weight, but through the use of brassieres,
bodices, reducing exercises, and diets, she had kept her curves from
emulating a circus side-show effect. It was a strain on her nerves,
however, and she had that persecuted but uncomplaining look on her
face. Like a great many middle-class, nearly middle-aged French women,
with very moderate educations, she was a preposterous mixture of
dense cupidities and romantic sentiments, and while the cupidities
had their way with her most of the time, they were always apt to be
knocked galley-west by some gentleman with an aquiline nose, or the
destitution of some weeping girl. She had a round, almost handsome
face, with the wretched hint of a double chin that was never allowed to
go any further, and bobbed, black hair--it didn’t become her but it had
to be mutilated for business reasons--and she dressed in dark, lacy,
expensive gowns.

“Ah, Ma’m’selle Palmaire, you will take so good care of Mees White,
she is vairy fine lady,” she babbled. “Mees White, she always have
Nanette to feex her hair, but Nanette she is here no more. Ma’m’selle
Palmaire, she is really ex-pert, Mees White. She will geeve you, what
you call it?--the curl that won’ come off!”

“’F I’m so good, why don’t you raise my wages once in a while,” Blanche
thought to herself, but she said: “Sure, I guess I know my work all
right. I’ll do the best I can for her.”

The patroness was a slim girl with a disproportionately plump bosom,
a dumbly child-like, near-pretty face, and a great shock of blonde,
bobbed hair. As Blanche heated the curling-irons, the other girl said:
“It’s just the hardest thing to keep my hair wavy. It never does last
more than two or three days. I’ll spend a fortune on it before I’m
through.”

“Why don’t you get a permanent wave--it’s cheaper in the end,” Blanche
answered.

“Oh, I’m never able to afford it when I do get the impulse, and then I
might want it straight again any time. It’s all so much a question of
what you’re wearing and how you feel, you know. D’you think I look good
in curls?”

Blanche had no opinion whatever on the subject, but she replied: “Yes,
indeed, I think they go well with your face.” Patronesses, to her, were
simply blanks to be dealt with in rotation, unless they exhibited an
ill-temper or an impatience. A spell of silence came as Blanche bent to
her task, and then the other girl said: “Don’t you get tired of working
all day in this stuffy place? I know I could never stand it myself.”
Blanche was used to this question--women who tried hard to show an
interest in the beauty-parlor workers but rarely ever really felt it.

“It’s no worse than lots of other things,” she answered. “I’ve got to
earn my living some way. I won’t be here all my life though, believe
me.”

The conversation continued in this casual strain, with neither woman
caring much about what the other said, but with both desiring to lessen
the tedium of an hour. Two-thirds of all the words that human beings
talk to each other are merely unaffected protections and tilts against
an impending boredom.

When Blanche came home from work that night, the members of her family
were seated at the supper-table. After she joined them they began to
twit her about her approaching engagement with Campbell.

“Gonna make him buy the license, Blanche?” Harry asked.

“Yes, a dog license,” she answered.

“That’s a fine crack to make against a fellow like Joe,” Harry replied.
“You’re not good enough f’r him, ’f you ask _me_.”

“’F you give me one of your hankies I’ll cry about it,” she said.
“Maybe that’ll suit you.”

Harry looked at her dubiously--it sure was hard to “get her goat” these
days.

“You’re gettin’ sillier ev’ry day,” Mabel said to her sister. “You’ll
never find another chance like Joe Campbell--they don’t grow round
on bushes. S’pose you’d rather sit all night ’n’ read one of those
no-ovuls uh yours. It’s hard to figure you out.”

“In the first place he hasn’t asked me to marry him yet,” Blanche
answered, “and besides, I don’t see why all of you have to butt into my
affairs so much. I never tell any of you people what to do.”

“Well, don’t forget, I’m your father, and I’m gonna have somethin’ to
say ’bout who you hitch up with,” Will Palmer said.

“Nobody’ll stop you from saying it, but I’m no good at being bossed
around,” she retorted coolly.

“We’ll see ’bout that, we’ll see,” her father responded with a heavy
emphasis.

This daughter of his was becoming too high-handed, and he would
probably have to use harsh measures to her for her own good, but as
long as the matter remained one of verbal exchanges there was nothing
that he could do about it. Just let her start something, though!

“We’re all jes’ tryin’ to look out f’r you, Blanie dear,” her mother
said. “You shouldn’t get so uppity about it, you shouldn’t.”

“I can take care of myself--I’ve had to do it long enough, ma,” Blanche
responded.

“We’ll, I’m with you all the time, and that’s no lie,” Philip said.

He did not understand Blanche to any great extent, but he liked her
independence (“spunk”) because it spoke to the similar feeling within
himself which he was too cowardly to express.

“You’re about the only one in this fam’ly who leaves me alone,” Blanche
answered, with a little dolorous affection.

She knew that Philip was weak and hedging but she was grateful for his
lack of hard interference and pitied his spineless spirit.

As she dressed to meet Campbell she had a don’t-care, tired-out mood.
Let them all talk their heads off--they couldn’t prevent _her_ from
doing what she wanted to do.

When Campbell came up, the rest of her family had departed, with the
exception of her mother, who greeted him with a timid cordiality. How
she wished that her daughter would marry this good-natured, prosperous
man! She herself would have been much better off if she had been more
prudent in her youth and not so much concerned with this “lovin’ and
mushin’” thing. Why, any woman could get to lovin’ a man if he took
care of her, and acted kind and true, and didn’t bother with other
women, and had a nice, jolly nature. Of course, Campbell _did_ go
around with a fast, booze-lapping crowd--she knew what those Broadway
people were, but leave it to Blanche to tame him down if she married
him. Well, maybe Blanche would come to her senses before it was too
late.

When they reached the street, Campbell said to Blanche: “What’s on your
mind, to-night, old dear? You’ve said about six words since I came up.
You haven’t gone back on me, have you?”

“I don’t feel much like gabbing to-night,” she answered. “I guess I
won’t be very entertaining to you.”

“Just be yourself, that’s all I want,” he said, as he squeezed her arm.
He sensed that something might be “going wrong” with her at home, and
after they had entered a cab he asked: “What’s the matter, your family
been razzing you any?”

“Oh, they’re always doing that,” she responded. “They’re great ones on
telling me what I should do.”

“Why don’t you make a break?” he queried. “I’ve always thought you were
a fool to stay in that rotten dump of yours. It’s no place for a girl
with any class to be living in, you know that. You could get a couple
of rooms of your own and do as you please, and sit on the top of the
world.”

He had an idle sympathy for her, and he felt that she would be much
more accessible if she were removed from the guardian eyes of her
family. Funny, how he couldn’t get this girl out of his mind. She had
a “thoroughbred” touch, a high-headed, brave, exclusive something that
he had rarely found in women and could scarcely define. It wasn’t her
looks and she certainly wasn’t particularly talented in any way--it was
a straightness in conduct and word, and an untouched, defiant essence
that seemed to cling to the physical part of her. Some women were like
that--their affairs with men never left any impress upon them. Guess
they never really gave in to any man--that was it.... Should he ever
ask this girl to marry him? Marriage--brr! Wasn’t he still paying
alimony on the first one that he had contracted? No, he’d be willing
to live with Blanche and give other women “the air,” for some time
at least, but no more marrying for him. Even this would be quite an
important concession for a man of his kind, who could have his pick
of pretty girls every night. His first wife had attracted him just
as Blanche did, and what had happened? Everything sweet and snug for
the first six months, and then a first quarrel because she caught him
kissing a girl in his show--nothing but handcuffs and a prison cell
ever satisfied _them_--and then more quarrels about where they should
eat, and what kind of ties he ought to buy, and a dozen more trivial
frictions. And money--two hundred a week for her expenses got to be
like two dollars in her estimation. Then he had felt the gradual
letting down of his desire for her--she had not become less attractive
but less imperative and more a matter of pleasant convenience. He had
returned to unfaithfulness, after drunken parties--how could any man
help it?--and he’d certainly never forget the cheap, blah-blahing night
when she had burst into a hotel room, with two private detectives, and
found him with a woman. No more of that kind of joke for him.

These thoughts occurred to him irregularly as he talked to Blanche in
the cab, and afterwards as they sat in a corner of The Golden Mill.

“You’re a simp to work like a nigger all the time,” he said. “What’s it
bring you, anyway? Three dimes and a crook in your pretty back, that’s
about all.”

“It’s easy for you to talk,” she replied. “Tell me how I’d ever get
along without working?”

“I’ll keep you up any time you say,” he responded, caressing her hand
that rested on the table, “and don’t think I’m spoofing you, either.
I’ll give you anything you want, and no strings tied to it. I mean it.
Don’t think I hand this spiel around ev’ry night! You’ve had me going
ever since I first saw you--you’ve got the class and I know it.”

She looked at him meditatively--it would be necessary to “call him
down” for this open proposal, but--just saying it to herself--why
shouldn’t she be supported by a man? How would she ever get a breathing
spell otherwise?

“When I take money from any man I’m going to be married to him first,”
she replied, “and don’t think I’m giving you any hints, either. ’F I
wanted to be free and easy with men, I’ve had plenty of chances before
this--plenty. I hate to work at something I don’t care much for, sure,
ev’ry girl does, but it’s better than living with some fellow till he
gets tired of you and then passing on to some one else. They’ll never
play baseball with yours truly ’f she can help it.”

He was divided between admiration for her “spunk” and candor, and a
suspicion that she might be testing him.

“I’ll stop dealing from the bottom of the deck,” he said, slowly. “I’ve
known you for two years, now, Blanche, and it’s time that we came to
some understanding. This loving stuff’s all apple-sauce to me--you
always think you’re nuts about a girl till she falls for you, and then
you change your eyesight. I’ve had one bum marriage in my life, and I
never was fond of castor-oil and carbolic acid on the same spoon. If
you’ll hook up with me, old girl, I’ll treat you white, but I can’t
hand out any signed testimonials about how long it’ll last, for you ’r
me. What’s the use of all this worrying about next week and next year?
It’s like not sitting down to your meal, ’cause you don’t know what
you’re going to have for dessert.”

“Well, what’s the proposition?” she asked, surprised at her own lack of
indignation, and liking his unveiled attitude.

“I’ll get you a swell apartment up in the West Seventies,” he said,
“and you can put up a bluff at studying something--music ’r acting ’r
something like that--just a stall to keep your folks in the dark. I’ll
get a wealthy dame I know to take an interest in you, see? She’ll be
the blind. She’s a good sport and she’ll do anything for me. You’ll
be known as a _protégée_ of hers, and your family’ll never know I’m
putting up the coin. Why, it’s done ev’ry day in the year.”

“So, I’m to be your miss-tress, like they say in the novels,” Blanche
answered, with a struggle of irritation and tired assent going on
within her. “I suppose I ought to bawl you out for your nerve, but I
won’t take the trouble. I’d like to _really_ study something, and get
somewheres, but I’m not so sure I want to take it like that.”

“What’s the matter, don’t you like my style?” he asked.

“You’re not so bad ’s far as you go,” she replied, “but I don’t happen
to be in love with you.”

“What of it?” he asked. “You know you like to be with me--that’s what
counts. Most of this love stuff’s a lot of hokum, that’s all. I never
saw a couple in my life that stayed crazy about each other for more
than two years, and that’s a world’s record. If they stick to each
other after that it’s because they haven’t got nerve enough to make a
break, ’r for the sake of their kid, ’r a hundred other bum reasons.
But they’ve lost the first, big kick ev’ry time--don’t fool yourself.”

“I don’t know about that,” she said slowly. “’F a girl finds a man that
loves her for what she is--her ways of acting and talking--I don’t
see why they can’t get along even ’f they do get tired of hugging and
kissing all the time. They’ve got to have the same kind of minds,
that’s it.”

“We-ell, how’s my mi-ind diff’rent from yours?” he asked, amused and
not quite comprehending (she sure had acquired a bunch of fancy ideas
since his last meeting with her).

“It’s this way, you don’t like to read much, real good books, I mean,”
she replied, “and you never go to swell symf’ny concerts where they
play beautiful music, and you don’t care for paintings and statues and
things like that. I never thought much of them myself, once upon a
time, but I’m beginning to get wise to what I’ve been missing. I mean
it. I’ve been going around for a long time with a fellow that likes
those things, and I’m not as dumb’s I used to be.”

Campbell laughed inwardly--doggone if she hadn’t become “highbrow”
since their last time together! This was an interesting, though absurd,
turn of affairs. She had probably been mixing with some writer or
painter, who had stuffed her head with “a-artistic” poppycock, which
she didn’t understand herself, but which she valued because it was
her idea of something grand and elegant. Girls like Blanche were
often weathercocks--not satisfied with their own lack of talent and
ready to be moved by any outburst of novel and impressive hot air
that came along. Well, it would be easy to simulate a response to her
new interests and captivate her in that way, unless the other man had
already captured her.

“How do you know I don’t like those things?” he asked. “I’ve never
talked much about them because I never knew they mattered to you.
I thought you believed that this guy, Art, was a second cousin to
artesian wells. How was I to know?”

She caught the presence of an insincerity in his glibness.

“’F they’d been first on your mind, you couldn’t have helped talking
about them,” she replied. “Anyway, ’f I ever went to live with you, I’d
never do it roundabout, like the thing you had in mind. I’m not much on
lies and hiding things. When I leave home it’ll be a clean break, and
anybody that doesn’t like it’ll have to mind his own business.”

“Well, I only wanted to make it easier for you,” he said. “If you don’t
care whether your family gets sore, or not, it’s all the same to me.”

“Say, you talk as though I’d said yes to you,” she answered. “Don’t
take so much for granted, Joe. I’ve listened to you like a good sport,
instead of bawling you out, but I’m not going to rush off with you
_this_ week.”

“Now, now, I’m not trying to force myself on you,” he said, soothingly.

She _was_ a wary one, and no mistake, but it looked as though he
finally had her on the run, and it was all a question of whether he
cared to exert a little more patience and persuasiveness in the matter.
Of course, he’d continue the game--he had nothing to lose, and it would
be a distinction to have her lovingly in his arms, and he really liked
her defiance and her immunity from ordinary wiles and blandishments.
She was somebody worth capturing--no doubt of that. A degree of cruelty
also moved within his reactions. Just wait till he had her where he
wanted her--he’d do a little bossing around himself then, and if she
didn’t like it....

When they departed from The Golden Mill, the whisky that she had
had played tiddledywinks with her head, aided by the abrupt change
from the heated cabaret to the cooler street air, and she felt an
Oh-give-in-to-him-what’s-the-dif’ mood, and her thoughts grew mumbling
and paralyzed. She swayed a bit on the sidewalk and he put an arm
around her waist, to steady her.

“Say, Blanche, don’t pass out on me,” he said, anxiously. “We’ll go
over to my shack now, that’s a good girlie. I won’t eat you up, don’t
be afraid.”

“I’ll go anywheres ... give my he-ead a rest ... feels like a rock ...
that’s funny ... like a ro-ock,” she answered, mistily.

He hailed a cab, and on the way over to his apartment, she leaned
her head on his shoulder and passed into a semidrowsy state, while
he caressed her with a careful audacity and smiled to himself. Well,
well, Blanche Palmer in the little old net at last--what a blessing
liquor was, if you kept your own head.

When they reached his apartment--two ornate, untidy rooms with mahogany
furniture, and signed theatrical photographs, and an air of cheaply
ill-assorted luxury--he wanted her to rest upon one of the couches,
but her head had grown a bit clearer by this time, and admonishings
were once more faintly stirring within it. Where was she? Where?...
In Campbell’s apartment.... So, he’d gotten her there at last. Damn,
why was everything trying to revolve around her? This wouldn’t do at
all.... She must ... must ... must get herself together. Tra, la, la,
what on earth was the dif’? It would be nice to let the whole world go
hang for one night, and feel a man’s body against hers, and stop all of
this fighting and objecting. Sweet, all right, sweet, but no ... no ...
no ... he’d be getting her too easy ... and all he wanted was ’nother
party with ’nother girl ... she knew ... and she just didn’t love ...
oh, love, nothing ... better to feel good and be yourself ... but she
didn’t trust him and she wouldn’t have him ... just wouldn’t have ...
yes, she would ... no-o ... she’d simply have to pull herself together.

She went to the bathroom and closed and locked the door behind her
before he knew what was happening--he had been standing in a corner
of the room and confidently slipping into his dressing-robe. Then she
plunged her head into cold water, off and on, for the next half hour,
and found a bottle of smelling-salts in his medicine cabinet and thrust
it against her nostrils, and loosened her waist. She felt herself
growing steadier, and the mists in her head changed to a swaying ache
in which her thoughts regathered, and her emotions became sullen and
self-contemptuous.

“You’re some boob, you are, letting Joe Campbell dose you up with booze
and get you to come to his place,” she said to herself. “He almost put
one over on you this time, you conceited dope. How much respect would
he have for you if he got you this way? Say, don’t make me laugh.”

In spite of the sick giddiness that still remained within her, she
became morosely determined to leave the apartment and return to her
home. If he tried any rough stuff, she’d yell for aid, or break
something over his head. But he wouldn’t--he’d never risk losing her.
He’d know darn well that if he tried any movie stunts she’d never see
him again. Well, maybe she had misjudged him--maybe he was really in
love with her and too ashamed to admit it. They always put up that
I-don’t-care-I’ve-got-a-hundred-others bluff, to impress a girl.
Besides, men always wanted the same thing, and they shouldn’t be blamed
for that. It was natural.

During the half hour he had rapped repeatedly on the door and begged
her to come out, and she had ignored his words. Now she opened the
door and walked slowly into the room. He was mixing a highball, and he
looked up with a placating smile.

“Well, feel any better now, Blanchie?” he asked, casually. “Sit down
and rest it off.”

“I’ll say I do,” she answered. “I’m going home, Joe.”

He looked at her intently and saw that at least half of her drunkenness
had disappeared. H’mm, this was a nice state of affairs. Sweet
mamma, he’d rather go after a she-fox any day in preference to this
girl! Well, he would have to renew his caresses and cajoleries--more
carefully this time. He walked up to her and placed his arms around her.

“Listen, don’t leave me flat now,” he said. “I’m wild about you, dear,
and I mean it. What’s the use of stalling around all the time? Hell,
life’s short enough, and the next morning slaps you in the face just
the same. I’d marry you in a second if I didn’t know that marriage
never turns out right. Let’s be ourselves, Blanche dear--let’s cut out
this comedy stuff.”

As he embraced her his words became more sincere than their original
conception had been--somehow transformed by her smooth closeness and
his grudging respect for the note of “class” within her.

She tried to thrust him away from her, with wobbly arms, and said:
“You’ve got to let me go home, Joe, I’m not myself, I’m not. You
wouldn’t want me to give in to you just because I’ve drank too
much--not if you love me like you say you do. ’F I ever come to you I
don’t want to be coaxed--I want to do it of my own accord, and be glad
about it.”

“I can’t, you’ve got me up in the air,” he answered, trying to embrace
her again.

This time she repulsed him with more vigor.

“I’d like to see you stop me,” she said. “’F you try it you’ll wish you
hadn’t.”

She walked to the couch and started to put on her hat and coat. His
mind began to work swiftly, repressing his impulse to follow her and
change it to a battle. The determination in her voice might not be
real--he had subdued other girls by resorting to a mingled physical
struggle and pleading at the last moment--but he had a hunch that it
was genuine in her case. She was that rare kind of girl who had to
be handled with extreme, inhuman care, and who had a fighting spirit
within her and became sullenly stubborn when she thought that a man
was trying to force himself upon her. If he controlled himself now,
it might give him the halo of a “real gentleman” to her, and then
afterwards she would come to him of her own accord, just as she had
said. He walked up to her and held one of her hands, gently.

“What do you think I am--a gorilla ’r something?” he asked. “I’d never
try to keep you here against your will, don’t be silly. I thought you
didn’t mean it ’r else I’d never have acted this way. You’ve got the
wrong slant on me, Blanche. I’ll get a cab for you now and see you
home.”

She looked at him more softly and said: “Maybe I have, Joe, maybe. You
can’t be blamed ’f you want me, but you’ll just have to wait till I
come to you myself, ’f I ever do.”

They descended to the street and he rode home with her. He kissed her
lightly, as they stood in the hallway of her building, and said: “When
can I see you again, dear?”

“I’m too dizzy to think ’bout anything now,” she replied. “Call me up
real soon and we’ll make a date.”

She managed to reach her room with no greater heralding than a
collision with a chair in the kitchen, and after she had undressed
and turned out the light, she pitched herself upon the bed, as though
she were violently greeting a tried and deliciously safe friend. For
a while, fragments of thought eddied through the growing fog in her
head. Hadn’t she acted like an idiot--like one of those movie queens in
the pictures, always struggling around with some man, like they were
ashamed they had bodies? She was alone now--she’d had her way, and she
was winding up with nothing, nothing except another day of hard word
at the “parlor,” with a heavy head to carry around. Oh, gee, where was
the man with a big chest, and a handsome face--it wouldn’t have to be
pretty, like that of a cake-eater--and a complete understanding of all
her longings, and a wonderful mind, and ... her head grew blank and she
fell asleep.

On the next morning she had a virulent headache, and felt thwarted
and taciturn, and was quite certain that life was a fraud and that
the future held nothing for her. The mood remained with varying
intensities, during the next three days, but the resiliency of youth
slowly drove it away, and on the third night, as she sat in her room,
preparing for a “date” with Rosenberg, she felt quite skittish and
intactly hopeful. After all, they hadn’t been able to down _her_ yet.
She’d get ahead in the world before she was through, and she’d find
the man that she was looking for, and in the meantime, Mister Campbell,
and Mister Munson, the stock-broker who had called for her in a
limousine on the night before last--her birthday--and Mister Rosenberg,
and all the rest of them, would have to jig to her tunes. She gave an
idle thought to Munson. He was wealthy, and middle-aged, with a large
wart on his broad nose, and his conversation ... _his_ money, and _his_
friends, and what _he_ would do for her. Yet, thousands of girls would
simply have jumped at the chance to marry him.... All of these men
were just makeshifts along the way, until she came across the man whom
she could really love, and where was the selfishness involved?--her
presence and her talk were worth just as much as theirs, and if they
were not satisfied, there were no ropes tied to them. She never ran
after _them_, did she?

Again, she berated herself for having as much as seriously considered
Campbell’s proposal to live with her and support her--in a couple of
months at most he would have turned away from her and sought another
girl, and then what would she have had? A sold-out feeling, and a
wondering where to turn next, and the whole problem of her life still
staring at her. And to think that she had been on the verge of giving
in to him that night at his apartment! She would have to stay away from
liquor for a while--it might turn her into a rank prostitute before
she knew what was happening. A girl only needed one good push to throw
everything to the winds, and she knew her weakness and would have
to be more on guard against it. When she met a man whom she loved,
she’d be daring and ardent then and tell the world to go to the devil,
without even worrying about how long it might last, and not merely
because booze had made her feel jolly and helpless and overheated. At
her next meeting with Campbell she intended to tell him that they could
never be more than pleasant friends to each other.

As for her family, they were a more concrete bug-bear. She knew that
Harry and her father would become pugnacious if she ever deserted her
home without marrying a man of their choice, but in a pinch, what could
they do except strike her, and if they dared....

She emerged from her room, and Mabel, who was sharing a newspaper with
Harry, said: “I heard you come in las’ night, Blan. ’F it wasn’t five
bells I’ll eat your gray bonnet. I hope you didn’t let Joe get too
frisky, though I wouldn’t blame you much if you did. Only he won’t be
liable to marry you ’less you hold him off--you know how men are!”

“I didn’t see Joe last night, but don’t worry, I wasn’t born
yesterday,” Blanche answered.

“I guess you’re gonna meet that Jew sissy uh yours,” said Harry. “I’ll
give him a boxin’ lesson ’f I run into him.”

“That’s all you ever have on your mind,” Blanche retorted. “I don’t see
that all this fighting of yours has ever brought you much.”

“That’s all right, I’m not through yet,” he responded, with an angry
look. “You hate a guy that doesn’t let off a lotta cheap gas and
wriggle his hips.”

As she left the building to meet Rosenberg at the corner drug store,
two blocks away, she did not notice that Harry was following her. When
she and Rosenberg had exchanged greetings and were about to cross the
street, she heard her brother’s voice cry: “Hey, wait a minnit!” and
they turned around, and she asked: “What do you want, Harry?”

He ignored her and spoke to Rosenberg.

“Your name’s Rosinburg, huh?” he asked. “I just wanna be sure.”

“That’s right,” Rosenberg answered, scenting trouble and wondering what
turn it would take.

“Well, you keep away from my sister, get me? You’ve been fillin’ her
head with garbage and turnin’ her against her own people, you have, and
I’m gonna put a stop to it. You’re a Jew-kike besides, an’ you better
stick to your own kind and leave our girls alone, see? ’F you know
what’s good for you, you’ll trot along, now.”

Caution and wrath contended within Rosenberg. This man was a
professional fighter and gangster, and could probably beat him easily
in spite of the difference in their heights, but, by God, he wouldn’t
stand for that kind of insulting interference.

“You bet I’m a Jew, and I’m proud of it,” he replied. “What gives you
the idea that you can order me around? If Blanche wants to be with me,
that’s her business and not yours.”

“Well, I’m gonna make it my business,” Harry retorted, doubling his
fists and stepping closer to Rosenberg.

Blanche, who had been stunned and then inarticulately angry at first,
glared at Harry--of all the nerve, insulting her escort and handing out
commands to _her_.

“Are you out of your mind, Harry?” she asked. “What do you mean by
butting in like this? I’m not a baby and I’ll do exactly as I please,
and you might as well get that into your dumb head!”

Harry still ignored her and said to Rosenberg: “Are you gonna beat it
’r not?”

“You notice I’m still standing here, don’t you?” Rosenberg asked,
trembling a bit, but holding a lurid roar in his head, in spite of the
sick pain in his breast.

He was in for it--it couldn’t be helped.

Harry immediately punched Rosenberg in the jaw and stomach, in quick
succession, and Rosenberg reeled back but recovered his balance and
advanced with a snarl and wildly swinging arms. They fought around
the sidewalk for the next half minute, while an increasing circle of
men and women gathered silently about them. The spectators made no
effort to interfere, but watched with that intent, hungrily curious
impersonality that usually possesses city crowds in such a situation.

Blanche stood with a numb fear and a helpless anger heavy within her,
as she nervously twisted her little white handkerchief and tried to
look over the heads of the spectators. Was there anything in life
except trouble, and browbeating, and every one trying to pull you a
different way ... and that vile brother of hers ... she’d fix him for
this audacity ... poor Rosenberg, how she had unwittingly lured him
into this mess ... he was more nervy that she had ever given him
credit for ... perhaps Harry was half killing him ... poor, poor boy.

Rosenberg fought desperately, his courage reviving to an unnatural
fervor beneath the repeated stinging blows, but Harry was far too
swift and strong for him, and an uppercut to the jaw finally knocked
Rosenberg to his knees. At this juncture some one yelled: “Jiggers,
here comes a cop!” The ring of onlookers broke instantly, and some of
them sped around the corner and walked swiftly down the side street,
while others stood about indecisively. Harry promptly jumped into a
nearby taxicab and was driven away--he had done his job and didn’t mean
to get arrested for it. Blanche hurried to Rosenberg and helped him
to his feet, just as the policeman, with the proverbial lateness of
his kind, strode up to them. Rosenberg’s left eye was discolored and a
rivulet of blood dropped from his swollen lips.

“What’s all this rumpus about--where’s the fellow that beat you up?”
the policeman asked, loudly.

For a moment, Blanche was about to betray her brother, but she
checked herself--what good would it do? Her hand tugged pleadingly at
Rosenberg’s arm.

“We were walking along when some enemy of his came up and hit him,” she
answered. “I don’t know who the fellow was.”

“Well, y’r escort knows, all right,” the policeman said, turning to
Rosenberg. “Who was he, come on, loosen up.”

“I can’t tell you ’cause I don’t want to make any charges against him,”
Rosenberg answered, slowly. “He started it and I had to defend myself,
that’s all.”

The officer turned disgustedly to the sprinkling of bystanders.

“Did any of you see what happened?” he demanded. There was a chorus of
“noes” and “not me’s.”

“Yeh, you always take it in but you get blind afterwards,” he said,
angrily--he was a new policeman and brassily anxious to make arrests
and acquire a record. “Go on, beat it now, don’t stand around blocking
up the corner. And you, girlie, you’d better take him in this drug
store and have his face fixed up.”

He waved his club as he dispersed the bystanders.

Blanche helped Rosenberg into the drug store, and the clerk applied a
poultice to Rosenberg’s eye and gave him some iodine for his mouth.
Blanche felt an enormous pity for him--he was physically weak but
he was not a coward, and she wished that she could love him, for he
certainly deserved it. She had a sense of guilt at having caused him
all this pain and trouble, and she became confused at the impossibility
of making any amends to him. More kisses and huggings?--they would
only lead him to an eventual disappointment. Only her love could make
him happy, and that couldn’t be manufactured, no matter how much you
respected a man. Oh, darn, was there ever an answer to anything?...
One thing was certain, though--for his own good she would have to stop
seeing him. Otherwise, she would only continue to lure him into danger
without offering him any reward.

On his own part, Rosenberg felt a determined resentment--if he was
going to get his head knocked off for her sake, she would have to give
him much more than friendship. There was no sense in fighting for a
girl who didn’t love you, or refused to surrender herself.

They sat for a moment on one of the drug-store benches.

“You’d better go home now, Lou,” she said. “We’ll get a cab and I’ll
ride up with you. Your face must be hurting you terribly. Gee, I can’t
tell you how sorry I am that all this happened, Lou. Harry’s nothing
but a low-down cur, and if he ever dares to do anything like this
again, I won’t stay home another twenty-four hours. I’ve simply got to
show them they can’t walk all over me.”

“Never mind about me, I’ll be all right in a couple of days,” he
answered. “I’ve got something to say to you, Blanche, but we’ll wait’ll
we’re in the cab.”

As they rode uptown, they were silent for a while, and then he said
slowly: “We’ve got to have a show-down, Blanche. ’F I’m going to buck
your whole family and that rotten gangster brother of yours, I want to
be sure you’ll marry me, first. I’d be a fool otherwise, you know that.”

“I know,” she answered, despondently, “and I don’t blame you a bit. I
like you lots, Lou, I’ve told you that enough times, and you’ve helped
me so much, showing me how stupid I was, and ... I feel blue about
it. I don’t love you--you give me a sort of peaceful feeling, and I
like to hear you talk, and I don’t mind your ways ... but that isn’t
love.... Oh, I’ve tried to love you, but it just wouldn’t come. It just
wouldn’t.... I guess you’d better stop seeing me, Lou. I’d only bring
you more trouble, and it wouldn’t be fair to you.”

“I’ll see about it,” he answered, dully. “I wish I’d never met you.
You’ve never brought me anything but sadness, after all I did for you,
and there’s no use keeping it up forever.”

“Lou, don’t say that,” she replied. “You know I’ve been honest with
you. I never made any promises, never, and I’ve always told you just
how I felt. I’m miserable about the whole thing as it is, and you can
just bet I’ll never forget you, Lou. I hung on to you all this time
because I needed you, that’s true, but I’d never have chased you if you
hadn’t wanted to be with me.”

“Well, it’s over, I guess,” he said, “and talking won’t help it any,
now.”

He felt a self-disparaging apathy. He had poured out his thoughts and
ideas to this girl, and set her to thinking as she never had before,
and this was his reward, eh? The whole world was just a selfish swamp.
She had taken his gifts because they were needed revelations to her,
and now she would save her love for some other man, who’d reverse the
process and plunder her of all she had, and feast on the elastic dream
of her body. No one ever loved you unless you walked all over them and
made them worship your highhandedness. He had had a last lesson now,
and henceforth he would have a cheeky, appraising attitude toward
every woman he ran across.

After they had traded their farewells--reluctant, empty monosyllables,
in which each person was trying to say something more and finding
himself unable--Blanche boarded a Ninth Avenue elevated train and rode
home, with all of her thoughts and emotions uncertain and sluggish.
What was the use of living?--you wound up by hurting the other person,
or else he injured you, with neither of you meaning to do it, and then
you separated, and accused yourself of selfishness without being able
to remedy the matter. But this brother of hers--wait till she got
hold of him! She’d give him the worst tongue-lashing of his life, and
warn him never to interfere in her affairs again. What did he think
she was--a doormat? Brother or no brother, he was a cruel, stupid
man, and things would have to come to an issue between them. She was
self-supporting and of age, and if her family persisted in treating her
as though she were a slave, she would have to leave their roof.

As she walked into the living-room of her home, she found her mother
seated beside the table, darning socks and munching at an apple. She
threw her hat and coat upon the seamed, leatherine couch, while her
mother asked: “How come you’re back so soon, Blanie, dear? Ten o’clock,
and _you_ walkin’ in! I think the world’s comin’ right to an end, I do
that. D’you have a fight with the man you was with? Tell your ma what
happened now.”

“Has Harry been back?” Blanche asked.

“No, he never gets back till early mornin’, and so does Mabel, an’
Phil, an’ your pa. None of you ever stays to home to keep _me_ comp’ny.”

“I know you get lonely, ma,” Blanche answered, stroking her mother’s
hair for a moment and trying to feel much more concerned than she was.
“Didn’t Mrs. O’Rourke, or Katie, come down to-night?”

“They did, sure enough, but it’s not like havin’ your own fam’ly with
you,” her mother replied.

Blanche looked at her mother, reflectively. Poor ma, she _was_ kind of
stupid, but maybe she had been more intelligent in her younger days and
had had it slowly knocked out of her. She didn’t get much out of life,
that was a fact, and she worked hard all the time, and she never harmed
anybody. Poor ma.... Then Blanche returned to anger at the thought of
Harry.

“Just wait’ll I see Harry,” she cried. “I’ll tell him a thing or two, I
will!”

“What’s Harry been doin’, now?” her mother asked.

“He followed me to-night till I met Lou Rosenberg, and then he walked
up and told Lou to keep away from me, and picked a fight with him. Of
course he beat Lou up--he knows all the tricks, and Rosenberg doesn’t.
Then a cop came along, and Mister Harry Palmer ran into a cab, like the
coward he is! Believe me, I’m going to show all of you, once and for
all, that you can’t boss me around, and if you keep it up I’ll leave
home in a jiffy.”

“I jes’ know Harry’ll get into jail yet, with all this scrappin’ uh
his,” her mother said, alarmedly. “Maybe this Mister Rosinburg will
have to go to the hospital, an’ then they’ll come after Harry. Did he
hurt him awful bad?”

“No, he just gave him a black eye and cut his mouth, but that was
bad enough,” Blanche answered. “The whole thing happened so quick I
couldn’t do anything about it, and besides, I never dreamt Harry would
dare to pull a stunt like that. I’m so angry I could punch him if he
was here!”

“That’s no way to be talkin’ about your own brother,” Mrs. Palmer said.
“It’s I that don’t think he did right, I don’t, but still, he only
meant it f’r your own good. You shouldn’t be goin’ around with Jews,
you shouldn’t, and this fella Rosinburg, he’s been makin’ you act so
silly-like, with all them books that nobody c’n make head ’r tail of.
You’re gettin’ to be ’n old girl now, Blanie, you are, and it’s time
you were thinkin’ of marryin’ a good man to keep you in comfort.”

“Why isn’t a Jew as good as anybody else?” Blanche asked. “I don’t
love Rosenberg, but believe me, ’f I did, none of you could keep _me_
away from him. I’m going to stop seeing him ’cause I don’t want him
to get into trouble all for nothing, but I won’t stand for any more
orders--I’m a free person, and I make my own living, and ’f I think I’m
doing right, that’s all I care about.”

“Blanie, you’re talkin’ somethin’ terribul,” her mother answered, sadly
aghast. “You oughta have more respect for your pa ’n’ ma, you ought. We
raised you up from a kid, an’ we give you everythin’ we could, an’ we
only want to see you do the right thing. You’ve got to settle down and
have a fine, good-looking, Christian fellow, who’s earnin’ good wages.
Course, you must be lovin’ him first--I’d never want you to marry no
one you didn’t care for, I wouldn’t, but that’s not everythin’ either.
I’d like to see you livin’ like a lady, I would, an’ havin’ a fine
home, ’n’ servants, ’n’ the best uh everythin’.”

“Marry, marry, that’s all you ever think about,” Blanche replied. “You
mean well, ma, but you can just see so far and no farther. What did
you ever get out of marrying, I’d like to know? Nothing but work, and
trouble, and worrying around.”

“That’s why I want to see you do better, that’s why,” her mother
responded. “It’s I that knows how foolish I was, I know it, and I don’t
want you to go through all the strugglin’ I’ve had. ’F you marry a man
like Mister Campbell, now, you’ll live in a swell apartment an’ you’ll
have the things you want.”

“You don’t know what I want, ma,” Blanche said, sadly. “I want to be
somebody, and find out what’s the reason for things, and use my head
for something besides a hat-rack. Any girl can marry and let a man
use her--there’s no trick in that. I’m tired of being just like other
people--I want to act, ’r write, ’r paint, and make a name for myself.
You think a woman shouldn’t do anything except have children and be as
comfortable as she can. You can’t understand what I’m looking for, ma.”

“It’s I that can’t, it’s all foolishness to me,” her mother replied,
perplexedly. “I don’t see why a woman should be anythin’ ’cept a good
wife ’n’ a good mother, ’f she finds a man that’ll treat her right ’n’
provide f’r her. This bein’ somebody you’re always talkin’ about, I
don’t see how it’ll ever make you happy, I don’t. It’s your heart that
counts most, an’ nothin’ else. You never talked like this ’fore you met
that Rosinburg. I’m glad you’re not goin’ to meet him again.”

“We’re both just wasting our words--let’s cut it out,” Blanche said,
depressedly, as she walked into her room.

Her mother looked after her with a sorrowful, uncomprehending
expression. What was her poor daughter coming to, with all this
unlady-like nonsense, and all this refusing to listen to the counsel of
her family, who only wanted her to have a happy and respected future.
Well, maybe she’d change, now that she wasn’t seeing that Jew-fellow
any more. Jews were human beings, but they were tricky and queer and
always out after the money, and they had no right to be picking on
Gentile girls.... Of course, if Blanche didn’t change, then her pa and
Harry would have to take hold of her. She mustn’t be allowed to go to
the dogs and ruin herself and her chances. While she, the mother, would
never let the menfolks abuse her daughter or lay their hands on her,
she still felt that they would have to act sternly to bring Blanche to
her senses. It couldn’t be helped as long as Blanche refused to behave.

When Blanche rose on the following morning, Harry was still asleep,
and they did not collide until she returned from work that night.
The family were seated around the supper-table, and Mabel looked at
Blanche, with curiosity and reproach interwoven, while her father
squinted questioningly at her, and Philip squirmed in his chair,
like some one waiting for a dynamite detonation. He hated family
quarrels--you couldn’t agree with both sides and yet you were always
expected to. He felt that the others were “too hard” on Blanche, and he
hoped that she would give them a piece of her mind.

Harry had a nonchalant mien which placated the fear within him which
he did not quite admit to himself--there was something about Blanche
that he couldn’t fathom, and no matter how much he sought to squelch
this alien foe, with word and action, it never died--a derided but
still-threatening specter.

Blanche was silent until she had seated herself at the table, and then
she burst forth.

“Harry, I’m going to tell you something--’f you ever beat up any one
I’m with again, and try to order me around, I’ll break something over
your head! Just try it once more and see what happens!”

“I’ll do that little thing,” Harry answered. “The last person I was
afraid of, he died ten years ago.”

“That’s just how I feel,” Blanche replied. “’F I’m not left alone from
now on, I’m going on the war-path.”

“Bla-anie, you mustn’t talk that way, an’ you, too, Harry,” Mrs. Palmer
said. “I never, never heard of a brother an’ sister carryin’ on like
this! I do think Blanche oughta listen more to what we tell her, I do,
but breakin’ things over y’r heads, why I never heard the like of it.
You won’t help things that way.”

“See here, Blanche, we’ve got to lay down the law to you,” her father
said. “No more goin’ around with Jews, and no more talkin’ back all the
time. I’m your father an’ I’m gonna put my foot down. You’re not a bad
kid, I don’t say that, but you’re too fresh, an’ you think you know
it all. You better stop readin’ them phony books and pay attention to
yourself, an’ act like a reg’lar girl.”

“Suppose I leave home, what’ll you do about it?” Blanche asked.

“I can’t stop you from doin’ that, but ’f you do, don’t think you can
come back here again--not ’less you’re married, anyway,” her father
replied. “We’ll all be through with you then, an’ you’ll be no daughter
uh mine.”

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Blanche,” Mabel said. “You don’t
seem to have any sense nowadays.”

“Of course you don’t,” answered Blanche. “All you care about is having
a good time, and working men for all they’re worth, and hunting around
for a fellow with money who’ll marry you. I want to do something that
counts, and I want to look into things. That’s all a mystery to you.”

“Is that so-o?” Mabel asked, bridling up. “I’ve got just as good a head
as you have, even ’f I don’t go around with a chip on my shoulder, like
you do, and tell people I’m better than they are. I’m gonna be a rich
lady and be up in the world ’fore I’m through with the game, but you’ll
wind up with nothing but that hot air you’re always spouting.”

“Well, I think you’re all too rough on Blanche,” Philip said. “Maybe
she ought to marry and settle down, but it’s her look-out. ’F she wants
to make a name for herself, and study something, I don’t see anything
so awful about it.”

“You’re the best one in this fam’ly, Phil,” said Blanche, with a
grateful look. “You’re not so wise, but you do believe in letting
people alone.”

“Yes, you an’ him are twins, all right,” Harry interposed, “but he
knows enough to keep quiet most of the time, and you don’t.”

“Now, Harry, what did I ever do against you?” Philip asked.

“Not a thing, but you wouldn’t side with Blanche all the time ’f you
wasn’t like she is,” Harry answered.

The argument went on, with Blanche subsiding to a hopeless silence, but
as the meal ended, it became more indifferent. Their appeased appetites
brought the others a brief, sluggish contentment, and they felt sure
that it was all just a “lot of jawing,” and that Blanche would never
really revolt--she was a Palmer, after all.

The next week passed quietly enough, with Blanche and Harry casting
disdainful looks at each other but rarely speaking, and the rest of
the family persuaded that it might be better to leave Blanche alone
as long as she failed to do anything definitely objectionable. Then,
one evening, just after Blanche had returned from work, a loud rapping
sounded on the front door, and after her mother had responded, Blanche
heard a gruff voice asking: “Is this where Mabel Palmer lives, huh?”
When her mother had answered yes, the gruff voice continued: “Well,
we’re detectives from the Sixth Precinct, and we want to have a talk
with you people.”

“Oh, Lord, what’s the matter--what’s happened to Mabel?” Mrs. Palmer
asked, agitatedly, as she entered the living-room, with the two
detectives walking behind her.

They were tall, burly men, in dark, ill-fitting suits, slouch hats
of brown, and heavy, black shoes, and one of them had a florid,
impassive face, while the other was tanned and more openly inquiring.
They sat down in chairs and looked the Palmers over. Harry and his
father sought to appear calm and careless but could not repress an
involuntary nervousness--there were several shady spots in their lives
that shrank from the impending searchlight, but these bulls wouldn’t
be acting this way if they really _knew_ anything--while Philip looked
warmly innocent--they didn’t have anything on _him_--and Mrs. Palmer
wrung her hands and told herself that all of her dire prophecies had
been fulfilled. Blanche was curious but undisturbed--little Mabel
Know-Everything had gotten into trouble at last, but what was it?

“Your girl’s locked up at Arlington Market,” the florid detective said.
“You know why, don’tcha?”

“My poor little Mabel, what’s happened to her?” Mrs. Palmer asked. “I
don’t know a thing that she’s done, I swear I don’t!”

“That’s straight, we don’t know what it’s all about,” Harry said, and
his father eagerly corroborated him.

“Well, we nabbed her this afternoon on Broadway,” the other detective
replied. “She’s been mixing up with a lotta bond-thieves, and we think
she’s one of their go-betweens. She’s been seen all the time with
the brains uh the gang, hanging around cabarets with him. We got him
yesterday, and we’ll scoop in the rest of them before to-morrow. If you
people don’t know anything about this, it’s mighty funny you let your
daughter associate with a gang like that.”

“Yeh, why do you let her run loose all the time?” the florid detective
asked.

“I’ve always told her not to be so wild, I’ve always,” answered Mrs.
Palmer, “but she never listened to me. She’s really a good girl
off’cer, she didn’t mean any harm, but she likes to have men payin’
attentions to her. I know she hasn’t done anything wrong, I know it.
She prob’bly thought those men was honest, that’s it, an’ she b’lieved
all the lies they told her.”

“That’s what they all say,” the other detective replied, gruffly.

“You’re wrong, Mabe’s a straight kid,” Mr. Palmer said. “She got into
bum comp’ny an’ didn’t know it, that must be it.”

“That’s what _you_ say, but we got a diff’rent idea,” the florid
detective retorted. “Sure, you’d take up for her, that’s an old trick.”

“I cert’nly will,” the father answered, spiritedly. “’F you’ve got any
evidence against her, all right, but I’ll have to hear it first ’fore I
b’lieve it. I’ll take up for my own daughter any time, any time.”

“Sure, I understand,” the other detective said, more amiably. “All we
know’s that she went around with that gang, hitting up the night clubs,
but we haven’t connected her with anything yet. It looks bad for her,
that’s all.”

“We’ll put her through a grilling to-night and find out more about
it”--the florid detective suddenly turned to Blanche. “What d’you do
for a living?”

“I work at Madame Jaurette’s Beauty Parlor, on Fifth Avenue near
Twenty-sixth,” Blanche responded, coolly. “Come down there some day and
I’ll curl your blond locks for you. They need it.”

The detective grinned and replied: “We’ll look you up, don’t worry.”

“And you, what’s your trade?” he asked her father.

“I don’t do much now ’cause my leg’s on the bum,” Mr. Palmer replied.
“I used to be a bartender in the old days when we had a little freedom
in this town.”

“Well, you’d better stop loafing around and get a job,” the detective
advised.

“I always work when I’m able to,” said Mr. Palmer. “I used to manage
my boy here, Harry, Battling Murphy--maybe you’ve seen him scrap
somewheres. He got a raw deal an’ they barred him from the ring, but
he’ll be back there ’fore long, don’t worry.”

The florid detective looked closely at Harry and then said: “Damned if
it isn’t Bat’ Murphy himself! I won some dough on you once when you was
fighting Kid Morley down at the Terrace. Why didn’t you tell us who you
was?”

“You was askin’ my folks questions an’ I didn’t wanna butt in,” Harry
replied as he shook hands, warmly, with the detective.

“I hear you been cutting up with a bad gang lately, Bat’,” the other
detective interposed, in a tone of friendly reproof. “Better cut it out
and get back into condition again. We wouldn’t like to pull you in,
y’know.”

“You c’n lay a bet I will,” Harry replied. “I’m no has-been yet, I’m
tellin’ you I knocked a coupla fellas out at the gym the other day....
An’ now about this poor kid sister uh mine. She isn’t a bad one, but
you know how fellas c’n fill a girl up with a lotta phony gab. I don’t
think she knew a damn thing about what was goin’ on.”

“You can bail her out, all right, when we’re through putting the
question to her,” the other detective said. “Know any one to go to?”

“Know any one, I’ll say we do,” Harry answered. “Why, Bill O’Brien, the
Wigwam chief in this district’s a good friend uh the old man, an’ me
too. He’ll put up the coin in a second.”

“All right, come down to Arlington Market court to-morrow morning,
ten sharp, when she’s arraigned, and we’ll see what we can do,” the
detective said, with respect in his voice, as both of them rose. “And
by the way, who’s this man in the corner?”

“He’s my brother Phil, works in a drug store a coupla blocks away,”
Harry answered.

“A-all right, I guess you’re all straight enough,” the detective
replied, genially. “Only, if your kid sister gets out of this, you
better keep a strict tab on her. She’s a flighty one and no mistake.”

“It’s sure I am that this’ll teach poor Mabel a lesson,” Mrs. Palmer
said, with a sad eagerness. “An’ to think she’s sittin’ in a cell
right now. It’s terribul, it is!”

“We-ell, don’t take it to heart, she may be out soon,” the other
detective answered.

The detectives departed, and after Harry had cautiously opened the door
and assured himself that they had gone, he came back and said: “We’ve
gotta get poor Mabe outa this. I’m gonna run over to Tenth Avenue now
an see ’f I c’n get ahold of O’Brien.”

“I wonder whether they’ve got the goods on her,” his father said. “I
can’t think a wise girl like Mabel would lay herself open to five years
in the pen. It don’t seem reas’nable. She musta had the wool pulled
over her eyes.”

“It’s li’ble to happen to any girl,” Harry answered. “When a girl goes
out with a guy, how’s she to know whether he’s a crook ’r not? Besides,
if Mabel was in on it she’d have been flashin’ a roll around here, and
if she’s got one she’s sure been hidin’ it well, I’ll say.”

“Well, I do think she oughta be more careful ’bout who she goes with,”
Mrs. Palmer said. “I swear, between Mabel and Blanche, I’m goin’ right
to my grave, I am.”

“Aw, don’t take on so, Kate,” her husband answered. “Mabel’s not like
Blanche anyway--she don’t put on the dog an’ tell her folks they don’t
know nothin’. She jus’ wants to have a good time an’ land a good man
f’r herself, and she’ll get over this mess all right. She made a
mistake in the crowd she went with--they prob’bly told her they was
rich business men.”

“I suppose I’ll have to get arrested before any of you’ll think I know
something,” Blanche broke in, disgustedly. “I’m sorry Mabel got into
this fix, but if you try to play men for their money, you’ve got to
expect that they’ll turn the tables on you, the first chance they get.”

“G’wan, you’re jes’ jealous uh her,” Harry said. “You’d do the same
thing ’f you had nerve enough.”

“Now, now, this is no time f’r scrappin’,” his father interposed.
“We’ve got to hustle around to O’Brien an’ see what he c’n do f’r us.”

The two Palmers departed, and Blanche and Philip tried to soothe the
mother, who had begun to weep and rock in her chair. Blanche felt a dab
of malice toward her sister--Mabel was so dreamless, and never tried
to understand Blanche’s hopes and desires, and was always scoffing and
sneering--but it was swallowed up by a sense of enforced compassion.
Perhaps Mabel was just a misguided girl whose head had been turned by
the flatteries of men, and perhaps she would wake up now and begin to
think, and question herself and her life, to a small degree at any
rate. In addition, Blanche was relieved at this turn in events, since
it might distract the attention of her family and make them drop for a
time their insistence upon marriage, and their naggings about Campbell,
and their jeers at the books that she read. She went to bed early that
night, and reclined awake for a long time, spinning her hopes from the
dark texture of the room. After all, why did she waste so much time in
arguing with her family? They would never understand her in a million
years, and they meant well in spite of all of their meanness, but she
had simply passed beyond them. They wanted her to be like them, and
share their ideas of happiness and propriety, and they used cruel
methods and threats without knowing how cruel they were because they
felt that the end could apologize for the means. It was all inevitable,
and the best thing that she could do would be quietly to pack her
belongings some day and move out to some rooming-house uptown before
they knew what was happening. Then let them rave all they wanted--what
could they do?

Besides, her leaving would convince them that she “meant business,” and
most of their bullying was probably due to the fact that they still
thought that they could force her to obey them. When she was finally
living in a place of her own, she’d go to some art or dramatic school
at night--maybe she could learn to draw after all, since she had been
very clever with sketches when she was a child at school, and still
poked around with a pencil now and then. Or again, why couldn’t she be
able to act on the stage, if she were only taught how to handle her
voice and her limbs. These famous actresses, they hadn’t been perfect
and accomplished in their cradles, and if she studied English and
learned how to speak more correctly, she might have as good a chance as
they had had. Nothing ever came to you unless you had a desperate faith
in yourself. She would have to work long and hard at these things, she
knew that, but she worked hard every day as it was, without deriving
any satisfaction from it.

An image of Rosenberg slipped back to her. Poor boy, wonder what he
was doing now? She owed a great deal to him, and the only payment that
she had given had been to jilt him. Was it always as one-sided as this
between men and women--always a kind of slave-and-master affair, with
one person taking everything and the other person hanging on because
he couldn’t think of any one else and was grateful for the scraps that
were thrown to him? She hadn’t meant to hurt this boy--he had wanted
feelings that were impossible to her, and her body had often endured
his hands out of pity, and her only reason for guilt was that she had
kept on seeing him. But she had needed, oh, she had needed all of the
spurrings-on, and answers, and thoughts, and beliefs in her, which he
had poured out--yes, it had been selfishness on her part, but she was
beginning to think that people could never avoid being selfish to each
other in some respect, even though they hid it behind all kinds of
other names and assertions. They _could_ make it aboveboard, though,
by confessing the unevenness of their relations, and by not demanding
anything that each person was not compelled to give of his own accord.
The ideal, of course, would be a man and a woman who selfishly craved
all of each other, for deeply permanent reasons, in which case each
one would become a happy plunderer--did such a thing ever quite come
off?... Her thoughts trailed out into sleep.

On the next morning at the Beauty Parlor, Blanche was distracted, and
a little uneasy about her sister--after all, the poor kid was just
conceited and flighty, with no real harm in her--and when Philip came
in at noon and told her that Mabel had been released, for lack of
evidence, Blanche was glad that the matter had blown over. When Blanche
returned from her work that night, Mabel was seated in the one armchair
in the apartment, with the rest of the family grouped admiringly around
her. Now that it was all over, they regarded her as something of a
heroine--one who had tussled with their never-recognized but potent
enemy, the law, and emerged scot-free--and although they qualified this
attitude with warnings and chidings, it dominated them, nevertheless.
The mother remained an exception--she hoped that her daughter would act
more soberly now, and leave her nightly dissipations, and mingle with
more honest men.

“Gee, I’m glad you’re out,” Blanche said, after kissing her sister.
“Did they treat you rough after they arrested you?”

“They wasn’t so bad,” Mabel answered. “They put me through a coupla
third degrees, first when they brought me in, and then another one
’bout nine in the ev’ning, tryin’ to trip me up, y’know. They said they
knew I was a prostitute, jes’ to get my goat, and I started to cry and
said it was a darn lie--I jes’ couldn’t help it.”

“They pull that off on ev’ry girl,” Harry said. “’F she is one, then
she’ll own up cause she thinks they know all about it--that’s the game.”

“How’d you happen to get in with a crowd like that?” Blanche asked.

“I didn’t know what they was,” Mabel replied, aggrievedly. “Gee whiz,
you can’t follow a fella around an’ see what he’s doin’, can you? This
Bob Sullivan, now, he told me he was a book-maker at the races, an
ev’rybody I knew seemed to think he was. Then he had a friend, Jack
Misner, said he was a jockey--a little runt of a guy. Bob swore all the
time he was gone on me. He’s a nice fella at that, he is, an’ I’m darn
sorry they got him.”

“Well, you shouldn’t be,” her mother said. “When any one’s dishonest
they oughta get punished for it, they ought. This world would be a fine
world, it would, ’f ev’rybody went round and robbed ev’rybody else. An’
what’s more, I do hope you’ll stay home more now, Mabel dear, an’ keep
outa trouble, I do.”

“Aw, pipe down, Kate,” her husband broke in. “She’s gotta size up her
men better fr’m now on, sure, but you can’t expect her to sit around
here all night. She c’n have all the fun she wants, I don’t mind, long
as she looks them over more careful an’ don’t swallow all their gab.”

“It’s jes’ no use f’r me to say anythin’,” Mrs. Palmer answered,
dolefully. “None uh you ever pays any attention to Kate Palmer till
it’s too late, and then it’s ma do this f’r me, an’ ma do that.”

“I’ll watch out more, ma, I will,” Mabel said. “When I meet a fella
with a big wad I’m gonna find out how he makes it ’fore I let him take
me out. A girl’s gotta protect herself, that’s a fact.”

“It wouldn’t hurt you to go out with a few men that work for a
living--just for a change,” Philip said. “Maybe they won’t take you
to swell joints, maybe not, but they’ll get you into less trouble all
right.”

“Don’t wish any uh Blanche’s kind on me,” Mabel retorted. “When I want
to go to a sixty-cent movie-house, ’r sit down on a bench in the park,
I’ll have my head tested to see ’f I’m all there.”

Her little, straight nose turned up, and her loosely small lips drew
together to a tight complacency. Her plump face was more drawn, and
hollows were under her eyes, and a trace of fright still lingered in
the black eyes, but the expression on her face was one of rebuked
but still ruling impudence. She told herself that she had been stung
once by men--an incredible incident--and would henceforth set out to
revenge herself upon them. It was all just a fight to see which side
would get the best of the other, and she wouldn’t be caught napping
twice. Her goal was to marry a man with money and good looks, and she
wouldn’t allow anything to deter her. Beneath these determinations,
sentimentalities and fears, aroused by the shock of her arrest,
told her that she was flirting too closely with danger, and that it
might be better to look for a stalwart youth with a laughable “line”
and a movie-hero face--she was tired, after all, of letting homely,
slow-tongued fellows kiss and hug her because they spent money to give
her the gay nights that were due to every girl, and then again, she
really ought to consider her poor ma, who was always fretting about
her. Aw, well, she _would_ slow down just a little and stay home
once in a while, and select her escorts with more of an eye to their
safety and their physical attraction, and with money alone no longer
all-supreme, but she would never subside to a back-number--not she.
Plenty of girls ended by catching rich young men with a dash to them,
and she could do the same thing if she kept a level head.

As Blanche listened to her sister, a disapproving sadness welled up
within her--same old Mabel, not a hairbreadth changed. People seemed to
be born in one way and to stick to it for the rest of their lives. She
herself had never been quite like Mabel, even when she, Blanche, had
been much more stupid than she might be now. She had always hunted for
something without knowing what it was, and had always been “easier,”
and more unhappy, and more concerned with the “inside” of herself.

“Men and men, that’s all you’ve got on your mind,” she said to her
sister, softly. “’F you were ever wrecked now on some island, like I
read about once, with nothing but another girl to keep you company, I
think you’d go mad. You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself.”

“I’d like to know who would,” Mabel answered. “Why, even you, smarty,
you’ve got to step out with diff’rent fellas, I notice. I suppose I’ll
have to excuse myself f’r being a woman, next thing I know.”

“That’s your only excuse,” Blanche said, as she turned away.

“Well, it’s a good enough one to suit me,” Mabel retorted, irascibly.

Blanche walked into her room without replying. What was the use of
speaking to people when your words went into one of their ears and
instantly flew out of the other? Her future course of action had been
determined. If her family ceased to bother her, she would continue
to live with them, and go to some school at least five nights out of
each week and reserve the other two for sessions with men and for
relaxation. She wouldn’t live like a nun, that was ridiculous, but
she would make a serious effort to master some profession or form of
expression that would be much higher and more inwardly satisfying
than doing the same thing with her hands every day. And if her family
continued to be meddlesome and dictating, she would move out some
morning when the menfolk were away.

During the next two days her existence was undisturbed. The Palmers had
been somewhat chastened by Mabel’s arrest, and they had to admit that,
in spite of the disagreeable mystery that Blanche had become, she _did_
manage to keep herself out of difficulties. Their confidence in Mabel
was not as great as it had been, and it affected to a moderate degree
their temporary reactions toward Blanche.

On the third afternoon, Campbell telephoned Blanche at the Beauty
Parlor and arranged to meet her that night. She wanted to tell him that
he would have to remain content with her friendship and that otherwise
she could not see him again, and that her promise to “think over” his
offer of an apartment and a shrouded alliance had been caused merely
by her desperation in the face of barriers that withheld her from her
desires. She intended to tell him frankly that she had resolved to
permit him no greater physical liberties than a kiss now and then,
and that she had made up her mind to reserve herself for the advent
of an actual love. If he still wanted to take her out under those
conditions, she’d be willing to see him once a week at most--he _was_
a jolly sedative in his way--but he would have to show her that he had
a serious mind and a sincere love for her before she would reconsider
his pleas. After all, there was such a thing as slowly falling in love
with a man, if he made you entirely reverse your previous image of him.
Campbell would never closely approach her ideals, she knew that, but
perhaps he might make a respectable progress toward it, in which case
she might accept him as the best real prospect possible to her.

She dressed to meet him that night, with a division of cautious and
sanguinely impertinent feelings seething within her. As they were
walking down Ninth Avenue, he looked admiringly at her round white felt
hat, trimmed with a zigzag dash of black velvet, and her plain yellow
pongee dress that had an air of subdued sprightliness about it, and her
long, black coat with squirrel fur at the bottom. These girls, working
for twenty-five a week, or thirty at most, how on earth did they manage
to doll up like Peggy Hopkins Joyce? Funny too, they never seemed to
retain this penny-transforming ability after they were married!

“You look like a million bucks, to-night,” he said. “I’d give a week’s
salary to know how you do it.”

“Well, listen to Mister Innocent--never heard about instalment plans,
and bargain hunting, and getting things cheap ’cause you know the head
buyer.”

“Oh, even at that it’s the world’s eighth wonder to me,” he replied.
“I’m afraid to take you any place to-night. Everybody I know’ll be
trying to horn in on us.”

“Why, I thought competition was your middle name,” she said, brightly.

“No, it’s only an alias--too much of it’s as bad as too little,”
he answered. “Anyway, don’t you get tired of scrimping and putting
yourself out for clothes all the time?”

“What ’f I do?” she asked.

“Well, you know what I told you time before last,” he said. “I’ll pay
all the bills and like it, any time you’re ready. You said you were
going to think it over--remember?”

“Yes, I do,” she replied, soberly. “I’ll talk to you about it later on
to-night. And don’t call a cab, Joe. Let’s walk a few blocks, for a
change. You always act like you hated to use your legs.”

“I use ’em enough behind the lights to make up for all the riding I
do,” he answered, amused.

They strolled over to Broadway, and were silent most of the time, save
for commenting on some of the people striding past them. When they
reached the corner of Broadway and one of the Forties, he said: “Say,
Blanche, a friend of mine, Jack Donovan, ’s pulling a party to-night in
his place. There’ll be two ’r three chorines from the Passing Gaieties
show, and a couple of respectable crooks--um, I mean bootleggers--that
kind of thing. I said I’d be up about eleven-thirty but I won’t go if
you don’t want to. We could drop in at The Golden Mill and kill time
until then.”

“Sure I’ll come, ’f it’s not going to be too wild,” she replied. “I
never was much on those parties where they try to pass you around like
you was a dish of ice cream.”

“Strictly pairs at Jack’s place, and the same pair lasts through the
night,” he said. “Stick to the woman you’re with ’r take the elevator
down--that’s the rule.”

“’F there’s too much booze flowing, that elevator-boy sure must be kept
busy,” she retorted, with a laugh.

“Oh, we run it ourselves--we’re accommodating,” he said, with a grin.

After they were seated at a table in The Golden Mill and had finished
half of their highballs, she said: “Joe, I’m going to talk serious to
you. I was just in a silly mood when I said last time I’d think about
living with you. It wouldn’t work out--it never does unless two people
really love each other. ’F I ever fall hard in love with you, Joe, I’ll
do it in a minute. I’m not afraid, but I don’t love you now. Besides,
it’s not just a question of some man, with me. I’ve made up my mind
to try and be an artist or an actress--don’t laugh now--and I wonder
whether you could help me any.”

He listened to her with chagrin and amusement--going after her was
like wading for eels, and she certainly had this “higher aspiration”
bug with a vengeance. These girls now, they were amenable enough
when their only desires were a good time, fine clothes, and a man who
wouldn’t give them the shivers, but the moment they started to get this
“self-expression,” I-want-to-be-different craze, boy, what a tough
proposition they became. Still, even that could be turned to your
advantage if you “yessed” it along and insinuated that you alone could
cause it to succeed. In addition, in spite of his cynical feelings, he
could not quite down his respect for her determination to struggle out
of her present life. She was no ordinary girl, that was certain, and in
a way she was a marvel, in view of the family that she came from and
the half-dirty, low-down flat in which she’d been raised. She probably
had no acting ability--they hardly ever did--but you could never be
sure about _her_; she was little Miss Surprise herself. Well, if he
could only land her first, he’d be willing to help her along--why not?

He looked at her eager face, that was not quite pretty but boldly
attractive and well-spaced, and the almost full drop of her bosom
rising and falling more quickly as she talked, and the restrained
sturdiness of her lips. Beyond a doubt, he’d give his right hand to
have her, and yet he couldn’t absolutely tell himself why.

“Well, well, Blanchie’s gone and got stage-struck,” he answered,
lightly. “You know I’ll do anything for you, you know that, but I don’t
want to see you wasting your time. This acting game’s a long, hard
proposition--some get in overnight but they’re damn few in number.
I know girls who’ve been in it for years, and all they’ve got is a
diamond ring in pawn and a favorite chair at the booking agencies. A
girl’s got to have more than ambition to make any one notice her on
Broadway, nowadays. How d’you know you’re fit to be an actorine?”

“I don’t, but I want a try-out just the same,” she replied. “How’ll I
ever know what I’m cut out for unless I go to it and see what I can
do? ’F I turn out to be a frost as ’n actress, I’ll take up drawing
’r something else. There must be something I can do as good as other
people, besides working like a nigger every day.”

“Sure there must,” he said, soothingly. “I’m with you all the time--I
like to see a girl who can think of something else besides putting on
the glad rags and lifting the glasses. You’ve got the stuff in you,
and it’s never had a chance to come out, and I’m the one man you know
who can help you in the acting line, don’t forget that. I’ll get you
a try-out for some play--just a little part, y’know, where you walk
across the stage ’n’ say ‘Madame, will you have the tea served now, or
next Monday?’ I’ll make them take you, too.”

“Will you?” she asked, eagerly. “Say, you’re a brick, Joe!”

“Not my head, anyways,” he said, smiling. “D’you know, I’m really gone
about you. It took two years to turn the trick--little Joe hates to be
caught, he does--but ’f I’m not in love with you now, it’s so close, I
can feel the breath on my neck. Why don’t you hook up with me and let
me have you meet the right people and push you along? You’re not in
love with me now, but you like me pretty well at that, don’t you?”

“I do,” she answered, “but I want to find out first whether you really
mean all of this, and whether you’re really int’rested in the same
things I am. You mustn’t be angry at this. It’s a serious thing to me,
and I want to be sure. Besides, ’f you do care for me, why can’t you
help me even ’f we _are_ just friends?”

“Of course I will,” he responded, with an easy heartiness. “It’s not
like a business transaction to me.”

If she became more and more dependent upon his assistance, she couldn’t
hold out forever.... They departed from the cabaret, after another
highball, and went to the apartment of his friend, Jack Donovan.
Donovan was a sturdy man of forty, whose five-feet-eleven were
supported by flat feet and buttressed by the girth of a paunch. His
head was one-quarter bald and his black hair was wetly combed down, and
the oval of his face, rising from an almost double chin, was a morbid
calculation, as though he were weary of his stage-laughs and smiles,
and wondering what in the devil was so funny about life, anyway, except
that people liked to pay money to be joshed into believing that it was.
He did a monologue in vaudeville--one of those acts in which a portly
“Senator Callahan,” in a frock coat and a high hat, cracks jokes about
the events and foibles and personages of the day, with many a crudely
ironical fling at grafting officials and high prices and prohibition,
with lower puns and slapstick harangues against the prevailing
immodesty of feminine attire--“They’d wear ’em two feet above the
knees if they weren’t afraid it would completely discourage a guy.” He
greeted Joe with an off-hand amiability, and looked at Blanche, after
the introduction, with a side-long intentness. Joe knew how to pick
’em, all right--she wasn’t a doll-baby but she had class to her.

The two front parlors of the apartment had an ebony baby-grand piano,
and Louis Sixteenth furniture picked up at auctions and standing
beside the squat, varnished products of Grand Rapids--an oak sideboard
with large, glass knobs and an oak settee. Some bottles and other
accessories were on the sideboard, and Donovan returned to his
interrupted task of making a round of cocktails. The other guests
had already arrived--the two chorus girls mentioned by Campbell,
and another woman whose occupation might not have desired a public
announcement, and two business men who dabbled in liquor-selling on the
side.

One of the chorus girls, Flo Kennedy, looked like the wax clothes dummy
that can be observed in shop-windows, and hardly showed much more
animation, except that when she spoke, the figure became slightly more
crude and less aloof. Her round face was inhumanly symmetrical below
her dark-brown hair, and its expression was, well, a no-trespassing
sign, over the composed expectation of masculine advances. She
wore a short-skirted thing of terra-cotta silk and cream lace, and
flesh-colored stockings rolled just below the knees, and black pumps.
Her companion, Grace Henderson, was a short, slender, Jewish girl in a
jauntily plain black gown, with bobbed, blondined hair and a mincing,
sensuous glisten on her face--pretty in spite of the tell-tale curve
at the end of her nose. The third woman, Madge Gowan, was silent and
dark, with a half-ugly, long face, whose shapely cheeks and chin partly
diminished the opposite effect, and a fully curved, strong body.

One of the business men, Sol Kossler, a Jew in his early forties, was
roly-poly and half bald, with a jowled, broad-nosed face on which
smug and sentimental confidences were twined--one of those merchants
who succeed more through luck than because of hard shrewdness--while
the other, Al Simmonds, was robust but not stout and had a shock of
wavy black hair, and the depressed face of a man who knew that he was
hoodwinking himself, in his life and thoughts, but could not spy any
other recourse. In their neatly pressed and creased gray suits, both of
the men looked as though their objective were the immaculate erasure of
individuality.

The conversation reverberated with continual laughter. The men expected
each other to utter wise-cracks, and digs at each other’s weaknesses,
and humorous tales, and each one was constantly egging the other on
to self-surpassing retorts. The women were not expected to do much
except listen, and laugh or smile at the right places, and join in the
intervals of more placid gossip about theatrical people, and indicate
a sexual responsiveness without becoming demonstrative (sex would have
been boresome to all of them without the assumption of gayly parrying
uncertainties, even though they knew in advance what the night’s
outcome would be, pro or con).

To Blanche, they were an emptily hilarious lot, out for the usual
things that men and women wanted from each other, and merely laughing
and idling on the way to them--not at all interested in the big,
serious things of which she had had a revealing glimpse--but they
_were_ funny at times, and it _was_ pleasant to be a young woman
patently desired by men, and the chance to be amused and self-forgetful
for one night was not to be sneezed at. She joined in the repartee
between Kossler and Donovan.

“I hear you sold some shirts to Mayor Kelly the other day,” Donovan
said. “One more vote shot to hell.”

“I voted for him last time when he bought them from Sax and Mulberry,”
Kossler retorted. “Li’l’ Sol can’t be corrupted, ’less it’s some one of
the other sex, and even then, corrupted wouldn’t be exactly the word,
y’know.”

“Yes, interrupted would be better there,” Donovan replied, as the
others laughed.

“Why d’you want to vote for a fellow like Kelly?” Blanche asked. “He’s
just a wind-bag--always telling how much he’s going to do for the
public, but that’s where he ends.”

Kossler lifted his eyebrows--women were not supposed to be interested
in politics (middle-aged club-women, and professionals in both parties,
and socialists excepted).

“Now, girlie, what d’you know about it?” he asked, indulgently.
“They’ve all got to promise a lot--that’s in the game--but old Kelly’s
better than the rest of them at that. He’s dead honest and he can’t be
bought.”

“So’s ’n elephant,” Blanche retorted. “You can buy one cheap at the
Bronx zoo and put him up at the next election.”

Donovan looked pityingly at her and said: “My Gawd, another socialist.”

“I’m not, but I come from the Hell’s-Kitchen district and I’m wise to
politics, all right,” Blanche answered.

“Everything you say is right with me,” Simmonds interjected. “It’s a
foxy-pass, anyway, to argue with a woman at a party--you’ll end up by
singing: ‘Sitting in a co-orner, that’s all I do-o.’”

“Maybe it is,” said Blanche, while the others laughed.

Flo and Grace regarded her with a petulant suspicion--she was of the
smart, snippy kind, and furthermore, she’d better not try to go after
_their_ men; they’d pull her hair out if she did.

“Now, you all stop razzing my Blanche,” Campbell broke in. “She’s just
a little girl trying to make both ends connect in the big, wicked city.”

“Razzing her!--it’s just the other way,” Simmonds said. “D’you ever
balance a hot coal on the tip of your nose?”

“It only looks that way--I was out on a party last night,” Campbell
replied. “I heard a good one, though, the other day. Tom Jarvey was
walking along the street, and he runs into Hammond, the village
cut-up. ‘I hear you was seen walkin’ with your grandmother the other
day--that’s a nice thing to do,’ said Hammond. Jarvey comes back: ‘She
didn’t look that way when I married her--you know how it is.’”

The rest of them laughed, and Grace said: “That’s like the husband I
ditched last year. He was a prize-package until I saw him putting his
false toofies in a glass uh water one night. Hot snakes!”

“Let’s call it a draw and put the phonograph on, and fox-trot,” Flo
said.

The party broke into dancing, with regular intervals in which rounds
of cocktails circulated. The silently dark woman sat on a couch, with
a fixed smile, and occasionally chatted with Donovan, and seemed to be
outside of the party, as though she were viewing it with a satiated and
good-natured patience. Blanche sat beside her for a short time.

“You don’t seem to be enjoying yourself,” Blanche said, “or maybe this
is how you do it.”

“Oh, I’m a good listener, and I don’t dance if I can help it,” Madge
Gowan replied. “I’m not down on the world, it’s not that, but I like to
sit in the audience now ’n’ then. It’s fine for your nerves and you get
a different slant at what’s going on around you.”

“I’m a little like that, myself,” Blanche answered, “but this is my
night for mixing in, I guess.”

Campbell pulled her away for another dance, and she reflected on the
dark woman, through the touch of haze forming in her own head. Was that
the way you became around thirty-five, if you couldn’t stay blind to
the world and the people in it?

The party became more boisterous, and the innuendoes grew warmer and
less attired, and the chorus girls sat beside Kossler and Simmonds and
exchanged kissing and impolite embraces that were not quite direct.
Donovan had his head on Madge Gowan’s shoulder, while she caressed his
hair. Blanche, who was standing beside the phonograph, with Campbell’s
arm around her waist, felt confused, and merrily indifferent to
everything except the unsteady exaltation in her body and the singing
carelessness of her emotions. As she had done so many times before,
she made an effort to pull herself together and resume some portion of
her secret wariness, but the effort was a weak one, this time, and her
“silly,” lightly unarmored feelings persisted and grew stronger.

“Let’s leave, Joe dear, I’m so-o-o diz-z-zy,” she said.

“Sit down a while, you’ll feel better,” he replied, leading her to the
couch.

The two chorus girls departed with Kossler and Simmonds, after a
loudly gay _mêlée_ of words had flown back and forth, and Blanche, by
this time, was too limp and dazed to bid them good-bye. When Donovan
returned from the front door, Blanche had slumped back upon the couch,
and Campbell said: “Darned if she hasn’t passed out, Jack.”

Donovan grinned at his friend.

“We’ll put her on the bed in the spare room and let her sleep it off.
I’m going to turn in, now, with Madge. Don’t do anything your mother
wouldn’t approve of, Joe.”

Madge Gowan rose and looked steadily at Campbell.

“How about leaving the poor kid alone, to-night?” she asked.

“Don’t be foolish, she’s ’n old flame uh mine,” Campbell answered.
“We’ve been crazy about each other for more than two years now.”

“Well, let her sleep with me, anyway,” Madge persisted. “You can see
her to-morrow morning.”

“Now Ma-adge, don’t butt in where it’s not needed,” said Donovan
chidingly.

“Yes, cut out the guardian-angel stuff,” Campbell said, in a careless
voice. “She’s ’n old sweetie uh mine, I’m telling you.”

Madge turned and looked down at Blanche, in a dully sad way.

“Oh, well, it’s no business of mine,” she said.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Blanche woke up on the next morning, she looked at the strange
room with an uncomprehending, ferocious ache in her head. Then, in a
detached fashion, incidents of the past night began to bob up in her
head, and she pieced them slowly together, in a stumbling, erratic
way. She’d met Campbell and gone to a party with him, and then she had
become drunk and everything had grown slowly darker. She remembered
vaguely that she had begged him to take her home.... Then, an
indefinable stirring within her heart told her what had happened....
So, he had sneaked off, afraid to face her now--the coward, the coward.
But perhaps he was still in the place, and ... where was she, anyway?
She opened the door and walked unsteadily down the hallway. Yes,
this was the same parlor where the party had taken place--same piano
and furniture. Perhaps Campbell was sleeping in another room in the
apartment.

She returned to the room that she had left, and sat down. The pain
in her head gave an added edge to the anger within her. The skulking
meanness of it--oh, she’d love to break his head in two! Then another
voice within her said: “You know perfectly well that’s what almost any
man’ll do, ’specially ’f he’s drunk, as well as you are. Don’t act like
a school-kid--you knew it all the time, but you kept on drinking last
night, long past your limit ... fool.”

Her anger against Campbell subsided to a more practical disgust. If she
had loved him, she would not have minded this finale, but as it was she
felt like a swindled imbecile. Campbell would have to be put in his
place once more, and treated with a cool aloofness. He had benefited by
an accident wedded to her own weakness, and the only grim satisfaction
left would be to ignore him from now on. She didn’t blame him,
particularly--all men seemed to be cut out of the same stuff--but it
would have to be impressed upon him that his victory had been an empty
one, and that she was still her own mistress. After all, she still felt
intact and undisturbed--it would take more than a dozen Campbells to
break her spirit--and she would sever her relations with him merely as
a matter-of-fact self-protection.

When she had washed, and dressed herself, she walked back to the parlor
and pulled back the shades at the window, and looked down at the street
far below. It was crowded with people and vehicles--the hour might be
around noon. She glanced back at a clock on the top of the sideboard.
Eleven-thirty--she would have to telephone the “Parlor” and give them
the old illness-excuse.... Where had every one disappeared to--where
was Donovan, who lived in the apartment? She heard the front door
close, and she sat down, waiting, and shrinking a little ... she didn’t
care to meet any one at this exact moment. Campbell walked into the
parlor, and when he saw her, he greeted her with a solicitous joviality.

“We-ell, there she is--fresh as a daisy ’n’ everything,” he said. “I’ve
bought some stuff and we’ll cook breakfast on Jack’s little electric
stove. He’s still dead to the world, I guess.”

She rose from the chair, without answering, and walked to the hallway,
where she removed her coat and hat from the rack and started to put
them on. He followed her and dropped a hand on her shoulder.

“Now, what’s up?” he asked.

“We’re never going to see each other again,” she replied, “and I’m not
very anxious to talk to you. I don’t blame you for anything, but you’re
not the kind of a man I’m looking for. You’re just no better ’r worse
than most people, that’s all. I’d feel just the same about it ’f you
hadn’t acted like you did. I held on to you because you could make me
laugh and forget my troubles, but I knew it couldn’t last much longer.”

“Don’t act like desp’rate Tessie in a movie-film,” he said. “Come on,
sit down and let’s talk it over. Nothing so terrible has happened.”

“I’m not worrying about what happened,” she answered. “’F I cared for
you I wouldn’t give it a thought. I don’t, though, and there’d be no
use in risking a second dose of the same fool stunt. We’ll call it
quits now, and stop seeing each other.”

“Well, I’ve got something to tell you, and it won’t hurt you to sit
down a minute and listen,” he urged.

“All right, just a few minutes, and then I’ll be going,” she said,
wearily.

They sat on opposite chairs in the parlor, and as he looked at her, an
irresistible impulse came to him. She certainly did have a marvelous
spirit and independence--no girl of his acquaintance had ever acted
with such a careless, untouched remoteness on the morning after,
unless she was a plain hooker--not in a way that convinced you of
its genuineness, at any rate--and, strangely enough, as he sat here
now, she was still as desirable as she had ever been. Well, guess he
would have to take the plunge--you couldn’t resist it forever. The old
chain-and-jail wind-up.

“I want you to marry me, Blanche,” he said. “I’ll go down to the
Municipal Building with you this afternoon, and we’ll get the license.
I mean every word of it. You’re an ace-high full to me and I can’t give
you up. I guess I’ve always been in love with you, but I didn’t want to
admit it to myself. You’ll marry me to-day and we’ll live happy ever
afterwards, just like they do in the books.”

He looked at her with a confident, admiring smile, as though her assent
were predetermined. She arose and smiled pityingly at him, as she
tucked her hair beneath her hat.

“Listen, Joe, I wouldn’t marry you on a bet,” she replied. “You
prob’bly think I’ve been egging you on to ask me all the time, and
there’s where you’ve made a big mistake, Joe Campbell. ’F I ever marry
any man I’ll have to be wild about him, and ’f I am, I won’t even care
so much whether he marries me ’r not. And, what’s more, I’ll have
to have a pile of respect for his mind, and I’ll have to feel like
listening to what he says, all the time.”

He stared at her, without answering.

“Well, it’s no use talking any more,” she said. “So long, Joe, I’m
going now.”

He had expected that she would first doubt the sincerity of his
proposal and then eagerly accept him. He still believed that she was
merely leading him on, to revenge herself, and that all of her words
had been said for their effect, and that she only wanted him to be
persistently begging and humble. He followed her into the hallway, and
caught her arm.

“I’m sorry for what happened last night,” he said. “I’ll make it up to
you, Blan. I mean it, dear. I’m crazy about you, and I want to make you
happy, and I’ll do anything you say. Why, I’ll even stop drinking, if
you say the word. You’ve just got to marry me, you’ve got to, Blanche.
You know you care for me, you know you do.”

“You’d better guess again, Joe,” she said, coolly, as she broke away
from him. “I’m not going to see you again, and what’s more, don’t
pester me with any ’phone-calls ’r letters, either. It won’t do you a
bit of good.... Good-bye, and good luck, old boy.”

It gave her a surface thrill to slap his face in this dramatic and
careless fashion. He thought that he was a precious catch, didn’t he?
Well, he might lose some of his huge conceit after she had finished
with him.

He caught her arm once more.

“Come on, you’ve razzed me enough now, haven’t you?” he asked. “I’ve
been taking it like a man, but don’t smear it on so thick. Come on, be
good to me, Blanche.”

She broke away again and walked swiftly down the hallway. He started
after her and then halted, still and perplexed, as she reached the
door. Then a rage quickly possessed him--imagine, this hussy turning
_him_ down after he had been really anxious to make amends.

“All right, then, you can go to hell for all I care,” he called after
her, as she was passing through the doorway.

She made no reply as she slammed the door behind her--he could have
said that immediately and spared himself the trouble of his other
words. These men, they thought that all they had to do was to utter
the magical words--ma-arry me--and a girl would be delighted at the
rare, luring condescension and instantly fall into their arms. Well,
perhaps he wouldn’t be quite so conceited from now on--the cheap
sneak. When she married a man it would be soberly and of her own free
will, because she longed to hear his words, and be physically near
him, and because she looked up to his mental gifts, and good taste,
and re-fine-ment. Oh, ye-es, in a way she was an idiot for not having
accepted _Campbell’s_ proposal, since he could certainly have given the
leisure and opportunities which she craved, but ... she’d be damned if
_she_ would ever marry a man just because she was ashamed to leave him
on the day after a drunken party!

After she had telephoned the “Parlor” and told Madame Jaurette that she
could not come down because of an intense toothache, she returned to
her home. Her mother had gone to the butcher shop and Mabel was sitting
alone in the living-room.

“Well, sma-artie, where’ve you been all night?” Mabel asked. “Ma was in
a awful stew about you--she was gonna call up the p’lice, but I stopped
her. An’ _pa_, he’s gonna ask you _some_ questions when he gets back,
believe me.”

“What’s all the fuss about?” Blanche asked, wearily. “I went to a wild
party and passed out, and they had to let me sleep there overnight.”

“An’ Joe Campbell, he got lost in the crush, ’r else he went back to
his place to sleep, I s’pose,” Mabel answered, sarcastically. “You c’n
tell it to ma but not to me. I never thought you’d give in to him that
easy, Blan. He hasn’t asked you to marry him, has he?”

“Yes, but I turned him down,” Blanche replied.

“Turned him down--well, of all the fool things,” Mabel cried. “I’ll bet
you’re jes’ sayin’ you did ’cause you don’t want to admit what a simp
you’ve been.”

“No, it’s true ... he wanted to marry me right this afternoon.”

Mabel was silent for a moment, as she regarded her sister with an
irritated surprise, and then she said: “You’ve got me guessing. Here’s
a fine fella, not so bad-lookin’ either, an’ you’ve been goin’ with
him, off and on, f’r over two years, an’ he’s got loads of money, an’
... you won’t marry him. There’s darn few fellas that’ll ask a girl
right after they’ve slipped one over on her. What’re you waitin’ for,
anyway?”

“Not for anything you could understand,” Blanche responded. “When I
marry a man I’m going to love him first--that’s what you can’t get into
your head--and it’ll have to be real love, too, and not just because he
has a handsome face and knows how to kid now and then.”

“Then why’d you stay with Joe last night?” Mabel asked. “’F you’re so
darn up’n the air about it, you didn’t have to peel your clothes off
f’r a fella you don’t care about.”

“I passed out of the picture, and the next thing I knew it was
morning,” Blanche said, trying to be patient with this querulous,
unseeing sister of hers, but feeling a rising strain.

It was bad enough that it had happened--why did she have to paw over
the details?

“Well, he played a dirty, rotten trick on you then,” Mabel answered,
indignantly, “an’ ’f it was me, I’d sure get back at him some way. ’F I
didn’t wanna marry him, then I’d scare him outa his wits an’ make him
come across with plenty uh money, I would. ’R else I’d see he was sent
to the hospital f’r a nice, long stretch.”

“It was my fault just’s much as his,” Blanche replied, dully. “No man’s
’n angel, and a girl shouldn’t get drunk with him ’f she doesn’t want
to go the limit. I can usually take care of myself, but I took too many
cocktails last night. I was feeling blue and forgot when to stop. ’F
you want to do me a favor, then you’ll talk about something else. I’ll
never see him again, and he doesn’t matter to me.”

“Try an’ talk to you,” Mabel responded, disgustedly. “The last person
you ever look out f’r is yourself. You ought to be sent to the
booby-hatch!”

Blanche went into her room without answering ... what was the use?
Mabel meant well enough, but she couldn’t see that money and gay times
and “getting back” at people were not the only things in the world.

When her mother returned, Blanche pretended to be asleep, and she
remained upon her bed until evening, with all her thoughts darting
about and then hopelessly evaporating, and with occasional intervals of
semi-drowsiness. When she came to the supper-table, where the remainder
of her family were seated, the firing started.

“Well, give an account uh yourself,” her father said. “Where was you
till twelve this morning?”

“I stayed with some friends,” Blanche answered--she wasn’t _afraid_
to tell them the truth, of course not, but she wanted to avoid the
senseless wrangling, and the loud accusations, and the outraged advice
that would ensue if she did. “I drank a little too much and I had to
sleep it off, that’s all.”

“An’ how about Campbell--was he with you?” her father asked, gruffly.

“He was gone when I woke up this morning,” Blanche answered, seeking
only to brush aside her father’s words.

“Well, it sounds damn fishy to me,” her father replied. “’F he did
anything wrong to you I’ll have it out with him, and he’ll have to
marry you then, ’f he knows what’s good f’r him.”

“That’s what I say,” Harry broke in. “I like Joe all right, but he’d
better go slow with any sister uh mine, I don’t care ’f he was the
Gov’ner himself!”

“You’re getting terribly concerned about me all at once, aren’t
you?” Blanche asked, speaking to Harry. “You’d better not jump at
conclusions--you don’t know a thing about it.”

“I’ll make it my business to find out,” Harry answered, looking
steadily at her.

“Well, I’m gonna stick up f’r Blanie this time,” Mabel said. “You’re
both makin’ a big fuss about nothin’, an’ what’s more, you’ve got
no right to be sayin’ she’s a bad girl. You oughta be ashamed uh
yourselves. All she did was stay overnight with some people she knew
’cause she wasn’t in no condition to come home. I’ve done it myself,
once ’r twice, an’ you never waded into me. Blanche may be a nut in
some ways but she’s not fool enough to let Joe Campbell put it over on
her, an’ you oughta believe her.”

Blanche gave her sister a grateful, surprised look--Mabel did have a
good streak in her, in spite of her blind reproaches.

“I’m not accusin’ her of anythin’,” the father said, impressed by this
defense from his favorite daughter. “I only wanted to find out what
happened, like any father would. ’S a matter uh fact, you’d both better
cut out all this booze you’re swillin’. ’F you don’t, you’ll wake up
some fine mornin’ an’ find yourselves in f’r it.”

“An’ they oughta stay home more, too,” the mother said, breaking in
with her endless complaint, not because she hoped to effect anything,
but merely to maintain her position. “I was worried to death, I was,
when I got up this mornin’ an’ Blanie wasn’t here. You never can tell
what’ll happen to a girl, you never. Don’t I read all kindsa things in
the paper ev’ry day--murders ’n’ rapes ’n’ what not!”

“I’ll see that they stay home--they’re runnin’ too loose to suit me,
these days,” the father replied.

He knew that he would do nothing of the kind, but the words soothed his
sense of authority.

When the supper was finished, Blanche put on her hat and coat, and
said: “I’m going out for a walk. I’ll be back early, I guess.”

“You’d better,” her father responded. “I won’t swallow another stayin’
over with friends story, this time.”

Blanche turned away without replying--words, words, and what did they
all amount to? Threats, and promises, and “reasons” ... and people
scarcely ever meant them.

After she had left the apartment she strolled aimlessly up one street
and down another, craving the motion that could add a fillip to the
dullness of her thoughts. Would she ever meet people who could help
her, and who would understand her longings and prod her with worthwhile
criticisms and encouragements--people, for instance, as superior to
Rosenberg as Rosenberg had been to the rest of the men whom she knew?
How could she run across them?... As she walked along, different men
stopped beside her for a moment, with their “Nice evening, isn’t it?”
and “You look sorta lonesome, how about it?” and “Pardon me, but
haven’t I met you somewhere before?” and “D’you mind if I talk to you
a while?” Sometimes they called to her from automobiles, but they were
merely irritating reminders of a real and grossly intruding world,
and she ignored them--it never paid to take a chance, for they always
turned out to be common and cheap. It stood to reason--why would an
enticing man be so “hard up” that he would have to solicit women on the
street?

She didn’t know where she was going, but she wanted to imagine that she
was searching for some destination that would greet her unexpectedly--a
vague, half-laughed-at hope--and she kept on strolling down the hard,
flatly dirty, noisy streets.



PART TWO



PART TWO


The night became thickly intense, and all the angular details and flat
expanses of each street--neither hideous nor beautiful but vapidly and
rigidly perched in between--took on the least touch of glamor. Some
semblance of a darkly plaintive heart began to sway and quiver within
the scene, as though the essence of all these human beings pacing down
the sidewalks and sitting or standing in shops, cars, and restaurants,
had joined the night and formed another quality--expectations,
illusions, and promises, all electric in the air. The harshly dreamless
industries and shallow loiterings of the day were replaced by an effort
at romance, soiled but persistent, and a sensual pride preening itself
with gallantries, and a confusion of cruel or softly dozing confidences.

The moving-picture theaters, in dots of red, yellow, blue, and
green light, made proclamations of spurious, quickly attained love,
adventure, and suspense; the United Cigar Stores, framed by red
and gold, displayed their mild, brown opiates, while within them
deferential clerks catered to jovial or importantly sullen men and
women; the restaurants, with food heaped in their windows, and
glistening fronts, were filled with people intent upon turning a
prosy stuffing into an elaborate, laughing ritual; and even the Greek
lunch-rooms, with their stools beside half-dirty glass counters, and
nickel coffee-urns, assumed a hang-dog grin.

Taxicabs in all the cardinal colors darted about, like feverish insects
serving human masters, and the people in them--lazy, or impatient,
or bored, or out for a lark--made a blur of faces sometimes glimpsed
more distinctly as the cabs stopped or slowed down. Policemen in dark
blue uniforms stood at street-crossings, with tired aggressiveness,
looking for a chance to invest their flunky-rôles with a rasping
authority. Motor-trucks lurched along like drab monsters barely held in
leash. Lights were everywhere--in shops, on iron poles in the streets,
mellowly staring from upper windows--desperately seeking to dismiss
the darkly fearful mystery of the surrounding night, but never quite
overcoming it.

Street-cars and “L” trains crawled on, soddenly packed with under-dogs
going to their dab of rest or crude pleasure. A roar was in the air,
with immediate, sharp sounds trailing out into it--a complaining,
shackled savage floating up from the scene. The large buildings were
without individuality, except that some of them rose vertically above
the others, and in their dull shades of red, brown, and gray, they
would all have presented a yawning, meanly barrack-like effect but for
the relieving fancy of their lights. Even the perpendicular strength of
the skyscrapers was marred by filigreed and overcorniced lines.

To Blanche, the scene was a _mêlée_ of delightful possibilities always
just eluding her, and obnoxious intrusions only too ready to seek her
arm. She realized the transforming effect of the night and said to
herself: “Say, I’d never do all this walking if it was daytime--funny,
how everything gets more attractive when the night trots along. Guess
you can’t see things so clear then.... Better chance to kid yourself
along.”

As she strolled through the outskirts of Greenwich Village her legs
began to feel heavy, and the past hour seemed to be nothing more than
a long, senseless walk taken within the confines of a large trap. The
light, hazy sensation of searching oozed slowly out of her body and was
replaced by the old hopelessness.

She stopped in front of a batik-shop window and looked at the soft,
intricately veined gaudiness of the smocks, blouses, and scarves.
“Sorta crazy, yes, but she’d like to wear them--they suited her mood.”
Another girl was standing beside Blanche, and the other turned her head
and said: “Aren’t they beauties, though. I’d just love to buy that
purple and green smock there in the corner.”

“I like the blue one better--the one right next to yours,” Blanche
answered naturally, but she looked closely at the other girl.

It was not unusual for strange girls to speak to you when they were
either lonely or just brightly interested in some little thing, but
still you had to be careful--sometimes they were “fast” players with
men, in need of a feminine accomplice, or grafters intent on securing
some favor or loan. The other girl had a slender torso and almost
slender legs, with all of her plumpness crowded in the buttocks and
upper thighs. She had singed butterflies on her face and they gave a
light, fluttering pain to her smiles. She had the rarity of large blue
eyes on a duskily pale brown face, and small, loosely parted lips,
and a slight hook on the upper part of her nose, and curly bobbed
brown hair. In her tan coat trimmed with dark fur, scarlet turban, and
multicolored silk scarf, she seemed to be a dilettantish, chippy girl,
just graduated from the flapper class.

Blanche noticed something “different” in the other girl and answered
her more readily as they continued their talk.

“D’you live in the Village?” the other girl asked.

“No, I’m from uptown,” Blanche answered. “I’ve heard lots about it,
though. I’d like to meet some of the int’resting artists and writers
down here. There must be all kinds of them in the tearooms and places
like that.”

The other girl gave her a pitying look.

“All kinds of fakers, you mean,” she replied. “They know how to brag
about themselves, but that’s where it ends.”

“But I thought this was the part of town where real artists ’n’ writers
came together,” Blanche persisted. “Of course, I didn’t believe they
were all great ones, but I did believe they were all trying to do
something, well, different, you know.”

“Oh, there _are_ some down here, but you don’t usually find them in the
showplaces or tearooms,” the other girl answered, as she and Blanche
walked down the street. “Those places are for the mediocrities, and
the pretenders, and the students ... and, oh, yes, the slummers. People
from uptown hunting for something gayly wicked.”

“I suppose you think I’m a foolish slummer, too,” Blanche said, “but
I’m not. I’ve just been walking along and thinking things over. I
didn’t realize where I was.”

“I wasn’t being personal,” the other girl replied. “I sort of like the
way you talk. Suppose we introduce ourselves to each other?”

They traded names and the other girl, Margaret Wheeler, went on: “You
know, strangers are always supposed to distrust each other, but I can’t
be annoyed. Every once in a while I talk to some girl on the street,
and I’ve started a couple of interesting friendships that way. I’m not
a Lesbian and I haven’t any other designs upon you.”

“Why, I don’t distrust you at all,” Blanche answered. “I can take
care of myself and I suppose you can, too. You talk like you were
intelligent, and I’d like to know you better, that’s all.”

“Thanks,” said Margaret. “I would be fairly intelligent, if I didn’t
let some male make an idiot out of me every few months. I’m in love
with some one now, but it’ll wind up like all the others.”

“You make me feel envious,” Blanche replied. “I don’t think I’ve ever
really loved any fellow.”

“Are you joking?” Margaret asked.

“No, that’s straight.”

“Well, I’m going on twenty-five now, and I couldn’t count the
infatuations I’ve had. I’m not as easy as I used to be, though. Once
upon a time, if a man had a straight nose, and blond hair, and could
recite poetry and make me believe it was his, that was all I needed.
But no-ow, a man must have some real subtlety, and ability, and
wittiness, before I pay any attention to him.”

“That’s just the kind I’ve been looking for,” Blanche answered. “Where
on earth do you find them?”

“Nowhere in particular--it’s a matter of luck. And don’t forget that a
girl must be unusual herself before she can attract unusual men, unless
they’re just anxious to have a party with her.”

“Yes, that’s where I’d lose out,” Blanche said, heavily. “I’m just a
ha-air dresser in a beauty parlor, that’s all.”

“You certainly don’t talk like one. Maybe you’ve never had much of a
chance to be anything different.”

“You said it”--Blanche’s voice was low and depressed.

“Well, I’m only a steno myself,” Margaret answered, “but I’m taking a
course in short-story writing at Herbert College--three nights a week.
I want to tear off the old veils and tell what people do to each other.”

“Say, maybe I could join it, too,” Blanche replied, eagerly. “I’m not
so strong on grammar, though--stopped in my first year at high and went
to work.”

“Oh, you can pound _that_ part of it into you. The main thing’s whether
you have something to say--something that’s not just ordinary and
hackneyed.”

“I think I have, but ... how do I know,” Blanche asked, uncertainly.

They had stopped in front of a tearoom with a multicolored wooden sign
under an electric light.

“Here’s Clara’s--one of my hangouts,” Margaret said. “I’m going in to
meet my blond-haired devastator. Won’t you come along?”

“Perhaps I’ll be in the way.”

“Nothing of the kind--I’ll introduce you to some of the people I know.”

They entered the place, which occupied the first floor of a two-storey,
attic-topped, brick house. Kitchen tables and chairs painted pale
green and vermilion lined the walls. Paintings and drawings were hung
everywhere--cubistic plagiarisms, slovenly sketches, and illustrations
meant for the average magazine’s check book but not quite reaching
it--and a semidim light came from stained-glass bowls hung from the
low ceiling. Some fifteen men and women were scattered around the two
rooms, and a portable phonograph in the corner was whining one of the
latest fox-trot insinuations--“He Never Gets Tired of Me, No, Boy, Just
Never Gets Tired of Me-ee.”

Three men and a woman at a table effusively greeted Margaret, and after
she had introduced Blanche, the two girls sat down with the others. The
third girl, Dora Ruvinsky, was an unsymmetrically fat Jewess, with a
thin-lipped but salacious face and a shorn disorder of black hair. Her
sex had yielded to a cunning nightmare of masculinity, and she wore
a stiff white collar, a red cravat, and a man’s vest and coat. She
spoke in a husky drawl and perpetually slapped the shoulders of the
men beside her. They regarded her with tolerance contending against a
slight aversion.

One of them, Max Oppendorf, a blond-haired man of thirty, plied her
with whisky from a hip-bottle and strove to trap her into feminine
reactions and remarks, as though he were coldly and listlessly
playing with a desperately hypocritical insect. His narrow, pale,
blue-eyed face glanced around the tables with pity and repugnance
somehow fused into its expression. A recognized poet and novelist,
he was nevertheless known as a distinguished outcast, ostracized,
attacked, and hated by literary and dilettantish groups of every
variety because of his skillful-tongued independence, his careless
violations of etiquettes and conventions, and the ravages of his
unorthodox intellect. His clothes were shabby but not quite untidy,
and as he frequently closed his eyes while speaking, he displayed the
contradictory guise of an aristocratic vagabond.

Men almost invariably detested him, while the reactions of the women
who met him were evenly divided into a distrustful resentment in one
camp and a loyal adoration in the other. His armor was invulnerable,
save when he became hopelessly drunk, in which condition he either
savagely denounced and affronted the people around him or became
unwontedly indulgent and gave them simulations of sentimentality and
affectionate attention. These abdications sprang from his innate
indifference to life and most of its people. Sincerely believing that
most men and women were beclouded, unsearching, and cruelly _gauche_
children, alcohol made his indifference to them more indulgently intent
upon distracting itself, and, when drunk, he stooped to them with loud,
mock-arguments, and exuberant caresses. He felt a moderate degree of
tenderness toward Margaret Wheeler, who appealed to him as an honest
grappler, more unreserved and mentally edged than most other girls of
her age and occupation. She was violently in love with him, and they
spoke together in tones that were almost whispers, and stroked each
other’s hands.

The second man, Bob Trussel--a gorgeously effeminate youth who was
known in Village circles for his not-quite-Beardsleyesque black and
whites--conversed with Dora, while the third, Ben Helgin, talked to
Blanche.

Ben was a robustly tall man in his early thirties, with a huge,
half-bald head, and dark-brown hair inclined to be frizzly. His long,
pointed nose, severely arched eyebrows, and widely thin lips gave him
the look of a complacent, pettily cruel Devil--a street urchin who had
donned the mask of Mephistopheles but could not quite conceal the leer
of a boy intent upon practical jokes and small tormentings. He was
a master in the arts of dramatic exaggeration and belittling, never
quite telling the truth and never quite lying, and his immeasurable
vanity made him always determined to dominate any conversation. He had
an Oriental volubility, and people would often sit beside him for an
hour or more and vainly seek to insert a beginning remark or express an
uninterrupted opinion.

One of his favorite devices was to tell anecdotes about men of his
acquaintance, in which the men were invariably depicted in a childish,
ridiculous, or inferior posture, while he gloated over and embellished
the details of their fancied discomfiture, with a great assumption
of sympathy for the victims. Living in a dream-world entirely of his
own making, he loved to flirt with visions, conquests, world-shaking
concepts, and child-like boasts. On one morning he would appear among
his friends, describing some plan or idea with a cyclonic enthusiasm,
and on the very next afternoon no trace of it would remain within his
mind. Again, he would loll in an armchair and announce that a famous
actress of forty had implored him to reside with her and to become the
leading man in her next play, but he would neglect to mention that the
lady in question was renowned for her generous impulses and included
truck-drivers and cigar-clerks in her overtures. These impositions
caused most people to regard him as an eel-like _poseur_, when they
were removed from the persuasive sorceries of his words, and they
failed to see that his gigantic egotism had sincerely hoaxed itself
into the rôle of a flitting and quickly ennuied conqueror.

For years he had followed the luring dream of amassing a large fortune
through the creation of dexterously dishonest stories, plays, and
press-agent campaigns, and while he had accumulated thousands of
dollars in these ways, the dream of wealth persistently refused to be
captured. He lacked the grimly plodding, blind instinct necessary for
such a goal, and his financial harvests were always quickly gathered
and dissipated. This babbling immersion in the garnering of money,
however, gave him the paradoxical air of an esthetic Babbitt.

His serious literary creations were original and sardonic at their
best, but frequently marred by a journalistic glibness which led him
into shallow and redundant acrobatics, or facetious saunterings.

He had known Max Oppendorf for nine years, and they had passed through
a comical fanfare of recriminations, friendly invitations, sneers, and
respects. Oppendorf secretly disliked him but was at times fascinated
by his charming pretenses of _camaraderie_, and the quickness of his
mind. At one time, the poet had broken off with Helgin for three
years--a withdrawal caused by his discovery of the other man’s peculiar
and somewhat incredible sense of humor. Penniless, and afflicted
with incipient tuberculosis, Oppendorf had written to his friend and
asked for the loan of two hundred dollars. A special-delivery letter
had flown back to him, containing an unctuously sympathetic note and
announcing the enclosure of a two-hundred-dollar check. The rest of the
envelope had been empty, however, and believing that the absence of the
check was merely an absent-minded error, he dispatched another letter
which apprised his friend of the oversight. In response, Helgin had
sent him the following telegram: “It was a nice joke--hope you enjoyed
it as much as I did.”

Helgin had a sincere admiration for the other man’s work and a veiled,
malicious aversion to the poet’s personal side. To him, Oppendorf’s
life held a supreme taunt which had to be demolished with falsehoods
and ridicule. The poet’s unbroken flaunting of moralities, conventions,
and compromises, reminded Helgin that his own life had not been equally
courageous and defiant, in spite of his endless written shots at
average people and their fears, and that, in his personal existence,
he had frequently prostrated himself before the very observances which
he pilloried, or laughed at, in his books and conversation. This
specter could only be slain by the effort to jeer at the opposite man’s
episodes with men and women, and to hold them forth as clownish and
unrewarded capers.

As Helgin sat now, in the boisterous and tawdrily glassy tearoom, he
spoke to Blanche with the gracious casualness which he always publicly
affected with women. It was a part of his jovially invincible pose to
insinuate that he could have been a perfect libertine had he chosen
to follow that denounced profession, and that his enormous sexual
attractiveness was held in bondage only by his lack of desire and his
ability to peer through the entire, violent fraud of sex itself. In
the dream-world of his own making, through which he moved, loftily but
genially immune to all criticisms, adulations, and importunities, women
were the potential vassals whom he disdained to hire.

On the night previous to the present one, his second wife had departed
on a visit to her family in a distant city, and he had telephoned
Oppendorf and arranged a meeting, prodded by one of the irregular
impulses in which his respect for the other man overcame his opposite
feelings of envy and aversion. Now, he sat and chatted with Blanche
while she listened with an almost abject attention. This great writer,
whose pictures she had run across on the literary pages of newspapers,
and in magazines, was actually seated beside her and speaking to
her--it could scarcely be true! She recalled that Rosenberg had often
lauded Helgin, and that a year previous she had read one of the latter
man’s novels and had liked its “difficult,” thumb-twiddling style
and disliked its patronizing, pitying attitude toward the feminine
characters. Well, when men wrote about women, or women about men, they
never seemed able to become quite fair to each other. They were always
mushy and lenient, on one side, or sneering and unsympathetic on the
other. She voiced this thought to Helgin, who advised her to cease
searching for an unhappy medium. To him, she presented the figure of
a worried, heavily questioning peasant girl, dressed and manicured
for a more polite rôle, and he had a whim to lure her into expectant
admirations and play with her stumbling hungers and wonderings.
Usually, he did not waste his time on such girls--they were more to
Oppendorf’s liking--but for the space of one night he could afford to
risk the impending boredom in a more unassuming manner.

“You must get Oppie to compliment you,” he said, glancing in the poet’s
direction. “He does it perfectly. Women cry for it, babies smile, old
ladies jump out of their chairs. Come on, Oppie, say something about
Miss Palmer’s hair. What does it remind you of? A startled ghost of
dawn, the visible breath of afternoon?”

Oppendorf turned from his whisperings with Margaret, and smiled--a
patient but slightly threatening smile.

“Are you ordering a tailormade suit or buying a box of cigars?” he
asked, sweetly.

“The comparison isn’t quite fair to your poetry, Oppie,” Helgin
answered, in the same sweet voice.

“Monseigneur Helgin, apostle of fairness, sympathy, and tolerance--know
any other good ones, Ben?”--the poet’s smile shone like a sleeping
laugh.

“Your hair is like a tortured midnight--that was a nice line, Oppie,”
Helgin answered pensively, as he ignored the other man’s thrust.

“The actual phrase happens to be ‘transfigured midnight,’” Oppendorf
said, in an ominously subdued voice. “You substituted the word tortured
to make the line meaningless, of course.”

“Sa-ay, wasn’t that tormented night stuff in The Duke of Hoboken, Ben’s
last novel?” Dora Ruvinsky asked, poking Oppendorf in the side.

“Yes, among other frantic mendacities,” Oppendorf answered, as he
looked compassionately at Helgin. “The ancient Chinese had an excellent
proverb: ‘When your stilettos have failed to penetrate the actual
figure, erect a ludicrous dummy and belabor it with an ax.’”

“The Chinese usually come to your rescue,” Helgin retorted, “but you
don’t seem to realize that The Duke of Hoboken is simply a gorgeous and
delirious fantasy. It wasn’t meant to be an actual portrait of you.”

“Yes, you were more innocent than you imagined,” Oppendorf answered,
still smiling.

“Oh, stop all of this polite quarreling, Maxie,” Margaret interposed,
as she looked at Helgin with an open dislike. “Helgin sits in his
little phantom palace, bo-ored and genial, and when you cave in the
walls he scarcely hears you.”

“Your own hearing is just a trifle more adoring, isn’t it?” Helgin
asked, as he looked at Margaret with an expression of complacent malice.

“Yes, it needs to be, if only to counteract yours,” Margaret replied,
tartly.

“Call it a draw, and let’s talk about purple chrysanthemums,” Oppendorf
interjected.

When people persisted in clinging to one subject he was always reminded
of scrubwomen endlessly scouring a pane of glass, unless the theme was
exceptionally complex.

“Dear me, can’t I say something else about the sweet Duke?” Trussel
asked, as he stroked his hair with the fingers of one hand. “It’s
screamingly amusing, really. Lots of the critics have always attacked
Mr. Helgin’s books, you know--called them stilted and, well,
overcynical. That sort of thing. But no-ow, dear me, what a change!
Why, they’re all simply showering praise on the dear Duke of Hobok’.
Of course, there isn’t any connection between this change and the
fact that little Dukie is supposed to be a biting caricature of Mr.
Oppendorf.”

“No, of course not,” Oppendorf replied, thoroughly amused now. “In the
same way, three thoughtful chorus girls were observed last night,
floating in a huge balloon as they crossed the peninsula of Kamchatka.”

“People are always talking about the dead,” Helgin said, in a bored
voice. “The indecent vagaries of critics are not interesting to me.
They might be vastly engrossing to some entomologist, though.”

“Oh, you’re all a lot of bugs,” Dora said, as she caressed Margaret’s
arm while Margaret regarded her with a resigned look that said: “Well,
I suppose you _must_ do this.”

“You’re crazy, and you take yourselves so darn seriously it gives me a
pain!” Dora continued. “Come on, let’s have another drink and act like
human beings.”

The conversation changed to a game in which the others bantered with
Dora and laughed at her amiable but scoffing retorts. Blanche, who had
been bewildered and almost awe-stricken ever since her introduction to
these people, began to listen and observe with a clearer, though still
strongly respectful, attitude. They were the people whom she had always
longed to meet, and they knew much more than she did, and they were
bold creators while she was only despairing and partly tongue-tied,
ye-es, but still, they were by no means perfect. They wasted so much
time in slamming each other as cleverly as they could, and while they
were always good-natured about it, you couldn’t fail to spy the malice
beneath at least half of their smiles and remarks. They never expressed
any whole-hearted liking, or sympathy, or placid interest in their
reactions toward each other, and their talk reminded her of a game
in which each one strove to make his “comeback” a little “smarter”
and quicker than that of the others. Yet Oppendorf alone seemed to be
different. The others, with the exception of Margaret, were always
trying to twit or arouse him--something about him seemed to plague them
almost against their will--and never quite succeeding. His eyes were
sleepy and retiring, and he closed them half of the time during his
conversation. When he laughed or raised his voice now and then, it was
in a jerky way, “like some one else” was pulling some strings tied to
him. Funny man ... what had given him this air of tired sadness? Well,
at any rate, she could never fall in love with him--he was too much
like a careful ghost!

The man whom she loved would have to be robust, and natural, and, well
... sort of eager to be alive, in spite of the fact that he knew all
about the shams and meannesses which life held. Yes, that was it ...
he’d be glad, and a little hopeful, in spite of all the rotten things
he saw and heard.

She began to talk more frankly, her tongue loosened a bit by the two
drinks of whisky that Oppendorf had given her.

“Say, why don’t all of you just call each other liars and boobs, and
have it over with?” she asked, with a smile.

“At an early age, I was confronted by the choice of using the other
side’s tactics now and then or becoming a hermit,” Oppendorf replied,
in his deliberate way. “I am still direct enough, however, to be
ostracized by practically every literary party or group in New York.”

“I admire your indignation,” Helgin said to Blanche. “Ride us all on a
rail and tell us what vicious double-dealers we are.”

He had decided to egg her on for purposes of entertainment. “It
wouldn’t have the least effect on any of you,” Blanche answered,
composedly. “Besides, I’m only a stranger and I really haven’t any
right to criticize. You’re all doing things--real things that amount to
something--and I’m just a hair-curler in a Beauty Shop.”

“Listen, here’s a tip--never be modest when men are around,” Margaret
said, gayly. “They think little enough of women as it is, and they’re
_always_ looking for a chance to walk over us.”

“Oh, it’s too much trouble not to be honest,” Blanche retorted,
lightly. “Let them try to wa-alk, for all I care.”

“Have you ever written, or painted?” Oppendorf asked, liking the
contradiction of her humble brassiness.

“I _have_ fooled around with ideas of being a writer, but I’m afraid I
don’t know English well enough for that,” said Blanche, uncertainly.

“Don’t take up writing, Miss Palmer--it’s only an excuse for laziness,”
Helgin said. “That’s probably why so many young people try to toss off
stories and verses. They have just a bit of imagination and they don’t
like the prospect of slaving in father’s shoe store or helping mother
bake the evening pies.”

“There must be a more important reason than that,” Blanche replied,
soberly.

“Yes, it’s barely possible,” Oppendorf interjected. “It’s a habit with
us to take our profession somewhat flippantly. That’s to avoid giving
the impression that we’re too much in love with ourselves.”

“Funny, you do manage to give the impression, anyway,” Blanche
answered, as she made a grimace.

Oppendorf and the others laughed, and Helgin said: “So, you’ve been
carrying that little dagger all the time. Bright gal.”

“Not at all--just trying to imitate your style,” Blanche retorted,
merrily.

The others had been regarding her as a meek and abashed apprentice
in their realms, but now they began to pelt her with more respectful
badinage, with the exception of Oppendorf, who watched her with a
sleepy stare of approval and remained silent. This girl wasn’t half
stupid at bottom, but just ignorant of many things.

The group repaired to Margaret’s nearby studio and danced to a
phonograph and slipped into varying stages of tipsiness. Helgin did not
dance, but sat in a corner and talked to Blanche. He became mellowly
garrulous and somewhat less malicious, and he regarded Blanche as a
fumbling but slightly diverting barbarian--diverting for a night or two
at least. They were mildly interesting as long as they clung to their
ferocious sassiness, but they always wound up by becoming girlishly
wistful, and pleading, and more disrobed. He began to tell her
anecdotes of his past, in which he was always laughing, penetrating,
and triumphant at somebody else’s expense, and she listened eagerly.
My, but this man certainly knew how to talk! He was always getting the
best of people--you had to take at least forty per cent off from any
fellow’s claims in that direction--but he really was a great writer,
and he knew so many words and handled them so gracefully.

Urged by a perverse whim, he invited Blanche to come with him to a
party which he had promised to attend on the following night. The
affair was to be a gathering of literary and theatrical celebrities
and near celebrities, together with their latest fads and fancies in
human form, and it might be amusing to bring this blunt, would-be
highbrowish, young hair-dresser and see whether the assembled pedestals
would overwhelm her.

While Blanche suspected that he was playing with her and had only the
impulse to grasp a flitting distraction, she felt delighted at this
second opportunity to meet “famous” writers, and artists, and actors,
and as she accepted the invitation she said to herself: “He thinks I’m
just a snippy nobody, and he wants to show me off and then see what
happens--like letting the puppy run loose in the parlor. Oh, I know.
But what do I care? I might make friends at this party with two or
three people just as intelligent as he is, and maybe more honest.”

While Helgin left her emotionally unaroused, she was nevertheless
dazed by his vocabulary and his mental swiftness, which she frequently
had to stumble after, and a little flattered by his talkative
attention, in spite of herself. The genially wise-cracking, quizzically
aloof, and patronizing air, which he never deserted, irritated her
but did not drive away the spell of her attention. After all, he
made Rosenberg, the most intelligent man in her past, sound like a
stuttering, yearning baby. Funny, how you changed! She had once looked
up to this same Rosenberg, as though he were a luring and puzzling god.
Well, that was life--listening and clinging to people until you grew
beyond them. The only man whom she could permanently love would be one
always a little superior to her, and urging her to catch up with him,
and kindly waiting a little now and then, so as not to get too far
ahead of her.

When she reached her home she felt tired but “up in the air.” A long,
hopeless stroll and a chance acquaintanceship had really led her into
a new world--it was like a fairy tale, wasn’t it? Helgin had remained
in the taxicab, after arranging to meet her at Margaret’s studio on the
following night, and hadn’t even attempted to hold her hand ... not
that that mattered, though she was a little curious to know how men of
this kind “went about it.”

He had refrained from touching her because it would have disrupted his
nonchalant posture--the meticulous avoidance of sexual defeat with
which he kept his egotism intact. He was like a watchman, ever alert in
front of a towering but shaky house of cards.

It was 2 A.M. when she entered her bedroom, but her mind was still
spinning and darting about, in spite of her physical weariness, and,
moved by an irresistible desire, and a sudden confidence that had been
born from her surprising evening, she took a pad of paper from one of
her bureau drawers and sat up in bed until 4 A.M., writing a sketch
of the tearoom she had visited, and the people within it. The sketch
was crude and at times ungrammatical, but it had an awkward sense of
irony and humor which clung to small, insufficient words or hugged
inappropriately long ones, and it was filled with clumsily good phrases
such as: “They made a lot of noise and then whispered like they were
ashamed of it,” or “She had small eyes and they got smaller when she
talked,” “She was wearing a daisy, georgette thing and she acted like
it.” Sturdily, but with little equipment, her thought bent to the
novel wrestle with words on paper, and she felt an odd, half-uncertain
thrill when she had finished the sketch. Did it have anything to it,
or was it entirely bad? Well, she’d show it to Helgin or Oppendorf on
the next night and get ready for the old cleaver. Nothing like trying,
anyway, and curiously, she felt a beautiful relief now, as though
she had emptied herself for the first time in a way that approached
satisfaction.

On the next day she was drowsy but cheerful at the Beauty Parlor,
managing somehow to stagger through the quick-fingered details of her
work, but experiencing a rising strain. This would never do--she would
have to be wakeful and at her best for the coming party. It wouldn’t
be like going out with some silly man, feigning to listen to his “I
am it” gab, and leaving him around midnight, with several yawns and
the usual, semievaded kiss and hug. Through using the reliable excuse
of serious illness in her family, she succeeded in leaving the shop at
three in the afternoon, hastening home and sleeping there until nearly
seven. When she sat at the supper-table with the rest of the family,
Harry said: “Say, I’ve got some news for yuh. Ran across Joe Campbell
on Broadway an’ had a long chin-fest with him. He says he begged yuh to
marry him the other night and yuh turned him down flat, but he’s still
leavin’ the prop’sition open. Believe me, I wouldn’t, if I was him. He
asked me to tell yuh, anyway.”

“How interesting,” Blanche replied. “Suppose you tell your friend,
Mister Campbell, to go to the devil.”

“Now, Bla-anie, that’s a nice way to talk,” her mother cried. “I’m
ashamed of you, I am. He’s never done you no harm, far’s I know, an’
he’s been acourtin’ you for over two years now, an’ besides, he’s
gone an’ made you ’n hon-rable pruposul. You could do lots worse than
marryin’ him, you could.”

“Listen, have I got to go through this whole thing over again?”
Blanche asked, exasperated. “I wouldn’t marry Campbell ’f he had ten
million and owned the subway system, and there’s no sense to this
endless jawing match we put on. You can’t understand me and you never
will--it’s not your fault, you just can’t, and what’s more, you ought
to realize it by this time. I’m going my own way and you might as well
leave me alone.”

“Is that so,” her father replied, with a dull, puzzled anger shining in
his little eyes. “I-is that so. You’re jest a stranger here, I s’pose,
an’ you’ve dropped in tuh have supper with us. Sure, that’s it. I’m not
your father an’ I’ve got nothin’ tuh say about you, huh? You’ve got a
lot of nerve f’r a person your age, you have.”

“Yeh, she’s gettin’ a swelled head, all right,” Harry said. “Guess I’ll
have to beat up ’nother one uh her phony guys, an’ tone her down a bit.”

“Oh, you’re just full of wind,” Blanche answered, indifferently.

Mabel had been listening to Blanche with a mixture of reluctant loyalty
and annoyance--this “nut” sister of hers was certainly impossible
to understand, but Campbell had “done her dirty” just the same, and
Blanche had a perfect right to detest him, and it was about time that
the family stopped nagging her on that subject. Mabel’s antagonism
against men and her regarding them as a would-be preying sex made it
imperative that she should be on her sister’s side in this question,
almost against her will.

“I know Blan’s a nut, but stop razzing her about this Campbell stuff,”
she said, glancing disapprovingly around the table. “The way you all
rave about him a person’d think he was a king ’r something. He’s just
like other fellows--waving his dough around an’ trying to put it over
on ev’ry girl he meets. What do you want to do anyway--tie Blan up
an’ carry her down to the license-bureau? She oughta have some rights
around here.”

Taken aback by this unexpected defense from Mabel, and not being able
to think of any immediate and adequate retort, in spite of their
emotional opposition, the parents and Harry lapsed into a short
silence, after which they returned to minor complaints and jovialities.
It was easy to battle with Blanche, who outraged all of their petted
hopes and ideas, but when Mabel contradicted them, their feeling of
innate kinship with her placed them in a temporarily bewildered state
in which they wondered whether they might not be slightly wrong.
Philip, who had squirmed distressedly in his chair and tried to look
unconcerned, according to his custom, secretly prayed for Blanche to
revolt and leave home. It would be better for her--she’d be happier
then, in her crazy but rather likably independent way--and if she did
there’d be some peace around the flat, for the first time.

Blanche, who had felt relieved and a little unwillingly affectionate as
she heard her sister’s support, drew back her chair to leave the table.

“Going out to-night?” Philip asked casually, as he rose.

“Yes, I’m invited to ’n exclusive party ... artists and actors--real,
famous ones that people talk about,” Blanche replied, not being able to
resist the desire to voice her proudly anticipating mood.

“Fa-amous, huh,” Harry said, with a sneer. “Well, you’ll sure be outa
place there, ’f they are.”

“Peddle your wise-cracks somewhere else,” Blanche responded, unruffled.

“We-ell, I don’t care what they are ’cept that you’d better not come
skiddin’ in after breakfast,” her father broke in, gruffly.

What his girls did was their business as long as no one “had the
goods on them” and they kept out of trouble, but at the same time
he didn’t intend to stand for any open flaunting of their possible
transgressions. If a girl came home just before dawn, at the latest,
she might only have been “cutting up” at some wild party or night club,
but if she returned later than that, then it was evident that she had
stayed overnight with some man.

As Blanche stood before her mirror, engrossed in the half-piteous and
half-brazenly hopeful ritual observed by most women--that of applying
cosmetics to her face--a lyric rose and fell in her heart, separated
by skeptical pauses. At last she had a chance to leap from the greasy,
colorless weights of Ninth Avenue, and the cheaply frothy interludes
of Broadway ... but was it only a fair-faced dream? Would the people
in the other impending world laugh at her, or turn their backs? Again,
all of them might turn out to be qualified versions of the group she
had met at Clara’s--mischievous, sneering Helgins, weak and pouting
Trussels, unwomanly Doras, Margarets indifferent to every one save the
men at their sides, and perhaps another approach to Oppendorf--another
intriguing but palely distant figure.

The lyric rose once more and slew the specters. What an expert she was
at borrowing trouble! It was quite possible that at least two or three
of the people whom she was to meet would act friendly toward her and
invite her to other gatherings, or perhaps a really fetching man, more
naked and decent than Helgin, would fall for her.

As she walked down Ninth Avenue to the Elevated station, the scene
incited tinglings of disgust in her whereas, usually, she regarded
it with a passively acceptant dislike, as the great, solid ugliness
from which she could not escape. Now, different objects in the scene
affected her as though she had been pummeled in the face. The garbage
cans at one side of the entrances, frequently overbrimming with decayed
fruit, soiled papers, and old shoes and hats; the pillars and tracks
of the “L” road, stretching out like a still millipede, with smaller
insects shooting over its back; frowsy women, with sallow, vacant
faces, shouting down from upper windows; dirt-streaked boys, wrangling
and cursing in hallways; drab blocks of buildings cramped together,
like huge, seething, shoddy boxes; and clusters of youths on each
corner, leering as though they could scarcely control the desire to
leap upon her.

All of it scraped against her nerves. Why had she remained so long
within it?--it should have become unendurable years ago. Well,
what choice had she ever had?--an unpleasant hall room in some
rooming-shack. She could not afford more than that. But why, oh, why,
was she so depressed on this evening of all others--this evening when
for the first time she had something novel and promising to look
forward to? The lyric started again and the black pause terminated. She
became more in tune with an insidious, dodging gayety that somehow
survived the grossness of Ninth Avenue and sounded in the mildly warm
air of the late spring evening. In the dark-brown duvetyn dress that
stopped at her knees, black chiffon turban, flesh-colored stockings and
brown pumps, she could almost have been mistaken for some society girl
on a slumming tour.

When she reached Margaret’s studio, Helgin and Oppendorf had already
arrived and were immersed in a game of dice for dimes, while Margaret
finished her toilette. The studio had a low, broad couch covered
with dark green taffeta and batik cushions, and gaudily painted
furniture, and a little kitchenette and bathroom adjoined it. Helgin
greeted Blanche in the affable boyish way which he could affect for
moments--the miraculous atom of humility sometimes flitting to the
surface of his poised urbanities.

“Are you prepared to be thrilled?” he asked her, as she seated herself.

“Listen, I’m a hard-boiled egg from Hell’s Kitchen, and I don’t thrill
so easy,” she answered, with the impudent desire to shatter his smiling
condescension.

“Well, well, little tough Annie from behind the gas works,” he said.
“How did you manage to stuff your boxing gloves into that vanity case?”

“Don’t need them--bare knuckles where I come from,” she retorted,
smiling back at him.

“Stop it, Ben, you’ve met your match this time,” Oppendorf called out
from the armchair where he was pensively eying a tiny glass of gin held
in his right hand. “The awkward fighter can always beat the clever one
if he stands and waits for Sir Cleverness to rush him.”

“Oppie always instructs me--he can’t bear the thought of my being
vanquished,” Helgin replied, lightly.

“Well, I don’t know, I _have_ managed to bear it now and then,”
Oppendorf said, before swallowing the gin.

“Didn’t both of you promise me not to be sarcastic for one night?”
Margaret asked, as she entered the studio. “If I had the muscle, why,
I’d spank the two of you!”

“Start with Ben--it might change his entire life,” Oppendorf said,
grinning.

“Oh, you’re not so sweet-tempered yourself,” she replied, as she
pinched his cheek.

“You’re quite right, I’m a snarling, vituperative, vindictive man until
your smile creates a miracle within me,” he said, as he bowed low to
her.

Whenever Oppendorf liked a woman he treated her at times with a
whimsical pretense of courtliness and deference, merrily overdone
enough to make the whimsicality apparent.

“How easy it would be to believe you,” she responded, with a sigh that
carried off the vestige of a smile.

“Emotions are never false--even the masquerade must become real before
it can be persuasive,” Oppendorf answered, quickly changing to a mien
of abstracted, impersonal challenge. “When the reality survives for a
long time it is called sincere and true, and people have faith in it.
It may be just as real for a moment, an hour, six days.”

“You’re a sophist and a promiscuous wretch, and I’ll probably wind up
by hating you,” Margaret said, as she slid into his arms. “Just as a
person begins to depend on you ... you flit away ... I know.”

“Why does a woman hate a man when he departs with an honest
abruptness?”--Oppendorf shifted to the inquiry of a distressed child.
“Or, why do men hate women for the same reason? I am immersed in you
at present because you contain qualities which I cannot find in the
other women around me. To-night, perhaps, or in a month from now, I may
meet another woman who does possess them, together with other qualities
which you lack. In such a case, my immersion would naturally transfer
itself. God, how human beings detest everything except the snug, warm
permanence which is either a lie or an unsearching sleep!”

“There’s nothing logical about pain, Max,” Margaret said. “It _must_ be
deaf, and angry, and blind, and pleading, until it dies down. When a
girl’s lover goes off, her mind can say: ‘He revived and stimulated me,
and I’m glad I did have him for a while,’ but just the same her heart
still cries out: ‘Oh, he’s mean, and selfish, and treacherous, and I
hate him!’”

Although she was conversing with Helgin, on the couch, Blanche had
caught bits of the other couple’s talk, and they brought a worried
tinge to her heart. Oppendorf was wrong--in very rare cases a man and
a woman _could_ love each other forever. Of course, the cases were
rare simply because people deeply harmonious in every way, from their
dancing-steps and tastes in clothes down to the very last opinion in
their minds, hardly ever met each other. That was it. It was simply a
question of luck as to whether you’d find this one person in a million
or not.

Helgin called out: “Well, Don Juan’s defending himself again. He’s more
convincing when he doesn’t talk. Come on, Oppie, stop the necking for a
while and join us. You’re falling into the boresome habit of dropping
into a lady’s arms for hours and spoiling the party.”

“I never object to other people taking the same privilege,” Oppendorf
replied, placidly, as Margaret slipped from his lap.

“Perhaps we’re not as impatient as you,” Helgin said, grinning.

“Or perhaps you hide your impatience more patiently--there are so many
possibilities,” Oppendorf retorted.

“Say, Oscar Wilde once opened a small-talk shop--the store has been
well patronized ever since,” Blanche said, flippantly.

The line wasn’t her own--it had been in the last novel she had
read--but she wanted to see what its effect would be on these men, and
whether it would impress them.

“The gal’s improving,” Helgin replied. “Come on, take off your little
costume. You’re a college-student trying to write, and you thought
you’d be more interesting if you posed as a slangy hair-dresser.”

“The best way to fool you people is not to pose at all,” Margaret said,
smiling.

“It’s not a bad idea--I’ve tried it myself,” Oppendorf interjected.

“Ti-ti-tum, come on, let’s go to the party,” Margaret interrupted. “You
can all keep it up on the way over.”

After they were all in a taxicab and speeding uptown, Helgin said to
Blanche: “Didn’t you give Oppie a manuscript at the studio?”

“Yes, it’s something I wrote about the tearoom where we sat last
night,” Blanche answered. “He’s such a frank man, and I know he’ll tell
me whether it’s just trash, or not.”

“It’s becoming very amusing,” Helgin continued. “Nowadays, if you
meet a manicurist you never know when she’s going to stop polishing
your nails and draw the great, American lyric out of her sleeve, and
the waiter at the café tries to induce you to read his startling,
unpublished novel, and the bootblack shoves a short-story under your
nose. None of these people would dare to attempt a painting or a
sonata. The popular superstition is that literature consists of a deep
longing plus thousands of words thrown helter-skelter together.”

“Well, it doesn’t hurt them to try--they’ll never find out what their
ability is, ’f they don’t,” Blanche replied, defiantly.

“That’s right, don’t let him razz you,” Margaret broke in. “Masefield
was once a bar-room porter, you know.”

“Please pick out a better example,” Oppendorf said.

Then he turned to Blanche.

“Your grammar is atrocious at times, but you have originality, and
there’s a razor in your humor,” he went on. “Keep on writing, and study
syntax and the declensions of verbs--they’re still fairly well observed
by every one except the Dadaists. I’ll have you in several magazines in
another two months. And thank God you’re not a poet. If you were, you’d
get fifty cents a line, mixed in with profound excuses!”

“Do you really mean it?” Blanche asked, delightedly.

“Of course.”

“Why, I’ll work like a nigger ’f I can really make something of myself
as a writer,” Blanche cried, enraptured.

“I hope you’re not giving any pleasant mirages to Miss Palmer,” Helgin
said, wondering whether Oppendorf was not merely seeking to flatter her
into an eventual physical capitulation. “I know your weakness. When we
were getting out The New Age you’d plague me every day with verses from
girl-friends of yours, and they were always rank imitations of your own
style.”

“You seem to have the delusion that every beginner, with a sense of
irony and a deliberate style, is an echo of mine,” Oppendorf replied,
undisturbed. “You’d treat these people with a flippant impatience,
but I’d rather err on the side of encouraging them, unless they’re
saturated with platitudes and gush.”

“Yes, you _are_ apt to make such mistakes, especially in the case of
some pretty girl,” Helgin said, with a malicious grin.

“Have it your way, Ben,” Oppendorf responded, indifferently.

Blanche listened with a serene confidence in Oppendorf--he never lied
about anything connected with writing: somehow she felt sure of that.
Literature was too serious a matter to him.

For a moment Margaret looked a little jealously at Blanche, pestered
by the suspicion that Oppendorf might have praised Blanche’s work as a
first move toward conquering her--a suspicion which Helgin had known
would be caused by his words. Then Margaret remembered how he had
viciously assailed her own short-stories just after her first meeting
with him, when he had known that she would have prostrated herself
before him for the least word of praise, and with the remembrance her
doubts perished.

“Be on your good behavior to-night,” Helgin said to Oppendorf.
“Vanderin didn’t want to invite you, but I convinced him that you had
become a chastened and amiable gentleman. I wouldn’t like to see you
thrown down the stairway--it gives smaller people a chance to gloat
over you.”

“Are you really as wild as all that?” Blanche asked, looking
incredulously at Oppendorf’s subdued pallidness.

“The stairway myth is one in a celebrated list,” Oppendorf replied.
“You’ll find many of the others in Mr. Helgin’s affectionate tribute
to me--his last novel. The list is a superb one. I deceived some
social-radical friends by pretending to defy the draft laws during the
war. I faked a broken shoulder and sponged on some other friends. I
was caught in the act of attempting to ravish a twelve-year-old girl.
I leap upon women at parties and manhandle them while they shriek for
mercy, in contrast to the other men present, who never do more than
audaciously grasp the little fingers of the same ladies. The amusing
part of it is that none of my actual crimes and offenses are on the
list. I could give my admirers some real ammunition if they would only
ask me for it.”

“But why do they tell such hideous lies about you?” Blanche asked
naively.

“I’ll tell you why,” Margaret broke in, indignantly. “It’s because
they hate him and fear him. He gets beneath their skins and mocks at
all their little idols, and squirmings, and compromises. They want to
pulverize him, but he hardly ever gives them any real opportunities,
so they’re reduced to falling back on their imaginations and insisting
that he’s a clownish monster. It’s a beautiful system of exaggerations,
all right! If he happens to be drunk at a party, it’s immediately
reported that he was pushed down the stairs, and if he’s seen stroking
a woman’s arm it’s always said that he hu-urled himself upon her.”

“It must be troublesome to hear your perfect lover so sadly maligned in
spite of his eloquent assertions of innocence,” Helgin said, smiling.
“Most of the stories are really told in admiration of his savage gifts.”

“Yes, the admiration is both profound and imaginative,” Oppendorf
retorted, with a weary return of the smile.

Blanche listened to the others with feelings of uncertainty and dismay.
How could refined, serious, artistic people act so rottenly toward
each other? They weren’t so very much different from the toughs in
her neighborhood, except that they used words while the gangsters
and bullies employed their feet and fists, or fell back on guns and
knives. The gangsters were far less dangerous, too. They could only
hurt a person for a short time, or else kill him and send him beyond
any further injury, but these artist-people with their mean tongues
and their sneering stories could damage some one for the rest of his
life, in different ways. Oh, well, maybe most people were always alike,
except that some of them were clever and had minds, while others were
more inept and stupid. What real difference was there between the
endless digs which her new acquaintances traded and the catty remarks
which she heard every day at the Beauty Parlor? Still, she made a
mental reservation in the case of Oppendorf. He had to retaliate or
keep quiet, and he never started any of the sarcasm, as far as she
could hear, though he certainly could finish it! If he had only been
physically stronger, and more blithely animated, she could have fallen
in love with him. This ideal man of hers!--she’d probably never meet
him. It only happened in story-books. But, at any rate, she intended
to apply herself to writing and feel of some importance for a change.
How relieved and happy she had been after putting down the last word
of her tearoom sketch--it had been almost the first real thrill in her
life.

When she entered Paul Vanderin’s large, high-ceilinged studio and spied
the Juliet balcony that ran around two sides of it, with rooms leading
out on the balcony, and the profusion of statues and paintings--most
of them weird or fiercely unorthodox--and the grand piano, and the
abundance of luxurious furniture in neutral shades, she sighed and
slipped a hand over her eyes. How delirious it must be to live in a
place of this kind--big, and high, and filled with conveniences and
intensely interesting objects--and how different it was from her own
small, ugly room, with the ceiling hemming you in as though you were in
a cage. Life was so darned unfair--lavishing favors, and stimulations,
and beauties on some people and treating others in the most grudging
and miserly fashion. Well, that was an old story--no good to rave over
it. You had to beat life to its knees somehow, sharpening your mind and
trying to express yourself, and praying for luck.

Several people had already gathered in the studio, and as she walked
beside Helgin in the round of introductions, she opened her mouth and
felt stunned at the discovery that some of them ... were negroes! This
was really astonishing--she had never dreamt that cultured, artistic
white people mingled with black and brown men and women on terms of
familiar friendship! Her head felt in a turmoil and she couldn’t decide
whether these contacts were right or wrong, whether she herself could
join them without shrinking. Of course, human beings were all equal
and shouldn’t look down upon each other because the color of their
skins varied, but ... didn’t it go much deeper than that? Wasn’t there
a physical repugnance between the different races--a strong feeling
that simply couldn’t be overcome? Certainly, she had always thought so.

She had spoken to negroes, and Japanese, and Chinamen before, and had
even joked with them--elevator boys, and porters, and waiters, and
laundry-men--but she had never cared for their physical proximity and
had always felt repulsed if they happened to brush against her. But
still, they had been unrefined and ordinary, while these negroes were
intelligent and cultured, and spoke about art and psychology. This
was a revelation, as she had never imagined that negroes of this kind
existed, except in the ratio of one to tens of thousands. She had heard
vaguely of Booker T. Washington, and famous negro lawyers, and, oh
yes, a negro writer named Du Bois, whom Rosenberg had always talked
about, but she had thought that they were rarities and had even felt a
flitting pity for their isolation among their own race.

Of course, she had been foolish and thoughtless--there was no valid
reason why negroes should not voice their feelings and search for
beauty and uniqueness, instead of always clinging to some business or
manual labor. They were human beings, too, and their hearts and minds
were probably often much more restless than those of most white people.
Besides, since these white writers and artists mixed with negroes, it
must be that society was gradually beginning to approve of this union
and was losing its prejudice in the matter. Sti-ill, perhaps these
negroes and whites simply talked to each other, or danced together,
without any sexual intimacies. Surely, there was no harm in that.

As she sat beside Helgin she voiced her perplexity.

“Say, I never knew that black and white people went to the same
parties,” she said. “I don’t quite know what to think of it.”

“Oh, yes, it’s the latest fad among white dilettantes,” Helgin replied.
“They became weary of their other enthusiasms--finding a tragic,
esthetic beauty in Charlie Chaplin and other slapstick comedians, and
raving over East Side Burlesque Shows, and making Greek gladiators
out of flat-nosed prize-fighters, and hunting for love in Greenwich
Village. They are now busily engaged in patronizing and eulogizing
the negro race. Vanderin is one of the ring-leaders in the matter.
It tickles his jaded senses and reassures him of his decadence, and
provides him with material for novels.”

“But isn’t any of it sincere and honest?” Blanche inquired.

“Certainly--negro and white writers and artists are actually starting
to tear down the age-old barriers,” Helgin responded. “What begins as a
fad can end as an avalanche. I really hope it happens.”

“But ... but tell me, do negro and white men and women have anything to
do with each other?” Blanche asked, falteringly.

Helgin laughed.

“Do you see that couple over there?” he asked. “The tall, Nordic kid
and the mulatto girl in red. They’re always together at every party.
Of course, white men have had negro mistresses in the past, with
everything veiled and a little shamefaced, but this is different. It’s
out in the open now, and it’s on the basis of deep mental and spiritual
understanding.”

“I don’t want to be narrow-minded,” Blanche answered, “but I don’t see
how they can love each other--they must be lying to themselves. The
races just weren’t meant to have physical relations with each other.
There’s something, something in their flesh and blood that stands
between, like ... like a warning signal. That’s it.”

As she spoke, though, she had the sensation of uttering sentences
which she had borrowed from books and other people, and which did not
decisively express her opinions.

“Oh, it doesn’t last long, usually,” Helgin said. “It’s not often that
they live permanently together and raise families, but the infatuations
are fierce enough while they last. And even intermarriage is becoming
more common.”

“We-ell, I’d like to talk to a negro boy, ’f he were intelligent and
brilliant-like, you know, but I don’t think I could fall in love with
him, even then,” Blanche replied. “You can’t reason about it ... it’s
there, that’s all.”

Vanderin walked up and spoke to Blanche. He was a tall, robust man with
gray hair and a half-bald head and a ruddy, mildly sensual face. His
speech and manners were genially suave and yet reserved, and there
was something about his large eyes that resembled the look of a child
playing with toys to hide its weariness.

“You don’t mind our mixed gathering, I hope,” he said to Blanche. “I
find the negro race to be very congenial, and just beginning to wake
up. There are negro painters and poets here to-night who are quite able
to stand shoulder to shoulder with white creators.”

“Tell us all about their plaintive, erotic, defiant quality,” Helgin
said. “You do it well, Paul--come on.”

Vanderin laughed as he retorted: “You’ll have to read it in my next
book, old skeptic. I’m not giving lectures to-night.”

“But won’t you tell me something about them?” Blanche asked,
pleadingly. “I’m a frightful simpleton in all these matters, but I do
want to find out about them.”

Helgin rose and joined a group, while Vanderin sat down and conversed
with Blanche. He fascinated her as he told her grotesquely humorous,
slightly bawdy anecdotes of Harlem’s night life and spoke of cabarets
where negroes and whites danced and frolicked with a savagely paganish
abandonment, and described the motives and longings behind negro music
and writing. According to Vanderin, negroes were pouncing upon the
restrained and timorous art of America and revitalizing it with an
unashamed sensuality, and more simple and tortured longings, and a more
grimly questioning attitude of mind.

As Blanche listened to his silkenly baritone voice she reproached
herself for her lack of a warm response toward this persuasive, exotic
man. His mind intrigued her but her heart still beat evenly. She
seemed to sense something of a huge, amiable, carelessly treacherous
cat within him--one who lazily and perversely hunted for distractions
and amusements, without allowing anything or any one to move him
deeply, and who could become cruel or disdainful in the tremor of
an eyelash. Why did all of the mentally luring men she had ever met
fail to overpower her emotions? So far, her heart had been moderately
stirred only by mental weaklings or frauds. Oh, dear, this business of
searching for an ideal was certainly a shadowy mess!

Vanderin excused himself to greet some new arrivals, and Margaret
dropped into his chair.

“How do you like the hectic fricassee?” she asked, half waving her hand
toward a boisterous group of negroes and whites, who stood with arms
interlocked.

“I’m very confused about it,” Blanche said. “One part of me, now, it
says, ‘Come on, Blanie, be a good sport and don’t be prejudiced,’
but there’s another part, you see, and it sort of shrinks away, and
wonders, well ... and wonders how they can kiss and hug each other.”

“Listen, you ain’ seen nothin’ yet,” Margaret answered, jocosely. “I’ve
been to parties where white and colored people were doing everything
but, and they weren’t lowbrows, either. Real artists, and writers, and
actors.”

“Well, how do you feel about it?” Blanche asked.

“I couldn’t do it myself, but I’m not intolerant,” Margaret said. “Some
people have this instinctive, physical aversion to other races, you
know, and some just haven’t. I’ve talked to colored men for hours and
felt very immersed in what they said, but I could never have spooned
with them.”

“Well, I’m probably built the same way, but I’m not at all sure about
it,” Blanche responded. “I’m not sure about anything, to-night. It’s
all too new to me.”

A tall, jaunty, colored youth whisked Margaret away, and a portly,
courtly man wearing shell-rimmed spectacles sat down beside Blanche
and began to tell her all about an immortal play which he had written,
but which the managers were hesitating over because it hadn’t strolled
into the box-office. The playwright was garrulous, using his arms as a
sweeping emphasis for his remarks, and Blanche wondered whether she was
listening to a genius or an untalented boaster. Some day she’d meet a
man who didn’t claim to be superb in his particular line ... some day
snow would fall in July.

The gathering became slowly silent as Vanderin announced that a poet
was about to recite. The poet, a young negro, Christopher Culbert, read
some of his sonnets, in a liquid and at times almost shrill voice. He
had a round, dark-brown face, and a body verging on chubbiness, and his
verses were filled with adored colors and a sentimentality that flirted
with morbidity for moments and then repented. He was effeminate and
jovial in his manner, and after the reading he returned to his place
on a couch beside another negro youth. Then another man, blackish
brown and with the body of an athlete, sang spirituals, with a crazy,
half-sobbing, swaying quaver in his voice. A curious blending and
contrast of elation and austerity seemed to cling to him. As he intoned
the words of one song: “Ho-ow d’yuh kno-ow, ho-ow d’yuh kno-o-ow, a-t
the blo-od done si-ign mah na-a-me?”, Blanche felt shivers racing up
and down her spine. These negroes certainly had something which white
people couldn’t possibly imitate--something that made you feel wild,
and sad, and swung you off your feet! It was hard to put your finger on
it--perhaps it was a kind of insanity.

When the singer had finished, Vanderin announced that Miss Bee Rollins,
of the Down South night club would do the Charleston dance. She stepped
forward--a palely creamish-brown skinned young negress with a lissom
body incongruously plump about the waist, and an oval face, infinitely
impertinent and infinitely sensual in a loosely heavy way. She twisted
and bobbed and jerked through the maniacal obliquely see-sawing and
shuffling steps of the Charleston, with a tense leer on her face, and
inhumanly flexible legs. She was madly applauded and forced to several
encores. Then the party broke up into dancing and more steady drinking,
with different negroes playing at the piano, and the assistance of a
phonograph in between.

The dancers undulated and embraced in a way that surprised
Blanche--even in the cheap dance halls which she had frequented, the
floor-watchers always immediately ordered off all couples who tried
to get away with such rough stuff. Well, anyway, it wasn’t the main
part of these people’s lives--their only thrill and importance--as
it was with the dance-hall men and women. The couples in this studio
were only “cutting up” between their more serious, searching labors
and expressions, and they were certainly more entitled to be frankly
sexual, if they wanted to.

Blanche stepped over the floor with several negro and white men, and
enjoyed the novelty of dancing as extremely as the other couples did,
though she felt the least bit guilty about it--it certainly was “going
the limit.” As she danced with the negroes she felt surprised at her
lack of aversion to the closeness of their bodies. Somehow, they danced
with a rhythmical, subtle, audacious fervor which her white partners
could never quite duplicate, and she was swung into a happy harmony
with their movements in spite of herself.

As she was catching her breath between dances, she watched some of the
negroes around her. One of them, a short, slender girl in a dark red
smock and a short black skirt, was conversing with a white youth in a
dark suit, who looked like a solemnly tipsy mingling of clergyman and
pagan. She had a pale brown skin, black curls of bobbed hair, thin
lips, and a pug nose. She held his hand and gave him distrustfully
tender looks.

Blanche caught fragments of their conversation.

“You don’t love me, hon.... You can get white girls prettier than I
am--I know....”

“I don’t want them ... you’ve put a song in my blood, right in it....
I’m crazy about you.”

“I don’t think you mean it.... Lord knows, I’d like so to believe
you....”

“You will, you will.... I’ll take care of that....”

He kissed her and then she withdrew, saying: “You funny, funny, dear,
impatient boy!”

Another young negress with a dark-brown skin and a tall fullness to her
body, was laughing violently beside a thin, white man with a little
black mustache and a petulant face. She sang: “Mamma has her teeth all
filled with goldun bridges ’n’ diamon’s small, but po-oor papa, po-o-or
papa, got no teefies at a-all.”

“Not this papa,” he replied. “I’ll prove it to you.”

She drew back, laughing, while he sought to embrace her. They almost
collided with a young negress who was dancing with a middle-aged white
man. She was slim, with a straight-nosed, creamy face and straight
brown hair, while her partner was floridly jowled and had the symptoms
of a paunch, and sparse, black hair. They stopped their dance and
stood, talking.

“Have you seen the Russian Players?” she asked.

“Yep, went down last night and took in that version of
Carmen--‘Carmencita and the Soldier.’”

“Aren’t they a curious mixture of restraint and hilarity? It’s a
contradiction--a sort of disciplined madness, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes, they have dark, strange, patient souls, and yet ... they can
be wildness itself. And they’re entirely obedient to the designs of the
playwright. They never let their personalities swagger all over the
stage at the expense of the author.”

The two walked off, still talking, and Blanche eyed them regretfully as
she wished that they had remained within hearing. Most of the men and
women at the party seemed to be disinclined to talk about impersonal
subjects. Their only aims were drinking, dancing, and making love to
each other. Of course, they were tired of their more sober professions
and the heavier problems in life, and wanted to forget them for one
night at least--but this explanation scarcely lessened Blanche’s
disappointment. She was longing to hear discussions on art and
psychology--matters that were still semishrouded to her. She had been
to tens of parties where people were “running wild” and foxtrotting and
mauling each other--it was nothing new to her.

She answered the teasing remarks of the man beside her with abstracted
monosyllables, and watched another couple--a tall, dark, negro youth,
with the face of a proud falcon, and an ample-bodied white woman in
her early thirties, with a round face void of cosmetics but like an
angelic mask that could not quite hide the jaded sensuality underneath
it. She leaned closely against his side while he stroked one of her
arms and looked at her with an almost scornful longing on his face.
Blanche gazed intently at them--this was an exception. All of the other
mixed couples that she had noticed had consisted of negro girls and
white men, and she had been on the verge of believing that the women
of her own race were only tolerantly “fooling around” and had no deep
response to the colored men. But no, she was wrong. Another white woman
and a negro youth were whispering together on the piano-bench, with
their heads almost touching and their right hands clasping each other.

How queer it was--even she had succumbed to the spell of the negroes,
while dancing with them. They were like wise children--they could be
abandoned and serious in such a quick succession, and there was an
assured, romping, graceful something about them. Still, loving any
one of them would probably be impossible--she still shrank a little
from the nearness of their bodies, when the sorcery of the dances was
removed.

The teasing man departed, thinking her an odd iceberg, and another man
sat beside her. She turned to look at him. He was of her own height
and had a muscular body, a pale white skin with the least tinge of
brown in it, and straight, light brown hair brushed back. His lips were
thin below a narrow nose, and his large, gray eyes seemed to be full
of silent laughter, as though the scene were an endurable but trivial
comedy to him. In his tuxedo suit, well fitting and distinctive, and
with his athletic, graceful body, that was neither too narrow nor too
broad, and the high-chinned but not supercilious poise of his head, he
could have been mistaken for some movie hero more natural and finely
chiseled than most of the other stars in that profession.

He looked at Blanche and smiled--a smile that was respectful but had
the least touch of impudence.

“I haven’t been introduced to you--I came in rather late,” he said,
easily. “My name’s Eric Starling.”

“Mine’s Blanche Palmer,” she replied.

“Isn’t it rather silly--this trading of names right off the reel?” he
asked. “They’re just empty sounds until people get to know each other,
and then, of course, they do begin to suggest the qualities within each
person.”

“My name’s even more meaningless, if that’s possible,” she answered. “I
haven’t done a thing to make it of any importance. Not a thing.”

“Well, you’re not gray-haired, yet--unless you dye it,” he said, with a
boyish geniality. “You have still time enough to conquer the world.”

He had a soft and low, but unmistakably masculine voice, that pleased
her.

“Yes, a girl can keep on telling that to herself until there’s no time
left,” she responded.

“How doleful you sound,” he replied. “Have a heart--you’ll make me
confess my own pessimism in a minute, if you keep it up.”

She laughed softly.

“No, you’re still young--you have plenty of time to conquer the
wo-o-orld,” she said, mimickingly.

“I was only trying to be pleasantly conventional,” he responded. “Lord
knows, I’m a child of night myself--morbid moods, and hatreds, and
despairs. I do try to tone it down, though. The world may be a muddled
and treacherous place, on the whole, but if you never laugh about it,
then you let it interfere too much with your work. I don’t know why
I’m telling you all this--you’re probably not interested.”

She liked his tone of quiet self-disparagement and understanding
resignation--the absence of the usual masculine: “Look me over, kid,
I’m there!”

“Of course I’m interested,” she said. “It’s this way--’f you go around
and laugh too much, why, then it’s just like taking dope, and then
again, ’f you don’t laugh enough, you see, you get too wise to your own
smallness. There’s never any cure for anything, I guess.”

Up to this time he had regarded her only as a handsome girl, a bit
more unaffected and humorous than the general run, but now he felt a
much keener interest. She had something to say--an intriguing oddity
among women. Who was this girl, with her dark red hair in bobbed curls,
and her jaunty, Irish-looking face, and her words divided between
whimsicality and hopelessness? Perhaps she was a talented person,
well-known in her profession and amusing herself with this posture of
half-smiling and half darkly wistful obscurity.

“You’re probably quite famous and rebuking me for not having heard of
you,” he said, after a pause.

“I don’t think Madame Jaurette would agree with you,” she answered,
smiling.

“Mother or dancing partner?”

“She owns the Beauty Parlor where I work--I’m just a common
hair-dresser, that’s all.”

He looked closely at her--was she persistently jesting?

“No fooling--come clean,” he said. “You’re not really.”

“Oh, I know, I’m not like my type,” she answered. “I think a little,
and I don’t use slang very often, though I like it sometimes. Don’t be
deceived so easy.”

“Well, I’ll bet you’re trying to do something different, anyway,” he
said, convinced now that she was telling the truth and engrossed in
this phenomenon of a seemingly intelligent and searching Beauty Shop
girl. “You could tell me you were a scrubwoman and I’d still know
instinctively that your job had nothing to do with your ambitions. It’s
in all your words and all the expressions on your face.”

She felt glad that his response had not been one of veiled pity, or
sexy flattery, or the polite ending of interest, and her heart began
to quicken its strokes. Say, could he be the man that she had been
looking for? Could he? Silly, oh, very silly dream, and one that
could scarcely be changed to a proven reality by a few beginning and
possibly misleading words, and yet ... she _was_ attracted by his
appearance--stalwart and yet subdued, with no “fizz” about it--and she
liked immensely everything he said.

“My family’s poor and I’ve had to work to earn my own living,” she
said, simply. “I live in the toughest part of Ninth Avenue--I was born
and raised there. The people I come from think that art’s the second
word in ‘Thou art bughouse.’ Now you’ve got the whole sad story.”

“Well, seeing that confessions are in order, I’ll spill mine,”
he answered. “I was brought up in a neighborhood where they throw
paving-blocks at each other to prove the sincerity of their feelings.
One of them hit me once, but it didn’t seem able to knock any obedience
into me. Oh, ye-es, nice, little neighborhood.”

“’F it’s any worse than Hell’s Kitchen it must be a peach,” she
replied, thoroughly unreserved and immersed in him now.

“It is--Peoria Street in Chicago,” he said, smiling. “If I could escape
from Peoria Street, you’ll probably be able to get out of Ninth Avenue
with one wing-flutter and a little audacity! I’m working for a Harlem
cabaret now--Tony’s Club. Publicity man ... writing the blurbs, and
arranging the banquets, and getting the celebs to come down.”

“I’m quite sure you’re different from most publicity men, I can just
feel it in your words and in the looks on your face,” she answered, in
a mocking voice.

“Lady, I’ll never feed you that medicine again--the taste is simply
frightful,” he replied.

They both laughed and felt relieved about it.

“D’you know, I’ve got a writing bug buzzing in my head,” she said,
after a short pause. “It really started only a night ago--I never
dared to believe I could do it before. I was down to Greenwich Village
for the first time, and when I came back I wrote a sketch of the
tearoom I’d been in. I didn’t think it amounted to very much, but Max
Oppendorf, the poet, you know, he tells me it’s really clever and
original, in spite of the shaky grammar. I’m going to keep on writing,
you see, and he’s promised to criticize my stuff and try to put it over
for me.”

“I think I met Oppendorf once,” he replied. “He’s tall and blond, isn’t
he?”

“Yes, that’s him--he’s here to-night.”

“You didn’t come with him, did you?”

“No-o, don’t be scared,” she said, in raillery. “He’s with a girl
friend, Margaret Wheeler, and my, how they’re gone on each other. It
always seems to annoy them when they’ve got to talk to somebody else.”

“Who’d you come with?”

“With Ben Helgin, the novelist. I only met him and Oppendorf last
night, and I’m only a curiosity to him. He just wanted to see how
the slum-girlie would get along in the mi-ighty studio. I hope he’s
satisfied now.”

“Do you know, people who patronize and bend down all the time, do it as
a hop-fiend sniffs his cocaine,” he said. “They might have to take a
close peek at themselves otherwise.”

“Isn’t it the truth,” she answered. “When I think of all the dopes
people use to kid themselves along, I get the Jailhouse Blues. I was
just as bad myself, two or three years ago, before I commenced to get
wise to myself.”

A pause came, during which they looked at each other with a budding and
almost incredulous desire.

“By the way, I have another confession to make,” he said. “Close
your eyes and take the blow. I’m one of those dreamy, high-handed,
impossible poets you’ve heard about. Vanderin likes my stuff and he’s
induced Koller, the publisher, to take a first book of mine. I grind
it out between the times when I’m slaving down at Tony’s.”

“Three cheers,” she answered, delightedly. “Perhaps we can put our
heads together now, and maybe you’ll help me with my work. I know you
must have much more education than I’ve got.”

“Oh, I did work my way through two years of college, but I stopped
after that,” he said. “It was too dry, and heavy, and, well,
conservative, to satisfy me. A million don’ts and rules and rules and
boundaries. They’re all right to know but they’re not so sacred to me.”

“Well, I envy you, anyway,” she replied, sighing. “You’ve got to help
me with my grammar--that’s the big, weak sister with me.”

“You can bet I will,” he responded, eagerly.

She was certainly an unusual girl--one who had somehow commenced
to force her way out of a vicious, muddy environment. Since he had
partially freed himself from the same thing, it was a sacred duty
to help her. But he wouldn’t do it for that reason alone--he liked
the jolly and yet pensive turn of her, and the undismayed and candid
twist of her mind, and the soft irregularities of her face, which were
charming in spite of their lack of a perfect prettiness, and the boldly
curved but not indelicate proportions of her strong body. Of course,
it was nonsense to believe that you could fall in love after several
minutes of talking, and there was Lucia, the clever little hoyden whom
he had gone with for two years now, and Clara, savage, beautiful, and
dumb, and Georgie, keen-minded enough but a little hysterical at times,
and promiscuous, and.... But after all, none of them except Lucia had
ever aroused him to any depth of emotion, and even that had long since
begun to wear off. She was mentally shallow--women usually turned out
to be that, after you penetrated their little tricks and defenses.
Would this girl prove to be of the same kind? Maybe, maybe, but there
was one thing about her that he hadn’t found in any other women--the
instant, frank, ingenuous way in which she had intimately revealed
herself, without all of the wrigglings and parryings common to her sex.
They sure did hate to get down to brass tacks.

He was an odd confusion of sentimentalities and cynicisms, and the
conflict between them was often an indecisive one. As he looked at
Blanche, a fear suddenly shot through him.... Lord, he had forgotten.
The old, dirty scarecrow that would probably turn her away from him.

“D’you know, I was certainly surprised when I came here to-night,” she
said. “I never imagined that negroes and white people--real, artistic
ones, I mean--I never imagined that they went around with each other
and made love together. I don’t know just how to take it. How would you
feel if you met a good-looking, intelligent, negro girl and she became
fond of you?”

He winced and his face tightened up. It was just as he had feared--she
had mistaken him for a white man. Of course, he _was_ white for the
most part ... just a fraction of negro blood, but he was proud of
it just the same, damn proud of it, and if people wanted to repulse
him because of this fraction, they could go straight to the devil for
all he cared.... Should he tell her now and have it over with? He
hesitated. Despite his impatient pride he could not bring the words to
his lips, as he had done many times before in such cases. White women
often made this mistake, and he was inured to correcting it and bearing
their constraint, or their shifting to a careful cordiality, but this
time his self-possession had vanished. Sometimes he _had_ failed
to tell women, when he had only wanted a night or two of physical
enjoyment with them, for then it never mattered, but ... some miracle
had happened. This girl really seemed to have cut beneath his skin, and
... yes, he was afraid of losing the chance to see her again.

He didn’t love her now--in the deep, seething way that was the real
thing--but he felt that if he continued to meet her he probably would,
and this was a rare sensation to him. She would have to be told some
time, of course, but ... not to-night. He simply couldn’t run the risk
of spoiling this growing harmony between them, of not seeing whether it
might flower out into an actual ecstasy. He couldn’t.

Blanche began to wonder at his lengthy silence, and she looked
inquiringly at him.

“Please excuse me,” he said at last. “I was sort of ... sort of
waltzing in a dream with you for a while.... Negroes and whites are
human beings after all, and the fact that a man’s colored shouldn’t
make him an inferior animal. But that’s an old story to me. I’ve got
it all memorized. Race-prejudice, and fun-da-men-tal repugnance, and
all the disasters that spring from intermingling. Oh, yes, these things
exist in most people, of course they do, but I refuse to believe that
exceptional men and women can’t rise above them. If they can’t, then
what _is_ exceptional about them?”

Something in the weary contempt of his words should have suggested to
her that he was pleading his own cause, but her delighted immersion in
him made her oblivious, and she mistook his words for those of a rarely
unprejudiced white man. How eloquently and clearly he talked! He had an
unassuming but fervent way that was far more attractive than Helgin’s
suave, superior jovialities, or Oppendorf’s tired belligerency, or
any of the other postures which she had noticed in different men at
the party. Was she really beginning to fall in love with this Eric
Starling? Somehow, she felt that no matter what faults she might
discover in him afterwards, they would not be huge enough to destroy
this present sense of communion with him. You had to trust to your
instinct in such matters, and this instinct certainly hadn’t failed her
up to date. Hadn’t she always doubted and feared Campbell, and held him
at arm’s length, in spite of his smooth protests and promises? But gee,
what if she _were_ deceiving herself? This time it would be a real blow.

“I think I agree with you.... I’m not sure,” she answered at last. “I
guess no person can tell how he’s going to feel about, well, loving
somebody who’s of another race, unless he actually runs up against it
himself. I certainly believe negroes and whites ought to talk together,
though, and try to understand each other more. There’s too much darn
hate and meanness in this little world, as it is.”

“Yes, entirely too much,” he said, in an abstractedly weary way.

Helgin walked up and Blanche introduced him to Starling.

“Found your ideal yet, little gal?” he asked, grinning. “A
studio-party’s an excellent place for such delusions.”

“’F I had, I wouldn’t tell you, old boy,” she answered impertinently.
“You’d just answer ‘Nice li’l baby, all blind and deaf and everything.’”

“Ideals are out of fashion, Mr. Helgin,” Starling said. “They don’t
seem to blend so well with synthetic gin, and the Charleston, and
divorces at six for a dollar.”

Helgin countered with one of his bland ironies and then said: “The
party’s beginning to break up, now. Are you ready to leave, Miss
Palmer?”

“Would you mind if I saw Miss Palmer home?” Starling asked, bluntly,
but in a soft voice. “I hope you won’t be irritated at my nerve.”

Helgin laughed.

“Of course not, if it’s agreeable to her,” he replied. “I never have
any desire to interfere with blossoming romances.”

“You won’t think I’m being terribly rude, will you?” Blanche asked.

“Go o-on, stop the nervous apologies, child,” he said. “I’m really glad
that you’ve found a kindred soul.”

He shook hands with the other two and walked away.

As Blanche and Starling went for their wraps, they ran into Oppendorf
and Margaret, and Blanche introduced the two men, who vaguely
remembered that they had met somewhere before. Oppendorf looked even
sleepier and more distant than usual, while Margaret was in a giggling
daze of contentment.

“He didn’t kiss more than two other girls to-night,” she said gayly. “I
really think he must be beginning to care for me.”

“I didn’t count more than two in your case, but then we had our backs
turned once in a while,” Oppendorf replied.

Blanche promised to visit Margaret’s studio at the end of the week,
with another manuscript for Oppendorf’s appraisal, and the two couples
separated.

During the taxicab ride to her home, Starling held her hand, but
made no effort to embrace her, and although she wanted him to, she
felt rather glad at his reserve. How tired she had become of men who
desperately tried to rush her at the end of the first night. It almost
seemed as though rarely desirable men were never instantly frantic
about it--as though their unabashed quietness alone proved their
rarity. Naturally, only starved or oversexed men were so immediately
anxious for physical intimacies, although ... Starling might have
kissed her at least.

As Blanche stood in the dirty, poorly lit hallway, she smiled for a
moment as she remembered how often she had been in this same spot,
permitting men to kiss and hug her, out of pity or as a small payment
for the “good time” that they had shown her. And now she was parting
with a man infinitely more cajoling than they had been, and merely
clasping hands with him. Life was certainly “cuckoo” all right. She
had arranged to see Starling at the end of the week and leave a night
of rest in between. As she retired to her bed, the satiated remnants
of the ecstasy-herald were shifting slowly, slowly in her breast. The
dream had finally peered around the corner ... how nice, how sweet, how
terrifying....

On the following day, as she worked at the Beauty Parlor, she was
in a sulkily grimacing mood. Oh, this endless ha-air-curling, and
face-massaging ... beautifying women and girls so that some male fool
would spend his money on them, or offer to marry them, or try to caress
them. Gold-diggers, and loose women too passionate to be very efficient
gold-diggers, and lazy, decent housewives, and sly-faced wives with a
man or two on the side, and kiss-me-’n’-fade-away flappers--take away
their bodies and what would be left of them? Less than a grease-spot.
Drat this empty, tiresome work. She’d have to get out of it pretty soon
or go loony. She wanted to write, and describe people, and live in a
decent place, and ... see Eric Starling.

He moved about in her mind; his fingers were still touching her hands.
What a strong body and well-shaped face he had. Funny about men’s faces
... they were usually either too weakly perfect--movie-hero-like--or
too homely, but Starling’s was in between. And he had a curious
quality--not humble but sort of sadly and smilingly erect. What was it,
anyway?

During the next two days she treated her family with a greater degree
of merry friendliness, and they began faintly to hope that she was
coming around to their ways of thinking. In reality, they had ceased to
matter much to her, all except her mother, for whom she still felt a
weak and troubled compassion. Poor, hard-working, patient, stupid ma.
But what on earth could be done to help her?

Propped up against the pillows on her bed, Blanche had written an
account of the Vanderin party. With more confident emotions now,
fortified by Oppendorf’s praise, and with a little, dizzy ache in her
head, her fingers had passed less laboriously over the paper. Her
sketch was pointedly humorous and disrespectful, and stuck its tongue
out at the different men and women who had attended the party. They
might be celebrities and all that, but most of them hadn’t acted and
talked much different from the business men and chorines whom she had
met at other affairs. She enjoyed the task of good-naturedly attacking
them--it was like revenging her own undeserved obscurity.

Her sketch was full of lines such as: “She was fat, and when she
did the Charleston with a little skinny fellow, why he looked just
like a frightened kid,” and “The negroes and whites, all except the
loving couples, they acted like they were trying too hard to be happy
together,” and “The party was a good excuse for necking, but they
all could have done it much better alone,” and “They introduced him
as a poet, but when he started to talk to you, why then you got more
uncertain about it, and when he was through talking you were just sure
that something must be wrong.”

When she met Starling, on Saturday night, she was in a facetious and
tiptoeing mood. Hot doggie, life was perking up again. As they rode in
a taxicab down to Margaret’s studio, she showed him the sketch, and he
laughed loudly over it.

“You know, the trouble between colored and white people at parties
is that they’re both acting up to each other,” he said. “The whites
are doing their darnedest to be tolerant and, well, cordial, and
the colored people are always a little uncomfortable. They act
self-conscious, you know, or too wild, and why? They’re all trying to
put their best foot forward, and show that they belong there.”

“But how about all the loving pairs I saw at Vanderin’s?” she asked.
“They sure didn’t seem to mind it much.”

He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. Of course, she didn’t know
that in eight cases out of ten--perhaps more--these pairs had nothing
but a passing lust for each other. And what if they did?--that part
of it was all right. There was no earthly reason why they shouldn’t
want each other’s bodies, unless they were too cruel or sneering
about it. God, sex could be a wild, clean, naked, beautiful thing, and
people were always hurling mud and denunciations at it, or slinking
with it behind closed doors, damn them. But he didn’t want just a
flitting affair with Blanche ... he was sure of that now. He had been
afraid that the encouragement of night, and the highballs, and the
party, might have caused him to throw a false radiance around this
girl--he had done the same thing before, though never so severely.
But now he realized that his feelings for her were made of more solid
stuff--realized it just after he had finished reading her sketch. He
liked her upstanding, inquiring, impertinent spirit, and the unaffected
smiles and _moués_ that appeared on her face, and the sturdy and yet
soft freshness of her body.

Hell was probably facing him. He was a negro, yes, and proud of it,
but suppose it caused him to lose this woman? He would almost hate
it, then--this streak of black blood which he had always flaunted so
defiantly. He wasn’t like other men of his kind--cringing about it, and
claiming to be entirely white, and fawning before every white woman
they met. Stupid lily-snatchers! Not he! Yet he was sorely tempted
to flee to this lie, in Blanche’s case. If he confessed, then all of
his hopes and longings might be shot to pieces. He could picture her
in his mind, recoiling from him against her will, summoning pleasant
and compassionate smiles, trying to soothe the wound caused by her
sorrowful determination never to see him again.

Puzzled by his frowning silence, she said: “What’s the matter, Eric?”

“Oh, I was just brooding over some of the injustice in this world,” he
replied. “It’s absurd, of course--never does any good. What were we
talking about?”

“You said something about negroes and whites always acting up to each
other,” Blanche answered, “and then I said that some of the couples I
saw at Vanderin’s seemed to be really gone on each other.”

“Of course they are--for a night, or a month. A year’s the world’s
record as far’s I know. It’s nothing but surface sex-appeal, you know,
and it’s not much different from the old plantation-owners down South,
who used to pick out colored mistresses. The only difference nowadays
is that white women are starting to respond to colored men.”

“Gee, I wonder ’f I could care for you, ’f you were colored ... I
wonder now,” Blanche said, reflectively. “Of course, I’ll never have
to bother about it, but it’s interesting just the same. I guess a
woman never knows how she’ll feel about anything until she’s got to
make a choice. It’s all right to think it over and say ‘I could’ ’r
‘I couldn’t,’ but that’s just because you’ve got to pretend to know
yourself anyway. It kind of keeps up your backbone.”

She did not notice the pain that twisted his face. He tried his best to
be humorous ... this dark bugaboo was getting on his nerves.

“Mix black and white together and they make gray,” he said. “I never
did like that color. Let’s be more gaudy to-night.”

“You’re a terrible liar--you’re wearing a gray suit,” she replied.

He laughed.

“Well, what’s a man to do?” he asked. “You women can put on lavender,
and orange, and cerise clothes, but if a man tried it he’d be howled
out of town.”

“It’s all your own fault,” she said. “Men just hate to look different
from each other, and besides, they’re always afraid that somebody’s
going to think that they’re showing some weakness or other. I know
them.”

As they continued the conversation, in a vein of mock-chiding and
sprightly rebuke, she knew that she was rapidly descending into the
depths of a love for him. She had also been afraid that the giddiness
of night and a party, plus her own thwarted longings, might have
induced her to throw a glamor over him, and that her next meeting with
him might turn out to be somewhat disillusioning. But no, his mixture
of frowns and deft gayeties, and his clear, incisive way of talking,
were causing her emotions to increase in leaps and bounds. Whenever his
shoulder grazed hers, a shamefaced tremor was born within her.

After they had reached Margaret’s studio they became more spontaneously
mirthful. Margaret was in a frothy mood and Oppendorf seemed to be more
affable and relaxed than usual. He read Blanche’s sketch with a broad
grin on his face.

“That’s the stuff, rip it into them, old girl,” he said. “When they’re
not strapping their pedestals to their backs and setting them up
in this place and that, they’re wildly reaching for each other’s
flesh. The very thought of an unassuming naturalness, or a frank and
good-natured exchange of challenges, would give them heart failure!”

“Don’t worry--they’ll live,” Starling replied.

Oppendorf was aware of the fact that Starling was a negro, and
Starling liked the blunt and impersonal way in which the other man
treated him. Congenial, and tossing epigrammatic jests about, the
party wended its way to Tony’s Club and danced there until 3 A.M. The
cabaret was a wild, gargoylish, shamelessly tawdry place, trimmed
with colored strings of confetti, and orange and black boxes over the
electric lights hanging from its low, basement-ceiling, and atrocious
wall-panels of half nude women in Grecian draperies, and booths
against the walls, each booth bearing the name of a different state.
A brightly painted railing hemmed in the rectangular dance floor, and
the jazz-orchestra--one of the best in town--moaned and screeched and
thudded, in the manner of some super-roué, chortling as he rolled his
huge dice to see who his next mistress would be.

Margaret, who also knew that Starling was a negro, glanced curiously
at Blanche now and then, and wondered whether Blanche also knew and
whether she had found that it raised no barrier. The subject, however,
was too delicate to be broached to Blanche on this night.... It would
have to wait.

Since she was with a man whom she practically loved, Blanche’s usual
wariness toward alcohol--a caution produced by her desire not to become
an unconscious prey--left her entirely, and in spite of Starling’s
remonstrances, she drank with a reckless glee. When 3 A.M., the closing
time, arrived, she was giggling fondly at him, and trying to balance
glasses on her nose, and snuggling her head against his shoulder.

When the party reached the street she was barely able to walk, and had
to lean against Starling for support.

“Why don’t you two come down to our place?” Margaret asked. “The poor
kid’s going to pass out soon, and then you’ll be in a devil of a fix
unless she’s safely inside somewhere.”

“No, I’ll call a cab and take her home,” he said. “Thank you just the
same. She comes from a stupid family, you know, and they’d probably
raise a vicious row if she came back to-morrow afternoon.”

After bidding the other two farewell, Starling hailed a cab and gave
Blanche’s address to the driver. She passed out completely in the cab,
with her arm around his shoulder and her head on his breast, and as he
thought it over he began to regret his decision. He would be forced
to carry her to the door of her apartment and wake up her family, and
since they were obtuse proletarians, they might imagine that he had
plied her with liquor to achieve her seduction. In that case there
would be a sweet rumpus, all right! He was not afraid of a possible
fight--swinging fists was nothing new to him--but if one did occur, her
folks would probably order her never to see him again, or would look
him up and discover his negro blood. Again, the ever-blundering “cops”
might also interfere in the matter.... In this world it was often
imperative to avoid the sordid misinterpretations of other people, for
otherwise you would simply be expending your energy to no purpose. No,
the best thing would be to take Blanche to his apartment and let her
sleep it off, for then she could return home with the usual story of
having “stayed over” at some girl-friend’s home. Fearful lies, lies,
lies--sometimes he thought that the entire world was just a swamp of
them. Well, hell, you’d get very far, wouldn’t you, trying to hold out
against it!

He tapped on the pane and told the driver to switch to a Harlem
address. After he had paid the driver and was half carrying Blanche
over the sidewalk, the man called after him: “That’s the way to
get ’em, Bo!” Starling turned and was about to leap at the leering
chauffeur, but burdened with Blanche, whom he could scarcely deposit
on the walk, and fearing to arouse the neighbors in his building, he
ignored the remark.

His apartment consisted of two rooms and a kitchenette, and after
he had placed Blanche on a couch in one of the rooms, he closed the
door and changed to his slippers and a dressing-gown. Then he sat
down in an armchair and grinned, in a sneer at himself, as he lit a
cigarette. This was exactly like one of the impossible climaxes in a
cheap movie-reel. The handsome hero had the proudly beautiful girl at
his mercy, but nobly and honorably refused to compromise her. Oh, rats,
why not walk in and take the only crude, gone-to-morrow happiness that
life seemed to offer. Otherwise, she would find out about his negro
blood, before their achievement of finality, and depart from him or
tell him to be “just a dear friend,” and what would he have then?--not
even the remembrance of a compensating night. Hell, he ought to regard
her as just another blood-stirring girl, and ravish her, and forget her
afterwards. If you failed to trick and abuse women, they usually sought
to turn the cards on you--he’d found that out often enough.

He arose and paced up and down the room. No, he was a mawkish fool, a
sentimental jackass--he couldn’t do it. The dirty nigger couldn’t leap
on the superior white girl, damn it. He loved this girl--no doubt about
that. She had a clear, honest, stumbling-on mind, and her heart was
free from pretenses and hidden schemes, and a unique essence, tenderly
simple and defiant by turns, seemed to saturate her. It wasn’t just
her body and face--he had known prettier girls by far--but it was
something that clung to this body and face and transformed them to an
inexplicable but indubitable preciousness. She was unconscious now, and
her inert surrender would mean nothing to him except a cheap and empty
triumph. He wanted her to come to him joyously, spontaneously, madly,
and with quiverings and shinings on her face!

He sat down again in the armchair. Damn his luck, why couldn’t he have
fallen in love with another negro girl? He wasn’t like some of the men
of his race--always chasing after white girls because it gave these men
a thrill to boast of having captured them, and soothed their miserable
inferiority complex. He had nearly always stuck to the girls of his
own race, and yes, he had loved two of them ... in a way ... but it
hadn’t been the surging, frightened, and at times abashed thing that
he was feeling now. He was in for it now, oh, how he was in for it! He
would undoubtedly be rejected, and pitied, and reduced to every kind of
helpless writhing. It was in him to curse the very day on which he had
entered the earth.... Good God, why couldn’t he shake off this morbid
hopelessness? How did he know what would happen, after all? Perhaps her
love for him was as overwhelming as his. Perhaps she would be forced to
cling to him, in spite of every enormous warning and obstacle.

He passed into a fitful and often dream-groaning sleep. When he awoke
it was noon. His room seemed uglier than usual--the straight, oak
furniture, and the worn, brown carpet, and the rose-stamped wallpaper
were like slaps against his spirit. Money, money--the devil sure had
been in an ingenious mood when he invented it.... And Blanche Palmer
was in the next room--all of him tingled incredibly at the thought
of her proximity, and his heavy head grew a bit lighter. Then the
door opened and she walked out, slowly, with a sulky, half sleepy,
questioning look on her face, and rumpled hair, and a wrinkled gown.

“Eric, what’m I doing here--what happened last night?” she asked.

“Sit down, dear, and let your head clear a bit--I’ll tell you,” he
answered.

She dropped into the armchair and he drew another chair beside her.

“You passed out in the cab after we left Tony’s, and I decided to
bring you here,” he said. “It would have been rather ticklish, carrying
you in my arms and waking up your, u-um, intellectual family. Their
response might have been just a trifle excited, you know. You’re not
angry with me, are you, Blanche?”

She looked steadily at him, with her head too confused and aching for
any definite emotion--for the moment--and then, very slowly, she gave
him a tenderly rebuking smile. Somehow, she knew that he had left her
in peace while she had slept at his place, and funny, this time she
would not have minded an opposite gesture. Things never seemed to
intrude upon you unless you were seeking to avoid them! Yet, she was
touched by this proof that he had not been hiding a mere, ordinary lust
for her. Sweet, sweet boy ... how her head swayed and throbbed, and
yet, despite the pain, a happiness tried to lessen it.

“You really shouldn’t have brought me here,” she said at last. “My
folks’ll raise the dickens with me now. Their system is wink your eye
at daughter ’f she gets back any time before 6 A. M., and call her a
bad woman ’f she doesn’t. Still, you’d have been in for it ’f you _had_
brought me back, I guess. There wasn’t much choice in the matter.”

“Why don’t you leave that dirty den of yours?” he asked. “You can’t go
on sacrificing yourself forever.”

“Oh, I’m going to leave pretty soon,” she answered. “I’d have done it
long ago, only I didn’t see much difference between living home and
staying in some spotty hall-bedroom, and I’ve never had money enough
for more than that. Maybe I can get a fairly decent place in the
Village, though. Margaret tells me that rents are much cheaper down
there.”

“Yes, you’d better look around,” he said, dully.

He couldn’t ask her to live with him, or to marry him--especially the
latter--without telling the secret to her, and once more his courage
failed him. While she was bathing and making her toilette, he fixed a
simple breakfast in the kitchenette. Afterwards, as they were lolling
over the coffee, he said: “You’re looking beautiful this morning. Your
face is like ... well, like a wild rose and a breeze flirting with each
other.”

“I’m only too willing to believe you, Eric,” she answered, softly.
“Don’t make me conceited now.”

An irresistible impulse came to him. He arose, walked around the table,
and bent down to her. She curved her arms about his shoulders, and they
traded a lengthy kiss.

“I’m in love with you, Blanche,” he said, looking away, after he had
straightened up.

She grasped one of his hands and answered: “Why, you’re startling me,
Eric--I’d never have guessed it. Would it surprise, you, too, ’f I said
I loved you?”

“Say it and find out.”

“Well, I do.”

He bent down and kissed her again. Then he clenched one of his fists
and walked away. It would have to be told now ... or never.

“Let’s sit on the couch, Blanche, I want to talk to you,” he said.

After she had acquiesced they were silent for a full minute, while she
looked at him and wondered at his nervous remoteness. Then he turned to
her.

“I suppose you don’t know that I’m a negro,” he said.

She stared at him with an unbelieving frown on her face.

“A ... what?” she asked.

“A man of negro blood. My grandfather was white and he married a
negress, and my mother married another white man. That’s the story.”

As she stared at him she felt too stunned for any single emotion.

“Eric, you’re fooling me, aren’t you?” she asked at last, slowly.

“No, it’s the truth.”

“But ... but, Eric, you look exactly like a white man! It can’t be
true.”

“It is, just the same,” he answered, oddly relieved, now that he had
blurted the thing out, and stoically waiting for her words to strike
him. “I have just a small fraction of negro blood, as you see, and most
people, like you, mistake me for a white man. God, how I wish I were
coal-black--it would have saved me from the heartache that’s coming to
me now!”

She looked away from him for a while, with a veritable _mêlée_ of
fear, brave indifference to the revelation, and self-doubt contending
within her. Eric Starling was a negro, and she had fallen in love
with him, and ... would she be averse to touching him, now? Would it
make any difference? She reached for his hand and held it tightly for
a moment, almost in an absurd effort to discover the answer to the
question. Oh, what were words, anyway? He could tell her that he was
negro until he became blue in the face, but he didn’t give her the
feeling of one. Somehow, he just didn’t have the physical essence which
she had always felt in the presence of other negroes, even those at
the Vanderin party. He just didn’t have it. There was a fresh, lovely
sturdiness attached to his body, and she wanted to be in his arms, and
she couldn’t help herself. She loved him with every last blood-drop in
her heart.

But the future, with all its ghastly dangers and troubles. If she
married him, or if they lived together, her father and brothers would
try to kill him, or injure him--she knew what _they_ would do well
enough, the stupid roughnecks--and her mother would weep and shriek,
and perhaps try to kill herself, and other people would shun them,
or make trouble for them. Even the dirty newspapers might take it
up--hadn’t she read last week about a negro who had been hounded out
of a New Jersey town because he loved a white girl and they wanted to
marry each other? People were always like wolves, waiting to leap upon
you if you dared to disregard any of their cherished “Thou Shalt Nots”
... just like wolves. The whole world seemed to be in a conspiracy to
prevent people from becoming natural beings and doing as they pleased,
even when their acts couldn’t possibly injure anybody. It was terrible.

And she herself, would she have courage enough to defy everything
for his sake, and would her love for him continue in spite of all
the threats and intrusions? She turned to look at him again. He was
slumping down on the couch, with his hands resting limply on his
outstretched legs, and his head lowered. All of her heart bounded
toward him, and she flung herself against him and cried: “I don’t care
what you are, Eric! I love you and I’m going to stick to you. I love
you, Eric, dear one.”

With hosannas in his heart, he placed his arms around her, and they
passed into an incoherence of weeping, and kissing, and whispered
endearments, and sighs, and strainings. A full hour passed in this way
before they could slowly return to some semblance of composure. Then,
gradually, they tried to discuss the predicament facing them.

“You’re sure that you love me now, dear, but you’ve got to be doubly
sure,” he said. “We won’t see each other for the next two weeks, and
we’ll have a chance to think things over then. It’ll be hard, hard, but
we’ve simply got to do it. Our minds will work better when we’re alone.”

“Perhaps you’re right, Eric,” she said, slowly, “but it wouldn’t change
me any ’f I didn’t see you for a year, ’r a lifetime. Don’t be afraid
of that.”

“You think so now, and, God, I hope it’s true, but you must realize
what we’re going to be up against,” he answered. “Your family will
raise hell, of course, and other people will turn their backs on us,
and you’ll have to mingle with negro friends of mine and live among
them.... Are you sure you’ll be able to face all these things?”

She hid her head on the couch for a while, and then raised it.

“I’ll be honest with you, Eric,” she said. “I’ll love you for the rest
of my life, and I’ll never have anything to do with any other man, but
I don’t know whether I’m brave enough to marry you and ... and take all
the blows you’ve been talking about. I just don’t know.”

“If I were less selfish I’d give you up for your own good,” he
answered, moodily.

“How about myself?” she asked. “Don’t you know I’m afraid that my
father and my brothers will try to hurt you, ’r even kill you? Why, I
can see the anger and the meanness on their faces right now, and it
won’t do any good to talk to them! ’F I were less selfish, I’d want to
give _you_ up, just to save you, Eric.”

He kissed her again, and they murmured promises and were loath to
withdraw from each other. Finally, she rose from the couch and tried to
bring a brave smile to her face.

“I’ve simply got to be going now, Eric,” she said. “I’ll come up here
the Saturday after next, two weeks from now, dear, ’r I’ll write you
’f I just must see you sooner.... I know I _will_ marry you, Eric, in
spite of everything--I know I will--but it’ll be better for both of us
’f we take our time about it.”

“Yes, that’s true,” he answered, as he fondled her cheek. “I’ll spend
most of the two weeks writing poems to you, when I’m not in harness
down at Tony’s. It’ll be some consolation, anyway.”

She donned her hat, and they exchanged several “last” hugs before they
descended to the street, where he called a cab for her and, in spite
of her protestations, slipped a bill into the driver’s hands. When
she reached her home, the family were seated in the kitchen, smoking,
reading the Sunday papers, and occasionally debating on the subject of
her whereabouts.

“Well, give ’n account of y’rself, come on,” her father said, gruffly,
as she removed her hat and desperately tried to straighten out the
wrinkles in her dress. “’F you was out with Campbell again, I’ll make
him talk turkey this time. He can’t fool around with one of my girls
and not expect to do the right thing by her.”

His little eyes were tense with irritation and suspicion as he watched
her.

“Yeh, you’ve got a nerve, all right,” Mabel piped up. “_I_ never come
trotting in at three in the afternoon! You’re just losing all respect
for yourself, that’s what.”

“Say, listen, I’m not a child, any more,” Blanche answered, wearily
resuming the old, useless blah-blahing. “I went to a party down in
the Village and stayed overnight at my girl-friend’s studio, Margaret
Wheeler, but I don’t see why I have to make any excuses about it. If
the rest of you don’t like the way I act, I’ll pack up my things and
leave, that’s all.”

“You will, huh?” her father asked. “Well, maybe we’ll tell you
ourselves to clear outa here. ’F you can’t show any respect for your
folks, then it’s high time somethin’ was done about it!”

“Yeh, that goes for me, too,” Harry said.

He suspected that his sister had rejoined Campbell, and he determined
to look Joe up and frighten him into marrying her. The damn fool--she
didn’t have sense enough to look out for herself, and if she kept it
up, she’d wind up by becoming little better than the easy skirts he
knocked around with. He wouldn’t let that happen to _his_ sister--not
he.

Kate Palmer stuck to her invariable rôle of peacemaker, though she
felt sick at heart at her daughter’s silliness and looseness. She was
staying out overnight with men and getting to be a regular bad woman.
It was really terrible.

“Of course, we won’t let you leave home,” she said, “but you’re actin’
sim-ply awful nowadays. You’ll be disgracin’ all of us the next thing
we know, gettin’ into some trouble ’r somethin’. Won’t you promise your
ma not to stay out all night? Won’t you, Blanie?”

“You know I don’t want to hurt you, ma,” Blanche replied, as she
stroked her mother’s hair, “but just the same, I’ve got to lead my own
life from now on. I’m a grown-up person, ma, and not a slave.”

“You know we’re just askin’ you to act decint-like, you know it,” her
mother said, sadly. “We’re none of us tryin’ to hold you down.”

“Yeh, that’s right, you’re getting too bold,” Mabel cut in, with
disguised envy.

_She_ scarcely ever “went the limit” with men, and why should her
sister be privileged to be more brazen about it.

During all of these tirades, Blanche had wondered at her own
indifference--the battle was on again, but now it had only a comical
aspect. These pent-up, dense, jealous people--could they really be
related to her own flesh and blood? They seemed to be so remote and
impossible. None of them, except her mother, stirred her in the least,
and even there it was only a mild compassion. Yet, once she had loved
them in a fashion, and felt some degree of a warm nearness that even
wrangling had never quite been able to remove. What marvels happened
to you, once your mind began to expand. That was it--their minds were
still and hard, and little more than the talking slaves of their
emotions--while hers was restless and separate, and had slowly overcome
the blindness of her former emotions toward them.

And now ... ah, if they had only known what they really had to rave
about. How they would have pounced upon her! The sick fear returned
to her as she reclined upon the bed in her room. Perhaps it might be
wiser to pack up and leave home immediately. Yet, that would only be a
breathing spell. If she married Starling, or lived with him, they would
inevitably investigate and discover his negro blood, and the storm
would burst, anyway. She tossed about in a brooding indecision.

During the next week she surprised her family by remaining in her room
each night. What had come over her?--she must be sick, or in some
secret difficulty. When a girl moped around and didn’t care to enjoy
herself at night, something must be wrong, especially a girl like
Blanche, who had always been “on the go” for the past four years.
They suspected that Campbell or some other man might have given her
an unwelcome burden, and they questioned her in this respect, but her
laughing denials nonplussed them. Harry had an interview with Campbell,
and had grudgingly become convinced that Blanche was no longer going
out with him. The Palmer family finally became convinced that she had
really taken their objections to heart and had decided to become a good
girl.

Blanche wrote feverishly in her room, every night, with a little
grammar which she had purchased to aid her--descriptions of places
which she knew, such as cafeterias, dance halls and amusement parks.
Her anger at human beings, and her sense of humor, fought against
each other in these accounts, and the result was frequently a curious
mixture of indignations and grimaces. Starling was ever a vision,
standing in her room and urging on her hands ... she was writing
for his sake as well as her own. If the rest of her life was to be
interwoven in his, she would have to make herself worthy of him, and
try to equal his own creations, and give him much more than mere
physical contacts and adoring words. Otherwise, he might become quickly
tired of her!

Her courage grew stronger with each succeeding night, and a youthful,
though still sober, elasticity within her began to make plans that
slew her prostrate broodings. Eric and she would simply run off to
some remote spot--Canada, Mexico, Paris, anywhere--and then the
specters and hatreds in their immediate scene would be powerless
to injure or interfere with them. What was the use of remaining and
fighting, when all of the odds were against them, and when the other
side was so stubbornly unscrupulous, so utterly devoid of sympathy and
understanding? In such a case, they would only be throwing themselves
open to every kind of attack and intrusion, if not to an almost certain
defeat. Eric might be a “nigger,” yes, but he certainly didn’t look
like one, and he was better than any of the white men she had ever met
... dear, sweet boy ... and she loved him with every particle of her
heart. She was sure of that now. She had never before felt anything
remotely equal to the huge, restless emptiness which her separation
from him had brought her--a sort of can’t-stand-it-not-to-see-him
feeling that rose within her, even when she was in the midst of
writing, and kept her pencil idly poised over the paper for minutes,
while in her fancy she teased his hair, or chided some witticism of
his. She’d go through ten thousand hells rather than give him up!

After a week and a half had passed, she determined to visit Margaret
and “talk it over” with the other girl. It wasn’t that Margaret could
convince her one way or the other--she had made her decision--but
still, she craved the possible sympathy and encouragement of at least
one other person besides Eric. It was hard to stand so utterly alone.

After telephoning, and finding that Margaret would be alone that night,
she hurried down to see her.

The two girls sparred pleasantly and nervously with each other for a
while as though they were both dreading the impending subject--which
Margaret had sensed--and futilely trying to delay its appearance.
Finally, Blanche blurted out, after a silence: “I suppose you know I’m
in love with Eric Starling, Mart. You must have guessed it, the way I
fooled around with him at Tony’s.”

“Yes, I’ve been worrying quite a bit about that,” Margaret answered.
“Do you know that he’s, well--”

“Yes, I know that he’s a negro,” Blanche interrupted. “It’s true, Eric
has just a little negro blood in him, but you must admit, dear, that
he’s the whitest-looking one you ever saw.”

“Of course, he’d have fooled me, too, when I first met him, if Max
hadn’t told me about it,” Margaret said. “I like him, too. He’s
certainly not fatiguing to look at, and he has a lovely sense of humor,
but still, can you quite forget about his negro blood when ... oh, when
you’re petting together, I mean.”

“Can I forget it?--why, I go mad, stark mad, ’f he just puts his hand
over mine,” Blanche cried. “I’ve never fallen so hard for any man
in all my life--I mean it, Mart. I arranged not to meet him for two
weeks--just to see ’f I wouldn’t cool down about him, you know--but
it’s only convinced me all the more. I’ll never be able to get along
without him ... never.”

“Well, after all, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a little
affair with him, if you’re careful about it,” Margaret replied.

“But it’s much deeper than that,” Blanche said slowly. “We’re both
perm’nently in love with each other, we really are. It’s a big,
precious thing, and not just ... well ... not just wanting to have a
few parties, you know. I’m going to live with him for years and years,
and maybe marry him right now. It’s the first time I’ve ever loved any
one.”

“But, Blanche, you’re going to let yourself in for an endless
nightmare, if that’s the case,” Margaret replied, sorrowfully. “Your
people will simply raise the roof off, if they’re anything like you
say they are. And then, all the other things--children, and living
among his negro friends, and getting snubbed right and left.... Are you
really sure you love him enough for all that? Are you, really?”

“Yes, I _am_ sure,” Blanche said, in a slow, sick-at-heart, stubborn
voice. “I’ve thought of everything, don’t worry about that, and it
hasn’t given me much rest, either. Oh, how I hate this blind, mean
world of ours!”

“Yes, I know, but hating it never solves anything,” Margaret answered,
dully.

“Well, I’m going to solve it by running off with him,” Blanche
continued. “We’ll go far away, to Paris or London--some place where
nobody’ll know that Eric’s a negro, and we’ll stay there for the rest
of our lives, that’s all. I don’t care ’f we both have to wash dishes
for a living, I don’t. It’s all right to fight back when you’ve got a
chance, but not when everything’s against you.”

“Funny, I never thought of that,” Margaret said, more cheerfully. “It
might work out that way. Of course, it _is_ cowardly in a way, but
after all, there’s little sense to being brave in the lions’ den and
getting devoured. It might work out fine, if you’re both certain your
love’s going to last. Somehow or other, it’s hard for me to believe
in a permanent love. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed it in any of the
people around me. Are you sure you’re not just in a sentimental dream,
Blanche?”

Blanche reflected for a while.

“Well, ’f we’re both making a mistake, we’ll be happy, anyway, till we
find it out,” she said at last. “Good Lord, ’f you never take any risks
in life, why then you’ll be sad all the time, and you won’t have any
happiness at all, no matter how short it is!”

“Yes, I agree with you there,” Margaret answered, with a sigh.

They fell into a discussion of the practical details of Blanche’s
possible departure, and the money that would be required, and the
difficulty of earning a living in Europe, both trying to lose
themselves in a bright animation. When Blanche parted with Margaret,
a little after midnight, she felt more confident, and almost
light-hearted. After all, if two human beings were wise, and brave, and
forever alert, they simply couldn’t be separated from each other, no
matter what the dangers were.

The mood remained with her and grew more intense each day, and when she
rang Starling’s bell at the end of the week, she was almost fluttering
with hope and resolution. For the first hour they did little more than
remain in each other’s arms, in a daze and maze of kisses, sighs, and
simple, reiterated love words. To Starling, huge violins and cornets
were ravishing the air of the room, and the street sounds outside,
floating in through an open window, were only the applause of an
unseen audience. After all, only times like this gave human beings any
possible excuse for existing--the rest of life was simply a series of
strugglings, and dodgings, and tantalizings, and defeats. The least
pressure of her fingertips provoked a fiery somersault within him,
and the grazing of her bosom and face against his aroused revolving
conflagrations within his breast. Blanche had become a stunned child,
scarcely daring to believe in the compensations which were ruffling her
blood to something more than music, and yet desperately guarding them,
incoherently whispering over them, endlessly testing them with her
fingers and lips, lest they prove to be the cruellest of fantasies.

When Blanche and Starling had made a moderate return to a rational
condition, they began to discuss their future.

“Don’t you see that we must run away, Eric, dear?” she asked. “We’ll
just be crushed and beaten down, otherwise. My brother Harry, he’d
never rest till he’d put you in a hospital--oh, but don’t I know
him--and he might even try to do worse. I get the shivers when I think
of it.”

Her words were an affront to his courage, and he said: “Listen, I can
take care of myself--I’ve been through a pretty tough mill.”

“Of course you can, but they wouldn’t fight fair,” she answered,
impatiently. “They’d just proceed to get you by hook or crook. And
that’s not half of it. Why, I can just see ev’rybody turning their
backs on us, ’r making nasty remarks, ’r trying to poison us against
each other. We’ve just got to run away and live where nobody knows us!”

“No, it would be too yellow,” he replied, stubbornly. “All the things
you mention will only be a test of our love for each other. If we can’t
stand the gaff, then our love isn’t what we thought it was.”

“I’m not afraid of that,” she said. “I’d go through anything with you
’f I thought it was the best thing we could do, but why should we
stay here and run up against all kinds of suff’rings and insults, and
dangers, too, just to show how darn brave we are? It’s not cowardly to
run off when everything’s against us--it’s not.”

“Well, let’s think it over for another week, anyway,” he answered,
slowly. “I don’t like to slink away, with my tail between my legs, but
maybe it’s the only thing to do. If we were only starting a little
affair, like most of the mixed couples that hang out at Vanderin’s
shack, then it would be different, of course, but we’re probably facing
a whole lifetime together, and it’s a much more serious matter. The
trouble is I’ve a great deal of pride in me, honey, and it always wants
to fight back.”

“I have, too,” she said, “but in a time like this it’s just foolish to
be so proud--it’ll only help other people to make us unhappy, that’s
all.”

They were silent for a while, and then he said, with a smile: “Good
Lord, we’re getting morbid and theatrical. The whole thing may not be
half as bad as we think it is. Anyway, let’s forget it for one night,
at least.”

They spent the remainder of the evening in an idyllic way. He read her
his sensuous, symbolistic poems, and talked about them, and told her
exciting stories of his past life, while she tried to describe some of
the struggles and hesitations which had attended the birth of her mind,
and her search for happiness in the face of sordid punches, and stupid
jeers, and all the disappointments with which ignorance slays itself.
They resolved not to become complete lovers until they were really
living together and removed from fears and uncertainties. When they
parted at 2 A. M. they were both wrapped up in a warmly exhausted but
plotting trance. They arranged to meet on the following Wednesday, at
Tony’s Club, and Blanche felt feathery and on tiptoes, as she rode back
to the uninviting home which she would soon leave forever.

The next four days were excruciating centuries to her, and she was
barely able to stagger through the nagging, drab details of her work
at Madame Jaurette’s. She spent her nights writing in her room,
and the even trend of her days remained uninvaded until Tuesday
evening, when she found a letter waiting for her at home. It was from
Oppendorf, who told her that he had polished up her account of the
Vanderin party and had sold it to a New York magazine of the jaunty,
trying-hard-to-be-sophisticated kind. She was overjoyed as she stared
at the fifty-dollar check which he had enclosed, and she could scarcely
wait to tell the news to Eric. Now she had proved her mettle, and was
on the road to becoming a creative equal of his--blissful thought.

When she met him at Tony’s, she gayly extracted the check from her
purse and waved it in front of his face.

“Now what do you think of your stupid, hair-curling Blanche?” she asked
elatedly.

He laughed at her excitement as he led her to a table.

“You haven’t made me believe in your ability just because you’ve been
accepted by a frothy, snippy magazine,” he said. “I knew all about it
the first night I met you.”

“Never mind, this means I’m going to make a name for myself,” she
answered, proudly.

He gave her a fatherly smile--what a delicious combination of naïvetés
and instinctive wisdoms she was.

“I felt the same way when I first broke into print,” he said. “The
excitement dies down after a while, and then you don’t care so much
whether people like your stuff or not. You get down to a grimly
plodding gait, old dear, and you start to write only for yourself. Then
each acceptance means only so many dollars and cents.”

She retorted merrily: “Wet ra-ag--don’t try to dampen my spirits. It
can’t be done.”

The brazenly sensual clatter and uproar of Tony’s pounded against their
minds, and even Starling, more skeptically inured to it, and knowing
every hidden, sordid wrinkle in the place, became more flighty and
swaggering as he danced with Blanche. It meant something, now that
the girl whom he really loved was stepping out beside him, and it
had become something less gross than a collection of rounders, sulky
or giggling white and colored flappers, fast women, and hoodwinked
sugar-papas spending their rolls to impress the women beside them. Now
it was an appropriate carnival-accompaniment to his happiness.

Immersed in Starling, Blanche did not notice the group of newcomers
who had seated themselves two tables behind her. They consisted of her
brother Harry, another wooden-faced, overdressed man of middle age, and
their thickly painted, sullen-eyed ladies of the evening. Harry was
settling the details of a whisky-transaction with Jack Compton, the
other man.

“We’ll have the cases there by midnight on the dot,” he said, in a low
voice. “I’ve got a cop fixed up, an’ he’s gonna stand guard for us an’
say it’s K.O., ’f any one tries to butt in. We’ll have to hand him a
century, though.”

“That’s all right with me,” Compton replied. “You put this deal through
without slipping up and there’ll be a coupla hundred in it for you.”

“It’s as good as done,” Harry answered, with a heavy nod.

Then, glancing around, he spied Blanche at the other table.

“Say, there’s my crazy sis, Blanche,” he said, pointing to her. “In the
red pleated skirt, two tables down by the railing. See her, Jack?”

“Yeh ... she’s a good looker, Harry,” Compton replied.

“Say, I know the fellow with her,” one of the woman broke in. “He works
here--he’s public’ty-man for the joint. Name’s Starling--Eric Starling.
I met him down here about a week ago. What’s your sister doing out with
a nigger, Harry? She seems to be mighty thick with him from the way
she’s cutting up.”

“Go o-on, he looks damn white to me,” Harry answered, intently scowling
toward the other table.

“Well, he _is_ a nigger just the same,” the second woman said. “It’s
known all around here--he don’t deny it any. I’ve seen them like him
before. They’re only about one-eighth black, I guess.”

“Can’t your sister get any white fellows to go around with?” Compton
asked. “She must be hard up, trotting around with a shine.”

“Yeh, she’s sure crazy about dark meat, I’ll say,” the first woman
commented, with a laugh.

The taunts pierced Harry’s thick skin, and a rage grew within him. He’d
stood for her going with Jews, and wops, and dopey weak-sisters, but a
nigger was too much! It affronted his family-pride and erectness, and
made him feel that his friends had been given a chance to ridicule him
in an indirect way. For all he knew, Blanche might be having intimate
relations with this coon, or might be even fixing to marry him. The
thought was like a red-hot iron. His own sister, acting like a slut, in
a black-and-tan dive, and consorting with a nigger there, or maybe with
more of them.... By God, he wouldn’t stand for that!

“I’m gonna go over an’ bust him in the nose,” he said, half rising
from his chair. “He’ll be leavin’ white girls alone after I’m through
with him!”

Compton pulled Harry back to his chair.

“Keep your shirt on, d’you hear me,” he said. “If you start a scrap
here you won’t have a chance--every bouncer ’n’ waiter in the place’ll
be right on top of you. I’ve seen them in action before, and believe
me, they work just like a machine.”

“Well, I can get in a coupla good cracks at him before they throw me
out,” Harry persisted. “I want to show that dirty shine where _he_ gets
off at, makin’ a play for a sister uh mine!”

“You won’t show him this way,” Compton retorted. “You’ll land in the
hospital, and you’ll land there quick, too. This gang down here don’t
like a white man’s looks anyway, and they’ll give you the leather, just
for good luck. Come on, let’s all clear outa here. You can lay for
him to-morrow night, if you want to, ’r else give your sister a good
bawling out when you get her home, an’ make her stay away from him.”

“Well, they can’t do nothin’ ’f I go over an’ bawl her out now,” Harry
said, with a drunken stubbornness.

“Aw, keep your head, Harry, we don’t want to get the girl-friends here
into no trouble,” Compton replied. “Come on, let’s beat it, Harry.”

The women added their persuasions, and Harry finally gave a reluctant
assent. He departed with his friends, after vowing to settle the matter
during the next few days.

Blanche and Starling continued their entranced capers until the
closing hour, and when they rode to her home, they were steeped in a
tired and lazy fondness, with their arms around each other and their
heads close together. The apparitions and doubts had disappeared from
their situation, as far as they were concerned, and nothing remained
but a deliciously overheated and rumpled nearness to each other. They
arranged to meet on the following Saturday night, and exchanged several
farewell kisses, in the cab, before they reluctantly parted.

Blanche slept until noon, since the day was a holiday--Memorial
Day--and when she awoke, the other Palmers were eating a late breakfast
around the kitchen table. As she entered the kitchen, in her kimono,
the family turned and surveyed her, each bearing a frown on his face.
Taken aback, and suddenly prodded by an instinctive fear, Blanche
advanced slowly toward the table. How could they know anything about
Starling--nonsense. They were probably “sore” at her for some other
reasons.

After she had seated herself at the table, the bombardment commenced.

“Who was you with last night?” Harry asked, with a sneer, to see
whether she would lie.

“It’s none of _your_ business,” Blanche replied, coolly, her fears
soothed now.

“We-ell, that’s a hot one--going around with a nigger is none of our
business, huh?” Mabel queried, in a shrill voice.

“What do you mean?” Blanche asked, mechanically--the blow had come,
just when she had least expected it!

She became sick at heart, and dreaded the impending assault, and
scarcely knew what she could answer. If she became defiant, it would
only enrage them all the more, and it would be useless, besides ...
what could she do, oh, what? To attempt to explain matters to her
family would be ridiculous.

“You know what we mean all right,” her father cried. “You’ve been goin’
out with a shine--Harry saw you together last night down at Tony’s
Club. For all we know you may be hooked up with him in the bargain. ’F
I was sure of it, by God, I swear I’d take a swing at you, daughter ’r
no daughter!”

Blanche remained silent--what they said to her didn’t matter, and she
wasn’t afraid of them, but Eric, Eric ... they might kill him, or
cripple him for life. They were really aroused now as they had never
been before--she knew them well enough to tell when they were merely
blustering and when not--and they felt that she was on the verge of
disgracing and insulting everything that supported their lives--the
cruelly proud, angry delusion of blood superiority, which they clung
to as a last resort against all of the submissions and lacks in their
existences. In their opinion, Eric was little better than a rat, who
had tried to break into the sacred family kitchen.

Her mother began to speak, through fits of weeping.

“Oh, Blanie, Blanie, what’s come over you? You must be outa your head,
you must. You’ve just got to give up that nigger you’re goin’ with, ’r
you’ll be breakin’ my heart.... Blanie, Blanie, promise your ma you’ll
never give yourself to nobody but a white man ... promise me, Blanie.”

“See what you’re doing to ma,” Mabel said. “You’re just bringing her to
her grave, that’s what!”

“Well, I’m gonna take a hand in this,” her father cried. “You’ll
stay away from that fellow from now on, ’r I’ll land in jail f’r
manslaughter. I’m not kiddin’ any this time. You’ve been havin’ your
own way, an’ stickin’ up your nose at us, an’ we’ve let you get away
with it, but you never put over anythin’ like this--hookin’ up with a
lousy nigger! What have you got to say f’r yourself, huh?”

“Yeh, that’s what I wanta know,” Harry said, as he glowered at her.

The promptings of cunning began to stir in Blanche’s brain. To save
Eric, she would have to lie, abasing, tricky lies. No other answers
were possible. If she strove to argue with her family now, or if she
showed a hairbreadth of independence, they would instantly seek Eric
out, and even his life might be in danger. She was certain of that.

“I’ve only gone out with him twice,” she said. “I didn’t know he was a
negro, I swear I didn’t. I only found it out last night, just before I
left him. He told me he was then, and I was good and mad about it. I
called him down for daring to make up to me, and I told him I’d never,
never see him again. He looks just like a white man, and he’d fool
almost anybody. I swear he would.”

“Bla-anie, I mighta known it was somethin’ like this,” her mother
cried, joyously. “’Course you won’t see him no more, now you’ve found
out, ’course you won’t.”

“I should say not,” Blanche answered, vigorously. “I’m not picking out
negroes this year, unless I don’t know what they are.”

Blanche hated herself for the groveling words which she forced from her
mouth, and yet she felt that she had given the only shrewd answer that
could possibly placate the stupid viciousness assailing her. She’d be
willing to become a carpet, for Eric’s sake, any day in the year, no
matter what nausea might be attached to the proceeding.

“Well, all right then, we’ll let it rest,” her father said, in a
growling voice; “but just the same, Harry an’ me’ll keep a close watch
on you. ’F you’re not tellin’ us a straight story, it’ll be bad for
this Starling guy. We’ll put him in a nice, tight hotel, all right.”

“I’m with you there,” Harry broke in. “What I’d like to know is why she
didn’t speak up when we started to ask her about it.”

“Gee, you were all on top of me like a ton of bricks,” Blanche
answered. “I didn’t have a chance to say anything. Besides, I was
ashamed of the whole thing.”

“Sure, I can understand that,” Philip said, eagerly, glad that his
favorite sister had not been intending to disgrace them after all.
“Didn’t Harry say this morning that it was hard to tell this Starlun
guy from a white fellow? Blanche was just taken in, that’s all.”

“’Course she was,” Mrs. Palmer affirmed.

“Well, I’m not sayin’ she wasn’t,” her father replied. “We’ll just keep
tabs on her, anyway, an’ make sure of it.”

Blanche continued her meek explanations and protests of innocence, and
her family gradually calmed down and resumed a surface quietness. She
knew that the suspicions of her father and Harry were still smoldering,
and that these two would probably shadow her for some time, or use
some other means to become cognizant of her nightly destinations and
companions. She noticed also the speculative looks that Mabel gave her
now and then. Mabel was too expert a liar not to doubt her sister’s
tale, and she determined to do a little “snooping around” herself. You
never can tell about Blanche.

The remainder of the day and night held a nightmare to Blanche. She
had to affect a nonchalant mien--they would doubt her again if she
showed any sadness or depression--and the strain was infinite, like
holding up a boulder. Visions of Eric’s lifeless body dodged in and out
of her mind and made her shiver helplessly. Harry and his gangsters
could “get” poor Eric without half trying, and it would be useless to
attempt to flee with him now, since she would be under the severest of
scrutinies, where any false move might bring misfortune. Still, wasn’t
there another way out of it? Why couldn’t they remain scrupulously
apart from each other for half a year, or even longer, and then, when
all of the suspicions and spyings had completely vanished, suddenly
run away together? By that time her family would certainly have
forgotten the matter, and in the interim, she could go about with other
men--somehow compelling herself--and outwardly maintain her normal
ways. A wan approach to cheerfulness possessed her, and late that
night, she sat up in bed and wrote to Eric:

  MY DEAREST BOY:

  My brother Harry saw us at Tony’s last night, and this morning they
  gave me hell. It was no use to argue with them and make them even
  nastier--just no use. They said they would kill you, dearest, and
  I know they were not fourflushing when they said it. They’re cruel
  and stupid, and to their way of thinking, I’d disgrace and humiliate
  them if I ever married you. It’s what they cling to when everything
  else shows them how small they are--this snarling, keep-off pride in
  being white.... I lied to them and said I hadn’t known that you were
  colored, and swore I’d never see you again. Please, please forgive
  me, Eric. They’d have killed you if I hadn’t lied. And please,
  Eric, you must do as I say. This is the plan I have. We won’t see
  each other for exactly six months, and then we’ll suddenly run away
  together. Everything will be quiet then, and before they know what’s
  happened, we’ll be hundreds of miles away. If we tried it now we
  wouldn’t have a chance. Please, dearest boy, write and tell me you’ll
  do as I say. I love you more than anything else in life, and you’re
  like a prince walking through some rose-bushes, and you fill all of
  my heart, and I’ll never give you up--never be afraid of that. Answer
  me at once and address the letter to Madame Jaurette’s. I’m sending
  you a thousand kisses, dearest boy.
                                                                BLANCHE.

After finishing the letter, she felt woebegonely relieved and slightly
hopeful, and the mood stayed with her through the following day of
work at the Beauty Shop. She had placed a special-delivery stamp on
the letter, and he received it in a few hours. After he had read and
reread it several times, with a touch of anger lurking in his numbness,
he began to pace up and down in his room, as though striving to goad
himself into life again. Was she really giving him up, and trying to
hide the blow with promises of a future escape? Was she?... No, Blanche
was too inhumanly honest for that--even if she had wanted to lie, she
could never have induced herself to put the words on paper. If he
were wrong in this belief, then he would lose all of his faith in his
ability to peer into human beings, and would call himself a fool for
the remainder of his life! Somehow, a tremor of simple sincerity seemed
to run through her letter--he couldn’t be mistaken.

Well, what then? If he persisted in running off with Blanche now, it
might lead to melodrama. White gangsters such as her brother would
not hesitate about attempting to “croak him off.” He wasn’t afraid of
actually fighting them, but any man was always defenseless against a
sudden bullet or knife-thrust, and he certainly didn’t care to die that
way. B-r-r, the thought brought a fine sweat to his temples. No, these
whites were little better than rodents, when their angry pride was
aroused, and you had to use some of their own tactics, or perish.

They regarded him as a dirty nigger, these lily-pure, intelligent,
lofty, noble-hearted people. What a nauseating joke! But, joke or no
joke, it had to be grappled with. Blanche was right after all--when
you were in a trap you had to gnaw slyly at the things binding you.
It was galling to your erect defiance to admit it, but often, in a
dire crisis, an imbecilic bravery brought you no gain, and caused
your extinction. Yes, Blanche was right--it would be best for them to
separate for half a year and then take the other side by surprise, with
a thumb-twiddling swiftness. They would have to be patient--splendidly,
grimly, bitterly patient--and somehow control the aches and cries in
their hearts.

Of course, during the coming months, he would go out with women now and
then, or chat with them--as a feeble diversion--but he would shun any
intimate relations with them, if it were humanly possible. A pretty,
well-shaped girl could always affect a man, in a purely physical
way--he wasn’t trying naively to delude himself on _that_ score--but
just the same he intended to try his damnedest to remain faithful to
Blanche. She invaded and stirred him as no other woman had, and if he
consorted with other girls now, it would be a taunting and unanswerable
aspersion against the depth and uniqueness of his love for her. In such
a case he would be forced to admit that all of love was only an easily
incited lust--but it wasn’t true. He _would_ remain faithful to her.

He sat down and wrote a hopeful, agreeing letter, expressing his
implicit belief in her, and swearing that he would remain true, and
urging her to emulate his jaunty fortitude.

When she received the letter on the following afternoon, a surge of
youthful determination almost drove the darkness out of her heart. If
he had written morbidly, or in despair, her tottering and beleaguered
feelings would have been crushed, but now she felt armored and half-way
restored to her former happiness. After all, they were both very young,
and six months now were little more than six hours in _their_ lives.

During the next month she went to cabarets and theaters with other
men, and wearily repulsed their inevitable attempts to embrace her
afterwards, and preserved a careful attitude toward her family--not
too friendly and not too ill-tempered. They would have suspected her
of playing a part if she had suddenly seemed to become too pliable
and harmonious. She saw Margaret and Oppendorf once, but did not tell
them anything concerning the developments in her relations with Eric.
She feared that they would advise her never to see him again, and she
didn’t care to pass through the futile torments of an argument. She had
made up her mind, and no human being could change it.

When a month had passed, however, a restlessly jealous mood stole
imperceptibly over her. Perhaps Eric was running about with other girls
now; perhaps his head was pressed against the smooth tenderness of
their bosoms, or perhaps he had found another girl, far more beautiful
and intelligent than any Blanche Palmer. The mood reached a climax one
Sunday afternoon, as she boarded an “L” train and rode down to the
Battery. Yes, of course, he must have forgotten her by now. He met tens
of women every night down at Tony’s, and among all of them it would
be easy for him to find a quick-minded, tempting girl--perhaps one
of his own race, who would not lead him into staggering troubles and
difficulties.

She sat on a bench facing the greenish-gray swells of dirty water, and
watched the bobbing boats, and the laboriously swaying barges, and
the straining, smoky tugs. A mood of plaintive, barely wounded peace
settled about her, in spite of the jealous ranklings underneath. For an
hour she sat draped in this acceptant revery, with her mind scarcely
stirring. Then, glancing up, she saw that Eric was standing beside her.

For almost half a minute they stared at each other, without shifting
their positions.

“Eric ... darling ... what are you doing here?” she asked at last.

“I never dreamt I’d see you,” he answered. “I was walking along and
trying to forget my blues when I caught sight of you. I tried hard to
turn around then and avoid you, but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t.”

“I’m so glad you didn’t,” she said, as he sat down beside her. “Eric,
my boysie, what’s been happening to you?”

“Oh, I’ve been plodding along, and writing poems to you, and extolling
the barbaric charms of Tony’s,” he replied. “I’d get worried and
hopeless every now and then, thinking you were in some other man’s
arms ... just like a boy who doesn’t know whether he’s going to be
whipped or petted.”

“That’s exactly how I felt,” she cried. “Why, say, I had you falling in
love with every snippy, doll-faced girl in New York!”

They laughed--softly, ruefully, and with a relaxing weariness.

“How about your exquisite people?” he asked, after a pause. “Do they
still keep a close watch on you?”

“No, I think they’re completely deceived by now,” she said. “I’ve
played a foxy game, you know--going out with other men, and bragging
about them, and hiding my feelings all the time. I was so afraid that
somebody you know would see me with some fellow and tell you about it.
I just couldn’t help it, darling. One little break might have given me
away, and I just had to fool my folks. There wasn’t any other way.”

“Sure, I understand,” he replied, as he stroked her hand and looked at
her with the expression of a man relievedly twitting his past fears and
pains.

They were silent for a while, reveling in the unexpected, warm nearness
to each other and feeling a giddy swirl of revived faiths and hopes.
Their first little rush of reassuring words had aroused all of the
deferred plans and buried braveries within them, but the awakening was
not yet articulate enough for spoken syllables. They longed to embrace
each other with an open intensity, and the effort needed to control
this desire also served to prevent them from talking. Then Blanche
remembered a fear which she had experienced during the previous week.

“Eric, did you ever see a play called ‘God’s People Got Wings?’” she
asked.

“No, but I’ve heard about it.”

“Well, it certainly made me shiver,” she said. “One of Oppendorf’s
friends took me down to see it, and I’ve never had such a dreadful
time in my life. It was all about a colored man marrying a white girl.
It ended up with the colored boy killing his wife and then committing
suicide--think of it!--and I was just gripping the sides of my seat all
the time.”

“Were you afraid it might have some connection with us?” he asked,
gravely.

“No, no, of course not,” she answered, as she clutched his hand. “D’you
think I’m silly enough to let some prejudiced man tell me whether I’m
going to be happy or not? No, Eric, it wasn’t that, but I did feel
angry and upset, and, we-ell ... it set me to wondering. Why do all
these writers now always insist that colored and white people weren’t
meant to get along with each other--oh, why do they?”

“Mister Shakespeare revived it with his Othello and it’s been going
strong ever since,” he replied, with a contention of forlorn and
contemptuous inflections in his voice. “It can’t be argued about. Most
of them are perfectly sincere, and they really believe that people of
different races always hate and fear each other at the bottom. You
could get yourself blue in the face telling them exceptional men and
women aren’t included in this rule, but it wouldn’t make the slightest
impression.”

“But why are they so stubborn about it?” she asked.

“That’s easy,” he answered, wearily. “They don’t want to admit that
there’s the smallest possibility of the races ever coming together.
It’s a deep, blind pride, and they simply can’t get rid of it. They’re
hardly ever conscious of it, Blanche, but it’s there just the same.
Why, even Vanderin isn’t free from it. Take that latest book of
his--Black Paradise--and what do you find? What? He’s just a bystander
trying to be indulgent and sympathetic. It’s the old story. Negroes are
primitive and sa-avage at the bottom, and white people aren’t ... white
people like your brother, I suppose.”

He had been unable to restrain the sarcasm of his last words because
his wounds had cried out for a childish relief. She had listened to
him with a fascination that was near to worship ... what a dear, wise,
eloquent boy he was! When he talked, even the ghosts of her former
specters fled from her heart. Let the world call him a nigger--what did
it matter? They didn’t care whether he was beautiful or not--all they
wanted was to “keep him in his place,” these in-tel-li-gent people,
just because he happened to have a mixture of blood within him.

“Oh, let’s not talk any more about it,” she said. “We’re in love with
each other, Eric, boysie, and ... ’f other people don’ like it they can
stand on their heads, for all I care!”

He fondled her shoulder, gratefully, and an uproar was in his heart.

“Blanche, what’s the use of waiting and waiting?” he asked at last.
“We’re only suffering and denying ourselves when there’s no reason for
it. Let’s run off to-morrow and marry each other. If we wait too long
we’ll feel too helpless about it--it’ll grow to be a habit with us. I
can’t exist any longer without you, Blanche--it’s just impossible ...
impossible. I’ll draw out the thousand I have in the bank and we’ll hop
a train for Chicago to-morrow afternoon. Don’t you see it’s useless to
keep postponing it, Blanche?”

His eagerness, and her longing for him, expelled the last vestige of
her fears.

“Yes, dear, I’ll go with you to-morrow,” she said.

Their hands gripped each other with the power of iron bands, and they
stared hopefully out across the greenish-gray swells of water.


THE END



TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.



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