Chapter 17

"See, Jas--honest, can you ever get enough of how beautiful it is? When I was a kid on my pap's farm out there, eighty miles beyond the ridge, instead of playing with the kids that used to torment me because I was a heavy, I just used to lay out evenings like this on a hay-rack or something and look and look and look. There's something about this soft kind of scenery that a person that's born in it never gets tired of. Why, I've exhibited out in California right under the nose of the highest kind of mountains; but gimme the little scenery every time."

"I'm a lump--that's what I am. Nine months of laying. I'm a lump--on a woman, too."

"Why, Jas, Teenie's proud to have you on--on her. 'Ain't we got plans for each other after--you get well? Why, half the time I'm just in heaven over that. That's why, honey, if only you won't let yourself get setbacks! That's all the doctor says is between you and getting well. That's all that keeps you down, Jas, you scaring me and making me go against the doctor's orders. Last week your eating that steak--that drink you stole--ain't you ashamed to have got out of bed that way and broke the lock? You--you mustn't ever again, Jas, make me go against the doctor."

"I gets crazy. Crazy with laying."

"Just think, Jas; here I've drew out my last six hundred, ready to make first payment down on the place and us all ready to begin to farm it. Ain't that worth holding yourself in for? It wouldn't be right, Jas; it would be something terrible if we had to break into that six hundred for medicine and doctors. I don't know what to make of you, honey, all those months so quiet and behaved on your back, and, now that you're getting well, the--the old liquor-thirst setting in. We never will get our start that way, Jas. We got plans, if you don't hinder your poor Teenie. The doctor told me, honey--honest, he did--one of them spells--from liquor could--could take you off just like that. Even getting well the way you are!"

"I'm a lump; that's what I am."

"You ain't, Jas; you're just everything in the world."

"Sponging off a woman!"

"'Sponging'! With our own little farm and us farming it to pay it off! I like that!"

"Gimme a swig, Teenie. For God's sake gimme a swig!"

"Jas--Jas, if you get to cutting up again, I'm going to get me a man-nurse out here--honest I am!"

"A swig, Teenie."

"Please, Jas--it's only for bad spells--five drops mixed up in your medicine. That's six dollars a bottle, Jas, and only for bad spells."

"Stingy gut!"

"Looka down there, honey--there's old man Wyncoop's cow broke tether again. What you bet he's out looking for her. See her winding up the road."

"Stingy gut!"

"You know I ain't stingy. If the doctor didn't forbid, I'd buy you ten bottles, I would, if it cost twenty a bottle. I'm trying to do what the doctor says is best, Jas."

"'Best'! I know what's best. A few dollars in my pocket for me to boss over and buy me the things I need is what's best. I'm a man born to having money in his pocket. I'm none of your mollycoddles."

"Sure you ain't! Haven't you got over ninety dollars under your pillow this minute? 'Ain't the boy got all the spending-money he wants and nowheres to spend it? Ain't that a good one, Jas? All the spending-money he wants and nowheres to spend it. Next thing the boy knows, he's going to be working the farm and sticky with money. Ain't it wonderful, Jas, never no showing for us again? God! ain't that just wonderful?"

He reached up then to stroke her hand, a short pincushion of a hand, white enough, but amazingly inundated with dimples.

"Nice old Big Tent!"

"That's the way, honey! Honest, when you get one of your nice spells, your poor old Teenie would do just anything for you."

"I get crazy with pain. It makes me ugly."

"I know, Jas--I know--anyway, you fix it, honey. I 'ain't got a kick coming--a--tub like me to have--you."

She loomed behind his cot, carefully out of his range of vision, her own gaze out across the drowsing countryside. A veil of haze was beginning to thicken, whole schools of crickets whirring into it,

"If--if not for one thing, Jas, you know--you know what? I think if a person was any happier than me, she--she'd die."

"Let's play I'm Rockefeller laying on his country estate, Teenie. Come on; let's kid ourselves along. Gimme the six hundred, Teenie--"

"Why don't you ask me, Jas, except for what I'd be the happiest girl? Well, it's this. If only I could wear a cloak so when I got in it you couldn't see me! If only I never had to walk in front of you so--so you got to look at me!"

"You been a good gal to me, Big Tent. I never even look twice at you--that's how used a fellow can get to anything. I'm going to square it up with you, too."

"You mean it's me will square it with you, Jas--you see if I don't. Why, there'll be nothing too much for me to do to make up for the happiness we're going to have, Jas. I'm going to make this the kinda little home you read about in the magazines. Tear out all this old rented junk furniture, paint it up white after we got the six hundred paid down and the money beginning to come in. I'm even going to fix up the little trap-door room in the attic, so that if the Baron or any of the old exhibit crowd happens to be showing in Xenia or around, they can visit us. Just think, Jas--a spare room for the old crowd. Honest, it's funny, but there's not one thing scares me about all these months on the place alone here, Jas, now that we bought the gun, except the nightmares sometimes that we--we're back exhibiting. That's why I want to keep open house for them that ain't as lucky as us. Honest, Jas--I--I just can't think it's real, not, anyways, till we've paid down six hundred and--the fellow you keep joking about that wears his collar wrong side 'fore comes out from Xenia to read the ceremony. Oh, Jas, I--I'll make it square with you. You'll never have a sorry day for it!"

"You're all right, Big Tent," said the Granite Jaw, lying back suddenly, lips twitching.

"Ain't you feeling well, honey? Let me fix you an egg?"

"A little swig, Teenie--a little one, is all I ask."

"No, no--please, Jastrow; don't begin--just as I had you forgetting."

"It does me good, I tell you. I know my constitution better than a quack country boob does. I'm a freak, I am--a prize concession that has to be treated special. Since that last swig, I tell you, I been a different man. I need the strength. I got to have a little in my system. I'm a freak, I tell you. Everybody knows there's nothing like a swig for strength."

"Not for you! It's poison, Jas, so much poison! Don't you remember what they said to you after the operation? All your life you got to watch out--just the little prescribed for you is all your system has got to have. Wouldn't I give it to you otherwise--wouldn't I?"

"Swig, Teenie! Honest to God, just a swig!"

"No, no, Jas! No, no, no!"

Suddenly Jastrow the Granite Jaw drew down his lips to a snarl, his hands clutching into the coverlet and drawing it up off his feet.

"Gimme!" he said. "I've done it before and I'll do it now--smash up the place! Gimme! You're getting me crazy! This time you got me crazy. Gimme--you hear--gimme!"

"Jas--for God's sakes--no--no!"

"Gimme! By God! you hear--gimme!" There was a wrenching movement of his body, a fumbling beneath the pillow, and Mr. Jastrow suddenly held forth, in crouched attitude of cunning, something cold, something glittering, something steel.

"Now," he said, head jutting forward, and through shut teeth--"now gimme, or by God--"

"Jas--Jas--for God's sake have you gone crazy? Where'd you get that gun? Is that where I heard you sneaking this morning--over to my trunk for my watch-dog? Gimme that gun--Jas! You--you're crazy--Jas!"

"You gimme, was what I said, and gimme quick! You see this thing pointing? Well, gimme quick."

"Jas--"

"Don't 'Jas' me. I'm ugly this time, and when I'm ugly _I'm ugly!_"

"All right! All right! Only, for God's sakes, Jas, don't get out of bed, don't get crazy enough to shoot that thing. I'll get it. Wait, Jastrow; it's all right, you're all right. I'll get it. See, Teenie's going. Wait--wait--Teenie's going--"

She edged out and she edged in, hysteria audible in her breathing.

"Jas honey, won't you please--"

"Gimme, was what I said--gimme and quick!"

Her arm under his head, the glass tilted high against his teeth, he drank deeply, gratefully, breathing out finally and lying back against his pillow, his right hand uncurling of its clutch.

She lifted the short-snouted, wide-barreled, and steely object off the bed-edge gingerly, tremblingly.

"More like it," he said, running his tongue around his mouth; "more like it."

"Jas--Jas, what have you done?"

"Great stuff! Great stuff!" He kept repeating.

"If--if you wasn't so sick, honey--I don't know what I'd do after such a terrible thing like this--you acting like this--so terrible--God! I--I'm all trembling."

"Great stuff!" he said, and reaching out and eyes still closed, patting her. "Great stuff, nice old Big Tent!"

"Try to sleep now, Jas. You musta had a spell of craziness! This is awful! Try to sleep. If only you don't get a spell--Sleep--please!"

"You wait! Guy with the collar on wrong side round--he's the one; he's the one!"

"Yes--yes, honey. Try to sleep!"

"I wanna dream I'm Rockefeller. If there's one thing I want to dream, it's Rockefeller."

"Not now--not now--"

"Lemme go to sleep like a king."

"Yes, honey."

"Like a king," I said.

She slid her hand finally into one of the voluminous folds of her dress, withdrawing and placing a rubber-bound roll into his hands.

"There, honey. Go to sleep now--like a king."

He fingered it, finally sitting up to count, leaning forward to the ring of lamplight.

"Six hundred bucks! Six hundred! Wow--oh, wow! If Sid could only see me now!"

"He can, honey--he can. Go to sleep. 'Sh-h-h-h!'"

"Slide 'em under--slide 'em under--Rockefeller."

She lifted his head, placing the small wad beneath. He turned over, cupping his hand in his cheek, breathing outward deeply, very deeply.

"Jas!"

"Huh?"

"Ain't you all right? You're breathing so hard. Quit breathing so hard. It scares me. Quit making those funny noises. Honey--for God's sake--quit!"

Jastrow the Granite Jaw did quit, so suddenly, so completely, his face turned outward toward the purpling meadows, and his mouth slightly open, that a mirror held finally and frantically against it did not so much as cloud.

At nine o'clock there drew up outside the coolie-faced house one of those small tin motor-cars which are tiny mile-scavengers to the country road. With a thridding of engine and a play of lamps which turned green landscape, gray, it drew up short, a rattling at the screen door following almost immediately.

"Doctor, that you? O my God! Doctor, it's too late! It's all over, Doctor--Doctor--it's all over!" Trembling in a frenzy of haste, Miss Hoag drew back the door, the room behind her flickering with shadows from an uneven wick.

"You're the Fat, ain't you? The one that's keeping him?"

"What--what--"

"So you're the meal-ticket! Say, leave it to Will, Leave it to that boy not to get lost in this world. Ain't it like him to the T to pick a good-natured Fat?"

There entered into Miss Hoag's front room Miss Sidonia Sabrina, of the Flying-Fish Troupe, World's Aeronaut Trapeze Wonder, gloved and ringleted, beaded of eyelash and pink of ear-lobe, the teeth somewhat crookedly, but pearlily white because the lips were so red, the parasol long and impudently parrot-handled, gilt mesh bag clanking against a cluster of sister baubles.

"If it ain't Will to the T! Pickin' hisself a Fat to sponge on. Can you beat it? M-m! Was you the Fat in the Coney concession?"

"Who--Whatta you--want?"

"We was playin' the Zadalia County Fair. I heard he was on his back. The Little in our show, Baroness de Ross, has a husband played Coney with youse. Where is he? Tell him his little Sid is here. Was his little Sid fool enough to beat it all the way over here in a flivver for eight bucks the round trip? She was! Where is he?"

"He--Who--You--"

"You're one of them good-natured simps, ain't you? So was I, dearie. It don't pay! I always said of Will he could bleed a sour pickle. Where is he? Tell him his little Sid is here with thirty minutes before she meets up with the show on the ten-forty, when it shoots through Xenia. Tell him she was fool enough to come because he's flat on his back."

"I--That's him--Jastrow--there--O my God--that's him laying there, miss! Who are you? Sid--I thought--I never knew--Who are you? I thought it was Doc. He went off in a flash. I was standing right here-- I--O God!"

There seemed to come suddenly over the sibilant Miss Sidonia Sabrina a quieting down, a lessening of twinkle and shimmer and swish. She moved slowly toward the huddle on the cot, parasol leading, and her hands crossed atop the parrot.

"My God!" she said. "Will dead! Will dead! I musta had a hunch. God! I musta! All of a sudden I makes up my mind. I jumps ahead of the show. God! I musta had one of my hunches. That lookin'-glass I broke in Dayton. I--I musta!"

"It come so sudden, miss. It's a wonder I didn't die, too, right on the spot. I was standing here and--"

Suddenly, Miss Sabrina fumbled in the gilt mesh bag for her kerchief, her face lifting to cry.

"He spun me dirt, Will did. If ever a girl was spun dirt, that girl was me, but just the same it--it's my husband laying there--it's my husband, no matter what dirt he spun me. O God--O--O--"

At half after ten to a powdering of eye-sockets, a touching up with lip-stick, a readjustment of three-tiered hat, Miss Sidonia Sabrina took leave. There were still streaks showing through her retouched cheeks.

"I left you the collar-and-cuff box with his initials on, dearie, for a remembrance. I give it to him the first Christmas after we was married, before he got to developing rough. I been through his things now entire. I got 'em all with me. If there's such a thing as a recordin' angel, you'll go down on the book. Will was a bad lot, but he's done with it now, dearie. I never seen the roughness crop up in a man so sudden the way it did in Will. You can imagine, dearie, when the men in the troupe horsewhipped him one night for the way he lit in on me one night in drink. That was the night he quit. O Gawd! maybe I don't look it, dearie, but I been through the mill in my day. But that's all over now, him layin' there--my husband. Will was a good Strong in his day--nobody can't ever take that away from him. I'm leavin' you the funeral money out of what he had under his pillow. It's a godsend to me my husband layin' up that few hundred when things ain't so good with me. You was a good influence, dearie. I never knew him to save a cent. I'd never have thought it. Not a cent from him all these months. My legs for the air-work ain't what they used to be. Inflammatory rheumatism, y'know. I've got a mind to buy me a farm, too, dearie. Settle down. Say, I got to hand it to you, dearie--you're one fine Fat. Baby Ella herself had nothin' on you, and I've worked with as fine Fats as there is in the business. You're sure one fine Fat, and if there's such a thing as a recordin' angel--I got to catch that train, dearie--the chauff's honkin'--no grandmother stories goes with my concession. God, to think of Will layin' on a cool six hundred! Here's twenty-five for the funeral. If it's more, lemme know. Sidonia Sabrina, care Flying-Fish Troupe, State Fair, Butler County, Ohio. Good-by, dearie, and God bless you!"

Long after the thridding of engine had died down, and the purple quiet flowed over the path of twin lamplights, Miss Hoag stood in her half-open screen door, gazing after. There were no tears in her eyes; indeed, on the contrary, the echo of the chugg-chugging which still lay on the air had taken on this rhythm:

Better to have loved a short man Than never to have loved atall.

Better to have loved a short man Than never to have loved atall.

THE WRONG PEW

For six midnights of the week, on the roof of the Moncrieff Frolic, grape-wreathed and with the ecstatic quivering of the flesh that is Asia's, Folly, robed in veils, lifts her carmined lips to be kissed, and Bacchus, whose pot-belly has made him unloved of fair women, raises his perpetual goblet and drinks that he may not weep.

On the stroke of twelve, when on stretches of prairie the invisible joinder of night and day is a majestic thing, the Moncrieff Follies--twenty-four of them, not counting two specialty acts and a pair of whistling Pierrots--burst forth into frolic with a terrific candle and rhinestone power.

Saint Genevieve, who loved so to brood over the enigmatic roofs of the city, would have here found pause. Within the golden inclosure of the Moncrieff Roof, a ceiling canopied in deep waves of burnt-orange velvet cunningly concealed, yet disclosed, amber light, the color of wine in the pouring. Behind burnt-orange portieres of great length and great depth of nap, the Twenty-Four Follies, each tempered like a knife edge, stood identically poised for the first clash of Negroid music from a Negroid orchestra.

At a box-office built to imitate a sedan chair--Louis Quinze without and Louis Slupsky within--Million-Dollar Jimmie Cox, of a hundred hundred Broadway all-nights; the Success Shirt Waist Company, incorporated, entertaining the Keokuk Emporium; the newest husband of the oldest prima donna; and Mr. Herman Loeb, of Kahn, Loeb & Schulien, St. Louis, waited in line for the privilege of ordering _a la carte_ from the most _a la mode_ menu in Oh-la-la, New York.

The line grew, eighty emptying theaters fifteen stories below, sending each its trickle toward the Midnight Frolic--men too tired to sleep, women with slim, syncopated hips, and eyes none too nice. The smell of fur and fragrant powder on warm flesh began to rise on a fog of best Havana smoke. At the elevators women dropped out of their cloaks and, in the bustle of checking, stood by, not unconscious of the damask finish to bare shoulders.

When Mr. Herman Loeb detached himself from the human tape-line before the box-office, the firm and not easily discomposed lines of his face had fallen into loose curves, the lower lip thrust forward and the eyebrows upward. Sheep and men in their least admirable moments have that same trick of face. He rejoined his companion, two slips of cardboard well up in the cup of his palm.

"Good seats, Herman?"

"I ask you, Sam, is it an outrage? Twenty bucks for a table on the side!"

"No!"

"Is that highway robbery or not, I ask you!"

Mr. Samuel Kahn hitched at his belt, an indication of mental ferment.

"I wouldn't live in this town, not if you gave it to me!"

"It's not the money, Sam. What's twenty dollars more or less on a business trip, and New-Year's Eve at that? But it's the principle of the thing. I hate to be made a good thing of!"

"Twenty bucks!"

"Yes, and like he was doing me a favor, that Louis Slups kyin the box-office who used to take tickets in our Olympic at home. Somebody at the last minute let go of his reservation or we couldn't have got a table."

"Twenty bucks, and we got to feel honored yet that they let us sit at a table to buy a dinner! But say, Herm, it's a great sight, ain't it?"

"There's only one little old New York! Got to hand it to this town--they're a gang of cut-throats, but they do things up brown. A little of it goes a long ways, but I always say a trip to New York isn't complete without a night at the Moncrieff Roof. You sit here, Sam, facing the stage."

"No, you! An old bachelor has got the right to sit closer to a girl-show than a married man."

They drew up before a small table edging a shining area of reserved floor space and only once removed from the burnt-orange curtains.

"A-ha!" exuded Mr. Samuel Kahn, his rather strongly aquiline face lifted in profile.

"A-ha!" exuded Mr. Loeb, smiling out of eyes ten years younger.

"What'll you have, Sam?"

"Say, what's the difference? I'll take a cheese sandwich and a glass of beer."

"Now cut that! Maybe I squealed about the twenty bucks, but that don't make me out a short skate. This isn't Cherokee Garden at home, man. I'm going to blow my brother-in-law to New-Year's Eve in my own way, or know the reason why not. Here, waiter, a pint of extra dry and a layout of sandwiches."

"If you can stand it, I guess I can!"

"It's not on the firm, either, Sam; it's on me!"

"For the price of to-night ma and Etta would hang themselves, ain't it?"

"Say, we only live once. I always tell ma she can't take it with her when she goes. Anyways, for the discount we got on those Adler sport skirts, we can afford to celebrate."

"Say, Herman, I wish I had a dime for every dollar that is spent up here to-night. Look at the women! I guess American men don't make queens out of their wives!"

"For every wife who's up here to-night I wouldn't take the trouble to collect the dimes," said Mr. Loeb, with cunning distinction.

"I guess that ain't all wrong, neither. It isn't such a pleasure to be away from your family New-Year's Eve, but I can assure you I'd rather have Etta having her celebration with ma and grandma, and maybe the Bambergers over at the house, than up here where even a married woman can blush to be."

"Take it from me, old man, a flannel petticoat in the family is worth all the ballet skirts on this roof put together."

"I bought ma and Etta each one of them handbags to-day at Lauer's for nine dollars. What they don't know about the price won't hurt them. Two for nine I'll tell them."

"To this day ma believes that five-hundred-dollar bar pin I brought her two years ago from Pittsburgh cost fifty at auction."

"There's Moe Marx from Kansas City just coming in! Spy the blonde he's with, will you? I guess Moe is used to that from home, nix! There's a firm, Marx-Jastrow, made a mint last year."

"Look!"

The lights had sunk down, the sea of faces receding into fog. The buzz died, too, and doors were swung against the steady shuffle of incomers. From behind the curtains a chime tonged roundly and in one key. One--two--three--four--five--six--seven--eight--nine--ten--eleven --twelve!

Then the orange curtains parted and on a gilded dais the width of the room, in startling relief against a purple circle the size of a tower clock, the Old Year, hoar on his beard and with limbs that shivered in an attitude of abdication, held out an hourglass to a pink-legged cherub with a gold band in his or her short curls.

A shout went up and a great clanging of forks against frail glass, the pop of corks and the quick fizz ensuing. The curtains closed and the lights flashed up. Time had just sailed another knot into space, and who cared?

At a center table a woman's slipper was already going the rounds. It began to sag and wine to ooze through the brocade.

"Well, Hermie, here's a happy New Year to you!"

"And to you, Sam, and many of 'em!"

"To ma and Etta and grandma!"

"To Kahn, Loeb & Schulien!"

"To Kahn, Loeb & Schulien and that to this time next year we got the Men's Clothing Annex."

They drank in solemn libation.

The curtains had parted again. A Pierrot, chalky white, whistled in three registers, soprano, bass, and baser. A row of soubrettes rollicked in and out again in a flash of bushy skirts.

"Say, look at the third one from this end with the black curls all bobbing. I'm for her!"

"Where?"

"Gone now!"

Mr. Kahn leaned across his singing glass, his eye quickened into a wink.

"Old man, you can pull that woman-hater stuff on the home folks, but it takes your brother-in-law to lead you to the live ones. Eh?"

"You dry up," said Mr. Loeb, peering between the halves of a sandwich.