CHAPTER SIX

Not till the plant has forged through the ground can we see that the seed was fertile and events ripe for its blossoming. Thus, too, our lives are made up of accidents, chance seeds of the residue Nature provides against barrenness, blown by the wind of every-day, taking no root in our existence; and of coincidences which are accidents that find the soil receptive and come to fruition. Without specific design on Blake's part, the conjunction of a certain mood of his and certain words of Edith's had caused to happen that which he and Grace had so much desired. Edith had withdrawn voluntarily. She went home on what she thought was a long visit. Blake had merely now to keep her there, which was simpler.

The sunshine of the noons to which Blake opened his eyes that summer stroked his lids with a special zest. He had divested himself of the apartment in Brooklyn and gone to live with Jerry. From the first moment of waking he felt the hum of the street outside, a midtown Manhattan street that repeated like a second, fainter chorus the shining song of Fifth Avenue, mingled with the troubled, grimier notes of Sixth, where men stood with eyes glued to employment lists, where the El roared and small shops jostled each other and clamored. Blake's bed was soft and wide. It was part of the bedroom suite brought from St. Louis via Brooklyn, and in the midst of the dark blue hush of a semi-sacred parlor set which Edith had once chosen with such care, Jerry sprawled, his clothes neatly folded and himself sunk in a red, torpid slumber.

Their place and the house itself had the quietude of sleep, in spite of the sunshine, the sound of wheels sizzling up the black, hot street, the hoots of cars and a light zigzag of some work far off that rose, that ebbed, that never ceased. Negro maids were treading the carpeted stairs, clicking keys in doors closed upon a similar silence, and outside the black porter applied luster to the banisters with a languid hand.

When the telephone buzzed Blake dragged it into bed with him by its cord and spoke sleepily to Grace. "Hello," he said, and "Yes," he said with a yawn, "I'm just getting up." A more distinct effort of gallantry greeted the next call. Nearly every day this female voice, which had phoned to ask about one of his vaudeville playlets, continued to pursue him with semi-mysterious and flattering banter.

"Who'z'at?" called Jerry drowsily from the living room. He made his entrance, rumpled, opening and shutting gelid lids to the motes of sunshine, as if in a sort of exercise, and in his brief glimpses expressing disapproval of the tossed state of the room. In contrast with his genial disposition and life of easy concurrence, Jerry was a stickler for the tidiness of material objects. He picked up things; he straightened things; ashes on the carpet turned his face wry as much as a false note or a piano out of tune. "Who'z'at?" he said, and sitting down on the bed, "I got to cut this out."

"No one for you. You want to train your lady friends not to call you at 3 A.M. There was some girl ringing this phone every half hour from three to five."

"Same girl? Mm. Musta been Madalynne. You got yours trained, haven't you?" said Jerry sadly.

In leisurely fashion, Blake's day unwound ahead of him. He walked up his street which pleased him with its width, the houses having long ago been built back so that they, too, seemed to have leisure. On Sixth Avenue he passed the groups of men who stood before the employment bulletins, their hands hanging loose, their mouths dully open, peering at each letter and still irresolute whether to enter or leave, as if they knew that, no matter which action they chose, it would come to the same thing in the end. The air, brilliant with heat, picked out each spot of wear, each harsh line, awkward bones, and coarse hands, weaving in and out and about the groups in a nimble grotesquerie of light and more light and in final, swift rays not ignoring the stocky ankles of women, the cheap glazed fibers of a stocking, a smudge of a face, dingy, blemished, under the inquiring eye of the sun. Blake moved around them. Turning the corner, he went by the Friars' Club. Here was another knot of men loath to leave the sunshine that stroked their sleek shoulders and polished boots and tinged full cheeks and fleshy cheeks. Blake sent a cool glance through this group. He knew some of the men by sight.

When he reached the restaurant on Broadway he opened his mail and lost some of his tranquillity. He had a letter from his wife, three pages of small, even words, upon which a few bulbs, burning high in the chandelier even at noon, cast a weird, too-naked light. It was as if this room could not exist without some promise of the glittering night. Its chandeliers were gilded and its walls were adorned wherever possible with the same grimy gilt. The raucous blonde hair of his waitress remonstrated harshly with long, dusty rays of sunlight creeping in--and so did her gold teeth.

He wished to tear the letter up but there was no place to throw the pieces, so with a frown he restored it to his pocket. He had formed the habit of sending his wife money with merely a line of enclosure, but her small, even words continued to groove a path to reach him, each word wearing as a drop of water, each containing a minute part of the energy of its sender, and each to be evaded by the intangible negation of its recipient.

Afterward Blake went to the theater where his show was to be rehearsed. At the press agent's suggestion they had sent out a call for chorus girls with long hair. Blake found a few reporters; Jerry, with his coat off, haranguing the orchestra which he was to conduct; and the bare lines of the stage, its bare steps, even its bare floor, hidden by the soft bodies, the pale arms, long legs, the bright clothes of girls. Most of them had taken off their hats, and a few had even loosened their hair, spreading triumphant, delicate fans of gold and auburn, of dusk and chestnut about them.

The press agent was counting the long-haired ones. He returned in disgust.

"This is Mother's Day in the Old Ladies' Home," he said. "Not a long-haired dame under forty, I swear."

"There's a little blonde over there," suggested a reporter.

"Yeh--go look at her close and you'll find she has a grandchild. If you can pick anything out of this lot----"

The producer lowered himself into a front-row seat, resting a short arm on either side and his jowls on his chest. The director, on the other hand, was a tiny, gnarled person who wiped the back of his neck with a bandanna and cursed legs and girls. The theater was choked with heat. The girls said, "Whew!" and waved bits of handkerchiefs and rubbed and powdered their noses without respite.

"Now, you girls stand up and come to the center of the stage. No. _Not_ all at once. Say, you Bill, you get them into line. A dozen at a time, Bill. Goddamn this heat. Goddamn everything above two inches."

Some of the girls thought fit to smile. Others held grave faces and looked loftily up to the dome of the theater. Others drew themselves up in the line, took a dancing pose, gyrated slowly round like models. And each dozen, clad in varying plumage--in summer silk that clung to hips and breasts, in organdy with great, crisp hats, in practice bloomers that exposed pink flesh, dimples, the slim bones of ankles in businesslike nakedness, leaving the girls as pathetically unhidden as long, plucked fowls--each dozen moved with sealed faces, with indifferent faces, with open giggles before the lidded eyes of the producer and the sneering inspection of the director, before Blake to whom they all looked flawed for his show, who was disappointed in all of them, before Jerry who was touched by each pretty face, before the reporters who were pleased to be in the presence of so many chorus girls.

"Here, you with the Dutch cut--no, _not_ you--that girl there." A girl seemed startled, said, "Me?" and stepped to one side. "You with the blue bloomers. Yeh. That one. And that one. Step back you with the hair and let me see the others. Yes, I mean you. Goddamn it, dear, _will_ you step back?"

The producer whispered to the director.

"That little girl with the curls, didn't I see you around the Savoy in London?"

The others cast sharp looks from her to the men. "Why, I've been to England," said the girl haughtily.

Someone snickered.

"Just stop that noise, now, just stop that noise," shouted the director. "Whaddye think this is, a tea party? You girls, what are you waiting for? If your names haven't been taken, go on home. Go on. Get them out, Bill."

A girl called, "You haven't even looked at us."

"Oh, I haven't looked at you, haven't I? All right, step forward, I'll look at you now."

She stepped forward hardily, pirouetted, kicked out and would have continued.

"That's all right," snapped the director. "You don't have to go into your dance for us. We know you're a Pavlowa. But I'll say that for you, dear," he added, "you're worth looking at. Take her name, Bill. Any others we haven't looked at? Come on. Step forward or go home."

Those who had not been chosen lingered about the stage. The youth named Bill, his collar open at the throat, a pad in his hand, dispersed group after group into receding fragments, only to have them congeal again, murmuring, with eyes on the men who had not yet gone, opposing to his hoarse shouts the massed immobility of their hope. Drive them as he would, they moved forward, they moved back, unheeding, passive, according to some pattern of their own instinct.

"Only two in the bunch with long hair," said the press agent to the reporters. "That's a hot one for you."

"These babies look all right, but can they sing and dance? That's what I'd like to know," said the director. "Bill, tell 'em to come here same time to-morrow. Hey, you, all of you whose names we got, same time to-morrow. And no use any of you others coming--hear me?--no use!"

He added pessimistically, "Better send out a call for another batch."

When Blake turned the corner of his street again the retreating sun had strewn the sky with minute pink clouds, crisping one within the other like rose petals across one side of heaven. Lucent the air lay over the brownstone houses and bright summer awnings of tea rooms and over the bodies of limousines before the smooth shop windows. And in his house, where the windows were open, the light swam over Grace's pure skin as in another ether, in tiny bounding motes of light and shade. There was a mote on her nose and one that fled along her cheek and he kissed these, searching them out to the reward of her deep amusement. They made a circuit of the room in an embrace exaggerated so as not to come within the terms of sentimentality, an improbable embrace, a travesty on embraces, which yet could not conceal the force and persistence of their arms about each other, their utter absorption in each other, as, like great actors immersed in their parts, they set up a dais for themselves and swept below, aside, the audience of Jerry and his exuberant Madalynne.

Madalynne was a girl with a superfluity of everything--of flesh, of hair, of clothes, of complexion, of voice, and of the love which she lavished on Jerry. Even her name was over-spelt. With Grace she had felt it necessary to adopt a superfluity of dignity, matching, she thought, Grace's own, but in the presence of this embrace she felt that the barriers had been let down. She cast herself on Jerry's bosom, exuding baby talk at every pore.

Grace and Blake laughed into each other's eyes with a mute laughter, with a derisive understanding. "The perfect hot momma," murmured Grace, and aloud, taking pity on Jerry, she said to him, "Does Blake's mysterious lady still call every day?"

"Does he tell you that?" said Jerry. He freed himself by a number of shakes and pats, good-natured and indifferent, much as one does with an over-fond dog. "I'll never understand you two."

"And you stand for it?" demanded Madalynne. "My God! How can you bear it?" she cried. "Why, if such a thing happened with Jerry I'd never rest till I settled it. And Blake, how can you act that way to your girl friend? Shame on you! Jerry wouldn't do that to Momma, would'ums? Yum-yum."

Grace quickly put her hand up to her mouth. "I want him to ask her to the opening," she said.

"So you can meet her and judge what you're up against?"

Blake could not hide a certain gratification and Grace said to him, "I can meet her without you. Dee knows a woman who knows her."

"I knew I shouldn't have told you her name."

"Always keep your girls separate," declared Jerry solemnly. "Take it from me----"

"What! What girls are you keeping separate, Jerry Barker?"

"Not a one, hon. Honest-to-God, dear. I'm just advising Blake. You're the only girl for me."

"That's what you say. But I'd like to know about this. How come you know so much about keeping girls separate? I tell you I won't stand for any of that. I don't like the idea of girls being free to chase in and out of this place--I don't mean you, Grace. You tell Momma, Jerry, you 'fess up, you naughty boy, what've you been up to?"

"I swear to you, hon, I've had enough of--I mean--I've got you and that's enough for me."

"Jerry lov'ums his momma?"

"Absolutely, hon."

Outside, Grace remarked, "Does she really think Jerry'll marry her? She told me he promised her a diamond ring if the show went over."

"She can think what she likes," said Blake. "So he promised her a diamond ring?" He smiled sardonically. "The more fool he. He's got his hands full."

Grace sent him a strange, fleeting look. How men did resent a woman who concluded that the most heart-easing satisfaction she was likely to obtain from a man was money or its equivalent! Was it because she was a proof, which even they could not overlook, of the insufficiency of their own irresistible charms?

However, she kept quiet.