When Washington Was In Vogue

by Edward Christopher Williams

  “I should say it looked rather bad for somebody.”

  “I can make it more pointed than that,” said Tommie. “In Philadelphia I saw one of those coats sold to a well-known New York woman for a mere song. Later on in the winter, she was accosted by detectives in a theater on Seventh Avenue, and the coat identified and taken from her on the spot.”

  “Yes, I recall hearing about it from New York friends. The interesting, though somewhat disheartening, fact is that their only reaction was that the poor woman had rotten luck,” I said.

  “Any number of people got these letters. The broadcast sending of them seems to suggest a feeling of security on the part of the seller.”

  “How much of this sort of thing is done?” I asked.

  “I have no idea,” said Tommie. “But too much, I fear, for our self-respect. You have seen one, at least, of these fur coats, yourself—oh, I shan’t say whose it is!”

  Well, I suppose when folks must keep up with the Joneses, or die, the method or process is of comparatively little importance. It’s only another instance of the demoralizing influence of our anomalous position in American life. Truly, in many ways we are Ishmaelites, with every man’s hand against us, and our hands against every man, so that even our own crooks feel safe in the shadow of this situation, confident that if we will have no share in the spoils of their crimes, we will not, at any rate, betray them!”

  Did it ever strike you,” interjected Genevieve, “that when a people really religious, both by temperament and training, come into close and forced contact with a soulless civilization like that of the Anglo-Saxon, that they are in very grave danger? They are likely to lose their own warm spiritual feeling completely, while, on the other hand, they do not gain, as an offset, the colder ethical standards of the other race. It’s the old case of swapping horses while crossing a stream.”

  “Your explanation certainly fits many of the points in the case,” said I. “Well, it is an unpleasant subject. It’s dreadful to have to wonder where some of your good friends get their pretty clothes.”

  Then we went up into the parlor, and turned on the Victrola and—oh fortunate mortal—I danced with Caroline and Thoma-sine and Genevieve in turn. Genevieve is a fine dancer, though she is so very quiet one would never suspect it, but Tommie, as I have already said, is a nine days’ wonder. She’s a ball of thistledown animated by the combined spirits of Grace and Rhythm. I could dance with her forever, and never tire!

  I have been studying my fellow lodger, and, without having the most definite material premises for my conclusions, I feel sure that there is something wrong with him. If he were not living here, or were not so very attentive, even though somewhat intermittently so, to Caroline, I should not bother my head about him. Even as it is, with the painful memory of one unhappy experience of a similar kind, in connection with which I registered a solemn vow that I should never, Heaven helping me, interfere in any way in another person’s concerns, it is a question of whether I ought to bother about him or not. But ordinary human curiosity is sometimes hard to overcome, and when you add to it a touch of the temperaments of Sherlock Holmes, Monsieur Lecoq, and the immortal Dupin, what are you to expect? I did not at all like the gentleman’s deportment on the night of the quarrel of which I have already told you. He has been, for some reason of his own, unusually attentive to Caroline recently. I suppose that might be explained by the very simple reason that he is fond of her, in love with her, or whatever you would call it. She does not lack attractions, as you may have gathered from what I have said about her, and certainly, even without being acquainted with her at all, one might infer the fact of her attractiveness from the large numbers of young men who dance attendance upon her.

  To make a long story short, I saw Jeffreys yesterday with the flashy friends of whom Caroline was complaining the other night. They were eating dinner in a restaurant where I sometimes dine. Jeffreys had his back to the door, and consequently to me, as I went in. I took a seat so that I might see them fairly well without being conspicuous myself, allowing a hat tree to intervene somewhat between us. Then I ordered my dinner, and observed the party at my leisure, spreading out my newspaper before me the better to mask my intentions, and hoping that someone might come in who could tell me who the strangers were. I had just about come to the conclusion, from sight and hearing, that Mr. J.’s friends were decidedly off-color, when in walked Reese, and when he saw me he took a seat at my table.

  I asked him if he knew any of the strangers.

  “The big man,” he said, “is a sport, which means that he makes his living by gambling on the races, and in other similar ways. The woman is nobody in particular, I think, just a kind of cheap adventuress, and the other man I don’t know. The first two are from Baltimore. I am surprised that young Jeffreys would be seen with them in a place like this.”

  I have been recasting what the folks at the house have told me about Jeffreys. He has a very unimportant government clerkship from what I hear, certainly not one to furnish him with such an elaborate wardrobe, and the money for his almost weekly trips. I have noted that his articles of jewelry, of which he seems inordinately fond, are unusual in number and variety, and many of them, while not in the best of taste, are evidently quite costly. On two or three occasions, I have seen him display a roll of bills amounting into the hundreds. For example, the night we were in that ill-omened cabaret, he slipped the twenty-dollar bill which he handed the waiter from a thick roll in which I plainly saw two or three century notes. So you can see why he may be an interesting problem. I have figured out to my own satisfaction that his trips to Baltimore are “business” trips. Without connecting J.’s name in any way with the matter, I brought up the general question a propos of the party at his table, and Reese said that several well-known men of sporting propensities make these regular trips to Baltimore, and that at least one local character was completely ruined in business by being fleeced by the sharpers of that hustling city. But that sort of thing is an old story—and ever new. The real gambling mania seems about as hard to overcome as the “dope” habit. I hope J. is not an adventurer of this type, for I should hate to think of a man like that imposing upon a household like the Rhodeses’.

  How goes the world with you, Buddie? Life is very interesting hereabouts, what with absorbing work, and the possibility of meeting new people every day. I have not been able to tell you about everything and everybody, naturally, but someday when you come this way, I will show you my diary, which is a condensed record of the most important things.

  Speaking of diaries, I have often planned to keep a “journal intime, ” as our French friends call it. Of course it is more than a notion, for one has always to take into account the chance of it falling by accident into alien or unfriendly hands. However, as an experiment, I have begun one on a very small scale, and someday, perhaps, I shall try it out on you.

  I see my friends the Wallaces, Hales, and Morrows every few days somewhere. Lillian Barton has been out of town for over a week, but I am hoping to see her Saturday or Sunday. Verney and I have struck up a very nice friendship, and I am finding it both enjoyable and profitable, I assure you. He has lived just enough longer than I to make his philosophy, gathered by the way, both enlightening and stimulating to me.

  I almost forgot one important thing. Tommie Dawson said that when next I write I should say “Hello” for her to that good-looking soldier boy. I hope you appreciate your good fortune, my friend, but to measure it adequately you will have to see Tommie.

  My literary work is going swimmingly, especially the research side. The Americana collection in the Library of Congress is unusually rich, and, while the local history sections in which I am particularly interested occasionally fall short of my desires, I find quite enough to keep me busy. The slave-trade material is fascinating, and I have located one or two rich “finds” in the special collection at Howard. I am enclosing a list of books which I wish you would try to locate in the New York libraries—between the Un
iversity and the Public Library you ought to be able to find one or two, at least. What you don’t succeed in locating I am going to try to borrow from Harvard. It looks as if, to put the finishing touches on the local color, I may have to go to Charleston and Columbia. But there is still much I can do here, and I can decide about the rest later on.

  I am sending you herewith parts of two sample chapters. Tell me frankly what you think of them, both as to matter and manner. Don’t try to spare my feelings, but if you think it necessary, Lay on, Macduff! I await your criticism with interest.

  Davy

  FIVE

  Love, and life. Bob and Davy “over there.” Memorabilia. The prettiest woman in town.

  Sunday, November 19

  Dear Bob:

  Love, Buddie, is the mainspring of most human action that is not selfish and that is really worthwhile. Don’t get excited! I am not raving. This is merely a quotation from the wisdom of my friend Verney.

  We were all at Lillian Barton’s last Sunday evening, and the talk turned on great men, and the springs and motives of action. Dr. Morrow, who is a worshiper of Napoleon, spoke interestingly upon his career, and then Lincoln, and George Washington, and Cromwell were discussed. Wallace developed some clever points about the great Corsican, but my friend Don came back to Napoleon with the assertion that he had done nothing but impoverish a whole continent, and develop the spirit of nationalism throughout Europe, and that this, in its turn, has been the cause of the most bloody, destructive, cruel, savage, inhuman wars the world has ever seen, and that this same nationalism is probably destined to be, before it disappears from the world forever, the father and mother of still more inhuman deviltries. Then he propounded the assertion which begins this letter.

  Somebody cited the lives of Christ and Buddha, but Verney contended that in their case it was love of the people, love of humankind, as contrasted with the love of the individual. That Lincoln, in his latter days, might reasonably be put in a similar category. He says that, as far as he has observed and read, no man does the very highest type of work of which he is capable until he is in some way touched by love. That without the element of love, human ambitions are utterly selfish, and, as such, dangerous to all who come in contact with them. That, though we all of us now and then see the effect of love upon individuals, there are many more affected by it whom, in the nature of things, we are unable to see. Just as the most advanced students now agree that the secretions from the reproductive glands in some mysterious way vitalize and energize the whole physical mechanism of life, just so does the emotion of love vitalize and energize life itself. Life without love is conceivable, but it is life senescent.

  Then Don took out his notebook, and read us a quotation from Jung, which he characterized as a “rare bit in five hundred pages of rot!” Here it is:

  It is the incapacity to love which robs mankind of its possibilities. This world is empty to him alone who does not understand how to direct his desire towards objects and to render them alive and beautiful for himself for Beauty does not tend to lie in things, but in the feeling that we give to them.

  By some accident my eye fell upon Lillian Barton, and she, curiously enough, with her own eyes half hidden behind her hand—we were all seated in front of the big grate—was watching Mary Hale, who in her turn was staring with unwinking eyes into the fire. What did she see there? I wonder. I, too, have watched her many times, not from mere impertinent or idle curiosity, but because I like her and I like Verney very much, and because I see in them, or at any rate, I think I see, an unselfish love manifesting itself across insurmountable barriers. Her voice when she speaks to him contains a note of such unspeakable sweetness that his name is a caress, and his eyes, to anyone not entirely blind, are a trumpeting declaration of love! It is really one of the prettiest things I have ever witnessed.

  I suppose that if they two could express their feelings in the more obvious and ordinary ways, one might not observe this tense emotion compacted into the commonplace exchanges of social intercourse. At any rate, it is tremendously interesting to me, and I am very sorry for them both, somehow.

  On this same evening we had tea in the library-dining room at Barton’s, and during the stirring about after tea was over, Mary Hale and I happened to be seated side by side in front of the fire while the rest were still in the other room.

  “Don has been telling me how much he has enjoyed knowing you,” she said, looking at me with the utmost friendliness.

  “I appreciate the compliment,” I said with a modest bow. “I think I am very lucky to know him, and to find him so kind. After all, it is only people who are worthwhile—I mean, real people.”

  “I think you are both very lucky,” she said, again with that friendly look.

  As I am really very much pleased with Don, I launched out into a little eulogy of him, and I assure you I had a most sympathetic listener. Not only did she listen, but she asked a word or two in the right places. Then she asked me how I liked the Rhodeses, and I was properly enthusiastic. Altogether we had a nice time, and I was sorry when the coming in of the others interrupted our tête-à-tête.

  Before we left Miss Barton’s, Reese took me aside, and told me some interesting news. He has found out, through inquiries downtown, that my friend Jeffreys does function very largely not only in a so-called “private” gambling hell in Baltimore, but sometimes also in one of the well-known places connected with a big resort in the business section of that city. Reese’s informant says that Jeffreys is used often as a decoy to rope in a certain class of victims. This information puts me in an unenviable position. If I make use of it in the way that I should, if I were a son in the house, instead of a mere lodger, it might not be received in the spirit in which I should offer it; on the other hand, if I do not use it, and any unpleasant scandal should develop, all the Rhodeses would blame me, probably, for withholding it from them. And yet, when I simmer it all down, what I call “information” is, for the present at least, mere hearsay. If I actually knew these things at firsthand, I might feel constrained to act, however unpleasant the consequences might be.

  When I arrived home from Barton’s, it was early, and the usual Sunday crowd was present, as I noted through the windows of the basement dining room. I slipped upstairs quietly, thinking I might write one or two brief notes before turning in. Do you recall Scott Green, whom you knew as Lieutenant Green? He was on duty at St. Nazaire when we came through, and I procured us baths, and eats, and good beds on that most wretched night in the snow and mud. I know you’ll remember the bath, Buddie, if you don’t remember anything else! Well, this same chap is in Baltimore, and I met him here at a football game “on the hill”—that’s Washingtonese for “on the University campus.” He has been trying ever since to get me to come to Baltimore, and the other day I received an invitation in his name to a big dance in that burg on next Friday night. I thought it would be pleasant to go, but I should have to go alone, and probably come back by trolley the same night. So I decided to decline Green’s bid and I sat down and wrote him as nice a letter as I could, showing him “wherein and whereas.” I had just sealed the letter, addressed and stamped it, and laid it aside for mailing when here comes Caroline—her regular Sunday-evening stunt—but this time closely followed by Thomasine Dawson. I jumped up to receive them.

  “We didn’t know you were here. You must have sneaked upstairs in your stocking feet. You always feel so exclusive Sunday evenings that you don’t want to associate with the plain people. We should never have known you were in the house if Tommie had not insisted on coming up to my room to rouge her lips.”

  This was the basest of slanders, but it is Caroline’s little way with her friends, so Tommie smiled cheerfully, and I hastened to do the honors, as it was Miss Dawson’s first visit. Since the girls were both there, I brought up the matter of Thanksgiving arrangements, and we examined the little skylight room opening off the hall, and planned what we should do with it, Tommie agreeing to come over next Wednesda
y and help. Not that we needed her help, but is a really beautiful woman ever in the way?

  Then Caroline brought up a subject they had apparently been discussing below stairs. Said Caroline:

  “Godfather dear, don’t you think they ought to let me go to the dance Friday night in Baltimore?”

  “What dance?” I asked, pricking up my ears.

  She told me, and it was the same one the invitation to which I had just declined. My eyes involuntarily sought the letter lying on the table, but something told me to say nothing about it.

  “Who wants to take you?” I asked.

  “Jeff.”

  “What’s the objection?”

  “I can’t just make out. Mother does not want me to go on general principles, Genevieve says I don’t know who is going to be there, and Tommie does not approve of my company, though she won’t say so in so many words.”

  Tommie looked at me as if to read my thoughts, but I was quite noncommittal, for I realized I was on dangerous ground. Then she said, addressing her remarks to Caroline:

  “You know even you did not like his Baltimore friends the other night, and I certainly did not. How do you know that they, too, will not be at this party? Would you like to be forced to associate with them all evening?”

  Caroline looked stubborn. Finally, she said:

  “Well, I’ll give Jeff a chance to say about that first. But I am going, for I think all your reasons are silly.”

  And by the tone of the boyish voice, and the set of the very defiant little chin, I felt that she meant it.

  Realizing, as an old campaigner, that much may happen in five days, I did not unmask my batteries, but let the girls talk it out between them. Suddenly, I noticed my letter to Scott Green lying on the table. I picked it up and sat for a few moments looking at it reflectively. Then I tore it into little bits, while Caroline and Tommie looked at me in some perplexity.