Thus through the long months of his life in the City, Mr. John Wickliff Shawnessy—in his best Raintree County tradition—built a fictitious woman from a woman of flesh and blood named Laura Golden, who became, unknown to her, the subject of a play on the theme of love—love jealous, love tumultuous, love sensual and brooking no restraint.
For there was one thing he wanted in the City more even than fame and fortune. It was love. The City was this love.
The City was Miss Laura Golden posed in attitudes of fear, love, joy, rejection, loathing, horror, surprise. It was her swift body disappearing in the wings, the crashing of the curtain, her gracious encores, the kissing of her hand to voluptuous, noisy gentlemen in the boxes. It was the terrible power of the actress multiplied a hundredfold by the hundred costumes in which her graceful body was masked and a thousandfold by the thousand hushed faces that watched her from the darkened theatre.
But who this woman really was—except that she was the City and his dream of it—he couldn’t say. For who could follow the progress of this face through the twisted years? Who could follow it through many loves and many days back to its beginnings in the City? Who could describe the gray lights and seasons of the City, the old brown stridulous fabric of its days, the clamor of its streets and stunted words?
Mr. John Shawnessy saw little of Miss Laura Golden during the first year of his sojourn in the City, except in the theatres where she played. He was never one of those many bachelors with gold watchchains and greased mustaches who, like Mr. Cassius P. Carney, waited so often at the stage door of the Broadway Theatre with roses in their hands. He did meet her a few times at the Perfessor’s quarters, where, in the spring of 1877, a characteristic dialogue occurred between the two principal characters in Mr. John Wickliff Shawnessy’s own private drama of Sphinx Recumbent.
—Hello, Johnny. Where have you been? I haven’t seen you for weeks.
—I’ve been writing.
—But you can’t write all the time. What do you do for amusement?
—I take walks—over the nocturnal City.
—How thrilling! Alone, dear?
—Yes.
—I can’t understand it. Aren’t you interested in a woman?
—Well, yes. I am intensely preoccupied with a certain woman.
—How exciting! Tell me about her. Are you very much in love with her?
—I think about her all the time.
—How lucky she is! I’m positively jealous, dear!
—You needn’t be. She’s no more lovely than you.
—O, but I’m sure she is. Is she—an actress?
—How did you know?
—Just guessing. By the way, when do I get to see your play?
—When it’s finished.
—I’m very impatient, dear. You must show it to me the first of all. But I suppose you’ll show it to her first.
—I promise to show it to you first.
—You’re sweet. Johnny dear, will you do me a favor?
—Of course.
—Write me a letter on my tour.
—Where are you going?
—Out to your country—Ohio, Michigan, Nebraska, Idaho, California—I don’t know where all.
—I live in Indiana, dear.
—Well, that’s what I said, didn’t I? I’ll be gone three months.
—I’ll miss you, Laura.
—Dear, you’re such a terrible liar. How can you miss me when you never see me?
—It’s a talent that I have.
—Well, I shall miss you too, dear. So write to me, and I’ll read your dear letters just before I go to bed, dear, in my lonely little bed.
Her laughter conjured up a picture of a very unlonely little bed. When he took her home that night to her big brownstone mansion on Fifth Avenue, which he had never entered, his goodnight kiss fell on curved lips still laughing, though, to his surprise, Laura’s mouth twisted strangely at him just as he withdrew his lips. Or so he thought. But the door closed on her laughter, and he had the warm taste of her perfumed lips—deep, soft, and cruelly writhing—on his mouth. He lingered awhile just outside the parklike yard of her house until he saw a single yellow light go on behind closed curtains in a thirdfloor room. No doubt some luckier, lustier lover had been waiting there in her notorious bedroom. She had seemed in a hurry to say good night. It had been after all a very imperfect kiss.
Why was it then that this woman, who (according to an astute biographer of metropolitan decadence) had made a profession of the theatre and a pastime of love, seemed so invulnerable to the Gentleman from Indiana? Perhaps this distant, amused reserve was intended as a pungent sauce to the appetite of her lovers. As the Perfessor had once remarked, Every whore has her amenity of surrender.
As for John Shawnessy, he told himself that what he felt toward Laura Golden was surely not love (he wasn’t sure that he even liked her)—it was a species of intense curiosity, which had been transmitted to him with a vengeance by his old mentor. The pupil was simply making (as he had done before) more profound researches into a subject to which the Perfessor had devoted only a cursory inspection and a few brilliantly illuminating—though possibly erroneous—conjectures.
So he went home that night murmuring to himself, as he did so often in those days, the word ‘Laura.’
Laura. This name became his City—the City was this stately, sensual name of his gilded years. Laura.
Meanwhile in the gradual fashioning of his play, as he strove slowly toward a plausible and yet immensely novel climactic scene, he kept imagining how some night he himself would rise through the echoing chambers of the City and approach the door of that Forbidden Room, the City’s ultimate chamber. In the door would be the face that brooded over his whole sojourn in the City, moonluscious, with its twisted smile. Then he would follow the jade eyes and the beckoning hand within, and he would solve at last the secret of the City, know it to its inmost meaning, and the City would have yielded to his heroic, lone assault.
And so he lived his season in the City, waiting until his play should have its great Fifth Act or the City
CHEAT HIM OF THE CLIMAX AND AWAKEN HIM
WITH THE SOUND OF A
COLD
BELL CLANGING, the Eastbound Express thundered into Waycross Station, stopped, ejected from its long dark body an exceedingly rich man, and, bell clanging, resumed its way. Cassius P. Carney, the distinguished financier, carrying a grip and lipping a cigar, walked briskly up and shook hands with Mr. Shawnessy and the Perfessor.
—Hello, boys, he said, unsmiling, his brown eyes burning somberly, one delicate quick hand stroking his trim ball of beard, the other plucking the cigar from his mouth.
—Where’s Laura? the Perfessor said.
—Didn’t want to come through with me, Cash said. I can only stop off an hour. I’ve arranged to be picked up by the next train through. Got to get to Pittsburgh.
His eyes were probing the town, the Station, and the grain elevator beside the tracks.
—I’ll be damned, he said. Is this where you been spending your life, John? I didn’t know they built towns this small any more.
The remark seemed without humor, made as a practical observation.
—We’ve just had a big time here, Mr. Shawnessy said. Garwood pulled out on the Westbound just a few minutes ago. He must have passed you at Roiville.
—I wanted to see the Senator, Cash said, but it can wait. If you boys don’t mind, I’ll just sit down here in the Station and chat with you until the next train along.
—My wife and I would like to have you stay all night, Cash, if—
—No chance, Cash said. There’s a hell of a situation shaping up in Pittsburgh, and a lot of my interests are involved. I got to get over there and look into it.
Cash sat down on the bench, flanked by Mr. Shawnessy and the Perfessor. He took off his derby and fanned his face with it.
Mr. Shawnessy had a feeling of unimportance. Around Cash Carney, he always felt like a little
waystation between two really big terminals. Cash looked out of place sitting in Waycross Station. Even now, there clung to him the aroma and strangeness of the linked, thundering coaches from which he had just descended. Senator Garwood B. Jones, the eternal Dan Populus, the Man of the People, had a foot in two worlds, but Cash had gone over so entirely to his one world of big deals and big business that he seemed a bloodless abstraction. His face had not so much aged as yellowed. His nervous hands palping the big cigar, his face, the thin sheet of his oiled hair, even his eyeballs were yellow. Mr. Shawnessy had the feeling that the whole man—derby, cigar, black suit, shirt, tie stud, gartered socks, black conventional shoes with shiny toes, gold watch, massive signet ring—had all been dipped at once into a solution that preserved but discolored.
And the whole world in which the man moved was stained with that tincture of the gilded years. It was a world shut in, a world of rooms in cities, opulent interiors, lobbies in hotels where brass cuspidors squatted like obscene gods, banquet halls filled with fat men choking on rich foods and dirty jokes, depots whose walls were darkened with the sooty breath of trains, office buildings, stock exchanges, banks that saw the world through myopic windows lettered with gilded names and gilded legends, houses that were not houses, but mansions—great cages of iron and stone, diseased lumps of rusty architecture, nightmarish agglomerations of lightless windows and unlofty towers. And everywhere there was the smell of smoke—cigarsmoke, trainsmoke, factorysmoke. And all these interiors were foursquare, squat, thickrinded, and reptilian.
—Let me see, John, Cash was saying, last time I saw you was just before you left New York in ’77. I think I remember the very night—the night Laura threw the Grand Ball, and I couldn’t stay because of the Strike. Correct?
—Correct.
The Perfessor hummed softly and smiled a bland smile.
—Those were busy days, Cash said. But no worse than now. Those Bastards are getting ideas again.
—You mean, the Perfessor said, you’re expecting real trouble there at the Homestead Mill?
—Got it already, Cash said. I got word a couple days ago that an ugly situation is developing there. Of course we don’t want that stuff to spread. Those Bastards have a tendency to stick together.
—What’re they striking for this time? Mr. Shawnessy said.
—We had to cut their wage, Cash said. It’s the times. Threatens to be the worst thing since ’17, according to my private information. After all, imagine a shutdown in the steel industry! Imagine, for Christ’s sake, the men who make steel, all these wops getting into their heads they don’t want to make steel except on their own terms! Do you fellas realize that this nation is built on steel? If you pulled the steel out of it, it would fall to pieces like a house of cards. It isn’t just a question of one factory or one city. This thing could get really big. But we don’t aim to let it get out of hand. I’ve exchanged telegrams with Pittsburgh, and we’re moving in a whole army of Pinkertons, if things look ugly.
—Of course, it’s not to your interest to let it flare up into open warfare, is it? the Perfessor asked.
—Depends, Cash said. When they start shooting, it always antagonizes the public, and we can send the troops in to put it down. The biggest trouble is that the Populist Party is dragging it into the realm of politics. By the way, what does Garwood think about the Election chances? How much strength do the Populists have?
—The Man of the People is afraid of the People, Mr. Shawnessy said.
—And well he may be, Cash said. I don’t know whether you fellas have changed your notions any since the last time I talked with you, but I wonder if you know what’s happening to this country?
Cassius P. Carney took the cigar out of his mouth, sat briskly erect, placing one hand, fingers neatly folded under, on the knife-edge of his knee, and with the other hand began to wave his cigar.
—This country, he said, has grown great, strong, and rich on the principle of Free Enterprise. We’ve had the land, the means, the brains, the generosity to welcome and absorb the peoples of the earth. But, boys, it can’t go on forever. Do you know why? It’s simple. Because we’ve run out of land.
Mr. Shawnessy looked up and down the track, quiet from its recurrent thunders. Was it possible then to run out of America?
—Yes, sir, boys, we’ve run out of land at last. God knows, some of us got our share of it.
Cash smiled for the first time since he had landed in the Station—a nervous, almost lecherous smile.
—Yep, the Government don’t give it away anymore. Now, it used to be that when the laborer didn’t like his job, he couldn’t crab about it because there was always that hundred and sixty acres of black stuff waiting for him out in the Golden West. But all that’s over now. And here we are, with the immigrants still pouring into this country and looking for work. The cities are alive and stinking with ’em right now, and still they come. These people are willing to work at any wage, and we’ve still got the work for ’em. But that don’t mean we can give ’em all a house on Fifth Avenue, a lot of gilt-edged securities, and a family vault. Hell, no, we can barely make room for ’em at the current wage, what with the country going hellbent toward another panic. And yet Those Bastards blame us for holding down their wages. Let ’em blame each other. Let ’em blame the Law of Supply and Demand. Let ’em blame the Constitution of the United States, which protects the right of an American citizen to own his business and run it as he sees fit.
—Cash, Mr. Shawnessy said, those people are Americans too, and they have a right to a decent living in this big country.
—Of course they do, John, Cash said. You don’t need to go and get idealistic on me, son. I love this country and believe in her as much as you do. Every dollar I spend is a bet on the future of America. I always play America as a bull market. And incidentally I’ve done more for Those Bastards than practically any man living. How many of your social reformers and labor-leaders have given even fifty dollars of their dirty money to help out the cause of the poor and needy? Do you fellas want to know something? Last week, I delivered to the Society for the Independent Relief of Indigent Children a check for exactly one hundred thousand dollars. One hundred thousand dollars! Let’s see some of these anarchists and communists tie that.
—Guilt money, Mr. Shawnessy said. You’re just bribing them, Cash. That money’s in the same category with the money that keeps Garwood winning in a Populist stronghold. Put it on the campaign fund. Write it off to expenses for running the business.
—Money, Cash said, belongs to the man who knows how to use it. Money has to be on the move. If you went and distributed the money in this country equally, the money would stand still, and everything else would stand still. Money makes money, not just for the capitalist, but for everybody. That’s the American secret as I see it. Keep capital fluid and in the hands of men who are willing to take risks and who don’t have their hands tied. Hell, there’s no limit to what we can do in this country if we don’t get our hands tied by the kind of legislation the Populists are yelling for.
—Nevertheless, Mr. Shawnessy said, here are a lot of people who are eager to work, who have big families, who are honest citizens of the Republic, and yet they don’t have decent homes or enough to eat. How do you propose to remedy this situation?
—Who ever said you could remedy the situation? Cash Carney said. To be perfectly frank, it’s a situation that never has had a solution, because there isn’t any solution. We’ve come closer in America than anywhere else.
—There you are, John, the Perfessor said. Malthus and Darwin were right: there are too many Americans. There are too many bugs in the swamp. Some of them will just have to die for the race. Life’s a great cannibal.
—But, Mr. Shawnessy said, America’s going to get bigger and bigger. If we have troubles like these now, what will it be in fifty years? Is it merely an idle dream, then, to suppose that the Machine, instead of manufacturing more trouble for the human race, might manufacture mor
e leisure, more food, more happiness for more people?
—Put this Machine in the hands of the State, the Perfessor said, sitting up suddenly and waving his cane. Take it away from the control of private individuals like our friend Carney here, and let it work for the best interests of all.
—By God, that’s Communism, Perfessor! Cash said.
—By God, you’re right! the Perfessor said. And like it or not, gentlemen, that’s what we’re coming to. I say it without a particle of personal concern, because I frankly don’t give a hoot myself. But Marx was right. The bourgeois culture contains the seeds of its own destruction. The Many will some day be more powerful than the Few, just because they are the Many. The Proletariat will some day have a Plan and a Planner, and then God help that little band of rich men who have nothing but fluid resources to stop the flood.
—That day, Cassius Carney said, if and when it comes, will be the end of the American Republic. I hope I won’t be alive to see it.
—That Day will come! the Perfessor said. In Economics as in everything else, Mass and Vitality prevail. Can’t you see it coming yourself? Freedom, friends—freedom and democratic institutions—were manufactured by happy gentlemen with prosperous acres and contented slaves on the fringe of a wilderness. They and our tradition of rugged individualism, our capitalists, our log-cabin presidents, our millionaire paperboys—all belong not only to the youth of America but also to the youth of the human race. Americans are the frontiersmen of history, and America is running out of frontier. As Cash says, the times are changing. In America history has been speeded up. Wealth and all the power and prestige that go with it have flowed into huge concentrations in the hands of a few individuals. Industrial empires own whole towns, railroad systems, States, and—yes—the Senate of the United States. In a sense a few great combines may be said to own the country. But they own it how? By the remarkable acquiescence of the people they exploit. In creating these empires of wealth and power, our Capitalists have created the instruments of their own destruction. Behold, the day is almost at hand! When several million men suddenly awaken to find that they are forging with their toil the chains that bind them, when, I say, that historic moment arrives, they will find also that they have in their hands the simple means of emancipation. Then will come, gentlemen, the Great Confiscation! For the workers will say, These machines belong to us because we are the people who work them. Then it will also occur to them to say, We are the Government. That, friends, will be the end of our free and easy, hell-for-leather, capitalistic democracy, and the Revolution will be here!
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