One Basket

by Edna Ferber

  The next time it was Stell who saw them. In a restaurant. She said it spoiled her evening. And the third time it was Ethel. She was one of the guests at a theater party given by Nicky Overton II. The North Shore Overtons. Lake Forest. They came in late, and occupied the entire third row at the opening performance of Believe Me! And Ethel was Nicky’s partner. She was glowing like a rose. When the lights went up after the first act Ethel saw that her uncle Jo was seated just ahead of her with what she afterward described as a blonde. Then her uncle had turned around, and seeing her, had been surprised into a smile that spread genially all over his plump and rubicund face. Then he had turned to face forward again, quickly.

  “Who’s the old bird?” Nicky had asked. Ethel had pretended not to hear, so he had asked again.

  “My uncle,” Ethel answered, and flushed all over her delicate face, and down to her throat. Nicky had looked at the blonde, and his eyebrows had gone up ever so slightly.

  It spoiled Ethel’s evening. More than that, as she told her mother of it later, weeping, she declared it had spoiled her life.

  Eva talked it over with her husband in that intimate hour that precedes bedtime. She gesticulated heatedly with her hairbrush.

  “It’s disgusting, that’s what it is. Perfectly disgusting. There’s no fool like an old fool. Imagine! A creature like that. At his time of life.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Ben said, and even grinned a little. “I suppose a boy’s got to sow his wild oats sometime.”

  “Don’t be any more vulgar than you can help,” Eva retorted. “And I think you know, as well as I, what it means to have that Overton boy interested in Ethel.”

  “If he’s interested in her,” Ben blundered, “I guess the fact that Ethel’s uncle went to the theater with someone who isn’t Ethel’s aunt won’t cause a shudder to run up and down his frail young frame, will it?”

  “All right,” Eva had retorted. “If you’re not man enough to stop it, I’ll have to, that’s all. I’m going up there with Stell this week.”

  They did not notify Jo of their coming. Eva telephoned his apartment when she knew he would be out, and asked his man if he expected his master home to dinner that evening. The man had said yes. Eva arranged to meet Stell in town. They would drive to Jo’s apartment together, and wait for him there.

  When she reached the city Eva found turmoil there. The first of the American troops to be sent to France were leaving. Michigan Boulevard was a billowing, surging mass: flags, pennants, banners, crowds. All the elements that make for demonstration. And over the whole-quiet. No holiday crowd, this. A solid, determined mass of people waiting patient hours to see the khaki-clads go by. Three years had brought them to a clear knowledge of what these boys were going to.

  “Isn’t it dreadful!” Stell gasped.

  “Nicky Overton’s too young, thank goodness.”

  Their car was caught in the jam. When they moved at all, it was by inches. When at last they reached Jo’s apartment they were flushed, nervous, apprehensive. But he had not yet come in. So they waited.

  No, they were not staying to dinner with their brother, they told the relieved houseman.

  Stell and Eva, sunk in rose-colored cushions, viewed the place with disgust and some mirth. They rather avoided each other’s eyes.

  “Carrie ought to be here,” Eva said. They both smiled at the thought of the austere Carrie in the midst of those rosy cushions, and hangings, and lamps. Stell rose and began to walk about restlessly. She picked up a vase and laid it down; straightened a picture. Eva got up, too, and wandered into the hall. She stood there a moment, listening. Then she turned and passed into Jo’s bedroom, Stell following. And there you knew Jo for what he was.

  This room was as bare as the other had been ornate. It was Jo, the clean-minded and simplehearted, in revolt against the cloying luxury with which he had surrounded himself. The bedroom, of all rooms in any house, reflects the personality of its occupant. True, the actual furniture was paneled, cupid-surmounted, and ridiculous. It had been the fruit of Jo’s first orgy of the senses. But now it stood out in that stark little room with an air as incongruous and ashamed as that of a pink tarlatan danseuse who finds herself in a monk’s cell. None of those wall pictures with which bachelor bedrooms are reputed to be hung. No satin slippers. No scented notes. Two plain-backed military brushes on the chiffonier (and he so nearly hairless!). A little orderly stack of books on the table near the bed. Eva fingered their titles and gave a little gasp. One of them was on gardening.

  “Well, of all things!” exclaimed Stell. A book on the war, by an Englishman. A detective story of the lurid type that lulls us to sleep. His shoes ranged in a careful row in the closet, with a shoe tree in every one of them. There was something speaking about them. They looked so human. Eva shut the door on them quickly. Some bottles on the dresser. A jar of pomade. An ointment such as a man uses who is growing bald and is panic-stricken too late. An insurance calendar on the wall. Some rhubarb-and- soda mixture on the shelf in the bathroom, and a little box of pepsin tablets.

  “Eats all kinds of things at all hours of the night,” Eva said, and wandered out into the rose-colored front room again with the air of one who is chagrined at her failure to find what she has sought. Stell followed her furtively.

  “Where do you suppose he can be?” she demanded. “It’s”—she glanced at her wrist—“why, it’s after six!”

  And then there was a little click. The two women sat up, tense. The door opened. Jo came in. He blinked a little. The two women in the rosy room stood up.

  “Why—Eve! Why, Babe! Well! Why didn’t you let me know?”

  “We were just about to leave. We thought you weren’t coming home.”

  Jo came in slowly.

  “I was in the jam on Michigan, watching the boys go by.” He sat down, heavily. The light from the window fell on him. And you saw that his eyes were red.

  He had found himself one of the thousands in the jam on Michigan Avenue, as he said. He had a place near the curb, where his big frame shut off the view of the unfortunates behind him. He waited with the placid interest of one who has subscribed to all the funds and societies to which a prosperous, middle-aged businessman is called upon to subscribe in war-time. Then, just as he was about to leave, impatient at the delay, the crowd had cried, with a queer, dramatic, exultant note in its voice, “Here they come! Here come the boys!”

  Just at that moment two little, futile, frenzied fists began to beat a mad tattoo on Jo Hertz’s broad back. Jo tried to turn in the crowd, all indignant resentment. “Say, looka here!”

  The little fists kept up their frantic beating and pushing. And a voice—a choked, high little voice—cried, “Let me by! I can’t see! You MAN, you! You big fat man! My boy’s going by—to war—and I can’t see! Let me by!”

  Jo scrooged around, still keeping his place. He looked down. And upturned to him in agonized appeal was the face of Emily. They stared at each other for what seemed a long, long time. It was really only the fraction of a second. Then Jo put one great arm firmly around Emily’s waist and swung her around in front of him. His great bulk protected her. Emily was clinging to his hand. She was breathing rapidly, as if she had been running. Her eyes were straining up the street.

  “Why, Emily, how in the world–-!”

  “I ran away. Fred didn’t want me to come. He said it would excite me too much.”

  “Fred?”

  “My husband. He made me promise to say good-by to Jo at home.”

  “Jo?”

  “Jo’s my boy. And he’s going to war. So I ran away. I had to see him. I had to see him go.”

  She was dry-eyed. Her gaze was straining up the street.

  “Why, sure,” said Jo. “Of course you want to see him.” And then the crowd gave a great roar. There came over Jo a feeling of weakness. He was trembling. The boys went marching by.

  “There he is,” Emily shrilled, above the din. “There he is! There he is! There he–-”
And waved a futile little hand. It wasn’t so much a wave as a clutching. A clutching after something beyond her reach.

  “Which one? Which one, Emily?”

  “The handsome one. The handsome one.” Her voice quavered and died.

  Jo put a steady hand on her shoulder. “Point him out,” he commanded “Show me.” And the next instant, “Never mind. I see him.”

  Somehow, miraculously, he had picked him from among the hundreds. Had picked him as surely as his own father might have. It was Emily’s boy. He was marching by, rather stiffly. He was nineteen, and fun-loving, and he had a girl, and he didn’t particularly want to go to France and—to go to France. But more than he had hated going, he had hated not to go. So he marched by, looking straight ahead, his jaw set so that his chin stuck out just a little. Emily’s boy.

  Jo looked at him, and his face flushed purple. His eyes, the hard-boiled eyes of a Loop-hound, took on the look of a sad old man. And suddenly he was no longer Jo, the sport; old J. Hertz, the gay dog. He was Jo Hertz, thirty, in love with life, in love with Emily, and with the stinging blood of young manhood coursing through his veins.

  Another minute and the boy had passed on up the broad street—the fine, flag-bedecked street—just one of a hundred service hats bobbing in rhythmic motion like sandy waves lapping a shore and flowing on.

  Then he disappeared altogether.

  Emily was clinging to Jo. She was mumbling something, over and over. “I can’t. I can’t. Don’t ask me to. I can’t let him go.

  Like that. I can’t.”

  Jo said a queer thing.

  “Why, Emily! We wouldn’t have him stay home, would we? We wouldn’t want him to do anything different, would we? Not our boy. I’m glad he enlisted. I’m proud of him. So are you glad.”

  Little by little he quieted her. He took her to the car that was waiting, a worried chauffeur in charge. They said good-by, awkwardly. Emily’s face was a red, swollen mass.

  So it was that when Jo entered his own hallway half an hour later he blinked, dazedly, and when the light from the window fell on him you saw that his eyes were red.

  Eva was not one to beat about the bush. She sat forward in her chair, clutching her bag rather nervously.

  “Now, look here, Jo. Stell and I are here for a reason. We’re here to tell you that this thing’s going to stop.”

  “Thing? Stop?”

  “You know very well what I mean. You saw me at the milliner’s that day. And night before last, Ethel. We’re all disgusted. If you must go about with people like that, please have some sense of decency.”

  Something gathering in Jo’s face should have warned her. But he was slumped down in his chair in such a huddle, and he looked so old and fat that she did not heed it. She went on. “You’ve got us to consider. Your sisters. And your nieces. Not to speak of your own–-“

  But he got to his feet then, shaking, and at what she saw in his face even Eva faltered and stopped. It wasn’t at all the face of a fat, middle-aged sport. It was a face Jovian, terrible.

  “You!” he began, low-voiced, ominous. “You!” He raised a great fist high. “You two murderers! You didn’t consider me, twenty years ago. You come to me with talk like that. Where’s my boy! You killed him, you two, twenty years ago. And now he belongs to somebody else. Where’s my son that should have gone marching by today?” He flung his arms out in a great gesture of longing. The red veins stood out on his forehead. “Where’s my son! Answer me that, you two selfish, miserable women. Where’s my son!” Then, as they huddled together, frightened, wild-eyed.

  “Out of my house! Out of my house! Before I hurt you!”

  They fled, terrified. The door banged behind them.

  Jo stood, shaking, in the center of the room. Then he reached for a chair, gropingly, and sat down. He passed one moist, flabby hand over his forehead and it came away wet. The telephone rang. He sat still. It sounded far away and unimportant, like something forgotten. But it rang and rang insistently. Jo liked to answer his telephone when he was at home.

  “Hello!” He knew instantly the voice at the other end.

  “That you, Jo?” it said.

  “Yes.”

  “How’s my boy?”

  “I’m—all right.”

  “Listen, Jo. The crowd’s coming over tonight. I’ve fixed up a little poker game for you. Just eight of us.”

  “I can’t come tonight, Gert.”

  “Can’t! Why not?”

  “I’m not feeling so good.”

  “You just said you were all right.”

  “I AM all right. Just kind of tired.”

  The voice took on a cooing note. “Is my Joey tired? Then he shall be all comfy on the sofa, and he doesn’t need to play if he don’t want to. No, sir.”

  Jo stood staring at the black mouthpiece of the telephone. He was seeing a procession go marching by. Boys, hundreds of boys, in khaki.

  “Hello! Hello!” The voice took on an anxious note. “Are you there?”

  “Yes,” wearily.

  “Jo, there’s something the matter. You’re sick. I’m coming right over.”

  “No!” “Why not? You sound as if you’d been sleeping. Look here–-“

  “Leave me alone!” cried Jo, suddenly, and the receiver clacked onto the hook. “Leave me alone. Leave me alone.” Long after the connection had been broken.

  He stood staring at the instrument with unseeing eyes. Then he turned and walked into the front room. All the light had gone out of it. Dusk had come on. All the light had gone out of everything. The zest had gone out of life. The game was over—the game he had been playing against loneliness and disappointment. And he was just a tired old man. A lonely, tired old man in a ridiculous rose-colored room that had grown, all of a sudden, drab {sic}

  That’s Marriage [1917]

  Theresa Platt (she had been Terry Sheehan) watched her husband across the breakfast table with eyes that smoldered. But Orville Platt was quite unaware of any smoldering in progress. He was occupied with his eggs. How could he know that these very eggs were feeding the dull red menace in Terry Platt’s eyes?

  When Orville Platt ate a soft-boiled egg he concentrated on it. He treated it as a great adventure. Which, after all, it is. Few adjuncts of our daily life contain the element of chance that is to be found in a three-minute breakfast egg.

  This was Orville Platt’s method of attack: first, he chipped off the top, neatly. Then he bent forward and subjected it to a passionate and relentless scrutiny. Straightening—preparatory to plunging his spoon therein—he flapped his right elbow. It wasn’t exactly a flap; it was a pass between a hitch and a flap, and presented external evidence of a mental state. Orville Platt always gave that little preliminary jerk when he was contemplating a serious step, or when he was moved, or argumentative. It was a trick as innocent as it was maddening.

  Terry Platt had learned to look for that flap—they had been married four years—to look for it, and to hate it with a morbid, unreasoning hate. That flap of the elbow was tearing Terry Platt’s nerves into raw, bleeding fragments.

  Her fingers were clenched tightly under the table, now. She was breathing unevenly. “If he does that again,” she told herself, “if he flaps again when he opens the second egg, I’ll scream. I’ll scream. I’ll scream! I’ll sc–-“

  He had scooped the first egg into his cup. Now he picked up the second, chipped it, concentrated, straightened, then—up went the elbow, and down, with the accustomed little flap.

  The tortured nerves snapped. Through the early-morning quiet of Wetona, Wisconsin, hurtled the shrill, piercing shriek of Terry Platt’s hysteria.

  “Terry! For God’s sake! What’s the matter!”

  Orville Platt dropped the second egg, and his spoon. The egg yolk trickled down his plate. The spoon made a clatter and flung a gay spot of yellow on the cloth. He started toward her.

  Terry, wild-eyed, pointed a shaking finger at him. She was laughing, now, uncontrollably. “Your elbow!
Your elbow!”

  “Elbow?” He looked down at it, bewildered, then up, fright in his face. “What’s the matter with it?”

  She mopped her eyes. Sobs shook her. “You f-f-flapped it.”

  “F-f-f–-” The bewilderment in Orville Platt’s face gave way to anger. “Do you mean to tell me that you screeched like that because my—because I moved my elbow?”

  “Yes.”

  His anger deepened and reddened to fury. He choked. He had started from his chair with his napkin in his hand. He still clutched it. Now he crumpled it into a wad and hurled it to the center of the table, where it struck a sugar bowl, dropped back, and uncrumpled slowly, reprovingly. “You—you–-” Then bewilderment closed down again like a fog over his countenance. “But why? I can’t see–-“

  “Because it—because I can’t stand it any longer. Flapping. This is what you do. Like this.”

  And she did it. Did it with insulting fidelity, being a clever mimic.

  “Well, all I can say is you’re crazy, yelling like that, for nothing.”

  “It isn’t nothing.”

  “Isn’t, huh? If that isn’t nothing, what is?” They were growing incoherent. “What d’you mean, screeching like a maniac?

  Like a wild woman? The neighbors’ll think I’ve killed you. What d’you mean, anyway!”

  “I mean I’m tired of watching it, that’s what. Sick and tired.”

  “Y’are, huh? Well, young lady, just let me tell YOU something–-“

  He told her. There followed one of those incredible quarrels, as sickening as they are human, which can take place only between two people who love each other; who love each other so well that each knows with cruel certainty the surest way to wound the other; and who stab, and tear, and claw at these vulnerable spots in exact proportion to their love.

  Ugly words. Bitter words. Words that neither knew they knew flew between them like sparks between steel striking steel.

  From him: “Trouble with you is you haven’t got enough to do. That’s the trouble with half you women. Just lay around the house, rotting. I’m a fool, slaving on the road to keep a good-for-nothing–-“