“Why, I can remember when—”
But the man from Duluth interrupted these tales. “Oh, I’ve no doubt it was all very great,” said he, “but what are we going to do now? That’s the point.”
The five men stood on a street corner and reflected. Occasionally the visitor from the West prodded the others with accounts of the splendors of life in his country, and poked at them comments upon their slumbrous environment.
“It’s dead slow,” he told them, “dead slow. I’ll never come East again expecting to play horse. I’ll do my flying in Chicago. You fellows have all been turned down. You’re buried. Come out and see me in Chicago and I’ll show you real dives with electric lights out in front, and whole neighborhoods that get drunk by half-past three in the afternoon.”
The others were eager to explain. “Well, you see, we—”
“Oh, I know you can still have fun in New York if you are a nervy spender,” interrupted the man from Duluth; “but I guess you could do that in Mecca or Jerusalem, too. That’s no sign of a red-hot town. It’s the sign of a dead-slow town.”
He stared severely at the New York men. They cast down their eyes and pondered in mournful silence.
At last one man suddenly spoke. He wore an air of having arrived at the only real golden suggestion. “Well, let’s go and get a drink, anyhow.” It was said with great vigor.
The party aroused at this. “All right, come ahead.” “Where’ll we go?” “Oh, anywhere; what’s the matter with the little French concert hall?” “All right, come ahead.”
Led by one, they paraded down the avenue. They were presently among the criss-cross streets of Greenwich. The river was in sight before they halted. Once the silence of their tongues had been broken by the voice of the man from Duluth: “This is a derned long ways to go for a drink.”
The man who was in advance conducted the party up the steps of a private house. He rang the bell, and the door presently was opened a little way. A woman’s head was thrust out warily. She exclaimed in French when she discovered the size of the band of invaders. She was about to slam the door, but two or three of the men burst forth in very bad but voluble French.
There was a rapid parley. The man from Duluth edged forward. If it came to the worst, he could put his foot where it would prevent the door from closing.
The conductor of the party was a painter who had studied in France. He volleyed prayers and entreaties in a way that he learned in that country. Presently the woman let them in quickly and then banged the door upon the form of some stranger who had tried to insinuate himself inside.
They passed down a mutilated hallway. In the rear of the house, where no doubt had once been kitchens and dining room, there was now a little hall. A gallery occupied one end; at the other there was a tiny stage. There was a scenic arrangement in the form of papier-mâché rocks and boulders. They looked indescribably dusty.
The ceiling was high; in it some little transoms were turned to let in the night air. At the tables that filled the floor space sat two score people babbling French. The polish of the surface of these tables had been worn away in spots by the contact of countless beer and wine glasses. There was an air of dilapidation in the room that imparted itself even to the waiters and to the youth over in the corner who thrummed the piano.
But with it all there was in the atmosphere, enwrapped, it may be, in thick clouds of cigarette smoke that hung and hovered overhead, the irresistible spirit of French carelessness. It was an angel that had flown over seas. There was the presence of a memory of Paris. Everything remained local save the thoughts; these were fleeting, reminiscent. There was something retrospective in the very way the men pounded tables with their glasses, the while humming in chorus with the clattering piano. It was a gayety that was inherited, and it recalled in a way that was meager and sad the mother of it—Paris.
And one then could instantly see that little did it matter here if there were dust and suggestions of cobwebs, nor if the linen generally of the company was soiled, nor if the waiter who brought the wine had stains on his apron and only one eye. In blessed security from these things dwelt this assemblage. The environment was made rose-hued by the laughter of girls; the color of wine was a weapon with which to defy cobwebs and dust stains and spots; whole legions of one-eyed waiters would fail to dampen the ardor of these existences.
Three men sat near the youth who played on the piano. At intervals one of them would arise, vanish for a moment in the bosom of the paper mountains, and then suddenly appear upon the little stage. They relieved each other with the regularity of sentries, and sang from the inexhaustible store of French comic songs. One was wretched, one was fair, and one was an artist. Even the man from Duluth, who comprehended less of French than he did of Sanscrit, enjoyed this latter performer. It is not always necessary to understand a language; sometimes one can be glad that he does not. But the man from Duluth reveled in the songs of him who was an artist. There were eloquent gestures and glances of the eyes that were full symbols. The man from Duluth was ignorant of details; that at which he grinned and giggled was the universal part. Good art of this kind cannot be confined to a language; there is something absorbingly intelligent to the thinking Zulu in the exhibition of a master of it.
One could wonder what he of the eloquent hands was paid Probably he received the merest trifle. Some French customs are transported in completeness to certain portions of New York, and perhaps in France emotions are cheap. It is usually in the colder countries that publics pay fabulous prices for good emotions.
But the man from Duluth was not always satisfied with the universal part of art. When the audience would suddenly laugh he would lean forward and demand translation from the painter who had studied in France. The latter politely struggled with the difficulties of the task, but usually he failed.
“Say, what was that—what did he say then?” demanded once the man from Duluth.
“Oh—er—well,” the painter replied. “Er—well—you see—he was going along the street with three chickens in a basket—and then—er—he, you know—he looked up at a window—and there was a girl in the window, you know—and he looked up at her and kissed his hand, and he said, ‘Good-day, sweetheart’—and then he—he was walking backward when he said that—‘Good-day, sweetheart’—and then, you know, he didn’t see where he was going—and he—he fell down and the chickens got away—and flew up to this girl’s window, you know—and he began to—to yell at her, ‘Oh, I say, sweetheart, return to me my chickens’—and she laughed at him, and then he said—he said—oh, I don’t know what he said. It’s funny in French, but it don’t sound funny in English—I couldn’t make you understand.”
The man from Duluth seemed strangely puzzled.
Also, later in the evening, he began to grow weary of even the artistic performer. “Say,” he demanded, “don’t they ever have girls here that sing?” Every one hastened to explain to him: “Well, you know, it’s Sunday night—”
However, at frequent intervals after this time he would burst forth: “Say, this is pretty slow, ain’t it?” “Ain’t this slow, hey?” “Good Gawd, this is slow!”
“They always have a dance afterward—perhaps you will like that better,” somebody said, to comfort him.
Presently, indeed, the performers ceased to pop out from behind the paper rocks. The one-eyed waiter and his fellows made a clear space by dragging away chairs and tables and stacking them in an end of the room. Then the young man at the piano suddenly attacked his instrument, and the ball began. Couples emerged from all portions of the hall to go whirling about in reckless fashion. There was nothing uniform or sedate. It was all emotional. Each couple danced according to moods. Some went solemnly, some affectionately, and at all times; a man would swirl his partner about the floor with a mad speed that would threaten to send her head flying. They were having lots of fun; almost every one was laughing.
“It’s dead slow,” said the man from Duluth.
Then, suddenl
y, in the middle of the floor there was a fight. The music stopped with a shrill crash; the dancers scurried out of the way. The atmosphere of the place became instantly tense, ominous, battleful. A woman shrieked; another threw her hand up to her throat, as if feeling an agony of strangulation. The man from Duluth stood on a chair.
Two furious men had dropped from the ceiling, or come up through the floor or from somewhere. They appeared suddenly, like apparitions, in the very center of the hall. It was all as quick as an explosion. There had been peace and jollity; in a flash it was changed to lurid war. Violent, red-faced, swift of motion, they were hammering at each other with their fists, and lunging with their feet in the manner of French infantry soldiers. Their eyes flashed tragic hatred. There was prodigal expenditure of the most vast and extraordinary emotions. The blows were delivered with the energy of mad murder. In that instant of silence that followed the first shrieks and exclamations of the women one could hear their breaths come quick and harsh from between their clenched teeth.
But the men were about eight feet apart from each other. Their savage fists cut harmlessly through the air; the terrific deadly lunges of their feet were mere demonstrations of some kind. The man from Duluth climbed down from his chair. “They’re a pair of birds,” he said with supreme contempt. He regarded them with eyes of reproach. Apparently he considered that they had swindled him out of something, and he was much injured.
The vivid picture was blurred in a few seconds. Everybody had been frozen for a minute; then all rushed forward. Friends of both parties took flying leaps to avert a dreadful tragedy. The floor became a surge of men, tussling, tugging, and gesticulating in tremendous excitement. The principals in the affair were dragged this way and that way. There arose a wild clamor of explanation, condemnation, and reiteration.
The women, left without escorts, stood trying to look in other directions. Some shuddered with fear; some incessantly tapped the floor with the tips of their boots. They turned to each other with little nervous remarks. And over at a table directly opposite the battle sat the man from Duluth and his friends, silent, motionless, absorbed, grinning with wild, strange glee.
It was impossible to look upon the jumble of men, emotions, and swift French oaths without expecting some sort of a deadly riot. There was an impending horror. Men, frenzied with rage, gestured in each other’s faces, the quivering fingers threatened eyes. The lightning-blooded spirit of battle hovered over the swaying crowd. The man from Duluth and his friends were carven with interest. There was a great fight coming, and they were on the spot.
But the crowd finally finished their explanations, their condemnations, and their reiterations. Their fury expended itself in the air; the flaming words and gestures had absorbed the energy for war. Generally the men went back to their female friends. Their collars were wilted, from the grandeur of their emotions perhaps, but they had expressed themselves, and they were satisfied. Only a little mob of five or six people was left upon the scene. They still gestured and roared at each other.
“Oh, what a fake!” said the disgusted man from Duluth. “A great big fight in which nobody hits anybody else. It gives me a pain.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched out his legs. He thrust his hands into his pockets and stared calmly, contemptuously, and with incredible insolence at the agitated group before him. “What a husky lot of willies!” Gradually he assumed a demeanor of the greatest importance and prowess. He sneered boldly and obviously at the wrangle. “Holy smoke! I could whip about eight hundred pounds of ’em.” He was getting just a little bit drunk.
Downstairs from the gallery at that moment came a little, fat, tipsy Frenchman who was fated to play a great part. Evidently he was aware that there had been a difficulty, and he decided, of course, that with his peculiarly lucid intellect he could go over and straighten the whole thing. So he tottered uncertainly to the crowd, and, wedging his fat body among the gesticulators, he began to argue and explain in a slow, aimless, drunken fashion. No one paid attention to him at first, but it was not long before he had inaugurated an entirely new turmoil. He got one of the principals by the lapel and began another slow, distant harangue. This impassioned individual jerked away and swore in intense French.
Then came again the red apparition of war. There were renewed jostlings, gestures, oaths. Another tragedy impended, perhaps, but the man from Duluth stretched himself and said, “Oh, Gawd,” in a tone from the profound and absolute depth of scorn.
Suddenly a woman came toward the crowd. Her hands were outstretched like the claws of an eagle. There was an unspeakable rage in her face, but her high and quavering voice held a burden of tears. “Ah, I kin lick you meself,” she cried, with an accent that was from the street. She made a furious dive at the little, fat, tipsy Frenchman.
It seemed that this other man, a principal in the previous affair, was something to her. She had waited back there and trembled long enough. Now she was coming forward like a chieftainess of savages. That little, fat, tipsy Frenchman was the final exasperation; he had renewed the peril to her lover. She sprang at him. At last, at last there was war—real, red war. The man from Duluth climbed swiftly to an erect position upon his chair and cheered with valiant enthusiasm.
The little, fat, tipsy Frenchman was like a porpoise caught in a mighty human net. His face wore an expression of utter drunken woe and astonishment. There was one long crimson mark down his cheek. A dozen men held him and hauled him and berated him and fought at him. A half-dozen more beseeched the woman, holding her arms. Her shrill scream rose above the hoarse babble.
Then from an inner room came a large waiter. He was pushed on by the proprietress of the place, a dingy woman in a brown dress. She was giving him hurried directions, and he was nodding his head, “Yes, yes.”
He made a violent charge and seized the little Frenchman, who was casting despairing glances at the ceiling, praying for succor or at least explanation of this phenomenon. The large waiter grappled his coat collar. He gave a prodigious jerk. The little Frenchman’s collar and necktie came off with a ripping sound. He was in the last agonies of bewilderment.
Two or three men were trying to pacify the woman. She was turning from them always to shriek at the little Frenchman, who was being noisily dragged out by the large waiter.
She replied in screams to her friends who intercepted her: “Well, no man dare call me a name like that, not any man here. I dare any Johnnie in this room to call me a name like that.”
“Hurrah!” shouted the man from Duluth from on top of his chair. “Hurrah! hurrah for America and ‘The Star-Spangled Banner!’ No man here dare call the lady anything.”
“What’s that?” said the woman. She came ominously toward him. Her face was red and fierce. Her hands were held in the same peculiar claw-like manner. “What’s that yeh say?”
“Madam,” said the man from Duluth, suddenly sober and serious, “I didn’t mean to reflect upon you in any way.” His chair shook a little as he changed his weight from one leg to the other. His friends, down below at the table, were gazing solemnly at the ceiling. They were in deep thought.
“Well, yeh think yer jollyin’ me, don’t yeh?” burst out the woman with sudden violence. “I’ll let yeh know—”
The man from Duluth looked down at his friends. He bowed swiftly, but with satirical ceremony. “This is too many for me, boys. I’ve got no further use for this place. Tra-la-loo! I’ll see you next year.” He made a flying leap and ran for the door. The woman made a grab at his coattails, but she missed him.
February, 1901
[Metropolitan Magazine, Vol. 13, pp. 175–181.]
* Completed by Cora Crane.
A MAN BY THE NAME OF MUD
Deep in a leather chair, the Kid sat looking out at where the rain slanted before the dull brown houses and hammered swiftly upon an occasional lonely cab. The happy crackle from the great and glittering fireplace behind him had evidently no meaning of content for him. He appeared morose and unapproachable, and when
a man appears morose and unapproachable it is a fine chance for his intimate friends. Three or four of them discovered his mood, and so hastened to be obnoxious.
“What’s wrong, Kid? Lost your thirst?”
“He can never be happy again. He has lost his thirst.”
“That’s right, Kid. When you quarrel with a man who can whip you, resort to sarcastic reflection and distance.”
They cackled away persistently, but the Kid was mute and continued to stare gloomily at the street.
Once a man who had been writing letters looked up and said, “I saw your friend at the Comique the other night.” He waited a moment and then added, “In back.”
The Kid wheeled about in his chair at this information, and all the others saw then that it was important. One man said with deep intelligence, “Ho, ho, a woman, hey? A woman’s come between the two Kids. A woman. Great, eh?” The Kid launched a glare of scorn across the room, and then turned again to a contemplation of the rain. His friends continued to do all in their power to worry him, but they fell ultimately before his impregnable silence.
As it happened, he had not been brooding upon his friend’s mysterious absence at all. He had been concerned with himself. Once in a while he seemed to perceive certain futilities and lapsed them immediately into a state of voiceless dejection. These moods were not frequent.
An unexplained thing in his mind, however, was greatly enlightened by the words of the gossip. He turned then from his harrowing scrutiny of the amount of pleasure he achieved from living, and settled into a comfortable reflection upon the state of his comrade, the other Kid.
Perhaps it could be indicated in this fashion: “Went to Comique, I suppose. Saw girl. Secondary part, probably. Thought her rather natural. Went to Comique again. Went again. One time happened to meet omnipotent and good-natured friend. Broached subject to him with great caution. Friend said—‘Why, certainly, my boy, come round tonight, and I’ll take you in back. Remember, it’s against all rules, but I think that in your case, etc.’ Kid went. Chorus girls winked same old wink. ‘Here’s another dude on the prowl.’ Kid aware of this, swearing under his breath and looking very stiff. Meets girl. Knew beforehand that the footlights might have sold him, but finds her very charming. Does not say single thing to her which she naturally expected to hear. Makes no reference to her beauty nor her voice—if she has any. Perhaps takes it for granted that she knows. Girl don’t exactly love this attitude, but then feels admiration, because after all she can’t tell whether he thinks her nice or whether he don’t. New scheme this. Worked by occasional guys in Rome and Egypt, but still, new scheme. Kid goes away. Girl thinks. Later, nails omnipotent and good-natured friend. ‘Who was that you brought back?’ ‘Oh, him? Why, he—’ Describes the Kid’s wealth, feats, and virtues—virtues of disposition. Girl propounds clever question—‘Why did he wish to meet me?’ Omnipotent person says, ‘Damned if I know.’ ”
The Complete Short Stories and Sketches of Stephen Crane Page 109