The Ultimate Egoist (20 page)

Gregg was frantically bowing and scraping, saying: “Your Majesty, I had no idea—a thousand pard—it is unthinkable that—”

The King looked at him coldly, and Gregg subsided, trembling. Then the King came toward Bill and said, “I heard this unfortunate argument, and feel that I must speak to the first American who has acted as I understood all Americans act. I shall be honored to shake your hand in the American way.” And he did.

No, Gregg did not fire his bell captain after that. For once he did not dare.

A
BUNCH OF
us were there, former bachelors all. Now a former bachelor is ever so subtly different from the ordinary run-of-the-mill married man. A former bachelor is essentially a reformed person, whereas the average married man never reformed. Not so you’d notice it. He just steps into marriage as he stepped into school when he was a kid, or as he stepped into his first job. A casual, necessary thing. But a former bachelor is uprooted, reorganized; never a natural fit in the new order, but an artificially adjusted person.

And when a bunch of former bachelors—yes, they flock together!—indulge in a bull session, sooner or later the talk will drift around to the reasons that this one and that one had for abandoning the blissfully independent single state. These yarns are always worth hearing, because it takes plenty to lead a natural born bachelor to the altar. A former bachelor will get married for some of the doggonedest reasons, but quite the most superlatively doggonedest was the way little Louise Brett caught Carl Hansen.

Carl met Louise at a cocktail party and they really took to each other. Carl’s a hard worker, interested in his job, and he likes to talk about it. Louise is intelligent, and made a very interested audience. Before they knew it they had chatted the party away, so of course he had to take her to dinner. And then a show. And then a supper-dance. It must have been at about that point that Louise made up her mind to lasso the lad.

Now I’ve said she was intelligent. She could see Carl for what he was—an up and coming youngster with a taste for the finer things of life. She could see that he was perceptive and discriminating and fastidious. But above all she realized that he was a bachelor to the core, and she was going to have a hard time making him pop the question without frightening him away.

How she found the answer I don’t know. But she found it all right.

The third time they were out together he noticed her perfume. It grew on him during the evening, and at first he didn’t even realize that Louise owed her increased attractiveness to a scent, so subtle was it. There was something about her, though, something that stirred deep within him. She made him think of a succession of clean and sweet and pleasing things. Little pictures and impressions flickered through his mind as he talked to her and danced with her—mental photographs of the whiteness of washed enamel and the warm smell of home-cooked meals; blue checked aprons and bright curtains; fire glow and soft cushions. Louise exuded a magic all her own, completely original and completely devastating. She made Carl think of his mother—and when a woman achieves that, she has tied the binding knot, and needs only to pull it tight.

After he left her in the wee small hours that morning, Carl drifted homeward in a rosy fog. This had never happened to him before, this hot-cold shivery feeling. The scientist calls it “emotional involvement” and the poet calls it “beatitude” and the swingster calls it “ickey.” But it’s love in any language—except a bachelor’s. Poor guy, he doesn’t know what to make of it.

When he had a little time to relive that unforgettable evening, he reasoned and analyzed and discarded until he had isolated the fact that it was her perfume which had done the trick. But its name escaped him. It was a familiar odor, but it was familiar in a way that cloaked it. Like your front stairs. How many steps do you climb when you come home? You climb them each night, and yet you can’t name the number of them. Louise’s perfume was like that; everyday and indefinable. But it seemed like the essence of all the good things in the universe, and gave Louise the status of No. 1 woman in Carl’s life. And when he saw her again, so haunted and enchanted was he by that scent that he demanded in the same breath as his “Hello, darling,

“What kind of perfume is that?”

She looked up at him and smiled a warm mysterious smile. “Guess,” she said, “But it’s my secret.”

He took her by the shoulders and inhaled the telling whiff of her sorcery. “I’ll find out what it is,” he said softly, “if I have to marry you to do it.”

“Oh, Carl!” Soft arms around his neck, soft lips inches from his own … Oh, well—they were married in due time.

She stuck to her word. It wasn’t until they were on their honeymoon that she showed him the bottle of vanilla extract. And they call women the weaker sex!

L
AURA WAS DELIGHTED
. She had come here in a spirit of adventurous defiance, and the one thing that could possibly have spoiled the evening would have been loneliness in this noisy crowd. Rebelling at her mother’s insistence that she kowtow to the conventions, that she confine her dancing to the Greek interpretative, that she learn the gracious arts of being hostess and mistress of ceremonies at afternoon teas, and that she express her youthful exuberance in masterly playing of Chopin on her mother’s concert grand, she had flown in the face of fate, flung herself into the great unknown. She had come to the Jitterclub on East Beaufort Street, which club should have been dignified by the term “joint.”

Well, that’s East Beaufort Street for you. At one end, on the west side of town, it is lined by great mansions and exclusive apartment houses. These grade down in quality until West Beaufort Street, in the business section, undergoes its transition to East Beaufort Street. From that point on it descends the social scale. Its windup is a waterfront—a colorful, noisy, malodorous waterfront. And the center of the odors—hemp, copra, fish, stagnant water; and the noise—trucks and drays and a spur line of the central R.R.; and the color—shawled immigrant women, turbaned lascars from Limey ships and the ships themselves—in the center of all this, then, was the Jitterclub.

Some joints are loud and some funny, but the “Jitter” was by all counts the loudest and funniest. And Laura had fled to it. She was supposed to be at a meeting of the Cultural Society for Poetry and Orphan Dogs, and the prospect had been too deadly. It was simply a choice between breaking up a meeting of the CSPOD with violence, or letting off steam with equal violence where it would not be noticed. The way she felt, the Jitterclub was the only place that would do.

And here she was, with jam and jive washing over her in great
waves; and now she was delighted, because she wanted someone to talk to, and this incredibly handsome young man was saying, “Look, sister, I’m lonely too.”

Knowing the value of protective coloration (as long as she acted like an habitué, she felt safe) she carefully popped her huge cud of chewing gum at him before she said (
very
East Side!), “That makes two of us, all right. Somp’n’ oughta be done.”

Somp’n’
was
done—plenty. He
was
delightful. He acted just as a flashy East Sider should act. She knew. Hadn’t she been to the movies? His name was Sam Reynolds but he said, “Call me Sooky.”

He could dance. She giggled as she thought of the hours spent in Mme. Kokkinakski’s studio—“Ant-a-wan, ant-a-two, ant-a-t’ree, ant-a-vour, naow, you air a wave. You move like a swan—so!” Sooky whirled and shagged and hopped; carried her into a land far away, a land made of sharps and flats and blue crescendos and crazy heartbeat syncopation.

He knew the lingo, and he knew the gags and comebacks. He called her “Toots” and she liked it. Why not? Tomorrow she’d be back in her right little, tight little luxurious boring world; but now—the music’s playing, let’s dance.

Later they went to Antonio’s Spaghetti Emporium and ate
tagliatelli
and
costoletti
and it was delicious. They talked, and they sang to each other the lyrics of the popular songs that poured out of the brass throat of Antonio’s radio. They laughed a great deal—and it was in the middle of a peal of laughter that Laura suddenly stopped, put her hand to her mouth and stared with frightened eyes at Sam (Sooky) Reynolds.

“ ’S’matter, Laura?”

She couldn’t tell him. She wanted to—oh, yes! She wanted to tell him that, as if a light had been turned on, she realized that she didn’t want to say good-bye to this beautiful, vulgar young man. Not ever. “Nothing,” she said tiredly. Nothing? This filled up, choked feeling? This wild beating of her heart?

Antonio twisted the dial of the radio, and music poured forth—rich, glorious, emotional symphonic music. It was too much. Laura cried. Sooky came around the table, put his arm around her, thrust
a spotless handkerchief in her hands. “Take it easy, kid,” he said softly. “I know how it is … Brahms’ Fourth Symphony gets me that way too.”

Laura sniffed and sat up stiffly. “Brahms’ Fourth? What would a jitterbug know about Brahms’ Fourth? Besides, it’s Tchaikovsky’s Fourth.”

“Brahms!” he said sharply to get her angry, make her forget her tears.

“Tchaikovsky!” she insisted. “I know. I have to listen to it almost every day.”

“You—how come?”

She laid her cards on the table. “I’m not what you think, Sooky. I’m terribly sorry. I live on the west side. I wanted fun. I’ve had fun. I … I’d better go.” She was crying again.

“Fun,” he said. “I had fun too. I’ll go with you, Laura. It’s the same with me. I live next door to you. I followed you here tonight. Something might have happened to you. I had a chance—my mother went to the meeting of the CSPOD.” Laura sank back in her chair. He thought she was laughing, and then that she was crying. Then he saw that she was doing both.

The announcer said that they had been listening to Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. They weren’t interested.

T
HEY WERE SCARED
, those three. Mrs. Mulligan, as magnificently poised as ever, stood between Benny and Betsy, with a firm and inexorable grip on the back of each moist neck. George stood in front of them, his grubby face revealing the conflict between loyalty and self-preservation going on within him. They were caught red-handed, those three. It had been George’s idea, of course. All of his ideas were good, and most of them wound up this way. Set a couple of cannon crackers in front of Mrs. Mulligan’s door, light the fuses, ring the bell and beat it. Why Mrs. Mulligan? Because she was the terror of every child on the block. Not, certainly, because she ever did anything to anyone. But she was so mysterious. She never spoke to anyone, and she always dressed in black. An ignorant mother had once told her disobedient son that if he were not good, Mrs. Mulligan would get him. This little story had spread and grown with the telling. Mrs. Mulligan ate little boys and girls. She hid in dark corners and jumped out atcha. She—well, now she had neatly caught Benny and Betsy and George. They had set their cannon crackers and had rung the bell. They had stampeded around the corner of the house—right into the capable arms of Mrs. Mulligan. Like lightning, and yet with no apparent effort, she had captured the napes of Benny and Betsy, and fixed George with a baleful eye.

They held the tableau for a long painful moment. George could have fled, but the enemy had the two younger children in her power. And it was George’s fault. George stayed where he was, with his mouth open alarmingly.

“Come with me,” Mrs. Mulligan said quietly. Three scared pairs of eyes searched her face and found it inscrutable. And as she turned and went up the steps, three small pairs of legs followed obediently,
without enthusiasm. And so they passed through that fearsome portal, into the unknown beyond.

But it wasn’t so fearsome, after all. There were bright chintz curtains and neatly contrasting upholsteries. There were deep rugs, and there was a canary and a big aquarium. Mrs. Mulligan lined the three up in front of a huge divan and pushed them gently but firmly onto it. They were so frightened that they stayed where they were put, like dolls. Mrs. Mulligan laughed and went out of the room.

Betsy said, “I’m scared, George.”

“I’m not,” Benny quavered. George flashed a look around the room. “Let’s make a break for it!”

“No!” said Benny. “My father said if a bee flies around you and you don’t move, he’ll go away.”

“Snakes, too,” whispered Betsy absently. Mrs. Mulligan came back bearing a huge tray. She set it in front of them. It was loaded down with ice cream and cake and mints and chocolates. Three pairs of eyes tore themselves from the sight and looked again at that soft, quizzical face. It was smiling now, and suddenly they were not afraid any more, just very, very puzzled. Betsy sobbed twice, and tears came, and then she smiled at Mrs. Mulligan. “Go ahead,” said Mrs. Mulligan. “The cream will get soft.”

They needed no second invitation. And as they stuffed themselves Mrs. Mulligan sat opposite in a big chair and looked at them and laughed softly. It sounded like cool water running down a flight of thin glass steps. Benny suddenly looked up at her with his mouth crammed, and laughed with her, spraying crumbs on the carpet. Betsy and George laughed too, and after that they were all friends.

Their rather frantic munching began to slow, and all at once they realized that their hostess was telling them a story. It dawned on them slowly, like music in the background that gradually fills a room. It was a story, beautifully and simply told, about boys and girls, and how they sometimes do things without knowing why. “Why are you shooting off firecrackers today?” she asked. Benny said promptly, “It’s the Fourth. Everybody does.” “Why?” and they looked at each other and at her.

Then she asked them their names, and they told her. She thought
a minute, and then told them three stories.

One was about a girl named Betsy. Betsy was very clever with her hands, and she loved her country. If she had been a man, she would have been a soldier. But she thought and thought, and finally decided that the best thing she could do would be to make a flag for her country.