International (May 1923)
Parts of New Jersey, as you know, are under water, and other parts
are under continual surveillance by the authorities. But here and there lie
patches of garden country dotted with old-fashioned frame mansions, which have
wide shady porches and a red swing on the lawn. And perhaps, on the widest and
shadiest of the porches there is even a hammock left over from the hammock
days, stirring gently in a mid-Victorian wind.
When tourists come to such last-century landmarks they stop their
cars and gaze for a while and then mutter: “Well, thank God this age is joined
on to something” or else they say: “Well, of course, that house is mostly halls
and has a thousand rats and one bathroom, but there’s an atmosphere about it —
”
The tourist doesn’t stay long. He drives on to his Elizabethan
villa of pressed cardboard or his early Norman meat-market or his medieval
Italian pigeon-coop — because this is the twentieth century and Victorian
houses are as unfashionable as the works of Mrs. Humphry Ward.
He can’t see the hammock from the road — but sometimes there’s a
girl in the hammock. There was this afternoon. She was asleep in it and
apparently unaware of the esthetic horrors which surrounded her, the stone
statue of Diana, for instance, which grinned idiotically under the sunlight on
the lawn.
There was something enormously yellow about the whole scene —
there was this sunlight, for instance, that was yellow, and the hammock was of
the particularly hideous yellow peculiar to hammocks, and the girl’s yellow
hair was spread out upon the hammock in a sort of invidious comparison.
She slept with her lips closed and her hands clasped behind her
head, as it is proper for young girls to sleep. Her breast rose and fell
slightly with no more emphasis than the sway of the hammock’s fringe.
Her name, Amanthis, was as old-fashioned as the house she lived
in. I regret to say that her mid-Victorian connections ceased abruptly at this
point.
Now if this were a moving picture (as, of course, I hope it will
some day be) I would take as many thousand feet of her as I was allowed — then
I would move the camera up close and show the yellow down on the back of her
neck where her hair stopped and the warm color of her cheeks and arms, because
I like to think of her sleeping there, as you yourself might have slept, back
in your young days. Then I would hire a man named Israel Glucose to write some
idiotic line of transition, and switch thereby to another scene that was taking
place at no particular spot far down the road.
In a moving automobile sat a southern gentleman accompanied by his
body-servant. He was on his way, after a fashion, to New York but he was
somewhat hampered by the fact that the upper and lower portions of his
automobile were no longer in exact juxtaposition. In fact from time to time the
two riders would dismount, shove the body on to the chassis, corner to corner,
and then continue onward, vibrating slightly in involuntary unison with the
motor.
Except that it had no door in back the car might have been built
early in the mechanical age. It was covered with the mud of eight states and
adorned in front by an enormous but defunct motometer and behind by a mangy
pennant bearing the legend “Tarleton, Ga.” In the dim past someone had begun to
paint the hood yellow but unfortunately had been called away when but half
through the task.
As the gentleman and his body-servant were passing the house where
Amanthis lay beautifully asleep in the hammock, something happened — the body
fell off the car. My only apology for stating this so suddenly is that it
happened very suddenly indeed. When the noise had died down and the dust had
drifted away master and man arose and inspected the two halves.
“Look-a-there,” said the gentleman in disgust, “the doggone thing
got all separated that time.”
“She bust in two,” agreed the body-servant.
“Hugo,” said the gentleman, after some consideration, “we got to
get a hammer an’ nails an’ tack it on.”
They glanced up at the Victorian house. On all sides faintly
irregular fields stretched away to a faintly irregular unpopulated horizon.
There was no choice, so the black Hugo opened the gate and followed his master
up a gravel walk, casting only the blasé glances of a confirmed traveler at the
red swing and the stone statue of Diana which turned on them a storm-crazed
stare.
At the exact moment when they reached the porch Amanthis awoke,
sat up suddenly and looked them over.
The gentleman was young, perhaps twenty-four, and his name was Jim
Powell. He was dressed in a tight and dusty readymade suit which was evidently
expected to take flight at a moment’s notice, for it was secured to his body by
a line of six preposterous buttons.
There were supernumerary buttons upon the coat-sleeves also and
Amanthis could not resist a glance to determine whether or not more buttons ran
up the side of his trouser leg. But the trouser bottoms were distinguished only
by their shape, which was that of a bell. His vest was cut low, barely
restraining an amazing necktie from fluttering in the wind.
He bowed formally, dusting his knees with a thatched straw hat.
Simultaneously he smiled, half shutting his faded blue eyes and displaying
white and beautifully symmetrical teeth.
“Good evenin’,” he said in abandoned Georgian. “My automobile has
met with an accident out yonder by your gate. I wondered if it wouldn’t be too
much to ask you if I could have the use of a hammer and some tacks — nails, for
a little while.”
Amanthis laughed. For a moment she laughed uncontrollably. Mr. Jim
Powell laughed, politely and appreciatively, with her. His body-servant, deep
in the throes of colored adolescence, alone preserved a dignified gravity.
“I better introduce who I am, maybe,” said the visitor. “My name’s
Powell. I’m a resident of Tarleton, Georgia. This here nigger’s my boy Hugo.”
“Your son!“ The girl stared from one to the other in wild
fascination.
“No, he’s my body-servant, I guess you’d call it. We call a nigger
a boy down yonder.”
At this reference to the finer customs of his native soil the boy
Hugo put his hands behind his back and looked darkly and superciliously down
the lawn.
“Yas’m,” he muttered, “I’m a body-servant.”
“Where you going in your automobile,” demanded Amanthis.
“Goin’ north for the summer.”
“Where to?”
The tourist waved his hand with a careless gesture as if to
indicate the Adirondacks, the Thousand Islands, Newport —but he said:
“We’re tryin’ New York.”
“Have you ever been there before?”
“Never have. But I been to Atlanta lots of times. An’ we passed
through all kinds of cities this trip. Man!”
He whistled to express the enormous spectacularity of his recent
travels.
“Listen,” said Amanthis intently, “you better have something to
eat. Tell your — your body-servant to go ‘round in back and ask the cook to
send us out some sandwiches and lemonade. Or maybe you don’t drink lemonade —
very few people do any more.”
Mr. Powell by a circular motion of his finger sped Hugo on the
designated mission. Then he seated himself gingerly in a rocking-chair and
began revolving his thatched straw hat rapidly in his hands.
“You cer’nly are mighty kind,” he told her. “An’ if I wanted
anything stronger than lemonade I got a bottle of good old corn out in the car.
I brought it along because I thought maybe I wouldn’t be able to drink the
whisky they got up here.”
“Listen,” she said, “my name’s Powell too. Amanthis Powell.”
“Say, is that right?” He laughed ecstatically. “Maybe we’re kin to
each other. I come from mighty good people,” he went on. “Pore though. I got
some money because my aunt she was using it to keep her in a sanitarium and she
died.” He paused, presumably out of respect to his late aunt. Then he concluded
with brisk nonchalance, “I ain’t touched the principal but I got a lot of the
income all at once so I thought I’d come north for the summer.”
At this point Hugo reappeared on the veranda steps and became
audible.
“White lady back there she asked me don’t I want eat some too.
What I tell her?”
“You tell her yes mamm if she be so kind,” directed his master.
And as Hugo retired he confided to Amanthis: “That boy’s got no sense at all.
He don’t want to do nothing without I tell him he can. I brought him up,” he
added, not without pride.
When the sandwiches arrived Mr. Powell stood up. He was
unaccustomed to white servants and obviously expected an introduction.
“Are you a married lady?” he inquired of Amanthis, when the servant
was gone.
“No,” she answered, and added from the security of eighteen, “I’m
an old maid.”
Again he laughed politely.
“You mean you’re a society girl.”
She shook her head. Mr. Powell noted with embarrassed enthusiasm
the particular yellowness of her yellow hair.
“Does this old place look like it?” she said cheerfully. “No, you
perceive in me a daughter of the countryside. Color— one hundred percent
spontaneous — in the daytime anyhow. Suitors — promising young barbers from the
neighboring village with somebody’s late hair still clinging to their
coat-sleeves.”
“Your daddy oughtn’t to let you go with a country barber,” said
the tourist disapprovingly. He considered — “You ought to be a New York society
girl.”
“No.” Amanthis shook her head sadly. “I’m too good-looking. To be
a New York society girl you have to have a long nose and projecting teeth and
dress like the actresses did three years ago.”
Jim began to tap his foot rhythmically on the porch and in a
moment Amanthis discovered that she was unconsciously doing the same thing.
“Stop!” she commanded, “Don’t make me do that.”
He looked down at his foot.
“Excuse me,” he said humbly. “I don’t know — it’s just something I
do.”
This intense discussion was now interrupted by Hugo who appeared
on the steps bearing a hammer and a handful of nails.
Mr. Powell arose unwillingly and looked at his watch.
“We got to go, daggone it,” he said, frowning heavily. “See here.
Wouldn’t you like to be a New York society girl and go to those dances
an’ all, like you read about, where they throw gold pieces away?”
She looked at him with a curious expression.
“Don’t your folks know some society people?” he went on.
“All I’ve got’s my daddy — and, you see, he’s a judge.”
“That’s too bad,” he agreed.
She got herself by some means from the hammock and they went down
toward the road, side by side.
“Well, I’ll keep my eyes open for you and let you know,” he
persisted. “A pretty girl like you ought to go around in society. We may be kin
to each other, you see, and us Powells ought to stick together.”
“What are you going to do in New York?”
They were now almost at the gate and the tourist pointed to the
two depressing sectors of his automobile.
“I’m goin’ to drive a taxi. This one right here. Only it’s got so
it busts in two all the time.”
“You’re going to drive that in New York?”
Jim looked at her uncertainly. Such a pretty girl should certainly
control the habit of shaking all over upon no provocation at all.
“Yes mamm,” he said with dignity.
Amanthis watched while they placed the upper half of the car upon
the lower half and nailed it severely into place. Then Mr. Powell took the
wheel and his body-servant climbed in beside him.
“I’m cer’nly very much obliged to you indeed for your hospitality.
Convey my respects to your father.”
“I will,” she assured him. “Come back and see me, if you don’t
mind barbers in the room.”
He dismissed this unpleasant thought with a gesture.
“Your company would always be charming.” He put the car into gear
as though to drown out the temerity of his parting speech. “You’re the
prettiest girl I’ve seen up north — by far.”
Then with a groan and a rattle Mr. Powell of southern Georgia with
his own car and his own body-servant and his own ambitions and his own private
cloud of dust continued on north for the summer.
She thought she would never see him again. She lay in her hammock,
slim and beautiful, opened her left eye slightly to see June come in and then
closed it and retired contentedly back into her dreams.
But one day when the midsummer vines had climbed the precarious
sides of the red swing in the lawn, Mr. Jim Powell of Tarleton, Georgia, came
vibrating back into her life. They sat on the wide porch as before.
“I’ve got a great scheme,” he told her.
“Did you drive your taxi like you said?”
“Yes mamm, but the business was right bad. I waited around in
front of all those hotels and theaters an’ nobody ever got in.”
”Nobody?”
“Well, one night there was some drunk fellas they got in, only
just as I was gettin’ started my automobile came apart. And another night it
was rainin’ and there wasn’t no other taxis and a lady got in because she said
she had to go a long ways. But before we got there she made me stop and she got
out. She seemed kinda mad and she went walkin’ off in the rain. Mighty proud
lot of people they got up in New York.”
“And so you’re going home?” asked Amanthis sympathetically.
“No mamm. I got an idea.” His blue eyes grew narrow. “Has
that barber been around here — with hair on his sleeves?”
“No. He’s — he’s gone away.”
“Well, then, first thing is I want to leave this car of mine here
with you, if that’s all right. It ain’t the right color for a taxi. To pay for
its keep I’d like to have you drive it just as much as you want. ‘Long as you
got a hammer an’ nails with you there ain’t much bad that can happen — ”
“I’ll take care of it,” interrupted Amanthis, “but where are you
going?”
“Southampton. It’s about the most aristocratic watering trough —
watering-place there is around here, so that’s where I’m going.”
She sat up in amazement.
“What are you going to do there?”
“Listen.” He leaned toward her confidentially. “Were you serious
about wanting to be a New York society girl?”
“Deadly serious.”
“That’s all I wanted to know,” he said inscrutably. “You just wait
here on this porch a couple of weeks and — and sleep. And if any barbers come
to see you with hair on their sleeves you tell ’em you’re too sleepy to see
’em.”
“What then?”
“Then you’ll hear from me. Just tell your old daddy he can do all
the judging he wants but you’re goin’ to do somedancin’. Mamm,” he
continued decisively, “you talk about society! Before one month I’m goin’ to
have you in more society than you ever saw.”
Further than this he would say nothing. His manner conveyed that
she was going to be suspended over a perfect pool of gaiety and violently
immersed, to an accompaniment of: “Is it gay enough for you, mamm? Shall I let
in a little more excitement, mamm?”
“Well,” answered Amanthis, lazily considering, “there are few
things for which I’d forego the luxury of sleeping through July and August —
but if you’ll write me a letter I’ll — I’ll run up to Southampton.”
Jim snapped his fingers ecstatically.
“More society,” he assured her with all the confidence at his
command, “than anybody ever saw.”
Three days later a young man wearing a straw hat that might have
been cut from the thatched roof of an English cottage rang the doorbell of the
enormous and astounding Madison Harlan house at Southampton. He asked the
butler if there were any people in the house between the ages of sixteen and
twenty. He was informed that Miss Genevieve Harlan and Mr. Ronald Harlan
answered that description and thereupon he handed in a most peculiar card and
requested in fetching Georgian that it be brought to their attention.
As a result he was closeted for almost an hour with Mr. Ronald
Harlan (who was a student at the Hillkiss School) and Miss Genevieve Harlan
(who was not uncelebrated at Southampton dances). When he left he bore a short
note in Miss Harlan’s handwriting which he presented together with his peculiar
card at the next large estate. It happened to be that of the Clifton Garneaus.
Here, as if by magic, the same audience was granted him.
He went on — it was a hot day, and men who could not afford to do
so were carrying their coats on the public highway, but Jim, a native of
southernmost Georgia, was as fresh and cool at the last house as at the first.
He visited ten houses that day. Anyone following him in his course might have
taken him to be some curiously gifted book-agent with a much sought-after volume
as his stock in trade.
There was something in his unexpected demand for the adolescent
members of the family which made hardened butlers lose their critical acumen.
As he left each house a close observer might have seen that fascinated eyes
followed him to the door and excited voices whispered something which hinted at
a future meeting.
The second day he visited twelve houses. Southampton has grown
enormously — he might have kept on his round for a week and never seen the same
butler twice — but it was only the palatial, the amazing houses which intrigued
him.
On the third day he did a thing that many people have been told to
do and few have done — he hired a hall. Perhaps the sixteen-to-twenty-year-old
people in the enormous houses had told him to. The hall he hired had once been
“Mr. Snorkey’s Private Gymnasium for Gentlemen.” It was situated over a garage
on the south edge of Southampton and in the days of its prosperity had been, I
regret to say, a place where gentlemen could, under Mr. Snorkey’s direction,
work off the effects of the night before. It was now abandoned — Mr. Snorkey
had given up and gone away and died.
We will now skip three weeks during which time we may assume that
the project which had to do with hiring a hall and visiting the two dozen
largest houses in Southampton got under way.
The day to which we will skip was the July day on which Mr. James
Powell sent a wire to Miss Amanthis Powell saying that if she still aspired to
the gaiety of the highest society she should set out for Southampton by the
earliest possible train. He himself would meet her at the station.
Jim was no longer a man of leisure, so when she failed to arrive
at the time her wire had promised he grew restless. He supposed she was coming
on a later train, turned to go back to his — his project — and met her entering
the station from the street side.
“Why, how did you — ”
“Well,” said Amanthis, “I arrived this morning instead, and I
didn’t want to bother you so I found a respectable, not to say dull,
boarding-house on the Ocean Road.”
She was quite different from the indolent Amanthis of the porch
hammock, he thought. She wore a suit of robins’ egg blue and a rakish young hat
with a curling feather — she was attired not unlike those young ladies between
sixteen and twenty who of late were absorbing his attention. Yes, she would do
very well.
He bowed her profoundly into a taxicab and got in beside her.
“Isn’t it about time you told me your scheme?” she suggested.
“Well, it’s about these society girls up here.” He waved his hand
airily. “I know ’em all.”
“Where are they?”
“Right now they’re with Hugo. You remember — that’s my
body-servant.”
“With Hugo!” Her eyes widened. “Why? What’s it all about?”
“Well, I got — I got sort of a school, I guess you’d call it.”
“A school?”
“It’s a sort of Academy. And I’m the head of it. I invented it.”
He flipped a card from his case as though he were shaking down a
thermometer.
“Look.”
She took the card. In large lettering it bore the legend
JAMES POWELL; J.M.
"Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar"
She stared in amazement.
“Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar?” she repeated in awe.
“Yes mamm.”
“What does it mean? What — do you sell ’em?”
“No mamm, I teach ’em. It’s a profession.”
“Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar? What’s the J. M.?”
“That stands for Jazz Master.”
“But what is it? What’s it about?”
“Well, you see, it’s like this. One night when I was in New York I
got talkin’ to a young fella who was drunk. He was one of my fares. And he’d
taken some society girl somewhere and lost her.”
”Lost her?”
“Yes mamm. He forgot her, I guess. And he was right worried. Well,
I got to thinkin’ that these girls nowadays — these society girls — they lead a
sort of dangerous life and my course of study offers a means of protection
against these dangers.”
“You teach ’em to use brassknuckles?”
“Yes mamm, if necessary. Look here, you take a girl and she goes
into some café where she’s got no business to go. Well then, her escort he gets
a little too much to drink an’ he goes to sleep an’ then some other fella comes
up and says‘Hello, sweet mamma’ or whatever one of those mashers says up here.
What does she do? She can’t scream, on account of no real lady’ll scream
nowadays — no — She just reaches down in her pocket and slips her fingers into
a pair of Powell’s defensive brassknuckles, débutante’s size, executes what I
call the Society Hook, and Wham! that big fella’s on his way to the
cellar.”
“Well — what — what’s the guitar for?” whispered the awed
Amanthis. “Do they have to knock somebody over with the guitar?”
“No, mamm!“ exclaimed Jim in horror. “No mamm. In my course
no lady would be taught to raise a guitar against anybody. I teach ’em to play.
Shucks! you ought to hear ’em. Why, when I’ve given ’em two lessons you’d think
some of ’em was colored.”
“And the dice?”
“Dice? I’m related to a dice. My grandfather was a dice. I teach
’em how to make those dice perform. I protect pocketbook as well as person.”
“Did you — Have you got any pupils?”
“Mamm I got all the really nice, rich people in the place. What I
told you ain’t all. I teach lots of things. I teach’em the jellyroll — and the
Mississippi Sunrise. Why, there was one girl she came to me and said she wanted
to learn to snap her fingers. I mean really snap ’em — like they do. She
said she never could snap her fingers since she was little. I gave her two
lessons and now Wham! Her daddy says he’s goin’ to leave home.”
“When do you have it?” demanded the weak and shaken Amanthis.
“Three times a week. We’re goin’ there right now.”
“And where do I fit in?”
“Well, you’ll just be one of the pupils. I got it fixed up that
you come from very high-tone people down in New Jersey. I didn’t tell ’em your
daddy was a judge — I told ’em he was the man that had the patent on lump
sugar.”
She gasped.
“So all you got to do,” he went on, “is to pretend you never saw
no barber.”
They were now at the south end of the village and Amanthis saw a
row of cars parked in front of a two-story building. The cars were all low,
long, rakish and of a brilliant hue. They were the sort of car that is manufactured
to solve the millionaire’s problem on his son’s eighteenth birthday.
Then Amanthis was ascending a narrow stairs to the second story.
Here, painted on a door from which came the sounds of music and laughter were
the words:
JAMES POWELL; J. M.
"Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar"
Mon.--Wed.--Fri.
Hours 3-5 P.M.
“Now if you’ll just step this way — ” said the Principal, pushing
open the door.
Amanthis found herself in a long, bright room, populated with
girls and men of about her own age. The scene presented itself to her at first
as a sort of animated afternoon tea but after a moment she began to see, here
and there, a motive and a pattern to the proceedings.
The students were scattered into groups, sitting, kneeling,
standing, but all rapaciously intent on the subjects which engrossed them. From
six young ladies gathered in a ring around some indistinguishable objects came
a medley of cries and exclamations — plaintive, pleading, supplicating,
exhorting, imploring and lamenting — their voices serving as tenor to an
undertone of mysterious clatters.
Next to this group, four young men were surrounding an adolescent
black, who proved to be none other than Mr. Powell’s late body-servant. The
young men were roaring at Hugo apparently unrelated phrases, expressing a wide
gamut of emotion. Now their voices rose to a sort of clamor, now they spoke
softly and gently, with mellow implication. Every little while Hugo would
answer them with words of approbation, correction or disapproval.
“What are they doing?” whispered Amanthis to Jim.
“That there’s a course in southern accent. Lot of young men up
here want to learn southern accent — so we teach it —Georgia, Florida, Alabama,
Eastern Shore, Ole Virginian. Some of ’em even want straight nigger — for song
purposes.”
They walked around among the groups. Some girls with metal
knuckles were furiously insulting two punching bags on each of which was
painted the leering, winking face of a “masher.” A mixed group, led by a banjo
tom-tom, were rolling harmonic syllables from their guitars. There were couples
dancing flat-footed in the corner to a phonograph record made by Rastus
Muldoon’s Savannah Band; there were couples stalking a slow Chicago with a
Memphis Sideswoop solemnly around the room.
“Are there any rules?” asked Amanthis.
Jim considered.
“Well,” he answered finally, “they can’t smoke unless they’re over
sixteen, and the boys have got to shoot square dice and I don’t let ’em bring
liquor into the Academy.”
“I see.”
“And now, Miss Powell, if you’re ready I’ll ask you to take off
your hat and go over and join Miss Genevieve Harlan at that punching bag in the
corner.” He raised his voice. “Hugo,” he called, “there’s a new student here.
Equip her with a pair of Powell’s Defensive Brassknuckles — débutante size.”
I regret to say that I never saw Jim Powell’s famous Jazz School
in action nor followed his personally conducted tours into the mysteries of
Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar. So I can give you only such details as were
later reported to me by one of his admiring pupils. During all the discussion
of it afterwards no one ever denied that it was an enormous success, and no
pupil ever regretted having received its degree — Bachelor of Jazz.
The parents innocently assumed that it was a sort of musical and
dancing academy, but its real curriculum was transmitted from Santa Barbara to
Biddeford Pool by that underground associated press which links up the
so-called younger generation. Invitations to visit Southampton were at a
premium — and Southampton generally is almost as dull for young people as
Newport.
The Academy branched out with a small but well-groomed Jazz
Orchestra.
“If I could keep it dark,” Jim confided to Amanthis, “I’d have up
Rastus Muldoon’s Band from Savannah. That’s the band I’ve always wanted to
lead.”
He was making money. His charges were not exorbitant — as a rule
his pupils were not particularly flush — but he moved from his boarding-house
to the Casino Hotel where he took a suite and had Hugo serve him his breakfast
in bed.
The establishing of Amanthis as a member of Southampton’s younger
set was easier than he had expected. Within a week she was known to everyone in
the school by her first name. Miss Genevieve Harlan took such a fancy to her
that she was invited to a sub-deb dance at the Harlan house — and evidently
acquitted herself with tact, for thereafter she was invited to almost every
such entertainment in Southampton.
Jim saw less of her than he would have liked. Not that her manner
toward him changed — she walked with him often in the mornings, she was always
willing to listen to his plans — but after she was taken up by the fashionable
her evenings seemed to be monopolized. Several times Jim arrived at her
boarding-house to find her out of breath, as if she had just come in at a run,
presumably from some festivity in which he had no share.
So as the summer waned he found that one thing was lacking to
complete the triumph of his enterprise. Despite the hospitality shown to
Amanthis, the doors of Southampton were closed to him. Polite to, or rather,
fascinated by him as his pupils were from three to five, after that hour they
moved in another world.
His was the position of a golf professional who, though he may
fraternize, and even command, on the links, loses his privileges with the
sun-down. He may look in the club window but he cannot dance. And, likewise, it
was not given to Jim to see his teachings put into effect. He could hear the
gossip of the morning after — that was all.
But while the golf professional, being English, holds himself
proudly below his patrons, Jim Powell, who “came from a right good family down
there — pore though,” lay awake many nights in his hotel bed and heard the
music drifting into his window from the Katzbys’ house or the Beach Club, and
turned over restlessly and wondered what was the matter. In the early days of
his success he had bought himself a dress-suit, thinking that he would soon
have a chance to wear it — but it still lay untouched in the box in which it
had come from the tailor’s.
Perhaps, he thought, there was some real gap which separated him
from the rest. It worried him. One boy in particular, Martin Van Vleck, son of
Van Vleck the ash-can King, made him conscious of the gap. Van Vleck was
twenty-one, a tutoring-school product who still hoped to enter Yale. Several
times Jim had heard him make remarks not intended for Jim’s ear — once in
regard to the suit with multiple buttons, again in reference to Jim’s long,
pointed shoes. Jim had passed these over.
He knew that Van Vleck was attending the school chiefly to monopolize
the time of little Martha Katzby, who was just sixteen and too young to have
attention of a boy of twenty-one — especially the attention of Van Vleck, who
was so spiritually exhausted by his educational failures that he drew on the
rather exhaustible innocence of sixteen.
It was late in September, two days before the Harlan dance which
was to be the last and biggest of the season for this younger crowd. Jim, as
usual, was not invited. He had hoped that he would be. The two young Harlans,
Ronald and Genevieve, had been his first patrons when he arrived at Southampton
— and it was Genevieve who had taken such a fancy to Amanthis. To have been at
their dance — the most magnificent dance of all — would have crowned and
justified the success of the waning summer.
His class, gathering for the afternoon, was loudly anticipating
the next day’s revel with no more thought of him than if he had been the family
butler. Hugo, standing beside Jim, chuckled suddenly and remarked:
“Look yonder that man Van Vleck. He paralyzed. He been havin’
powerful lotta corn this evenin’.”
Jim turned and stared at Van Vleck, who had linked arms with
little Martha Katzby and was saying something to her in a low voice. Jim saw
her try to draw away.
He put his whistle to his mouth and blew it.
“All right,” he cried, “Le’s go! Group one tossin’ the drumstick,
high an’ zig-zag, group two, test your mouth organs for the Riverfront Shuffle.
Promise ’em sugar! Flatfoots this way! Orchestra — let’s have the Florida
Drag-Out played as a dirge.”
There was an unaccustomed sharpness in his voice and the exercises
began with a mutter of facetious protest.
With his smoldering grievance directing itself toward Van Vleck,
Jim was walking here and there among the groups when Hugo tapped him suddenly on
the arm. He looked around. Two participants had withdrawn from the mouth organ
institute —one of them was Van Vleck and he was giving a drink out of his flask
to fifteen-year-old Ronald Harlan.
Jim strode across the room. Van Vleck turned defiantly as he came
up.
“All right,” said Jim, trembling with anger, “you know the rules.
You get out!”
The music died slowly away and there was a sudden drifting over in
the direction of the trouble. Somebody snickered. An atmosphere of anticipation
formed instantly. Despite the fact that they all liked Jim their sympathies
were divided —Van Vleck was one of them.
“Get out!” repeated Jim, more quietly.
“Are you talking to me?” inquired Van Vleck coldly.
“Yes.”
“Then you better say ‘sir.’”
“I wouldn’t say ‘sir’ to anybody that’d give a little boy whisky!
You get out!”
“Look here!” said Van Vleck furiously. “You’ve butted in once too
much. I’ve known Ronald since he was two years old. Ask him if he wants you
to tell him what he can do!”
Ronald Harlan, his dignity offended, grew several years older and
looked haughtily at Jim.
“Mind your own business!” he said defiantly, albeit a little
guiltily.
“Hear that?” demanded Van Vleck. “My God, can’t you see you’re
just a servant? Ronald here’d no more think of asking you to his party than he
would his bootlegger.”
“Youbettergetout!” cried Jim incoherently.
Van Vleck did not move. Reaching out suddenly, Jim caught his
wrist and jerking it behind his back forced his arm upward until Van Vleck bent
forward in agony. Jim leaned and picked the flask from the floor with his free
hand. Then he signed Hugo to open the hall-door, uttered an abrupt “You step!“
and marched his helpless captive out into the hall where he literally threw
him downstairs, head over heels bumping from wall to banister, and hurled his
flask after him.
Then he reentered his academy, closed the door behind him and
stood with his back against it.
“It — it happens to be a rule that nobody drinks while in this
Academy.” He paused, looking from face to face, finding there sympathy, awe,
disapproval, conflicting emotions. They stirred uneasily. He caught Amanthis’s
eye, fancied he saw a faint nod of encouragement and, with almost an effort,
went on:
“I just had to throw that fella out an’ you-all know it.”
Then he concluded with a transparent affectation of dismissing an unimportant
matter — “All right, let’s go! Orchestra —!”
But no one felt exactly like going on. The spontaneity of the
proceedings had been violently disturbed. Someone made a run or two on the
sliding guitar and several of the girls began whamming at the leer on the
punching bags, but Ronald Harlan, followed by two other boys, got their hats
and went silently out the door.
Jim and Hugo moved among the groups as usual until a certain
measure of routine activity was restored but the enthusiasm was unrecapturable
and Jim, shaken and discouraged, considered discontinuing school for the day.
But he dared not. If they went home in this mood they might not come back. The
whole thing depended on a mood. He must recreate it, he thought frantically —
now, at once!
But try as he might, there was little response. He himself was not
happy — he could communicate no gaiety to them. They watched his efforts
listlessly and, he thought, a little contemptuously.
Then the tension snapped when the door burst suddenly open,
precipitating a brace of middle-aged and excited women into the room. No person
over twenty-one had ever entered the Academy before — but Van Vleck had gone
direct to headquarters. The women were Mrs. Clifton Garneau and Mrs. Poindexter
Katzby, two of the most fashionable and, at present, two of the most flurried
women in Southampton. They were in search of their daughters as, in these days,
so many women continually are.
The business was over in about three minutes.
“And as for you!” cried Mrs. Clifton Garneau in an awful voice,
“your idea is to run a bar and — and opiumden for children! You ghastly,
horrible, unspeakable man! I can smell morphin fumes! Don’t tell me I can’t
smell morphin fumes. I can smell morphin fumes!”
“And,” bellowed Mrs. Poindexter Katzby, “you have colored men
around! You have colored girls hidden! I’m going to the police!”
Not content with herding their own daughters from the room, they
insisted on the exodus of their friends’ daughters. Jim was not a little
touched when several of them — including even little Martha Katzby, before she
was snatched fiercely away by her mother — came up and shook hands with him.
But they were all going, haughtily, regretfully or with shame-faced mutters of
apology.
“Good-by,” he told them wistfully. “In the morning I’ll send you
the money that’s due you.”
And, after all, they were not sorry to go. Outside, the sound of
their starting motors, the triumphant put-put of their cut-outs cutting the
warm September air, was a jubilant sound — a sound of youth and hopes high as
the sun. Down to the ocean, to roll in the waves and forget — forget him and
their discomfort at his humiliation.
They were gone — he was alone with Hugo in the room. He sat down
suddenly with his face in his hands.
“Hugo,” he said huskily. “They don’t want us up here.”
“Don’t you care,” said a voice.
He looked up to see Amanthis standing beside him.
“You better go with them,” he told her. “You better not be seen
here with me.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re in society now and I’m no better to those people
than a servant. You’re in society — I fixed that up. You better go or they
won’t invite you to any of their dances.”
“They won’t anyhow, Jim,” she said gently. “They didn’t invite me
to the one tomorrow night.”
He looked up indignantly.
“They didn’t?”
She shook her head.
“I’ll make ’em!” he said wildly. “I’ll tell ’em they got
to. I’ll — I’ll — ”
She came close to him with shining eyes.
“Don’t you mind, Jim,” she soothed him. “Don’t you mind. They
don’t matter. We’ll have a party of our own tomorrow —just you and I.”
“I come from right good folks,” he said, defiantly. “Pore though.”
She laid her hand softly on his shoulder.
“I understand. You’re better than all of them put together, Jim.”
He got up and went to the window and stared out mournfully into
the late afternoon.
“I reckon I should have let you sleep in that hammock.”
She laughed.
“I’m awfully glad you didn’t.”
He turned and faced the room, and his face was dark.
“Sweep up and lock up, Hugo,” he said, his voice trembling. “The
summer’s over and we’re going down home.”
Autumn had come early. Jim Powell woke next morning to find his
room cool, and the phenomenon of frosted breath in September absorbed him for a
moment to the exclusion of the day before. Then the lines of his face drooped
with unhappiness as he remembered the humiliation which had washed the cheery
glitter from the summer. There was nothing left for him except to go back where
he was known, where under no provocation were such things said to white people
as had been said to him here.
After breakfast a measure of his customary light-heartedness
returned. He was a child of the South — brooding was alien to his nature. He
could conjure up an injury only a certain number of times before it faded into
the great vacancy of the past.
But when, from force of habit, he strolled over to his defunct
establishment, already as obsolete as Snorkey’s late sanitarium, melancholy
again dwelt in his heart. Hugo was there, a specter of despair, deep in the lugubrious
blues amidst his master’s broken hopes.
Usually a few words from Jim were enough to raise him to an
inarticulate ecstasy, but this morning there were no words to utter. For two
months Hugo had lived on a pinnacle of which he had never dreamed. He had
enjoyed his work simply and passionately, arriving before school hours and
lingering long after Mr. Powell’s pupils had gone.
The day dragged toward a not-too-promising night. Amanthis did not
appear and Jim wondered forlornly if she had not changed her mind about dining
with him that night. Perhaps it would be better if she were not seen with them.
But then, he reflected dismally, no one would see them anyhow — everybody was
going to the big dance at the Harlans’ house.
When twilight threw unbearable shadows into the school hall he
locked it up for the last time, took down the sign“James Powell; J. M., Dice,
Brassknuckles and Guitar,” and went back to his hotel. Looking over his
scrawled accounts he saw that there was another month’s rent to pay on his
school and some bills for windows broken and new equipment that had hardly been
used. Jim had lived in state, and he realized that financially he would have
nothing to show for the summer after all.
When he had finished he took his new dress-suit out of its box and
inspected it, running his hand over the satin of the lapels and lining. This,
at least, he owned and perhaps in Tarleton somebody would ask him to a party
where he could wear it.
“Shucks!” he said scoffingly. “It was just a no account old academy,
anyhow. Some of those boys round the garage down home could of beat it all
hollow.”
Whistling “Jeanne of Jelly-bean Town” to a not-dispirited rhythm
Jim encased himself in his first dress-suit and walked downtown.
“Orchids,” he said to the clerk. He surveyed his purchase with
some pride. He knew that no girl at the Harlan dance would wear anything
lovelier than these exotic blossoms that leaned languorously backward against
green ferns.
In a taxi-cab, carefully selected to look like a private car, he
drove to Amanthis’s boarding-house. She came down wearing a rose-colored
evening dress into which the orchids melted like colors into a sunset.
“I reckon we’ll go to the Casino Hotel,” he suggested, “unless you
got some other place — ”
At their table, looking out over the dark ocean, his mood became a
contended sadness. The windows were shut against the cool but the orchestra
played “Kalula” and “South Sea Moon” and for awhile, with her young loveliness
opposite him, he felt himself to be a romantic participant in the life around
him. They did not dance, and he was glad — it would have reminded him of that
other brighter and more radiant dance to which they could not go.
After dinner they took a taxi and followed the sandy roads for an
hour, glimpsing the now starry ocean through the casual trees.
“I want to thank you,” she said, “for all you’ve done for me,
Jim.”
“That’s all right — we Powells ought to stick together.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to Tarleton tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “Are you going to drive down?”
“I got to. I got to get the car south because I couldn’t get what
she was worth by sellin’ it. You don’t suppose anybody’s stole my car out of
your barn?” he asked in sudden alarm.
She repressed a smile.
“No.”
“I’m sorry about this — about you,” he went on huskily, “and — and
I would like to have gone to just one of their dances. You shouldn’t of stayed
with me yesterday. Maybe it kept ’em from asking you.”
“Jim,” she suggested eagerly, “let’s go and stand outside and
listen to their old music. We don’t care.”
“They’ll be coming out,” he objected.
“No, it’s too cold. Besides there’s nothing they could do to you
any more than they have done.”
She gave the chauffeur a direction and a few minutes later they
stopped in front of the heavy Georgian beauty of the Madison Harlan house
whence the windows cast their gaiety in bright patches on the lawn. There was
laughter inside and the plaintive wind of fashionable horns, and now and again
the slow, mysterious shuffle of dancing feet.
“Let’s go up close,” whispered Amanthis in an ecstatic trance, “I
want to hear.”
They walked toward the house, keeping in the shadow of the great
trees. Jim proceeded with awe — suddenly he stopped and seized Amanthis’s arm.
“Man!” he cried in an excited whisper. “Do you know what that is?”
“A night watchman?” Amanthis cast a startled look around.
“It’s Rastus Muldoon’s Band from Savannah! I heard ’em once, and I
know. It’s Rastus Muldoon’s Band!”
They moved closer till they could see first pompadours, then slicked
male heads, and high coiffures and finally even bobbed hair pressed under black
ties. They could distinguish chatter below the ceaseless laughter. Two figures
appeared on the porch, gulped something quickly from flasks and returned
inside. But the music had bewitched Jim Powell. His eyes were fixed and he
moved his feet like a blind man.
Pressed in close behind some dark bushes they listened. The number
ended. A breeze from the ocean blew over them and Jim shivered slightly. Then,
in a wistful whisper:
“I’ve always wanted to lead that band. Just once.” His voice grew
listless. “Come on. Let’s go. I reckon I don’t belong around here.”
He held out his arm to her but instead of taking it she stepped
suddenly out of the bushes and into a bright patch of light.
“Come on, Jim,” she said startlingly. “Let’s go inside.”
“What —?”
She seized his arm and though he drew back in a sort of stupefied
horror at her boldness she urged him persistently toward the great front door.
“Watch out!” he gasped. “Somebody’s coming out of that house and
see us.”
“No, Jim,” she said firmly. “Nobody’s coming out of that house —
but two people are going in.”
“Why?” he demanded wildly, standing in full glare of the
porte-cochere lamps. “Why?”
“Why?” she mocked him. “Why, just because this dance happens to be
given for me.”
He thought she was mad.
“Come home before they see us,” he begged her.
The great doors swung open and a gentleman stepped out on the
porch. In horror Jim recognized Mr. Madison Harlan. He made a movement as
though to break away and run. But the man walked down the steps holding out
both hands to Amanthis.
“Hello at last,” he cried. “Where on earth have you two been?
Cousin Amanthis — ” He kissed her, and turned cordially to Jim. “And for you,
Mr. Powell,” he went on, “to make up for being late you’ve got to promise that
for just one number you’re going to lead that band.”
New Jersey was warm, all except the part that was under water, and
that mattered only to the fishes. All the tourists who rode through the long
green miles stopped their cars in front of a spreading old-fashioned country
house and looked at the red swing on the lawn and the wide, shady porch, and
sighed and drove on — swerving a little to avoid a jet-black body-servant in
the road. The body-servant was applying a hammer and nails to a decayed flivver
which flaunted from its rear the legend, “Tarleton, Ga.”
A girl with yellow hair and a warm color to her face was lying in
the hammock looking as though she could fall asleep any moment. Near her sat a
gentleman in an extraordinarily tight suit. They had come down together the day
before from the fashionable resort at Southampton.
“When you first appeared,” she was explaining, “I never thought
I’d see you again so I made that up about the barber and all. As a matter of
fact, I’ve been around quite a bit — with or without brassknuckles. I’m coming
out this autumn.”
“I reckon I had a lot to learn,” said Jim.
“And you see,” went on Amanthis, looking at him rather anxiously,
“I’d been invited up to Southampton to visit my cousins — and when you said you
were going, I wanted to see what you’d do. I always slept at the Harlans’ but I
kept a room at the boarding-house so you wouldn’t know. The reason I didn’t get
there on the right train was because I had to come early and warn a lot of
people to pretend not to know me.”
Jim got up, nodding his head in comprehension.
“I reckon I and Hugo had better be movin’ along. We got to make
Baltimore by night.”
“That’s a long way.”
“I want to sleep south tonight,” he said simply.
Together they walked down the path and past the idiotic statue of
Diana on the lawn.
“You see,” added Amanthis gently, “you don’t have to be rich up
here in order to — to go around, any more than you do in Georgia — ” She broke
off abruptly, “Won’t you come back next year and start another Academy?”
“No mamm, not me. That Mr. Harlan told me I could go on with the
one I had but I told him no.”
“Haven’t you — didn’t you make money?”
“No mamm,” he answered. “I got enough of my own income to just get
me home. I didn’t have my principal along. One time I was way ahead but I was
livin’ high and there was my rent an’ apparatus and those musicians. Besides,
there at the end I had to pay what they’d advanced me for their lessons.”
“You shouldn’t have done that!” cried Amanthis indignantly.
“They didn’t want me to, but I told ’em they’d have to take it.”
He didn’t consider it necessary to mention that Mr. Harlan had
tried to present him with a check.
They reached the automobile just as Hugo drove in his last nail. Jim
opened a pocket of the door and took from it an unlabeled bottle containing a
whitish-yellow liquid.
“I intended to get you a present,” he told her awkwardly, “but my
money got away before I could, so I thought I’d send you something from
Georgia. This here’s just a personal remembrance. It won’t do for you to drink
but maybe after you come out into society you might want to show some of those
young fellas what good old corn tastes like.”
She took the bottle.
“Thank you, Jim.”
“That’s all right.” He turned to Hugo. “I reckon we’ll go along
now. Give the lady the hammer.”
“Oh, you can have the hammer,” said Amanthis tearfully. “Oh, won’t
you promise to come back?”
“Someday — maybe.”
He looked for a moment at her yellow hair and her blue eyes misty
with sleep and tears. Then he got into his car and as his foot found the clutch
his whole manner underwent a change.
“I’ll say good-by mamm,” he announced with impressive dignity,
“we’re goin’ south for the winter.”
The gesture of his straw hat indicated Palm Beach, St. Augustine,
Miami. His body-servant spun the crank, gained his seat and became part of the
intense vibration into which the automobile was thrown.
“South for the winter,” repeated Jim, and then he added softly,
“You’re the prettiest girl I ever knew. You go back up there and lie down in
that hammock, and sleep — sle-eep — ”
It was almost a lullaby, as he said it. He bowed to her,
magnificently, profoundly, including the whole North in the splendor of his
obeisance —
Then they were gone down the road in quite a preposterous cloud of
dust. Just before they reached the first bend Amanthis saw them come to a full
stop, dismount and shove the top part of the car on to the bottom pan. They
took their seats again without looking around. Then the bend — and they were
out of sight, leaving only a faint brown mist to show that they had passed.