Tales of the Jazz Age

V

After a while the coat of clean white paint on the Jeffrey Curtain house made a definite compromise with the suns of many Julys and showed its good faith by turning gray. It scaled – huge peelings of very brittle old paint leaned over backward like aged men practising grotesque gymnastics and finally dropped to a moldy death in the overgrown grass beneath. The paint on the front pillars became streaky; the white ball was knocked off the left-hand door-post; the green blinds darkened, then lost all pretense of color.

It began to be a house that was avoided by the tender-minded – some church bought a lot diagonally opposite for a graveyard, and this, combined with "the place where Mrs. Curtain stays with that living corpse," was enough to throw a ghostly aura over that quarter of the road. Not that she was left alone. Men and women came to see her, met her down town, where she went to do her marketing, brought her home in their cars – and came in for a moment to talk and to rest, in the glamour that still played in her smile. But men who did not know her no longer followed her with admiring glances in the street; a diaphanous veil had come down over her beauty, destroying its vividness, yet bringing neither wrinkles nor fat.

She acquired a character in the village – a group of little stories were told of her: how when the country was frozen over one winter so that no wagons nor automobiles could travel, she taught herself to skate so that she could make quick time to the grocer and druggist, and not leave Jeffrey alone for long. It was said that every night since his paralysis she slept in a small bed beside his bed, holding his hand.

Jeffrey Curtain was spoken of as though he were already dead. As the years dropped by those who had known him died or moved away – there were but half a dozen of the old crowd who had drunk cocktails together, called each other's wives by their first names, and thought that Jeff was about the wittiest and most talented fellow that Marlowe had ever known. How, to the casual visitor, he was merely the reason that Mrs. Curtain excused herself sometimes and hurried upstairs; he was a groan or a sharp cry borne to the silent parlor on the heavy air of a Sunday afternoon.

He could not move; he was stone blind, dumb and totally unconscious. All day he lay in his bed, except for a shift to his wheel-chair every morning while she straightened the room. His paralysis was creeping slowly toward his heart. At first-for the first year – Roxanne had received the faintest answering pressure sometimes when she held his hand – then it had gone, ceased one evening and never come back, and through two nights Roxanne lay wide-eyed, staring into the dark and wondering what had gone, what fraction of his soul had taken flight, what last grain of comprehension those shattered broken nerves still carried to the brain.

After that hope died. Had it not been for her unceasing care the last spark would have gone long before. Every morning she shaved and bathed him, shifted him with her own hands from bed to chair and back to bed. She was in his room constantly, bearing medicine, straightening a pillow, talking to him almost as one talks to a nearly human dog, without hope of response or appreciation, but with the dim persuasion of habit, a prayer when faith has gone.

Not a few people, one celebrated nerve specialist among them, gave her a plain impression that it was futile to exercise so much care, that if Jeffrey had been conscious he would have wished to die, that if his spirit were hovering in some wider air it would agree to no such sacrifice from her, it would fret only for the prison of its body to give it full release.

"But you see," she replied, shaking her head gently, "when I married Jeffrey it was – until I ceased to love him."

"But," was protested, in effect, "you can't love that."

"I can love what it once was. What else is there for me to do?"

The specialist shrugged his shoulders and went away to say that Mrs. Curtain was a remarkable woman and just about as sweet as an angel – but, he added, it was a terrible pity.

"There must be some man, or a dozen, just crazy to take care of her…"

Casually – there were. Here and there some one began in hope – and ended in reverence. There was no love in the woman except, strangely enough, for life, for the people in the world, from the tramp to whom she gave food she could ill afford to the butcher who sold her a cheap cut of steak across the meaty board. The other phase was sealed up somewhere in that expressionless mummy who lay with his face turned ever toward the light as mechanically as a compass needle and waited dumbly for the last wave to wash over his heart.

After eleven years he died in the middle of a May night, when the scent of the syringa hung upon the window-sill and a breeze wafted in the shrillings of the frogs and cicadas outside. Roxanne awoke at two, and realized with a start she was alone in the house at last.

VI

After that she sat on her weather-beaten porch through many afternoons, gazing down across the fields that undulated in a slow descent to the white and green town. She was wondering what she would do with her life. She was thirty-six – handsome, strong, and free. The years had eaten up Jeffrey's insurance; she had reluctantly parted with the acres to right and left of her, and had even placed a small mortgage on the house.

With her husband's death had come a great physical restlessness. She missed having to care for him in the morning, she missed her rush to town, and the brief and therefore accentuated neighborly meetings in the butcher's and grocer's; she missed the cooking for two, the preparation of delicate liquid food for him. One day, consumed with energy, she went out and spaded up the whole garden, a thing that had not been done for years.

And she was alone at night in the room that had seen the glory of her marriage and then the pain. To meet Jeff again she went back in spirit to that wonderful year, that intense, passionate absorption and companionship, rather than looked forward to a problematical meeting hereafter; she awoke often to lie and wish for that presence beside her – inanimate yet breathing – still Jeff.

One afternoon six months after his death she was sitting on the porch, in a black dress which took away the faintest suggestion of plumpness from her figure. It was Indian summer – golden brown all about her; a hush broken by the sighing of leaves; westward a four o'clock sun dripping streaks of red and yellow over a flaming sky. Most of the birds had gone – only a sparrow that had built itself a nest on the cornice of a pillar kept up an intermittent cheeping varied by occasional fluttering sallies overhead. Roxanne moved her chair to where she could watch him and her mind idled drowsily on the bosom of the afternoon.

Harry Cromwell was coming out from Chicago to dinner. Since his divorce over eight years before he had been a frequent visitor. They had kept up what amounted to a tradition between them: when he arrived they would go to look at Jeff; Harry would sit down on the edge of the bed and in a hearty voice ask:

"Well, Jeff, old man, how do you feel to-day?"

Roxanne, standing beside, would look intently at Jeff, dreaming that some shadowy recognition of this former friend had passed across that broken mind – but the head, pale, carven, would only move slowly in its sole gesture toward the light as if something behind the blind eyes were groping for another light long since gone out.

These visits stretched over eight years – at Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and on many a Sunday Harry had arrived, paid his call on Jeff, and then talked for a long while with Roxanne on the porch. He was devoted to her. He made no pretense of hiding, no attempt to deepen, this relation. She was his best friend as the mass of flesh on the bed there had been his best friend. She was peace, she was rest; she was the past. Of his own tragedy she alone knew.

He had been at the funeral, but since then the company for which he worked had shifted him to the East and only a business trip had brought him to the vicinity of Chicago. Roxanne had written him to come when he could – after a night in the city he had caught a train out.

They shook hands and he helped her move two rockers together.

"How's George?"

"He's fine, Roxanne. Seems to like school."

"Of course it was the only thing to do, to send him."

"Of course – "

"You miss him horribly, Harry?"

"Yes – I do miss him. He's a funny boy – "

He talked a lot about George. Roxanne was interested. Harry must bring him out on his next vacation. She had only seen him once in her life – a child in dirty rompers.

She left him with the newspaper while she prepared dinner – she had four chops to-night and some late vegetables from her own garden. She put it all on and then called him, and sitting down together they continued their talk about George.

"If I had a child – " she would say.

Afterward, Harry having given her what slender advice he could about investments, they walked through the garden, pausing here and there to recognize what had once been a cement bench or where the tennis court had lain…

"Do you remember – " Then they were off on a flood of reminiscences: the day they had taken all the snap-shots and Jeff had been photographed astride the calf; and the sketch Harry had made of Jeff and Roxanne, lying sprawled in the grass, their heads almost touching. There was to have been a covered lattice connecting the barn-studio with the house, so that Jeff could get there on wet days – the lattice had been started, but nothing remained except a broken triangular piece that still adhered to the house and resembled a battered chicken coop.

"And those mint juleps!"

"And Jeff's note-book! Do you remember how we'd laugh, Harry, when we'd get it out of his pocket and read aloud a page of material. And how frantic he used to get?"

"Wild! He was such a kid about his writing."

They were both silent a moment, and then Harry said:

"We were to have a place out here, too. Do you remember? We were to buy the adjoining twenty acres. And the parties we were going to have!"

Again there was a pause, broken this time by a low question from Roxanne.

"Do you ever hear of her, Harry?"

"Why – yes," he admitted placidly. "She's in Seattle. She's married again to a man named Horton, a sort of lumber king. He's a great deal older than she is, I believe."

"And she's behaving?"

"Yes – that is, I've heard so. She has everything, you see. Nothing much to do except dress up for this fellow at dinner-time."

"I see."

Without effort he changed the subject.

"Are you going to keep the house?"

"I think so," she said, nodding. "I've lived here so long, Harry, it'd seem terrible to move. I thought of trained nursing, but of course that'd mean leaving. I've about decided to be a boarding-house lady."

"Live in one?"

"No. Keep one. Is there such an anomaly as a boarding-house lady? Anyway I'd have a negress and keep about eight people in the summer and two or three, if I can get them, in the winter. Of course I'll have to have the house repainted and gone over inside."

Harry considered.

"Roxanne, why – naturally you know best what you can do, but it does seem a shock, Roxanne. You came here as a bride."

"Perhaps," she said, "that's why I don't mind remaining here as a boarding-house lady."

"I remember a certain batch of biscuits."

"Oh, those biscuits," she cried. "Still, from all I heard about the way you devoured them, they couldn't have been so bad. I was so low that day, yet somehow I laughed when the nurse told me about those biscuits."

"I noticed that the twelve nail-holes are still in the library wall where Jeff drove them."

"Yes."

It was getting very dark now, a crispness settled in the air; a little gust of wind sent down a last spray of leaves. Roxanne shivered slightly.

"We'd better go in."

He looked at his watch.

"It's late. I've got to be leaving. I go East tomorrow."

"Must you?"

They lingered for a moment just below the stoop, watching a moon that seemed full of snow float out of the distance where the lake lay. Summer was gone and now Indian summer. The grass was cold and there was no mist and no dew. After he left she would go in and light the gas and close the shatters, and he would go down the path and on to the village. To these two life had come quickly and gone, leaving not bitterness, but pity; not disillusion, but only pain. There was already enough moonlight when they shook hands for each to see the gathered kindness in the other's eyes.

MR. ICKY

The Scene is the Exterior of a Cottage in West Issacshire on a desperately Arcadian afternoon in August. MR. ICKY, quaintly dressed in the costume of an Elizabethan peasant, is pottering and doddering among the pots and dods. He is an old man, well past the prime of life, no longer young, From the fact that there is a burr in his speech and that he has absent-mindedly put on his coat wrongside out, we surmise that he is either above or below the ordinary superficialities of life.

_Near him on the grass lies PETER, a little boy. PETER, of course, has his chin on his palm like the pictures of the young Sir Walter Raleigh. He has a complete set of features, including serious, sombre, even funereal, gray eyes – and radiates that alluring air of never having eaten food. This air can best be radiated during the afterglow of a beef dinner. Be is looking at MR. ICKY, fascinated._

Silence… The song of birds.

PETER: Often at night I sit at my window and regard the stars. Sometimes I think they're my stars… (Gravely) I think I shall be a star some day…

ME. ICKY: (Whimsically) Yes, yes … yes…

PETER: I know them all: Venus, Mars, Neptune, Gloria Swanson.

MR. ICKY: I don't take no stock in astronomy… I've been thinking o' Lunnon, laddie. And calling to mind my daughter, who has gone for to be a typewriter… (He sighs.)

PETER: I liked Ulsa, Mr. Icky; she was so plump, so round, so buxom.

MR. ICKY: Not worth the paper she was padded with, laddie. (He stumbles over a pile of pots and dods.)

PETER: How is your asthma, Mr. Icky?

MR. ICKY: Worse, thank God!..(Gloomily.) I'm a hundred years old… I'm getting brittle.

PETER: I suppose life has been pretty tame since you gave up petty arson.

MR. ICKY: Yes… yes… You see, Peter, laddie, when I was fifty I reformed once – in prison.

PETER: You went wrong again?

MR. ICKY: Worse than that. The week before my term expired they insisted on transferring to me the glands of a healthy young prisoner they were executing.

PETER: And it renovated you?

MR. ICKY: Renovated me! It put the Old Nick back into me! This young criminal was evidently a suburban burglar and a kleptomaniac. What was a little playful arson in comparison!

PETER: (Awed) How ghastly! Science is the bunk.

MR. ICKY: (Sighing) I got him pretty well subdued now. 'Tisn't every one who has to tire out two sets o' glands in his lifetime. I wouldn't take another set for all the animal spirits in an orphan asylum.

PETER: (Considering) I shouldn't think you'd object to a nice quiet old clergyman's set.

MR. ICKY: Clergymen haven't got glands – they have souls.

(There is a low, sonorous honking off stage to indicate that a large motor-car has stopped in the immediate vicinity. Then a young man handsomely attired in a dress-suit and a patent-leather silk hat comes onto the stage. He is very mundane. His contrast to the spirituality of the other two is observable as far back as the first row of the balcony. This is RODNEY DIVINE.)

DIVINE: I am looking for Ulsa Icky.

(MR. ICKY rises and stands tremulously between two dods.)

MR. ICKY: My daughter is in Lunnon.

DIVINE: She has left London. She is coming here. I have followed her.

(He reaches into the little mother-of-pearl satchel that hangs at his side for cigarettes. He selects one and scratching a match touches it to the cigarette. The cigarette instantly lights.)

DIVINE: I shall wait.

(He waits. Several hours pass. There is no sound except an occasional cackle or hiss from the dods as they quarrel among themselves. Several songs can be introduced here or some card tricks by DIVINE or a tumbling act, as desired.)

DIVINE: It's very quiet here.

MR. ICKY: Yes, very quiet…

(_Suddenly a loudly dressed girl appears; she is very worldly. It is ULSA ICKY. On her is one of those shapeless faces peculiar to early Italian painting._)

ULSA: (In a coarse, worldly voice) Feyther! Here I am! Ulsa did what?

MR. ICKY: (Tremulously) Ulsa, little Ulsa. (They embrace each other's torsos.)

MR. ICKY: (Hopefully) You've come back to help with the ploughing.

ULSA: (Sullenly) No, feyther; ploughing's such a beyther. I'd reyther not.

(Though her accent is broad, the content of her speech is sweet and clean.)

DIVINE: (Conciliatingly) See here, Ulsa. Let's come to an understanding.

(He advances toward her with the graceful, even stride that made him captain of the striding team at Cambridge.)

ULSA: You still say it would be Jack?

MR. ICKY: What does she mean?

DIVINE: (Kindly) My dear, of course, it would be Jack. It couldn't be Frank.

MR. ICKY: Frank who?

ULSA: It would be Frank!

(Some risqué joke can be introduced here.)

MR. ICKY: (Whimsically) No good fighting…no good fighting…

DIVINE: (Reaching out to stroke her arm with the powerful movement that made him stroke of the crew at Oxford) You'd better marry me.

ULSA: (Scornfully) Why, they wouldn't let me in through the servants' entrance of your house.

DIVINE: (Angrily) They wouldn't! Never fear – you shall come in through the mistress' entrance.

ULSA: Sir!

DIVINE: (In confusion) I beg your pardon. You know what I mean?

MR. ICKY: (Aching with whimsey) You want to marry my little Ulsa?..

DIVINE: I do.

MR. ICKY: Your record is clean.

DIVINE: Excellent. I have the best constitution in the world —

ULSA: And the worst by-laws.

DIVINE: At Eton I was a member at Pop; at Rugby I belonged to

Near-beer. As a younger son I was destined for the police force —

MR. ICKY: Skip that… Have you money?..

DIVINE: Wads of it. I should expect Ulsa to go down town in sections every morning – in two Rolls Royces. I have also a kiddy-car and a converted tank. I have seats at the opera —

ULSA: (Sullenly) I can't sleep except in a box. And I've heard that you were cashiered from your club.

MR. ICKY: A cashier? …

DIVINE: (Hanging his head) I was cashiered.

ULSA: What for?

DIVINE: (Almost inaudibly) I hid the polo bails one day for a joke.

MR. ICKY: Is your mind in good shape?

DIVINE: (Gloomily) Fair. After all what is brilliance? Merely the tact to sow when no one is looking and reap when every one is.

ME. ICKY; Be careful. … I will-not marry my daughter to an epigram…

DIVINE: (More gloomily) I assure you I'm a mere platitude. I often descend to the level of an innate idea.

ULSA: (Dully) None of what you're saying matters. I can't marry a man who thinks it would be Jack. Why Frank would —

DIVINE: (Interrupting) Nonsense!

ULSA: (Emphatically) You're a fool!

MR. ICKY: Tut-tut! … One should not judge … Charity, my girl. What was it Nero said? – "With malice toward none, with charity toward all – "

PETER: That wasn't Nero. That was John Drinkwater.

MR. ICKY: Come! Who is this Frank? Who is this Jack?

DIVINE: (Morosely) Gotch.

ULSA: Dempsey.

DIVINE: We were arguing that if they were deadly enemies and locked in a room together which one would come out alive. Now I claimed that Jack Dempsey would take one —

ULSA: (Angrily) Rot! He wouldn't have a —

DIVINE: (Quickly) You win.

ULSA: Then I love you again.

MR. ICKY: So I'm going to lose my little daughter…

ULSA: You've still got a houseful of children,

(CHARLES, ULSA'S brother, coming out of the cottage. He is dressed as if to go to sea; a coil of rope is slung about his shoulder and an anchor is hanging from his neck.)

CHARLES: (Not seeing them) I'm going to sea! I'm going to sea!

(His voice is triumphant.)

MR. ICKY: (Sadly) You went to seed long ago.

CHARLES: I've been reading "Conrad."

PETER: (Dreamily) "Conrad," ah! "Two Years Before the Mast," by Henry James.

CHARLES: What?

PETER: Walter Pater's version of "Robinson Crusoe."

CHARLES: (To his feyther) I can't stay here and rot with you. I want to live my life. I want to hunt eels.

MR. ICKY: I will be here… when you come back…

CHARLES: (Contemptuously) Why, the worms are licking their chops already when they hear your name.

(It will be noticed that some of the characters have not spoken for some time. It will improve the technique if they can be rendering a spirited saxophone number.)

MR. ICKY: (Mournfully) These vales, these hills, these McCormick harvesters – they mean nothing to my children. I understand.

CHARLES: (More gently) Then you'll think of me kindly, feyther.

To understand is to forgive.

MR. ICKY: No…no…We never forgive those we can understand…We can only forgive those who wound us for no reason at all…

CHARLES: (Impatiently) I'm so beastly sick of your human nature line. And, anyway, I hate the hours around here.

(_Several dozen more of MR. ICKY'S children trip out of the house, trip over the grass, and trip over the pots and dods. They are muttering "We are going away," and "We are leaving you."_)

MR. ICKY: (His heart breaking) They're all deserting me. I've been too kind. Spare the rod and spoil the fun. Oh, for the glands of a Bismarck.

(_There is a honking outside – probably DIVINE'S chauffeur growing impatient for his master._)

MR. ICKY: (In misery) They do not love the soil! They have been faithless to the Great Potato Tradition! (He picks up a handful of soil passionately and rubs it on his bald head. Hair sprouts.) Oh, Wordsworth, Wordsworth, how true you spoke!

"No motion has she now, no force; She does not hear or feel; Roll'd round on earth's diurnal course In some one's Oldsmobile."

(They all groan and shouting "Life" and "Jazz" move slowly toward the wings.)

CHARLES: Back to the soil, yes! I've been trying to turn my back to the soil for ten years!

ANOTHER CHILD: The farmers may be the backbone of the country, but who wants to be a backbone?

ANOTHER CHILD: I care not who hoes the lettuce of my country if I can eat the salad!

ALL: Life! Psychic Research! Jazz!

MR. ICKY: (Struggling with himself) I must be quaint. That's all there is. It's not life that counts, it's the quaintness you bring to it…

ALL: We're going to slide down the Riviera. We've got tickets for Piccadilly Circus. Life! Jazz!

MR. ICKY: Wait. Let me read to you from the Bible. Let me open it at random. One always finds something that bears on the situation.

(He finds a Bible lying in one of the dods and opening it at random begins to read.)