He flung back his head and laughed a huge laugh in the loneliness. His voice surged like a dark billow against the wall behind him, then ebbing outward over the dim, formless river, it died slowly away . . . then from the other shore a mirthless echo mocked him, and it too died away. He went on treading the dark resin-scented wharf.
Presently he came to a break in the black depthless monotony of the wall, and the wall again assumed a pure and inevitable formal significance sharp against the glow of the city. He turned his back to the river and soon was among freight cars black and angular, looming; and down the tracks, much farther away than it appeared, an engine glared and panted while filaments of steel radiating from it toward and about his feet were like incandescent veins in a dark leaf.
There was a moon, low in the sky and worn, thumbed partly away like an old coin, and he went on. Above banana and palm the cathedral spires soared without perspective on the hot sky. Looking through the tall pickets into Jackson square was like looking into an aquarium—a moist and motionless absinthe-cloudy green of all shades from ink black to a thin and rigid feathering of silver on pomegranate and mimosa—like coral in a tideless sea, amid which globular lights hung dull and unstraying as jellyfish, incandescent yet without seeming to emanate light; and in the center of it Andrew’s baroque plunging stasis nimbused about with thin gleams as though he too were recently wetted.
He crossed the street into shadow, following the wall. Two figures stood indistinguishably at his door. “Pardon me,” he said touching the nearer man peremptorily, and as he did so the other man turned.
“Why, here he is now,” this one said. “Hello, Gordon, Julius and I were looking for you.”
“Yes?” Gordon loomed above the two shorter men, staring down at them, remote and arrogant. Fairchild removed his hat, mopping his face. Then he flipped his handkerchief viciously about his head.
“I don’t mind the heat,” he explained fretfully. “I like it, in fact. Like an old racehorse, you know. He’s willing enough, you know, but in the cool weather when his muscles are stiff and his bones ache, the young ones all show him up. But about Fourth of July, when the sun gets hot and his muscles loosen up and his old bones don’t complain any more, then he’s good as any of ’em.”
“Yes?” repeated Gordon looking above them into shadow. The Semitic man removed his cigar.
“It will be better on the water tomorrow,” he said.
Gordon brooded above them. Then he remembered himself. “Come up,” he directed abruptly, elbowing the Semitic man aside and extending his latchkey.
“No, no,” Fairchild demurred quickly. “We won’t stop. Julius just reminded me: we came to see if you’d change your mind and come with us on Mrs. Maurier’s boat tomorrow? We saw Tal—”
“I have,” Gordon interrupted him. “I’m coming.”
“That’s good,” Fairchild agreed heartily. “You probably won’t regret it much. He may enjoy it, Julius,” he added. “Besides, you’ll be wise to go on and get it over with, then she’ll let you alone. After all, you can’t afford to ignore people that own food and automobiles, you know. Can he, Julius?”
The Semitic man agreed. “When he clutters himself up with people (which he can’t avoid doing) by all means let it be with people who own food and whisky and motor cars. The less intelligent, the better.” He struck a match to his cigar. “But he won’t last very long with her, anyway. He’ll last even a shorter time than you did,” he told Fairchild.
“Yes, I guess you’re right. But he ought to keep a line on her, anyhow. If you can neither ride nor drive the beast yourself, it’s a good idea to keep it in a pasture near by: you may someday be able to swap it for something, you know.”
“A Ford, for instance, or a radio,” the Semitic man suggested. “But you’ve got your simile backward.”
“Backward?” repeated the other.
“You were speaking from the point of view of the rider,” he explained.
“Oh,” Fairchild remarked. He emitted a disparaging sound. “‘Ford’ is good,” he said heavily.
“I think ‘radio’ is pretty good, myself,” the other said complacently.
“Oh, dry up,” Fairchild replaced his hat. “So you are coming with us, then,” he said to Gordon.
“Yes. I’m coming. But won’t you come up?”
“No, no: not tonight. I know your place, you see,” Gordon made no reply, brooding his tall head in the shadow. “Well, I’ll phone her and have her send a car for you tomorrow,” Fairchild added. “Come on, Julius, let’s go. Glad you changed your mind,” he added belatedly. “Good night, Come on, Julius.”
They crossed the street and entered the square. Once within the gates they were assailed, waylaid from behind every blade and leaf with a silent, vicious delight.
“Good Lord,” exclaimed Fairchild, flipping his handkerchief madly about, “let’s go over to the docks. Maybe there ain’t any nautical ones,” He hurried on, the Semitic man ambling beside him, clamping his dead cigar.
“He’s a funny chap,” the Semitic man remarked. They waited for a trolley to pass, then crossed the street. The wharf, the warehouse, was a formal rectangle with two slender masts projecting above it at a faint angle. They went on between two dark buildings and halted again while a switch engine drew an interminable monotony of cars up the track.
“He ought to get out of himself more,” Fairchild commented. “You can’t be an artist all the time. You’ll go crazy.”
“You couldn’t,” the other corrected. “But then, you are not an artist. There is somewhere within you a bewildered stenographer with a gift for people, but outwardly you might be anything. You are an artist only when you are telling about people, while Gordon is not an artist only when he is cutting at a piece of wood or stone. And it’s very difficult for a man like that to establish workable relations with people. Other artists are too busy playing with their own egos, workaday people will not or cannot bother with him, so his alternatives are misanthropy or an endless gabbling of esthetic foster sisters of both sexes. Particularly if his lot is cast outside of New York city.”
“There you go: disparaging our Latin Quarter again. Where’s your civic pride? where’s your common courtesy, even? Even the dog won’t bite the hand that holds the bread.”
“Corn belt,” the other said shortly, “Indiana talking. You people up there are born with the booster complex, aren’t you? Or do you acquire it with sunburned necks?”
“Oh, well, we Nordics are at a disadvantage,” Fairchild replied. His tone was unctuous, the other detected something falsely frank in it. “We’ve got to fix our idea on a terrestrial place. Though we know it’s second rate, that’s the best we can do. But your people have got all heaven for your old home town, you know.”
“I could forgive everything except the unpardonable clumsiness of that,” the other told him. “Your idea is not bad. Why don’t you give it to Mark Frost—roughly, you know—and let him untangle it for you? You and he could both use it then—if you are quick enough, that is.”
Fairchild laughed. “Now, you layoff our New Orleans bohemian life; stay away from us if you don’t like it. I like it, myself: there is a kind of charming futility about it, like—”
“Like a country club where they play croquet instead of golf,” the other supplied for him.
“Well, yes,” Fairchild agreed. “Something like that.” The warehouse loomed above them, and they passed into it and amid the ghosts of the ends of the earth. “A croquet player may not be much of a go-getter, but what do you think of a man that just sits around and criticises croquet?”
“Well, I’m like the rest of you immortals: I’ve got to pass the time in some way in order to gain some idea of how to pass eternity,” the Semitic man answered. They passed through the warehouse and onto the dock. It was cooler here, quieter. Two ferry boats pass
ed and repassed like a pair of golden swans in a barren cycle of courtship. The shore and the river curved away in a dark embracing slumber to where a bank of tiny lights flickered and trembled, bodiless and far away. It was much cooler here and they removed their hats. The Semitic man unclamped his dead cigar and cast it outward. Silence, water, night, absorbed it without a sound.
The First Day
TEN O’CLOCK
The Nausikaa lay in the basin—a nice thing, with her white, matronly hull and mahogany-and-brass superstructure and the yacht club flag at the peak. A firm, steady wind blew in from the lake and Mrs. Maurier, having already gota taste of the sea from it, had donned her yachting cap and she now clashed and jangled in a happy, pointless ecstasy. Her two cars had made several trips and would make several more, creeping and jouncing along the inferior macadam road upon and beside which the spoor of Coca Cola and the almond bar betrayed the lair of the hot dog and the less-than-one-percent. All the jollity of departure under a perfect day, heatridden city behind, and a breeze too steady for the darn things to light on you. Her guests each with his or her jar of almond cream and sunburn lotion came aboard in bright babbling surges, calling, “Ship ahoy, everyone,” and other suitable nautical cries, while various casuals, gathered ‘along the quay, looked on with morose interest. Mrs. Maurier in her yachting cap clashed and jangled in a happy and senseless excitement.
On the upper deck where the steward broke out chairs for them, her guests in their colored clothing gathered, dressed for deep water in batik and flowingties and open collars, informal and colorful with the exception of Mark Frost, the ghostly young man, a poet who produced an occasional cerebral and obscure poem in four or seven lines reminding one somehow of the funotioh of evacuation excruciatingly and incompletely performed. He wore ironed serge and a high starched collar and he borrowed a cigarette of the steward and lay immediately at full length on something, as was his way. Mrs. Wiseman and Miss Jameson, flanking Mr. Talliaferro, sat with cigarettes also. Fairchild, accompanied by Gordon, the Semitic man, and a florid stranger in heavy tweeds, and carrying among them several weighty-looking suitcases, had gone directly below.
“Are we all here? are we all here?” Mrs. Maurier chanted beneath her yachting cap, roving her eyes among her guests. Her niece stood at the afterrail beside a soft blond girl in a slightly soiled green dress. They both gazed shoreward where at the end of the gangplank a flashy youth lounged in a sort of skulking belligerence, smoking cigarettes. The niece said, without turning her head, “What’s the matter with him? Why doesn’t he come aboard?” The youth’s attention seemed to be anywhere else save on the boat, yet he was so obviously there, in the eye, belligerent and skulking. The niece said, “Hey!” Then she said:
“What’s his name? You better tell him to come on, hadn’t you?”
The blond girl hissed “Pete” in a repressed tone. The youth moved his slanted stiff straw hat an inch and the blond girl beckoned to him. He slanted the hat to the back of his head: his whole attitude gave the impression that he was some distance away. “Ain’t you coming with us?” the blond girl asked in that surreptitious tone.
“Whatcher say?” he replied loudly, so that everybody looked at him—even the reclining poet raised his head.
“Come on aboard, Pete,” the niece called. “Be yourself.”
The youth took another cigarette from his pack. He buttoned his narrow coat. “Well, I guess I will,” he agreed in his carrying tone. Mrs. Maurier held her expression of infantile astonishment up to him as he crossed the gangplank. He evaded her politely, climbing the rail with that fluid agility of the young.
“Are you the new steward?” she asked doubtfully, blinking at him.
“Sure, lady,” he agreed courteously, putting his cigarette in his mouth. The other guests stared at him from their deck chairs and slanting his hat forward he ran the gauntlet of their eyes, passing aft to join the two girls. Mrs. Maurier gazed after his high-vented coat in astonishment. Then she remarked the blond girl beside her niece. She blinked again.
“Why—” she began. Then she said, “Patricia, who—”
“Oh, yes,” the niece said, “this is—” She turned to the blond girl. “What’s your name, Jenny? I forgot.”
“Genevieve Steinbauer,” the blond girl submitted.
“—Miss Steinbauer. And this one is Pete Something. I met them downtown. They want to go, too.”
Mrs. Maurier transferred her astonishment from Jenny’s vague ripe prettiness to Pete’s bold uncomfortable face. “Why, he’s the new steward, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know.” The niece looked at Jenny again. “Is he?” she asked. Jenny didn’t know either. Pete himself was uncomfortably noncommittal.
“I dunno,” he answered. “You told me to come,” he accused the niece.
“She means,” the niece explained, “did you come to work on the boat?”
“Not me,” Pete answered quickly. “I ain’t a sailor. If she expects me to run this ferry for her, me and Jenny are going back to town.”
“You don’t have to run it. She’s got regular men for that. There’s your steward, anyway, Aunt Pat,” the niece said. “Pete just wanted to come with Jenny. That’s all.”
Mrs. Maurier looked. Yes, there was the steward, descending the companionway with a load of luggage. She looked again at Pete and Jenny, but at that moment voices came aft breaking her amazement. The captain wished to know if he should cast off: the message was relayed by all present.
“Are we all here?” Mrs. Maurier chanted anew, forgetting Jenny and Pete. “Mr. Fairchild—Where is he?” She roved her round frantic face, trying to count noses. “Where is Mr. Fairchild?” she repeated in panic. Her car was backing and filling to turn around and she ran to the rail and screamed to the driver. He stopped the car, completely blocking the road, and hung his head out with resignation. Mrs. Wiseman said:
“He’s here: he came with Ernest. Didn’t he?”
Mr. Talliaferro corroborated her and Mrs. Maurier roved her frantic gaze anew, trying to count them. A sailor sprang ashore and cast off head- and stern lines under the morose regard of the casuals. The helmsman thrust his head from the wheelhouse and he and the deckhand bawled at each other. The sailor sprang aboard and the Nausikaa moved slightly in the water, like a soundless awakening sigh. The steward drew in the gangplank and the engine room telegraph rang remotely. The Nausikaa waked farther, quivering a little, and as a gap of water grew between quay and boat without any sensation of motion whatever, Mrs. Maurier’s second car came jouncing into view, honking madly, and the niece sitting flat on the deck and stripping off her stockings said:
“Here comes Josh.”
Mrs. Maurier shrieked. The car stopped and her nephew descended without haste. The steward, coiling the sternline down, gathered it up and flung it outward across the growing gap of water. The telegraph rang again and the Nausikaa sighed and went back to sleep, rocking sedately. “Shake it up, Josh,” his sister called. Mrs. Maurier shrieked again and two of the loungers caught the line and dug their heels as the nephew, coatless and hatless, approached without haste and climbed aboard, carrying a new carpenter’s saw.
“I had to go downtown and buy one,” he explained casually. “Walter wouldn’t let me bring yours.”
ELEVEN O’CLOCK
At last Mrs. Maurier succeeded in cornering her niece. New Orleans, the basin, the yacht club, were far behind. The Nausikaa sped youthfully and gaily under a blue and drowsy day, beneath her forefoot a small bow wave spread its sedate fading fan. Mrs. Maurier’s people could not escape her now. They had settled themselves comfortably on deck: there was nothing to look at save one another, nothing to do save wait for lunch. All, that is, except Jenny and Pete. Pete, holding his hat on, stood yet at the afterrail, with Jenny beside him. Her air was that of a soft and futile cajolery, to which Pete was smoldering and impervious. Mrs. Maur
ier breathed a sigh of temporary relief and astonishment and ran her niece to earth in the after companionway.
“Patricia,” she demanded, “what on earth did you invite those two—young people for?”
“God knows,” the niece answered, looking past her aunt’s yachting cap to Pete, belligerent and uncomfortable beside Jenny’s bovine white placidity. “God knows. If you want to turn around and take ’em back, don’t let me stand in your way.”