Chapter 8

Greatness seemed to elude Hugo, success such as he had earned was inadequate, and his friendships as well as his popularity were tinged with a sort of question that he never understood. By the end of winter he was well established in Webster as a great athlete. Psi Delta sang his praises and was envied his deeds. Lefty and Chuck treated him as a brother. And, Hugo perceived, none of that treatment and none of that society was quite real. He wondered if his personality was so meagre that it was not equal to his strength. He wondered if his strength was really the asset he had dreamed it would be, and if, perhaps, other people were not different from him in every way, so that any close human contact was impossible to him.

It was a rather tragic question to absorb a man so filled with life and ambition as he. Yet every month had raised it more insistently. He saw other men sharing their inmost souls and he could never do that. He saw those around him breaking their hearts and their lungs for the university, and, although it was never necessary for him to do that, he doubted that he could if he would. Webster was only a school. A sentiment rather than an ideal, a place rather than a goal of dreams. He thought that he was cynical. He thought that he was inhuman. It worried him.

His love was a similar experience. He fell in love twice during that first year in college. Once at a prom with a girl who was related to Lefty--a rich, socially secure girl who had studied abroad and who almost patronized her cousin.

Hugo had seen her dancing, and her long, slender legs and arms had issued an almost tangible challenge to him. She had looked over Lefty’s shoulder and smiled vaguely. They had met. Hugo danced with her. “I love to come to a prom,” she said; “it makes me feel young again.”

“How old are you?”

She ignored the obvious temptation to be coy and he appreciated that. “Twenty-one.”

It seemed reasonably old to Hugo. The three years’ difference in their ages had given her a pinnacle of maturity.

“And that makes you old,” he reflected.

She nodded. Her name was Iris. Afterwards Hugo thought that it should have been Isis. Half goddess, half animal. He had never met with the vanguard of emancipated American womanhood before then. “You’re the great Hugo Danner, aren’t you? I’ve seen your picture in the sporting sections.” She read sporting sections. He had never thought of a woman in that light. “But you’re really much handsomer. You have more sex and masculinity and you seem more intelligent.”

Then, between the dances, Lefty had come. “She? Oh, she’s a sort of cousin. Flies in all the high altitudes in town. Blue Book and all that. Better look out, Hugo. She plays rough.”

“She doesn’t look rough.”

Both youths watched her. Long, dark hair, willowy body, high, pale forehead, thin nose, red mouth, smiling like a lewd agnostic and dancing close to her partner, enjoying even that. “Well, look out, Hugo. If she wants to play, don’t let her play with your heart. Anything else is quite in the books.”

“Oh.”

She came to the stag line, ignoring a sequence of invitations, and asked him to dance. They went out on the velvet campus. “I could love you--for a little while,” she said. “It’s too bad you have to play football to-morrow.”

“Is that an excuse?”

She smiled remotely. “You’re being disloyal.” Her fan moved delicately. “But I shan’t chide you. In fact, I’ll stay over for the game--and I’ll enjoy the anticipation--more, perhaps. But you’ll have to win it--to win me. I’m not a soothing type.”

“It will be easy--to win,” Hugo said and she peered through the darkness with admiration, because he had made his ellipsis of the object very plain.

“It is always easy for you to win, isn’t it?” she countered with an easy mockery, and Hugo shivered.

The game was won. Hugo had made his touchdown. He unfolded a note she had written on the back of a score card. “At my hotel at ten, then.”

“Then.” Someone lifted his eyes to praise him. His senses swam in careful anticipation. They were cheering outside the dressing-room. A different sound from the cheers at the fight-arena. Young, hilarious, happy.

At ten he bent over the desk and was told to go to her room. The clerk shrugged. She opened the door. One light was burning. There was perfume in the air. She wore only a translucent kimono of pale-coloured silk. She taught him a great many things that night. And Iris learned something, too, so that she never came back to Hugo, and kept the longing for him as a sort of memory which she made hallowed in a shorn soul. It was, for her, a single asceticism in a rather selfish life.

Hugo loved her for two weeks after that, and then his emotions wearied and he was able to see what she had done and why she did not answer his letters. His subdued fierceness was a vehement fire to women. His fiercer appetite was the cause of his early growth in a knowledge of them. When most of his companions were finding their way into the mysteries of sex both unhandily and with much turmoil, he learned well and abnormally. It became a part of his secret self. Another barrier to the level of the society that surrounded him. When he changed the name of Iris to Isis in his thoughts, he moved away from the Psi Deltas, who would have been incapable of the notion. In person he stayed among them, but in spirit he felt another difference, which he struggled to reconcile.

In March the thaws came, and under the warming sun Hugo made a deliberate attempt to fall in love with Janice, who was the daughter of his French professor. She was a happy, innocent little girl, with gold hair, and brown eyes that lived oddly beneath it. She worshipped Hugo. He petted her, talked through long evenings to her, tried to be faithful to her in his most unfettered dreams, and once considered proposing to her. When he found himself unable to do that, he was compelled to resist an impulse to seduce her. Ashamed, believing himself unfit for a nice girl, he untangled that romance as painlessly as he could, separating himself from Janice little by little and denying every accusation of waning interest.

Then for a month he believed that he could never be satisfied by any woman, that he was superior to women. He read the lives of great lovers and adulterers and he wished that he could see Bessie, who had taken his money long before in New York City. She appealed to him then more than all the others--probably, he thought, because he was drunk and had not viewed her in sharp perspective. For hours he meditated on women, while he longed constantly to possess a woman.

But the habitual routine of his life did not suffer. He attended his classes and lectures, played on the basketball team, tried tentatively to write for the campus newspaper, learned to perform indifferently on the mandolin, and made himself into the semblance of an ideal college man. His criticism of college then was at its lowest ebb. He spent Christmas in New York at Lefty Foresman’s parents’ elaborate home, slightly intoxicated through the two weeks, hastening to the opera, to balls and parties, ill at ease when presented to people whose names struck his ears familiarly, seeing for the first time the exaggeration of scale on which the very rich live and wondering constantly why he never met Iris, wishing for and fearing that meeting while he wondered.

When his first year at college was near to its end, and that still and respectful silence that marks the passing of a senior class had fallen over the campus, Hugo realized with a shock that he would soon be on his way back to Indian Creek. Then, suddenly, he saw what an amazing and splendid thing that year at college had been. He realized how it had filled his life to the brim with activities of which he had not dreamed, how it had shaped him so that he would be almost a stranger in his own home, how it had aged and educated him in the business of living. When the time of parting with his new friends drew near, he understood that they were valuable to him, in spite of his questioning. And they made it clear that he would be missed by them. At last he shared a feeling with his classmates, a fond sadness, an illimitable poignancy that was young and unadulterated by motive. He was perversely happy when he became aware of it. He felt somewhat justified for being himself and living his life.

A day or two before college closed, he received a letter from his father. It was the third he had received during the year. It said:

Dear Son--

Your mother and I have decided to break the news to you before you

leave for home, because there may be better opportunities for you

in the East than here at Indian Creek. When you went away to

Webster University, I agreed to take care of all your expenses. It

was the least I could do, I felt, for my only son. The two thousand

dollars your mother and I had saved seemed ample for your four

years. But the bills we have received, as well as your own demands,

have been staggering. In March, when a scant six hundred dollars of

the original fund remained, I invested the money in a mine stock

which, the salesman said, would easily net the six thousand dollars

you appeared to need. I now find to my chagrin that the stock is

worthless. I am unable to get back my purchase money.

It will be impossible during the coming year for me to let you have

more than five hundred dollars. Perhaps, with what you earn this

summer and with the exercise of economy, you can get along. I trust

so. But, anxious as we are to see you again, we felt that, in the

light of such information, you might prefer to remain in the East

to earn what you can.

We are both despondent over the situation and we wish that we could

do more than tender our regrets. But we hope that you will be able

to find some solution to this situation. Thus, with our very

warmest affection and our fondest hope, we wish you good fortune.

Your loving father,

ABEDNEGO DANNER.

Hugo read the letter down to the last period after the rather tremulous signature. His emotions were confused. Touched by the earnest and pathetically futile efforts of his father and by the attempt of that lonely little man to express what was, perhaps, a great affection, Hugo was nevertheless aghast at a prospect that he had not considered. He was going to be thrown into the world on his own resources. And, resting his frame in his worn chair--a frame capable of smashing into banks and taking the needed money without fear of punishment--Hugo began to wonder dismally if he was able even to support himself. No trade, no occupation, suggested itself. He had already experienced some of the merciless coldness of the world. The boys would all leave soon. And then he would be alone, unprovided for, helpless.

Hugo was frightened. He read the letter again, his wistful thoughts of his parents diminishing before the reality of his predicament. He counted his money. Eighty dollars in the bank and twelve in his pockets. He was glad he had started an account after his experience with Bessie. He was glad that he had husbanded more than enough to pay his fare to Indian Creek. Ninety-two dollars. He could live on that for a long time. Perhaps for the summer. And he would be able to get some sort of job. He was strong, anyway. That comforted him. He looked out of his window and tried to enumerate the things that he could do. All sorts of farm work. He could drive a team in the city. He could work on the docks. He considered nothing but manual labor. It would offer more. Gradually his fear that he would starve if left to his own devices ebbed from him, and it was replaced by grief that he could not return to Webster. Fourteen hundred dollars--that was the cost of his freshman year. He made a list of the things he could do without, of the work he could do to help himself through college. Perhaps he could return. The fear slowly diminished. He would be a working student in the year to come. He hated the idea. His fraternity had taken no members from that class of humble young men who rose at dawn and scrubbed floors and waited on tables to win the priceless gem of education. Lefty and Chuck would be chilly toward such a step. They would even offer him money to avoid it. It was a sad circumstance, at best.

When that period of tribulation passed, Hugo became a man. But he suffered keenly from his unwonted fears for some time. The calm and suave youth who had made love to Iris was buried beneath his frightened and imaginative adolescence. It wore out the last of his childishness. Immediately afterwards he learned about money and how it is earned. He sat there in the dormitory, almost trembling with uncertainty and used mighty efforts to do the things he felt he must do. He wrote a letter to his father which began: “Dear Dad--Why in Sam Hill didn’t you tell me you were being reamed so badly by your nit-witted son and I’d have shovelled out and dug up some money for myself long ago?” On rereading that letter he realized that its tone was false. He wrote another in which he apologized with simple sincerity for the condition he had unknowingly created, and in which he expressed every confidence that he could take care of himself in the future.

He bore that braver front through the last days of school. He shook Lefty’s hand warmly and looked fairly into his eyes. “Well, so long, old sock. Be good.”

“Be good, Hugo. And don’t weaken. We’ll need all your beef next year. Decided what you’re going to do yet?”

“No. Have you?”

Lefty shrugged. “I suppose I’ve got to go abroad with the family as usual. They wrote a dirty letter about the allowance I’d not have next year if I didn’t. Why don’t you come with us? Iris’ll be there.”

Hugo grinned. “No, sir! Iris once is very nice, but no man’s equal to Iris twice.” His grin became a chuckle. “And that’s a poem which you can say to Iris if you see her--and tell her I hope it makes her mad.”

Lefty’s blue eyes sparkled with appreciation. Danner was a wonderful boy. Full of wit and not dumb like most of his kind. Getting smooth, too. Be a great man. Too bad to leave him--even for the summer. “Well--so long, old man.”

Hugo watched Lefty lift his bags into a cab and roll away in the warm June dust. Then Chuck:

“Well--by-by, Hugo. See you next September.”

“Yeah. Take care of yourself.”

“No chance of your going abroad, is there? Because we sure could paint the old Avenue de l’Opéra red if you did.”

“Not this year, Chuck.”

“Well--don’t take any wooden money.”

“Don’t do anything you wouldn’t eat.”

Hugo felt a lump in his throat. He could not say any more farewells. The campus was almost deserted. No meals would be served after the next day. He stared at the vacant dormitories and listened to the waning sound of departures. A train puffed and fumed at the station. It was filled with boys. Going away. He went to his room and packed. He’d leave, too. When his suit-cases were filled, he looked round the room with damp eyes. He thought that he was going to cry, mastered himself, and then did cry. Some time later he remembered Iris and stopped crying. He walked to the station, recalling his first journey in the other direction, his pinch-backed green suit, the trunk he had carried. Grand old place, Webster. Suddenly gone dead all over. There would be a train for New York in half an hour. He took it. Some of the students talked to him on the trip to the city. Then they left him, alone, in the great vacuum of the terminal. The glittering corridors were filled with people. He wondered if he could find Bessie’s house.

At a restaurant he ate supper. When he emerged, it was dark. He asked his way, found a hotel, registered in a one-dollar room, went out on the street again. He walked to the Raven. Then he took a cab. He remembered Bessie’s house. An old woman answered the door. “Bessie? Bessie? No girl by that name I remember.”

Hugo described her. “Oh, that tart! She ran out on me--owin’ a week’s rent.”

“When was that?”

“Some time last fall.”

“Oh.” Hugo meditated. The woman spoke again. “I did hear from one of my other girls that she’d gone to work at Coney, but I ain’t had time to look her up. Owes me four dollars, she does. But Bessie, as you calls her--her name’s Sue--wasn’t never much good. Still--” the woman scrutinized Hugo and giggled--”Bessie ain’t the only girl in the world. I got a cute little piece up here named Palmerlee says only the other night she’s lonely. Glad to interdooce you.”

Hugo thought of his small capital. “No, thanks.”

He walked away. A warm moon was dimly sensible above the lights of the street. He decided to go to Coney Island and look for the lost Bessie. It would cost him only a dime, and she owed him money. He smiled a little savagely and thought that he would collect its equivalent. Then he boarded the subway, cursing himself for a fool and cursing his appetite for the fool’s master. Why did he chase that particular little harlot on an evening when his mind should be bent toward more serious purposes? Certainly not because he had any intention of getting back his money. Because he wished to surprise her? Because he was angry that she had cheated him? Or because she was the only woman in New York whom he knew? He decided it was the last reason. Finally the train reached Coney Island, and Hugo descended into the fantastic hurly-burly on the street below. He realized the ridiculousness of his quest as he saw the miles of thronging people in the loud streets.

“See the fat woman, see Esmerelda, the beautiful fat woman, she weighs six hundred pounds, she’s had a dozen lovers, she’s the fattest woman in the world, a sensation, dressed in the robes of Cleopatra, robes that took a bolt of cloth; but she’s so fat they conceal nothing, ladies and gentlemen, see the beautiful fat woman...” A roller coaster circled through the skies with a noise that was audible above the crowd’s staccato voice and dashed itself at the earth below. A merry-go-round whirled goldenly and a band struck up a strident march. Hugo smelled stale beer and frying food. He heard the clang of a bell as a weight was driven up to it by the shoulders of a young gentleman in a pink shirt.

“The strongest man in the world, ladies and gentlemen, come in and see Thorndyke, the great professor of physical culture from Munich, Germany. He can bend a spike in his bare hands, an elephant can pass over his body without harming him, he can lift a weight of one ton...” Hugo laughed. Two girls saw him and brushed close. “Buy us a drink, sport.”

The strongest man in the world. Hugo wondered what sort of strong man he would make. Perhaps he could go into competition with Dr. Thorndyke. He saw himself pictured in gaudy reds and yellows, holding up an enormous weight. He remembered that he was looking for Bessie. Then he saw another girl. She was sitting at a table, alone. That fact was significant. He sat beside her.

“Hello, tough,” she said.

“Hello.”

“Wanna buy me a beer?”

Hugo bought a beer and looked at the girl. Her hair was black and straight. Her mouth was straight. It was painted scarlet. Her eyes were hard and dark. But her body, as if to atone for her face, was made in a series of soft curves that fitted exquisitely into her black silk dress. He tortured himself looking at her. She permitted it sullenly. “You can buy me a sandwich, if you want. I ain’t eaten to-day.”

He bought a sandwich, wondering if she was telling the truth. She ate ravenously. He bought another and then a second glass of beer. After that she rose. “You can come with me if you wanna.”

Odd. No conversation, no vivacity, only a dull submission that was not in keeping with her appearance.

“Have you had enough to eat?” he asked.

“It’ll do,” she responded.

They turned into a side street and moved away from the shimmering lights and the morass of people. Presently they entered a dingy frame house and went upstairs. There was no one in the hall, no furniture, only a flickering gas-light. She unlocked a door. “Come in.”

He looked at her again. She took off her hat and arranged her dark hair so that it looped almost over one eye. Hugo wondered at her silence. “I didn’t mean to rush,” he said.

“Well, I did. Gotta make some more. It’ll be”--she hesitated--”two bucks.”

The girl sat down and wept. “Aw, hell,” she said finally, looking at him with a shameless defiance, “I guess I’m gonna make a rotten tart. I was in a show, an’ I got busted out for not bein’ nice to the manager. I says to myself: ‘Well, what am I gonna do?’ An’ I starts to get hungry this morning. So I says to myself: ‘Well, there ain’t but one thing to do, Charlotte, but to get you a room, ‘ I says, an’ here I am, so help me God.”

She removed her dress with a sweeping motion. Hugo looked at her, filled with pity, filled with remorse at his sudden surrender to her passionate good looks, intensely discomfited.

“Listen. I have a roll in my pocket. I’m damn glad I came here first. I haven’t got a job, but I’ll get one in the morning. And I’ll get you a decent room and stake you till you get work. God knows, I picked you up for what I thought you were, Charlotte, and God knows too that I haven’t any noble nature. But I’m not going to let you go on the street simply because you’re broke. Not when you hate it so much.”

Charlotte shut her eyes tight and pressed out the last tears, which ran into her rouge and streaked it with mascara. “That’s sure white of you.”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s selfish. I had an awful yen for you when I sat down at that table. But let’s not worry about it now. Let’s go out and get a decent dinner.”

“You mean--you mean you want me to go out and eat--now?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“But you ain’t--?”

“Forget it. Come on.”

Charlotte sniffled and buried her black tresses in her black dress. She pulled it over the curves of her hips. She inspected herself in a spotted mirror and sniffled again. Then she laughed. A throaty, gurgling laugh. Her hands moved swiftly, and soon she turned. “How am I?”

“Wonderful.”

“Let’s go!”

She tucked her hand under his arm when they reached the street. Hugo walked silently. He wondered why he was doing it and to what it would lead. It seemed good, wholly good, to have a girl at his side again, especially a girl over whom he had so strong a claim. They stopped before a glass-fronted restaurant that advertised its sea food and its steaks. She sat down with an apologetic smile. “I’m afraid I’m goin’ to eat you out of house and home.”

“Go ahead. I had a big supper, but I’ll string along with some pie and cheese and beer.”

Charlotte studied the menu. “Mind if I have a little steak?”

Hugo shook his head slowly. “Waiter! A big T-bone, and some lyonnaise potatoes, and some string beans and corn and a salad and ice cream. Bring some pie and cheese for me--and a beer.”

“Gosh!” Charlotte said.

Hugo watched her eat the food. He knew such pity as he had seldom felt. Poor little kid! All alone, scared, going on the street because she would starve otherwise. It made him feel strong and capable. Before the meal was finished, she was talking furiously. Her pathetic life was unravelled. “I come from Brooklyn ... old man took to drink, an’ ma beat it with a gent from Astoria ... never knew what happened to her ... I kept house for the old man till he tried to get funny with me ... Burlesque ... on the road ... the leading man ... He flew the coop when I told him, and then when it came, it was dead...” Another job ... the manager ... Coney and her dismissal. “I just couldn’t let ‘em have it when I didn’t like ‘em, mister. Guess I’m not tough like the other girls. My mother was French and she brought me up kind of decent. Well...” The little outward turning of her hands, the shrug of her shoulders.

“Don’t worry, Charlotte. I won’t let them eat you. To-morrow I’ll set you up to a decent room and we’ll go out and find some jobs here.”

“You don’t have to do that, mister. I’ll make out. All I needed was a square and another day.”

Charlotte sighed and smoked a cigarette with her coffee. Then they went out on the street and mixed with the throng. The voices of a score of barkers wheedled them. Hugo began to feel gay. He took Charlotte to see the strong man and watched his feats with a critical eye. He took her on the roller coaster and became taut and laughing when she screamed and held him. Then, laughing louder than before, they went through Steeplechase. She fell in the rolling barrel and he carried her out. They crossed over moving staircases and lost themselves in a maze, and slid down polished chutes into fountains of light and excited screaming. Always, afterwards, her hand found his arm, her great dark eyes looked into his and laughed. Always they turned toward the other men and girls with a proud and haughty expression that pointed to Hugo as her man, her conquest. Later they danced. They drank more beer.

“Golly,” she whispered, as she snuggled against him, “you sure strut a mean fox trot.”

“So do you, Charlotte.”

“I been doin’ it a lot, I guess.”

The brazen crash of a finale. The table. A babble of voices, voices of people snatching pleasure from Coney Island’s gaudy barrel of cheap amusements. Hugo liked it then. He liked the smell and touch of the multitude and the incessant hysteria of its presence. After midnight the music became more aggravating--muted, insinuating. Several of the dancers were drunk. One of them tried to cut in. Hugo shook his head.

“Gee!” Charlotte said, “I was sure hopin’ you wouldn’t let him.”

“Why--I never thought of it.”

“Most fellows would. He’s a tough.”

It was an introduction to an unfamiliar world. The “tough” came to their table and asked for a dance in thick accents. Charlotte paled and accepted. Hugo refused. “Say, bo, I’m askin’ for a dance. I got concessions here. You can’t refuse me, see? I guess you got me wrong.”

“Beat it,” Hugo said, “before I take a poke at you.”

The intruder’s answer was a swinging fist, which missed Hugo by a wide margin. Hugo stood and dropped him with a single clean blow. The manager came up, expostulated, ordered the tough’s inert form from the floor, started the music.

“You shouldn’t ought to have done it, mister. He’ll get his gang.”

“The hell with his gang.”

Charlotte sighed. “That’s the first time anybody ever stuck up for me. Jeest, mister, I’ve been wishin’ an’ wishin’ for the day when somebody would bruise his knuckles for me.”

Hugo laughed. “Hey, waiter! Two beers.”

When she yawned, he took her out to the boulevard and walked at her side toward the shabby house. They reached the steps, and Charlotte began to cry.

“What’s the matter?”

“I was goin’ to thank you, but I don’t know how. It was too nice of you. An’ now I suppose I’ll never see you again.”

“Don’t be silly. I’ll show up at eight in the morning and we’ll have breakfast together.”

Charlotte looked into his face wistfully. “Say, kid, be a good guy and take me to your hotel, will you? I’m scared I’ll lose you.”

He held her hands. “You won’t lose me. And I haven’t got a hotel--yet.”

“Then--come up an’ stay with me. Honest, I’m all right. I can prove it to you. It’ll be doin’ me a favor.”

“I ought not to, Charlotte.”

She threw her arms around him and kissed him. He felt her breath on his lips and the warmth of her body. “You gotta, kid. You’re all I ever had. Please, please.”

Hugo walked up the stairs thoughtfully. In her small room he watched her disrobe. So willingly now--so eagerly. She turned back the covers of the bed. “It ain’t much of a dump, baby, but I’ll make you like it.”

Much later, in the abyss of darkness, he heard her voice, sleepy and still husky. “Say, mister, what’s your name?”

In the morning they went down to the boulevard together. The gay débris of the night before lay in the street, and men were sweeping it away. But their spirits were high. They had breakfast together in a quiet enchantment. Once she kissed him.

“Would you like to keep house--for me?” he asked.

“Do you mean it?” She seemed to doubt every instant that good fortune had descended permanently upon her. She was like a dreamer who anticipated a sombre awakening even while he clung to the bliss of his dream.

“Sure, I mean it. I’ll get a job and we’ll find an apartment and you can spend your spare time swimming and lying on the beach.” He knew a twinge of unexpected jealousy. “That is, if you’ll promise not to look at all the men who are going to look at you.” He was ashamed of that statement.

Charlotte, however, was not sufficiently civilized to be displeased. “Do you think I’d two-time the first gent that ever worried about what I did in my spare moments? Why, if you brought home a few bucks to most of the birds I know, they wouldn’t even ask how you earned it--they’d be so busy lookin’ for another girl an’ a shot of gin.”

“Well--let’s go.”

Hugo went to one of the largest side shows. After some questioning he found the manager. “I’m H. Smith,” he said, “and I want to apply for a job.”