The Relentless City

'Really, Gallio always succeeds in making himself comfortable,' said she. 'What more can anyone want than a charming house like this? It is so absurd to desire more than you can use. It is a mistake the whole world makes, except, perhaps, Judy.'

'I don't think Ginger does,' said Charlie.

'Oh yes; he desires, at least, to say more than he means. Consequently people attach no importance to what he says.'

Charlie laughed.

'Which, being interpreted, means that Ginger has been saying something which you are afraid is correct.'

Sybil Massington stopped.

'Charlie, for a man you have a good deal of intuition. That is partly what makes me never think of you as a man. You are so like a woman in many ways.'

'I am wanting to have a last word.'

'Last word! What last word?'

'A last word with you, Sybil,' he said; 'I shall never bother you again.'

'Dear Charlie, it is no use. Please don't!' she said.

'I am sorry to disobey you,' said he; 'but I mean to. It is quite short – just this: if ever you change your mind, you will find me waiting for you. That is all.'

Sybil frowned.

'I can't accept that,' she said. 'You have no business to put the responsibility on me like that.'

'There is no responsibility.'

'Yes, there is; you practically threaten me. It is like writing a letter to say you will commit suicide unless I do something. You threaten, anyhow, to commit celibacy unless I marry you.'

'No, I don't threaten,' said he; 'so far from threatening, I only leave the door open in case of Hope wanting to come in. That is badly expressed; a woman would have said it better.'

Sybil was suddenly touched by his gentleness.

'No one could have said it better,' she said. 'Charlie, believe me, I am sorry, but – here is the truth of it: I don't believe I can love anybody. This also: if I did not like you so much, I think I would marry you.'

'Ah, spare me that,' he said.

'I do spare it you. I will not willingly make you very unhappy. Do you believe that?'

He stopped, and came close to her.

'Sybil, if you pointed to the sky and said it was night, I should believe you,' he said.

She made no reply to that, and they walked on in silence. Everywhere over the broad expanse of swelling downs, looking huge behind the heat-haze, and over the green restfulness of the water-meadows beneath them, even over the blue immensity of the sky, there was spread a sense of quiet and leisure. To Sybil, thinking of the after-lunch conversation, it seemed of value; to her at the moment this contented security was a big factor in life. Economically, no doubt, she was wrong; a score of dynamos utilizing the waste power of the streams below that so hurryingly sought the sea would have contributed much to the utility of the scene, and the noble timber which surrounded them could certainly have been far better employed in some factory than to have merely formed a most wasteful handle, as it were, for the great parasol of leaves which screened them and the idle, cud-chewing cattle. Here, as always, there was that silent deadly war going on between utility and beauty; soon, without a doubt, in a score of years, or a score of days, or a score of centuries, principles of economy would prevail, and the world of men would live in cast-iron mood in extremely sanitary cast-iron dwellings. Already, it seemed to her, the death-knell of beauty was vibrating in the air. The rural heart of the country was bleeding into the towns; instead of beating the swords into sickles, the way of the world now was to beat the elm-trees into faggots and the rivers into electric light. For the faggots would give warmth and the electricity would give light; these things were useful. And in the distance, like a cuttle-fish with tentacles waving and growing every moment nearer, New York, and all that New York stood for, was sucking in whatever came within its reach. She was already sucked in.

All this passed very quickly through her mind, for it seemed to her that there had been no appreciable pause when Charlie spoke again.

'Yes, the world is going westwards,' he said. 'I heard a few days ago that Mrs. Emsworth was going to act in New York this autumn. Is it true?'

'I believe so. Why?'

'Mere curiosity. Is she going on her own?'

Sybil laughed.

'Her own! There isn't any. I don't suppose she could pay for a steerage passage for her company. Bilton is taking her,' She paused a moment. 'Do you know Bilton?' she asked.

'The impresario? No,'

'He is a splendid type,' she said, 'of what we are coming to.'

'Cad, I should think,' said Charlie.

'Cad – oh yes. Why not? But a cad with a head. So many cads haven't one. I met him the other night.'

'Where?' asked Charlie, with the vague jealousy of everybody characteristic of a man in love.

'I forget. At the house of some other cad. It is rather odd, Charlie; he is the image of you to look at. When I first saw him, I thought it was you. He is just about the same height, he has the same – don't blush – the same extremely handsome face. Also he moves like you, rather slowly; but he gets there.'

'You mean I don't,' said Charlie.

'I didn't mean it that moment. Your remark again was exactly like an Englishman. But I liked him; he has force. I respect that enormously.'

On the top of Charlie's tongue was 'You mean I have none,' but he was not English enough for that.

'Is he going with her?' he asked.

'No; he has gone. He has three theatres in New York, and he is going to instal Dorothy Emsworth in one of them. Is it true, by the way – '

She stopped in the middle of her sentence.

'Probably not,' said Charlie, rather too quickly.

'You mean it is,' she said – 'about Bertie.'

Charlie made the noise usually written 'Pshaw!'

'Oh, my dear Sybil,' he said, 'Queen Anne is dead, the prophets are dead. There are heaps of old histories.'

Sybil Massington stopped.

'Now, I am going to ask you a question,' she said. 'You inquired a few minutes ago whether Dorothy Emsworth was going to act in New York. Why did you ask? You said it was from mere curiosity; is that true? You can say yes again, if you wish.'

'I don't wish,' said he. 'It wasn't true then, and I don't suppose it will be by now. You mean that Bertie saw a good deal of her at one time, but how much neither you nor I know.'

Sybil turned, and began walking home again rather quickly.

'How disgusting!' she said.

'Your fault,' he said – ' entirely your fault.'

'But won't it be rather awkward for him?' she asked, walking rather more slowly.

'I asked him that the other night,' said Charlie; 'he said he didn't know.'

Again for a time they walked in silence. But the alertness of Mrs. Massington's face went bail for the fact that she was not silent because she had nothing to say. Then it is to be supposed that she followed out the train of her thought to her own satisfaction.

'How lovely the shadows are!' she remarked; 'shadows are so much more attractive than lights.'

'Searchlights?' asked he.

'No; shadows and searchlights belong to the same plane. I hope it is tea-time; I am so hungry.'

This was irrelevant enough; irrelevance, therefore, was no longer a social crime.

'And I should like to see my double,' said Charlie.

The only drawback to the charming situation of the house was that a curve of a branch railway-line to Winchester passed not far from the garden. Trains were infrequent on it on weekdays, even more infrequent on Sundays. But at this moment the thump of an approaching train was heard, climbing up the incline of the line.

'Brut-al-it-é, brut-al-it-é, brut-al-it-é,' said the labouring engine.

She turned to him.

'Even here,' she said – 'even here is an elbow, a sharp elbow. "Utility, utility!" Did you not hear the engine say that?'

'Something of this sort,' said he.

CHAPTER IV

A day of appalling heat and airlessness was drawing to its close, and the unloveliest city in the world was beginning to find it just possible to breathe again. For fourteen hours New York had been grilling beneath a September sun in an anticyclone; and though anticyclone is a word that does not seem to matter much when it occurs in an obscure corner of the Herald, under the heading of 'Weather Report,' yet, when it is translated from this fairy-land of print into actual life, it matters a good deal if the place is New York and the month is September. Other papers talked airily of a 'heat wave,' and up in Newport everyone reflected with some gusto how unbearable it must be in town, and went to their balls and dinner-parties and picnics and bridge with the added zest that the sauce of these reflections gave. Even in Newport the heat was almost oppressive, but to think of New York made it seem cooler.

From the corner where Sixth Avenue slices across Broadway and Thirty-fourth Street crosses both, one can see the huge mass of the Waldorf Hotel rising gigantic against the evening sky, and wonder, if one is that way inclined, how many million dollars it has taken to blot out the evening sun. But during the afternoon to-day most people were probably grateful for the shadow which those millions had undesignedly procured them; it was something as one went from Fifth Avenue to Broadway to be shielded a little by that hideous immensity, for the dazzle and glare of the sun had been beyond all telling. And though now the sun was close to its setting, the airlessness and acrid heat of the evening was scarcely more tolerable than the furnace heat of the day, for boiling was not appreciably more pleasant than baking. Yet in the relentless city, where no one may pause for a moment unless he wishes to be left behind in the great universal race for gold, which begins as soon as a child can walk, and ceases not until he is long past walking, the climbings of the thermometer into the nineties is an acrobatic feat which concerns the thermometer only, and at the junction of Sixth Avenue and Broadway there was no slackening in the tides of the affairs of men. The electric street cars which ran up and down both these streets, and the cars that crossed them, running east and west up Thirty-fourth Street, were all full to overflowing, and passengers hung on to straps and steps as swarming bees cluster around their queen. Those in the centre of the car were unable to get out where they wanted, while those at the ends who could get out did not want to. A mass of damp human heat, patient, tired, nasal-voiced, and busy, made ingress and egress impossible, and that on which serene philosophers would gaze, saying, 'How beautiful is democracy!' appeared to those who took part in it to be merely mis-management. Incessant ringings of the conductor's bell, the sudden jerks of stoppages and startings, joltings over points where the lights were suddenly extinguished, punctuated the passage of the cars up and down the street, and still the swarming crowds clustered and hung on to straps and backs of seats wherever they could find foot-hold and standing room. But all alike, in payment for this demoniacal means of locomotion, put their five cents into the hot and grimy hands of the conductor, from which, by occult and subtle processes, they were gradually transformed into the decorations of the yachts and palaces of the owners of the line.

Democracy and discomfort, too, held equal sway in the crowded trams of the elevated railway which roared by overhead down Sixth Avenue, in the carriages of which tired millionaires and tired milliners sat stewing side by side, with screeching whistles, grinding brakes, and the vomiting forth of the foul smoke from soft coal; for a strike of some kind was in progress in Pennsylvania, and the men who had stored coal and also engineered the strike were reaping a million dollars a day in increased prices and slight inconvenience to a hundred million people, for the thick pungent smoke poured in wreaths into the first-floor windows of the dingy, dirty habitations of the street. But the train passed by on the trembling and jarring trestles, and the inconvenience passed also, till the next train came.

Thunder of the passing trains above; rumbling of the electric cars; roar of heavy, iron-shod wheels of drays on the uneven, ill-paved cobbles of the street; jostling of the foot passengers on the side-walks, as they streamed in and out from the rickety wooden staircases of the elevated railway, from the crammed, perspiring cars, from dingy, sour-smelling restaurants; shouts of the newsboys with sheaves of ill-printed newspapers under their arms, giving horrible details of the latest murder, and abominable prints of the victim's false teeth, shoes, and the dress she had last been seen in; the thump-thump of the engines in the Herald office; the sickening stew of the streets; the sickening heat of the skies – Democracy, or 'Everyone for himself.'

As an antidote or warning – though it did not seem to have the least effect on the dogged, unending bustle – the note of 'Impermanence' was everywhere sounded loudly. A block or two further up, for instance, the street was torn up for some new underground enterprise (Lewis S. Palmer, as a matter of fact, had floated a company to run a new subterranean line across New York, and had been paid a million and a half dollars for the loan of his credit); and while the cars, which will certainly not cease running till the last trump has been sounded several times, passed over spindle-shanked iron girders and supports, shaken every now and again by the blasting of the rock below, thousands of workmen were toiling day and night deep down in the earth, loading the baskets of the cranes with the splinters of the riven rocks, or giving the larger pieces into the embrace of huge iron pincers that tackled them as a spider tackles a fat fly, and, rising aloft with them above street level, took them along the ropes of their iron web, over the heads of passengers and vehicles, for the carts which waited for them. Elsewhere, half a block of building had vanished almost as the night to make way for something taller, and where yesterday a five-storied building had stood, the site to-day was vacant but for a dozen pistons half buried in the ground, which puffed and shook in a sort of hellish ecstasy of glee at the work, while a gang of men with axe and pick dug out the foundations for the steel house-frames. Yet though to-morrow almost would see the newly completed building again filling up the gap in the street, the exposed walls of the adjacent houses were just for to-day only covered with advertisements, and a notice informed the bewildered shopper that business was going on as usual. That in New York might be taken for granted, but the notice omitted to say where it was going on. But for the crowd in general it was sufficient that work was to be done, and money to be made. That was the whole business and duty of each unit there, and as far as each unit was concerned, the devil might take the rest. Everyone looked tired, worn out, but indefatigable, and extraordinarily patient. One man pushed roughly by another, and where in England the one would look aggrieved, and the other probably, however insincerely, mutter an apology, here neither grievance nor apology was felt, desired, or expressed, for it is a waste of time to feel aggrieved and a waste of energy to express or feel regret. To-morrow the crowd would, on the average, be a little richer than to-day; that was all they wanted. To-morrow the world in general would be a day richer.

Sybil Massington and Bertie Keynes had arrived that morning by the Celtic, after a voyage of complete uneventfulness. The sea had been rough, but the Celtic had not been aware of it. Bertie had seen a whale blow, or so he said, and Sybil had seen three fisher boats off the banks. There had been six hours' fog, and they had got in that morning in this day of frightful heat. They had been on deck like honest tourists to see the immense green, mean statue of Liberty, or whatever that female represents, and had found the huge sky-scrapers by the docks, the bustling paddle-steamers of the ferries, the hooting sirens, the general hideousness, exactly what they had expected. They were, in fact, neither disappointed nor pleased, and when a small, tired young man with a note-book had met them on the moment of their landing, and asked Bertie his first impressions of America, they had felt that they were indeed in the authentic place. Nor had the impression been in any way dimmed all day, and now, as they sat together in the darkened sitting-room at the Waldorf, just before going to dress for dinner, they felt like old inhabitants. Bertie had bought a paper containing the account of his interview, headed, 'Marquis Bolton's eldest son lands: Lord Keynes' first impressions,' and had just finished reading to Sybil, half a column of verbose illiteracy of which, to do him justice, he had not been in any way guilty.

'You're getting on, Bertie,' said she; 'that interview shows you have struck the right note. And where have you been this afternoon?'

'Like Satan, walking up and down the earth,' said he. 'I went by an overhead railway and an underground railway. There are swing gates into the stations of the overhead railway. As I passed in, I naturally held the gate for the next man, so as not to let it bang in his face. He did not take it from me, but passed through, leaving me still holding it. I might have stood there all day, and they would have all passed through. Then I learned better, and let it slam in other people's faces. It saves time. Somehow I thought the incident was characteristic of the country.'

Sybil lit a cigarette.

'I like it,' she said. 'The air, or the people, or something, makes me feel alert. Now, when I feel alert in England it is mere waste of energy. There is nothing to expend one's alertness on; besides, one is out of tone. But here, somehow, it is suitable. I like the utter hideousness of it, too. Look from that window at the line of houses. They are like a row of jagged, broken teeth. Well, it is no worse than Park Lane, and, somehow, there is an efficiency about them here. One is ninety-five stories high for a definite reason – because land is valuable; the next is three stories high because it belongs to a millionaire who doesn't want to walk upstairs. By the way, Mrs. Palmer came in while you were out. We are going to dine with her this evening, and go to Mrs. Emsworth's first night.'

She looked at him rather closely as she said this.

'That will be charming,' he said quite naturally. 'And to-morrow we go down to Mrs. Palmer's on Long Island, don't we?'

'Yes. Really, Bertie, their idea of hospitality is very amazing. She came up here to-day to this blazing gridiron of a place simply in order not to let us be dull on our first evening here. It seemed to her quite natural. And she has put a motor-car at my disposal. I like that sort of thing.'

Bertie thought a moment.

'I know,' he said. 'But though it sounds horrid to say it, a motor-car doesn't mean anything to Mrs. Palmer.'

'It means the kindliness of thinking of it,' said Sybil.

'It was the same kindliness which brought her up from Long Island. Would you and I, if we were in the country, come up to town to entertain someone who was going to stay with us next day? You know we shouldn't.'

'That is true,' said he. 'Is Mrs. Palmer alone here?'

'Yes. Her husband and daughter are both down in Long Island. She is making a sort of rival Newport, you know. You and I plunge into it all to-morrow. I think I am rather frightened, but I am not sure. No, I don't think I am frightened. I am merely trembling with determination to enjoy it all immensely.'

'Trembling?' he asked.

'Yes; just as when you hold something as tight as you can your hand trembles. You must go and dress – at least, I must. Bertie, I am going to be very English. I think they will like it best.'

'Oh, don't pose! You are never so nice when you pose.'

'I'm not going to pose. I am going to be absolutely natural.'

'That is the most difficult pose of all,' said he.

About half-way up Fifth Avenue the two rival restaurants, Sherry's and Delmonico's, glare at each other from opposite sides of the street, each with its row of attendant hansoms and motor-cars. Though New York was technically empty – that is to say, of its millions a few hundred were still at Newport – both restaurants were full, for Mrs. Emsworth's opening night was an occasion not to be missed, and many of those who would naturally have been out of town were there in order to lend their distinguished support to the actress. Furthermore, Mr. Lewis S. Palmer, from his retreat in Long Island, had been operating yesterday on the Stock Exchange in a manner which compelled the attendance of many of the lesser magnates who at this season usually left the money-market to attend to itself. This was very inconsiderate of him, so it was generally thought, but he was not a man who consulted the convenience of others when he saw his own opportunity. But it was extremely characteristic of him that, while nervous brokers, bankers, and financiers rushed back to the furnace of the streets, he remained himself in the coolness of Long Island, and spoke laconically through the telephone.

Mrs. Palmer was waiting in the anteroom at Sherry's when her two English guests arrived, and greeted them with shrill enthusiasm. A rather stout young American, good-looking in a coarse, uncultivated kind of manner, and dressed in a subtly ill-dressed, expensive mode, was with her.

'And here you are!' she cried. 'How are you, Lord Keynes? I'm delighted to see you again. Mrs. Massington, you must let me present to you Mr. Armstrong, who has been so long dying to make your acquaintance that I thought he would be dead before you got here. Mrs. Massington, Mr. Reginald Armstrong. Lord Keynes, Mr. Armstrong.'

The American murmured his national formula about being very pleased, and Mrs. Palmer continued without intermission.

'And I've got no party to meet you,' she said, 'because I thought you would be tired with your journey, and want to have a quiet evening, and we'll go in to dinner at once. Lord Keynes, you look as if America agreed with you, and I see they have been interviewing you already. Well, that's our way here. Why, when Reginald Armstrong gave his equestrian party down at Port Washington last week, I assure you there was a string of our newspaper men a quarter of a mile long waiting to see him.'

The curious shrillness of talk peculiar to America sounded loud in the restaurant as they made their sidling way by crowded tables toward one of the windows looking on the street.

'Equestrian party?' asked Mrs. Massington. 'What is that?'

'Tell them, Reginald,' said Mrs. Palmer. 'Why, it tickled me to death, your equestrian party. Mrs. Massington, those are blue points. You must eat them. Tell them, Reginald.'

'Well, my stable was burned down last fall,' said he, 'and I've been building a new one. So I determined to open it in some kind of characteristic way.'

'His own idea,' said Mrs. Palmer in a loud aside to Bertie. 'He's one of our brightest young men; you'll see a lot of him.'

'So I thought,' continued Mr. Armstrong, 'that I'd give a stable party – make everyone dress as grooms. But then the ladies objected to dressing as grooms. I'm sure I don't know why. I should have thought they'd have liked to show their figures. But some objected. Mrs. Palmer objected. I don't know why she objected – looking at her – but she did object.'

Mrs. Palmer smiled.

'Isn't he lovely?' she said loudly across the table to Mrs. Massington.

'Well, she objected,' again continued Mr. Armstrong; 'and when Mrs. Palmer objects, she objects. She said she wouldn't come. So I had to think of something else. And it occurred to me that the best thing we could do was to have dinner on horseback in the stables.'

He paused a moment.

'Well, that dinner was a success,' he said. 'I say it was a success, and I'm modest too. I had fifty tables made, fitting on to the horses' shoulders, and we all sat on horseback, and ate our dinners in the new stables. Fifty of us in a big circle with the horses' heads pointing inwards, and simultaneously the horses ate their dinner out of a big circular manger. And that dinner has been talked about for a week, and it 'll be talked about till next week. Next week Mrs. Palmer gives a party, and my dinner will be as forgotten as what Adam and Eve had for tea when they were turned out of Paradise.'