On his third glass of Bourbon Herf began to talk. Congo sat listening with his heavy lips a little open, occasionally nodding his head. ‘The difference between you and me is that you’re going up in the social scale, Armand, and I’m going down… When you were a messboy on a steamboat I was a horrid little chalkyfaced kid living at the Ritz. My mother and father did all this Vermont marble blackwalnut grand Babylonian stuff… there’s nothing more for me to do about it… Women are like rats, you know, they leave a sinking ship. She’s going to marry this man Baldwin who’s just been appointed District Attorney. They’re said to be grooming him for mayor on a fusion reform ticket… The delusion of power, that’s what’s biting him. Women fall for it like hell. If I thought it’d be any good to me I swear I’ve got the energy to sit up and make a million dollars. But I get no organic sensation out of that stuff any more. I’ve got to have something new, different… Your sons’ll be like that Congo… If I’d had a decent education and started soon enough I might have been a great scientist. If I’d been a little more highly sexed I might have been an artist or gone in for religion… But here I am by Jesus Christ almost thirty years old and very anxious to live… If I were sufficiently romantic I suppose I’d have killed myself long ago just to make people talk about me. I havent even got the conviction to make a successful drunkard.’
‘Looks like,’ said Congo filling the little glasses again with a slow smile, ‘Meester ’Erf you tink too much.’
‘Of course I do Congo, of course I do, but what the hell am I going to do about it?’
‘Well when you need a little money remember Armand Duval… Want a chaser?’
Herf shook his head. ‘I’ve got to chase myself… So long Armand.’
In the colonnaded marble hall he ran into Nevada Jones. She was wearing orchids. ‘Hullo Nevada, what are you doing in this palace of sin?’
‘I live here, what do you think?… I married a friend of yours the other day, Armand Duval. Want to come up and see him?’
‘Just been… He’s a good scout.’
‘He sure is.’
‘What did you do with little Tony Hunter?’
She came close to him and spoke in a low voice. ‘Just forget about me and him will you?… Gawd the boy’s breath’d knock you down… Tony’s one of God’s mistakes, I’m through with him… Found him chewing the edges of the rug rolling on the floor of the dressing room one day because he was afraid he was going to be unfaithful to me with an acrobat… I told him he’d better go and be it and we busted up right there… But honest I’m out for connubial bliss this time, right on the level, so for God’s sake dont let anybody spring anything about Tony or about Baldwin either on Armand… though he knows he wasnt hitching up to any plaster virgin… Why dont you come up and eat with us?’
‘I cant. Good luck Nevada.’ The whisky warm in his stomach, tingling in his fingers, Jimmy Herf stepped out into seven o’clock Park Avenue, whirring with taxicabs, streaked with smells of gasoline and restaurants and twilight.
It was the first evening James Merivale had gone to the Metropolitan Club since he had been put up for it; he had been afraid, that like carrying a cane, it was a little old for him. He sat in a deep leather chair by a window smoking a thirtyfive cent cigar with the Wall Street Journal on his knee and a copy of the Cosmopolitan leaning against his right thigh and, with his eyes on the night flawed with lights like a crystal, he abandoned himself to reverie: Economic Depression… Ten million dollars… After the war slump. Some smash I’ll tell the world. BLACKHEAD & DENSCH FAIL FOR $10,000,000… Densch left the country some days ago… Blackhead incommunicado in his home at Great Neck. One of the oldest and most respected import and export firms in New York, $10,000,000. O it’s always fair weather When good fellows get together. That’s the thing about banking. Even in a deficit there’s money to be handled, collateral. These commercial propositions always entail a margin of risk. We get ’em coming or else we get ’em going, eh Merivale? That’s what old Perkins said when Cunningham mixed him that Jack Rose… With a stein on the tahul And a good song ri-i-inging clear. Good connection that feller. Maisie knew what she was doing after all… A man in a position like that’s always likely to be blackmailed. A fool not to prosecute… Girl’s crazy he said, married to another man of the same name… Ought to be in a sanitarium, a case like that. God I’d have dusted his hide for him. Circumstances exonerated him completely, even mother admitted that. O Sinbad was in bad in Tokio and Rome… that’s what Jerry used to sing. Poor old Jerry never had the feeling of being in good right in on the ground floor of the Metropolitan Club… Comes of poor stock. Take Jimmy now… hasnt even that excuse, an out and out failure, a misfit from way back… Guess old man Herf was pretty wild, a yachtsman. Used to hear mother say Aunt Lily had to put up with a whole lot. Still he might have made something of himself with all his advantages… dreamer, wanderlust… Greenwich Village stuff. And dad did every bit as much for him as he did for me… And this divorce now. Adultery… with a prostitute like as not. Probably had syphilis or something. Ten Million Dollar Failure.
Failure. Success.
Ten Million Dollar Success… Ten Years of Successful Banking… At the dinner of the American Bankers Association last night James Merivale, president of the Bank & Trust Company, spoke in answer to the toast ‘Ten Years of Progressive Banking’… Reminds me gentlemen of the old darky who was very fond of chicken… But if you will allow me a few serious words on this festive occasion (flashlight photograph) there is a warning note I should like to sound… feel it my duty as an American citizen, as president of a great institution of nationwide, international in the better sense, nay, universal contacts and loyalties (flashlight photograph)… At last making himself heard above the thunderous applause James Merivale, his stately steelgray head shaking with emotion, continued his speech… Gentlemen you do me too much honor… Let me only add that in all trials and tribulations, becalmed amid the dark waters of scorn or spurning the swift rapids of popular estimation, amid the still small hours of the night, and in the roar of millions at noonday, my staff, my bread of life, my inspiration has been my triune loyalty to my wife, my mother, and my flag.
The long ash from his cigar had broken and fallen on his knees. James Merivale got to his feet and gravely brushed the light ash off his trousers. Then he settled down again and with an intent frown began to read the article on Foreign Exchange in the Wall Street Journal.
They sit up on two stools in the lunchwaggon.
‘Say kid how the hell did you come to sign up on that old scow?’
‘Wasnt anything else going out east.’
‘Well you sure have dished your gravy this time kid, cap’n ’s a dopehead, first officer’s the damnedest crook out o Sing Sing, crew’s a lot o bohunks, the ole tub aint worth the salvage of her… What was your last job?’
‘Night clerk in a hotel.’
‘Listen to that cookey… Jesus Kerist Amighty look at a guy who’ll give up a good job clerkin in a swell hotel in Noo York City to sign on as messboy on Davy Jones’ own steam yacht… A fine seacook you’re goin to make.’ The younger man is flushing. ‘How about that Hamburgher?’ he shouts at the counterman.
After they have eaten, while they are finishing their coffee, he turns to his friend and asks in a low voice, ‘Say Rooney was you ever overseas… in the war?’