The Driver (18 page)

As the time drew near Galt swelled with mystery. He could not help dropping now and then at dinner a hint of something that might be coming to pass. He addressed it always to Natalie, for the benefit of the others. He looked at her solemnly one evening and contorted a nursery rhyme:

Who got ‘em in?

Little Johnnie Quinn

Who got ‘em out?

Big John Stout.

“Old silly,” said Natalie. “You’ve got it wrong. It goes—”

“Now let me alone,” he said. “I’ve got it the way I want it. What do you know about it? Poor little outcast! No place to go. Nobody to take her in.”

He leaned over to pet her consolingly.

“Stop it!” she said, attacking him. They scuffled. Some dishes were overturned. She caught a napkin under his chin and tied it over the top of his head.

“All right,” he mumbled. “You’ll be sorry. You wait and see.”

She held his nose and made him say the rhyme the right way, repeating it after her, under penalty of being made to take a spoonful of gooseberry jam which he hated.

v

The momentous evening came at last. It had been a particularly hard day in Wall Street. Galt was cross and easily set off. So the omens were bad to begin with. Natalie read them from afar and gently let him alone. He bolted his food, became restless, and asked Mrs. Galt to order the carriage around.

“Which one?” she asked. “Who will be going?” She did not ask where.

“All of us,” said Galt.

“Gram’ma, too?” Natalie asked.

He nodded.

“Come on,” he said, pushing back his dessert. He went into the hall, got into his coat, and walked to and fro with his hat on, fuming. He helped Gram’ma down the steps and handed her into the carriage, then Mrs. Galt, then Vera, Natalie last.

“Go there,” he said to the coachman, handing him a slip of paper.

The house, with not a soul inside of it, was brilliantly lighted. Galt in a fever of anticipation crossed the pavement with his most egregious, cocklike stride. The entrance was level with the street, screened with two tall iron gates on enormous hinges. Before inserting the key he looked around, expecting to see the family at his heels. What he saw instead threw him into a violent temper. I was still standing at the carriage door waiting to hand them out. Natalie stood on the curb with her head inside arguing with her mother. Mrs. Galt would have to know whom they were calling on. Natalie went to find out.

“Nobody,” said Galt. “Nobody, tell her.”

When Natalie returned with this answer Mrs. Galt construed it in the social sense. She was rigid with horror at the thought that Galt by one mad impulse might frustrate all her precious plans. For all she knew he was about to launch them upon a party of upstart nobodies in the very sight of Mrs. Valentine. Vera now joined with Natalie. They added force to persuasion and slowly brought her forth. We went straggling across the pavement toward Galt, who by this time was in a fine rage.

As he unlocked the gates and pushed them open Mrs. Galt had a flash of understanding. “Oh!” she exclaimed in a bewildered, contrite tone. It was almost too late.

There were two sets of doors after the gates.

We stood in a vaulted hallway. There was a retiring room on either side. Further in, where the width of these two rooms was added to that of the hallway, a grand impression of the house began. We were then in a magnificently arched space, balanced on four monolith columns. At the right was a carpeted stone staircase. At the left was a great fireplace and in front of it a very large velvet-covered divan. Logs were burning lazily on the andirons. On a table at one side was a cut glass service and iced water. Beyond, straight ahead, was a view of the dining room. As we walked in that direction there was a sound of tinkling water. This issued from a fountain suddenly disclosed in an unsuspected space. A fire was burning in the dining room. The table was decorated. The sideboard was furnished.

Galt, silently leading the way, brought us back to the grand staircase. God knows why,—women must weep in a new house. Possibly it makes them feel more at home. All the feminine eyes in that party, Vera’s alone excepted, were red as we mounted the stairs.

As Galt’s satisfaction increased he began to talk. “This,” he said, “is where we live.”

That was a room the whole width of the house and half its depth, second floor front, full of soft light reflected from the ceiling, dedicated to complete human comfort. Everything had been thought of. Trifles of convenience were everywhere at hand. There were flowers on the table, books in the bookcases, current magazines lying about, pillows on the rug in front of the fire place and an enormous divan in which six might lie at once.

On the same floor was a music room; then a ball room. The chambers were next above, arranged in suites. This was mother’s, meaning Mrs. Galt; that was Gram’ma’s, that one Vera’s, that one Natalie’s, those others for company,—or they could rearrange them as they pleased. Every room was perfectly dressed, even to towels on the bath room racks and toilet accessories in the cabinets.

“The help,” he said, “and some other things,” passing the next two floors without stopping. The top floor was his. One large room was equipped as an office is. His desk was a large mahogany table with six telephone instruments on it. Opening off to the right was his apartment. “And this,” he said, opening a door to the left, “is Coxey’s when he wants it... two rooms and bath like mine.”

On the roof, under glass, was a tennis court. The view of the city from there at night was apparitional. Galt led us to the front ostensibly that we might see it to better advantage, but for another reason really.

“That’s Valentine’s house down there,” he said, “that roof. We are three stones higher and twenty feet wider.... You could almost spit on it.”

Mrs. Galt shuddered.

Well, that was all to see.

“She’s built like a locomotive,” said Galt, trying here and there a door to show how perfectly it fitted. There was no higher word of praise.

We went down by an automatic electric elevator and were again in that vaulted, formal space on the ground floor. Words would not come. Mrs. Galt stood gazing into the fire, overwhelmed, wondering perhaps how this would affect her campaign to propitiate Mrs. Valentine. Natalie sat on the stairway with her chin in her hands. Vera helped herself to some iced water. Gram’ma Galt sat far off in the corner on a stone bench.

Galt surveyed them with incredulous disgust. This was a kind of situation for which he had no intuition at all. His emotions and theirs were diametrically different. For him the moment was one of realization. That which was realized had existed in his thoughts whole, just as it was, for nearly a year. For them it was a terrific shock, overturning the way of their lives, and women moreover do not make their adjustments to a new environment in the free, canine manner of men, but with a kind of feline diffidence. It is very rash to surprise them so without elaborate preparation.

The tension became unbearable. I was expecting Galt to break forth in weird sounds. Instead, without a word, but with his teeth set and his hands clenched, he leaped into the middle of the divan with his feet and bounced up and down, like a man in a circus net, until I thought he should break the springs. That seemed to be what he was trying to do. But it was the very best quality of upholstery, as he ought to have known. Then he came down on his back full length and lay still, the women all staring at him.

Vera had a sense of tragedy. It gave her access to his feelings. She walked over to the divan, knelt down, took his head in her arms and kissed him. This of all her memorable gestures was the finest. And it was spoiled. Or was it saved, perhaps? She might not have known how to end it.

“Ouch!” said Galt. “A pin sticks me.”

He got up.

“Come on, Coxey, I want to show you something in the office upstairs.”

That was subterfuge. He only wished to get away. We took the elevator and left them. He went directly to his bedroom, ripped off his collar and threw it on the floor, kicked off his shoes, and cast himself wearily on the bed. There he lay, on the costly lace counterpane, lined with pink silk, a forlorn and shabby figure.

Presently Mrs. Galt timidly appeared at the door, followed by Vera and Natalie. They were a little out of breath, having walked up, not knowing how to manage the elevator.

“It’s lovely... perfectly splendid!” said Mrs. Galt, sitting on the bed and taking his hand. “I’m only sorry I haven’t words to tell you—” And she began to weep again.

“Don’t,” said Galt. “How does Gram’ma like it?”

“Hadn’t we better start home now?” said Mrs. Galt.

“Home!” said Galt. “What’s this, I’d like to know? Not a bolt missing. She’s all fueled... steam up... ready to have her throttle pulled open. Go downstairs and hang up your hat Telephone over for the servants.... How does Gram’ma like it?”

“We haven’t anything here, you know,” Mrs. Galt protested gently. “The girls haven’t and neither have I.”

“I’m here for good,” said Galt. “I want my breakfast in that dining room tomorrow morning.... How does Gram’ma like it?... What’s the matter?”

They couldn’t evade it any longer. Natalie told him.

“Gram’ma says she won’t live here.”

“Why not?”

“She won’t say why not. Just says she won’t.”

“All right, all right,” said Galt. “Being a woman is something you can’t help. Tell her we’ll give her a deed to the old house... all for her own. We’ll play company when we come to see her.... That reminds me.”

He brought a large folded document out of his pocket and handed it to Mrs. Galt.

“What’s this?”

“Deed to this house,” he said. “It’s from Coxey. Thank him. We kept it all in his name until today. Now it’s in your name.”

i

V
ERA by this time was in high, romantic quest of that which cannot be found outside oneself. She had a passion to be utterly free. It was a cold, intellectual phantasy, defeated in every possibility by some strange, morbid no-saying of her emotional nature. Her delusion had been that circumstances enthralled her. That refuge now was gone. Wealth gave her control over the circumstances of her life. She could do what she pleased. She was free to seek freedom and her mind was strong and daring.

She leased an old house in West Tenth Street and had it all made over into studio apartments, four above to be let by favor to whom she liked and one very grand on the ground floor for herself. Then she became a patron of the arts. It is an easy road. Art is hungry for praise and attention. Artists are democratic. They keep no rules, go anywhere, have lots of time and love to be entertained by wealth, if only to put their contempt upon it. The hospitality of a buyer must be bad indeed if they refuse it. Vera’s hospitality was attractive in itself. Her teas were man teas. Her dinners were gay and excellent. They were popular at once and soon became smart in a special, exotic way. Her private exhibitions were written up in the art columns.

She had first a conventional phase and harbored academic art. That passed. Her taste became more and more radical; so also of course did her company. I went often to see her there,—to her teas and sometimes to her dinners, because one could seldom see her anywhere else. But it was a trial for both of us. She introduced me always with an air which meant, “He doesn’t belong, as you see, but he is all right.” I was accepted for her sake. The men were not polite with each other. They quarrelled and squabbled incessantly, mulishly, pettishly, in terms as strange to me as the language of my trade would have been to them. They were polite to me. That was the distinction they made.

As Vera progressed, her understanding of art becoming higher and higher, new figures appeared, some of them grossly uncouth, either naturally so or by affectation. She discovered a sculptor who brought his things with him to be admired,—small ones in his pockets, larger ones in his arms. I could not understand them. They resembled the monstrosities children dream of when they need paregoric. He had been stoker, prize-fighter, mason, poet, tramp,—heaven knows what!—with this marvellous gift inside of him all the time. He wore brogans, trousers that sagged, a shirt open to the middle of his hairy chest, a red handkerchief around his neck and often no hat at all.

Vera seemed quite mad about him. She took me one day to his studio, saying particularly that she had never been there. It was a small room at the top of a palsied fire trap near Gramercy Park, reached by many turnings through dark hallways with sudden steps up and down. In it, besides the sculptor in a gunny-sack smock, there was nothing but some planks laid over the tops of barrels, some heaps of clay, and his things, which he called pieces of form. On the walls, scrawled in pencil, were his social engagements, all with women. Vera’s name was there.

Once he came to tea with nothing of his own to show, but from under his coat he produced and held solemnly aloft an object which proved to be a stuffed toy beast,—dog, cow, bear or what you couldn’t tell, it was so battered. One of its shoe-button eyes, one ear and the tail were gone. Its hide was cotton flannel, now the color of grimy hands.

“What is it?” everybody asked.

He wouldn’t tell until he had found something to stand it on. A book would serve. Then he held it out at arm’s length.

“I found it on the East Side in a rag picker’s place I” he said. “I seem to see something in it... what?... a force... something elemental... something.”

The respect with which this twaddle was received by a sane company, some of it distinguished, even by Vera herself, filled me with indignation.

Later the sculptor sat by me and asked ingratiatingly how matters were in Wall Street.

“You are the third man who has asked me that question today,” I said. “Why are artists so much interested in Wall Street?”

“I’m not,” he said. “I only thought it was a proper question to ask. Some of them are. I hear them talking about it. Pictures sell better when people are making money in Wall Street. Sculpture never sells anyway. Mine won’t.”