Their faces were sad. There was great age in them. They felt suddenly the distance they had come and the amount they had lived. They had a moment of cohesion, a moment of tragic affection and union, which drew them together like small jets of flame against all the senseless nihilism of life.
Margaret came in fearfully. Her eyes were red, her broad German face white and tearful. A group of excited boarders whispered in the hall.
“I’ll lose them all now,” Eliza fretted. “The last time three left. Over twenty dollars a week and money so hard to get. I don’t know what’s to become of us all.” She wept again.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Helen impatiently. “Forget about the boarders once in a while.”
Steve sank stupidly into a chair by the long table. From time to time he muttered sentimentally to himself. Luke, his face sensitive, hurt, ashamed around his mouth, stood by him attentively, spoke gently to him, and brought him a glass of water.
“Give him a cup of coffee, mama,” Helen cried irritably. “For heaven’s sake, you might do a little for him.”
“Why here, here,” said Eliza, rushing awkwardly to the gas range and lighting a burner. “I never thought — I’ll have some in a minute.”
Margaret sat in a chair on the other side of the disorderly table, leaning her face in her hand and weeping. Her tears dredged little gulches through the thick compost of rouge and powder with which she coated her rough skin.
“Cheer up, honey,” said Helen, beginning to laugh. “Christmas is coming.” She patted the broad German back comfortingly.
Ben opened the torn screen door and stepped out on the back porch. It was a cool night in the rich month of August; the sky was deeply pricked with great stars. He lighted a cigarette, holding the match with white trembling fingers. There were faint sounds from summer porches, the laughter of women, a distant throb of music at a dance. Eugene went and stood beside him: he looked up at him with wonder, exultancy, and with sadness. He prodded him half with fear, half with joy.
Ben snarled softly at him, made a sudden motion to strike him, but stopped. A swift light flickered across his mouth. He smoked.
Steve went away with the German woman to Indiana, where, at first, came news of opulence, fatness, ease, and furs (with photographs), later of brawls with her honest brothers, and talk of divorce, reunion and renascence. He gravitated between the two poles of his support, Margaret and Eliza, returning to Altamont every summer for a period of drugs and drunkenness that ended in a family fight, jail, and a hospital cure.
“Hell commences,” howled Gant, “as soon as he comes home. He’s a curse and a care, the lowest of the low, the vilest of the vile. Woman, you have given birth to a monster who will not rest until he has done me to death, fearful, cruel, and accursed reprobate that he is!”
But Eliza wrote her oldest son regularly, enclosed sums of money from time to time, and revived her hopes incessantly, against nature, against reason, against the structure of life. She did not dare to come openly to his defense, to reveal frankly the place he held in her heart’s core, but she would produce each letter in which he spoke boastfully of his successes, or announced his monthly resurrection, and read them to an unmoved family. They were florid, foolish letters, full of quotation marks and written in a large fancy hand. She was proud and pleased at all their extravagances; his flowery illiteracy was another proof to her of his superior intelligence.
Dear Mama:
Yours of the 11th to hand and must say I was glad to know you were in “the land of the living” again as I had begun to feel it was a “long time between drinks” since your last. (“I tell you what,” said Eliza, looking up and sniggering with pleasure, “he’s no fool.” Helen, with a smile that was half ribald, half annoyed, about her big mouth, made a face at Luke, and lifted her eyes patiently upward to God as Eliza continued. Gant leaned forward tensely with his head craned upward, listening carefully with a faint grin of pleasure.) Well, mama, since I last wrote you things have been coming my way and it now looks as if the “Prodigal Son” will come home some day in his own private car. (“Hey, what’s that?” said Gant, and she read it again for him. He wet his thumb and looked about with a pleased grin. “Wh-wh-what’s the matter?” asked Luke. “Has he b-b-bought the railroad?” Helen laughed hoarsely. “I’m from Missouri,” she said.) It took me a long time to get started, mama, but things were breaking against me and all that little Stevie has ever asked from any one in this “vale of tears” is a fair chance. (Helen laughed her ironical husky falsetto. “All that little S-S-Stevie has ever asked,” said Luke, reddening with annoyance, “is the whole g-g-g-goddam world with a few gold mines thrown in.”) But now that I’m on my feet at last, mama, I’m going to show the world that I haven’t forgotten those who stood by me in my “hour of need,” and that the best friend a man ever had is his mother. (“Where’s the shovel?” said Ben, snickering quietly.)
‘That boy writes a good letter,” said Gant appreciatively. “I’m damned if he’s not the smartest one of the lot when he wants to be.”
“Yes,” said Luke angrily, “he’s so smart that you’ll b-b-believe any fairy tale he wants to tell you. B-b-b-but the one who’s stuck by you through thick and thin gets no c-c-credit at all.” He glanced meaningly at Helen. “It’s a d-d-damn shame.”
“Forget about it,” she said wearily.
“Well,” said Eliza thoughtfully, holding the letter in her folded hands and gazing away, “perhaps he’s going to turn over a new leaf now. You never know.” Lost in pleased revery she looked into vacancy, pursing her lips.
“I hope so!” said Helen wearily. “You’ve got to show me.”
Privately: “You see how it is, don’t you?” she said to Luke, mounting to hysteria. “Do I get any credit? Do I? I can work my fingers to the bone for them, but do I get so much as Go to Hell for my trouble? Do I?”
In these years Helen went off into the South with Pearl Hines, the saddlemaker’s daughter. They sang together at moving-picture theatres in country towns. They were booked from a theatrical office in Atlanta.
Pearl Hines was a heavily built girl with a meaty face and negroid lips. She was jolly and vital. She sang ragtime and nigger songs with a natural passion, swinging her hips and shaking her breasts erotically.
“Here comes my da-dad-dy now
O pop, O pop, O-o pop.”
They earned as much as $100 a week sometimes. They played in towns like Waycross, Georgia; Greenville, South Carolina; Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
They brought with them the great armor of innocency. They were eager and decent girls. Occasionally the village men made cautious explorative insults, relying on the superstition that lives in small towns concerning “show girls.” But generally they were well treated.
For them, these ventures into new lands were eager with promise. The vacant idiot laughter, the ribald enthusiasm with which South Carolina or Georgia countrymen, filling a theatre with the strong smell of clay and sweat, greeted Pearl’s songs, left them unwounded, pleased, eager. They were excited to know that they were members of the profession; they bought Variety regularly, they saw themselves finally a celebrated high-salaried team on “big time” in great cities. Pearl was to “put over” the popular songs, to introduce the rag melodies with the vital rhythm of her dynamic meatiness, Helen was to give operatic dignity to the programme. In a respectful hush, bathed in a pink spot, she sang ditties of higher quality — Tosti’s “Goodbye,” “The End of a Perfect Day,” and “The Rosary.” She had a big, full, somewhat metallic voice: she had received training from her Aunt Louise, the splendid blonde who had lived in Altamont for several years after her separation from Elmer Pentland. Louise gave music lessons and enjoyed her waning youth with handsome young men. She was one of the ripe, rich, dangerous women that Helen liked. She had a little girl and went away to New York with the child when tongues