II
Joe had chosen the top floor in a row of old walk-up flats on West Fifty-Eighth street. The neighborhood was one of the best in town; but the house itself was unimproved, and a little run-down; anybody might live in such a house. It was pleasant too, to walk up the interminable, dark, shabbily-carpeted stairs, and at the top burst into a paradise of red velvet portières and Oriental divans crowded with feather cushions. Joe had bought all the stuff himself; it had been great to pick out the very best quality velours and the thickest rugs. It was Mr. Gore who stipulated for a walk-up apartment. In a house with an elevator, you ran the chance of a blackmailing elevator boy.
Jewel Le Compte (Mr. Gore had suggested the changed spelling of her name) sat half reclining in a Morris chair, sewing a ribbon strap on a sheer undergarment, with microscopic stitches. Joe lay stretched out on a divan with his hands under his head, watching her. She was wrapped in a blue silk kimono embroidered with pink chrysanthemums; Joe had picked that out, too. Her legs were crossed, and from the foot which was elevated, a quilted blue mule dangled free of her rosy heel. Her plentiful black hair was gathered in a rough twist on top of her head: and she had no make-up on her face. Joe liked to see her without her war paint; when she left it off, the babyish look came back to her cheeks; they no longer looked all of a piece; but showed delicate, dusky discolorations and unevennesses. A damn pretty girl, Jewel; and how well she suited her luxurious surroundings! He had had the wit to foresee that while she was still in Allen street.
From time to time Jewel looked up from her sewing, and her eyes travelled with pleasure over Joe from head to foot.
“You’re fillin’ out,” she remarked. “You’ll soon be a man.”
“Aah!” said Joe; “I’m man enough alretty to be your master!”
Jewel laughed. “Listen to it! I got you to nurse, boy.”
“Where would you be if it wasn’t for me?” demanded Joe.
“Oh, as a business manager you’re all right,” said Jewel. “That wasn’t what I meant. . . . In ten years maybe you can talk about bein’ my master!”
“How do you know I’ll stick to you that long?” asked Joe.
“Well, you will. Not that it matters . . . but you will.”
Joe felt uncomfortable. “Why will I?”
“I don’t know . . . I guess we’re a pair . . .”
A thousand recollections tumbled into Joe’s mind. He looked at Jewel and in her unsmiling eyes he saw the same things that were in his own mind. For the moment he seemed to have become Jewel; and Jewel him; he the woman; Jewel the man. It made him feel queer. “Aah!” he snarled.
Jewel resumed her sewing. “It’s like this,” she said; “with all the other fellows I’ve known, I had to chuck a bluff, see? One kind of bluff or another. And they the same with me. Like an Irish jig, when you dance up to your partner and back. . . . But with you—though you’re only a boy, it’s different. . . . You belong to me, like.”
“The hell I do!” said Joe.
Jewel shrugged. “Not that my saying so, matters. Either it’s so or it isn’t so, and we can’t change it.”
“I t’ink you got Jewish blood, too,” said Joe, “That’s how they talk.”
“I do’ know what I got,” she said indifferently.
“The Jews are a great people,” said Joe; “when they chuck all that Jewish bunk, and get down to tacks. . . . But an old-fashioned Jew! Gee! Like my old man. A preachin’ Jew’s the limit!”
Jewel was not listening to this. The color of her eyes seemed to darken. “I know why it is,” she said. “With me . . . you forget yourself.”
“You forget yourself, too,” said Joe quickly.
“Oh, sure!” she said lightly. Joe perceived resentfully that she only said it to shut him up. “It’s great to be able to make a fellow like you lose himself,” she went on with a slow smile; she was honest enough then; “you’re so stuck on yourself!”
“Aah!” said Joe sorely. For the moment he could find no rejoinder; he studied her, looking for some way to get back at her. “You’ll get fat,” he said at length.
“Sure, bright-eyes!” she said unconcernedly. “Your eyes run over me like rats. . . . But at that, men will still like me.”
“Why will they?”
“I dunno. . . . It’s somepin. . . . For the same reason maybe, that women will always run after you, you pink and black devil!”
“Because I’m so handsome?” said Joe, grinning.
“Nah! there’s a plenty of handsomer fellows than you!”
“Well, you’re no Lillian Russell!”
“It’s somepin we know . . . but I don’t know how to name it. . . . Neither you nor me gives a damn. . . .”
“Now you’re talkin’!” said Joe, pleased.
“But . . . we’ll never be able to get shet of each other,” Jewel went on with her darkened eyes.
“We’d better get hitched, then,” said Joe, sneering.
“Oh, Gawd!” she said, disgustedly.
Joe echoed her disgust. “Oh, Gawd!”
They looked at each other and laughed.
“You’ll always come back,” she said.
“I’m gonna marry a swell dame,” said Joe; “the pick of the whole four hundred. . . . You needn’t laugh. You wait!”
“Go ahead,” she said.
“You kin marry, too, if you play your cards right.”
Jewel laughed suddenly. “Thanks for the favor,” she said. . . . “Not on your life! I like my own self too well. I like to live alone. . . . Why should I marry? I ain’t ambitious.”
“To get a man to keep you when you’re old,” said Joe.
“I’ll put by enough for me old age,” said Jewel. “I don’t want much. All this—” she waved her arm about, “is all right to attrac’ custom, but it don’t mean nottin’ to me. . . . A nice plain room wit’ a winda on a busy street. There I’ll sit. . . . All I want good is a bed. My bed must be of the best; a1 box spring and a real hair mattress. Plenty of tasty food cooked the way I like it. Nobody to hinder my comin’ and goin’; nobody wit’ the right to bother me! That’s livin’!”
“Aah! you’ll git like the fat lady in Barnum and Bailey’s!”
“All right!”
“It wouldn’t suit me,” said Joe. “I want to be mixed up in things. I’m gonna be a big man. One of the biggest. I been about a bit now. I’m as smart as anybody I see. I’m gonna make them feel me. I like to see the buggers crawl on their bellies. Like Dobereiner. I’ll have a secretary like Dobereiner. Makes you feel great. . . . And a hell of a big house on Fift’ Avenoo, and a yacht and a private car . . . there isn’t anything I won’t have!”
“You’re welcome to it,” said Jewel. “Seems childish to me.”
“And a swell-lookin’ wife to take around, wearing diamonds all over her. . . .”
“Just the same, you’ll come to see me,” said Jewel smiling to herself; “fat though I be.”
“Have you braced the old man?” asked Jewel.
Joe armed himself with caution. He had been waiting for this. “No,” he said. “All bills paid, and a hundred a week clear! Ain’t yeh satisfied?”
“No,” said Jewel. “This may blow up any time. I want to be protected. A lump sum down. A man as rich as that; it’s customary. It don’t have to be in cash. A string of pearls, if it suits him better. Or anything I can realize on.”
Joe smoothed out his tone. “You’re right, Jewel. You’re certainly entitled to it. Just leave it to me. I’ll brace him as soon as the time is ripe.”
“The time is ripe now,” said Jewel with quiet stubbornness.
“Who’s runnin’ this show?” Joe demanded.
“There’s some things you don’t know,” said Jewel. “You’re only a kid. The time is ripe. The old man is ripe.”
“All right,” said Joe. “I’ll brace him next time I see him.”
“That’s what you said before. You needn’t mind now. I’ll brace him myself to-night.”
Joe sat up suddenly. “Go ahead!” he cried violently. “And the whole show’ll blow up right then! I know that old geezer! If you ask him for money, he’ll fade! He likes to make out it’s all a fairy-story like, when he comes here.”
“Has he already given you the money for me?” Jewel asked unexpectedly.
Joe’s mouth opened and shut. He perceived that he had betrayed himself by showing too much heat. Oh well, he had to have it out with her anyhow. “Yes,” he said coolly, falling back on the divan.
Jewel stood up suddenly. Her sewing fell to the floor. She stood over Joe with clenched hands; a flush in her dark cheeks; her big eyes burning—she was handsome! “You dirty cheat!” she said, not loud. “You rotten kid! Rotten before you’re ripe! You thieving Jew! . . . I might have known how it would be!”
Joe felt relieved. If this was how she was going to take it, he was right there with her. He grinned up at her. “Aah! chase yerself!” he drawled. “This is my show. I started it, didn’t I?”
“You didn’t earn this money, damn you!”
“I put you in the way of earning it!”
Jewel suddenly quieted down. “Was it in cash?” she asked.
“No, railroad bonds. He got ’em out of the safe deposit box himself.”
Jewel sat down, and picked up her sewing. This was what Joe was afraid of. He ground his teeth together. “Aah, what was you anyhow when I picked you out of the gutter?” he cried noisily. “You was nottin’ but a dirty little Allen street. . . .”
Jewel smiled at him. “What’s the use?” she said; “you know you got to fork out.”
“I’m damned if I will!” cried Joe. “Now you know it, what you goin’ to do about it?”
Jewel merely pulled her sewing this way and that.
“I’m damned well gonna keep those bonds!” shouted Joe. “You tell the old man when he comes here to-night! Maybe he’ll hand you a new set. I don’t think! What can you do? It’s back to Allen street for yours if I drop you. The old man’ll fire me, you says. What the hell do I care? ‘ ’ll still have the mon’, won’t I? I’m about troo wit’ t’ old stiff anyhow . . . and he don’t need neither me nor you no more, if you want to know it; cos I’ve taught him the ropes. There’s plenty other girls.”
Joe’s tone changed. “. . . But you got him eatin’ out of your hand. He don’t want to hafta make up to a new girl. If you was wise you could keep him long as you wanted. The longer you kep’ him, the harder it would be for him to make a break. You could work him for a whole sheaf of gilt-edge bonds. But you gotta make a stink, I suppose. That’s just like a woman. All right! All right! If you’re so stuck on the Allen street houses. . . .”
Joe ran out of matter. You’ve got to have some return from the other side in order to keep this sort of thing up. He jumped up, and walked about the room muttering angrily; picking things up and putting them down again; darting little side looks at Jewel. She went on sewing.
Joe found his voice again. “It’s up to you now. I warn yeh! I’m about to resign the job as your manager anyhow. It don’t give me enough scope. I’m tired suckin’ up to that old dub—to anybody! I’m gonna operate on my own now. I’ll have them comin’ to me! And I don’t need no woman in my business neither! . . . A few thousands is little enough for you to pay me for puttin’ you where you are. . . .”
In spite of himself, Joe could not keep his mind on any one line; it shot off this way and that. He sounded weak to himself. How the hell had he come to let himself be put on the defensive anyhow? Now, struggle as he would, he could not keep a whining tone from coming into his voice.
“Aah! what’s the matter with yeh? I ain’t tryin’ to swipe the bonds offen you. You know me! I on’y want to use ’em for a little while. I got a scheme. . . . I can pay you back twice over. I can make money for both of us. You said I was a good business man. Well, I’m a better business man than you know. On’y I got to have a lump sum to start with. As a decoy to attrac’ more. I’ll tell you my scheme. . . .”
“I ain’t interested,” said Jewel, biting off her thread.
“Now listen, Jewel. . . .”
“You hand over my bonds,” she said, looking at him steadily. “When they’re in my own hands, then you can talk. I’ll have the handling of my own money, see? If your scheme looks good to me, I’ll put something in it—but I’ll say how much.”
Joe flung himself down on the divan again. “Yeah!” he said in extreme bitterness. “You think you’re gonna run my business, don’t you? What you know about business? You never been off Allen street till you come up here. You’d do better to stick to your own business, and leave me mine.”
“Where are the bonds?” she asked.
“Aah! in the inside pocket o’ me coat.” Joe flung an arm over his eyes.
Jewel got up without haste.