IX
There was a large organ in this cathedral, a magic organ of the modern style, which played itself when you put in a roll of paper and pressed an electric switch. It played the very latest jazz tunes from Broadway, and the company danced, and Vee Tracy came to Bunny and said, “My doctor allows me only one drink in an evening, and I want a sober partner.” Bunny was glad to oblige, and so the time passed pleasantly. He danced with his hostess, and with the blonde fairy, Bessie Barrie. In between dances they chatted, and the Chinese spectre continued to flit about, and the deeps of the human spirit were more and more unveiled.
In front of Bunny stood Tommy Paley, super-director, handsome, immaculate if slightly ruffled, flushed of face, and steady upon his legs if not in his thoughts. “Look here, Ross,” he said, “I want you to tell me something.”
“What is it?”
“I want to know what it’s all about.”
“What, Mr. Paley?”
“Life! What the hell are we here for, and where do we go when we get through?”
“If I knew,” said Bunny, “I would surely tell you.”
“But, lookit, man, I thought you went to college! I never got any education, I was a newsboy and all that. But I thought when a fellow’s read a lotta books and goes to college—”
“We haven’t got to it yet,” said Bunny. “Maybe it comes in the last two years.”
“Well, by God, if they tell you, you come tell me. And find out, old son, what the hell we going to do about sex? You can’t live with ’em and you can’t live without ’em, and what sort of a mess is it?”
“It’s very puzzling,” admitted Bunny.
“It’s the devil!” said the other. “I’d pay anybody ten year’s salary if they’d teach me to forget the whole damn business.”
“Yes,” said Bunny; “but then, what would you direct?”
And the super-director looked at him, bewildered, and suddenly burst out laughing. “By God, that’s so! That’s a good one! Ho, ho, ho!” And he went off, presumably to pass the good one on.
His place was taken by Harvey Manning, who was no longer able to stand up, but sprawled over a chair, and in a voice of the deepest injury declared, “I wanna know whoze been tellin bout me!”
“Telling what?” asked Bunny.
“Thaz what I wanna know. What they been tellin?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Harvey.”
“Thass it! Why don’t you know? Why don’t you tell me? Mean say I ain’t askin straight? You think I’m drunk—that it? I say, I wanna know whoze been talkin bout me an what they been sayin. I gotta take care my reputation. I wanna know why you won’t tell me. I’m gonna know if I have to keep askin all night.” And accordingly he started again, “Please, ole feller, what they been tellin you?”
But just then the Chinese spectre flitted past, and Harvey got up and made an effort to catch him, and failing, caught hold of a lamp-stand, slightly taller than himself. It was not built like the lamp-posts that he was used to clutching on street-corners; it started to fall, and Bunny leaped and caught it, and Harvey cried, in alarm, “Look out, you’re upsettin it!”
Then a funny thing happened. Bunny had noticed at the dinner-table a well-groomed man of the big Western type, polite and unobtrusive; the superintendent of the estate, and one of the few who kept sober. Now it appeared that among the duties of superintendent at a monastery was that of the old-fashioned “bouncer” of the Bowery saloon. He came up, and quietly slipped his arm about Harvey Manning; and the latter, evidently having been there before, set up an agonized wail, “I d’wanna go to bed! I woan go to bed! Dammit, Anderson, lemme lone! If I go to bed now I wake up in the mornin an I can’t have a drink till evenin an I go crazy!”
Against that horrible fate poor Harvey fought frantically; but apparently the material inside the shoulders of Mr. Anderson’s dresscoat was not the ordinary tailor’s padding, and the weeping victim was helpless as in the grip of a boa-constrictor. He went along, even while proclaiming loudly that he wouldn’t. “I’ll get up again, I tell you! I woan be treated like a baby! I woan come this damn place again! It’s an outrage! I’m a grown man an I got a right get drunk if I wanna—” and so his weeping voice died into the elevator!
“Mr. Ross,” said Vee Tracy, “there are two cries that one hears at Hollywood parties. The first is, I don’t want to go to bed; and the second is, I do.”