# Firecrackers/Chapter 13

As time passed, Paul fell so completely under the spell of the charm of the world of affairs that he seriously began to consider the advisability of following the general custom of taking on a mistress.
I mustn't be too marked, he averred to George Everest from the rich brown leather of a couch at the Moloch Club. Everybody else down here is keeping somebody and I seem to be out of it. John Armstrong warns me against stenographers. What do you say?
Well, old man, George roared back at him, what do you say?
Paul grinned. For the moment he was not prepared to say anything more. The idea, although it had been revolving vaguely in his head, had just assumed formal expression. The next day, however, he did not lunch at the club as usual, and a little later in the afternoon, Florizel Hammond reported that he had squinted at Paul in the company of a cutie at Fraunces' Tavern. Thereafter, Paul and his cutie became the subjects for a good deal of ribald gibing around Wall Street. They had been observed dining at Voisin's and the Crillon; they had been seen motoring on the Boston Post Road ​at a late hour. Paul, indeed, it was beginning to be recognized, had at last become a regular business man.
Entering the Moloch Club one day, alone, he was greeted with applause.
Aren't you going to introduce us?
How's Delilah?
Growing up, eh? was Jack Draycott's interrogative comment, while Florizel Hammond burst into song:
The crowd took up the refrain. Even George Everest, busy at the ticker, managed to get in with
while one white-bearded old fellow whose paunch and buttocks occupied fully two-thirds of a broad couch, giving him the appearance of a prosperous Easter egg, bawled out in a deep bass that drowned all the others:
Paul received this bantering with disarming good-nature. It added, indeed, to his happiness, caus​ing him to wonder whether it was business or his brunette which he preferred. One, assuredly, gave edge to the other; even his relations with Vera were now sufficiently oblique to interest him.
I hope it isn't a stenographer, Paul, John Armstrong hinted darkly. You know what I told you.
What does she do, anyway, Paul? Jack Draycott demanded.
Yes, what does she do? the crowd inquired in chorus.
Paul grinned. She paints, he replied.
Paints! Good God, they all do! Florizel howled. Paints! That's a good one! Another song had occurred to him:
Wintergreen Waterbury was not actually a painter. To be sure, she cherished ambitions, based on no known talents, to wield the brush, but her career, up to date, had been that of artists' model. She had frequently been heard to remark, however, while Harrison Fisher or Rolf Armstrong was engaged in making a replica of her pretty face, I could do that if I wanted to, or You'll have to get a new model soon, I'm going to open a studio of my own. A curious ​fact was that, although her fresh, innocuous face, her even, white teeth, her saccharine smile, and her dark hair had graced the covers of half the popular magazines half-a-dozen times each, a state of affairs which convinced her that she was as celebrated in her own sphere as Gloria Swanson in hers, not one of the men in the Moloch Club had recognized her, notwithstanding the fact that her portrait had appeared on the very periodicals they were most in the habit of reading.
Born in a small Michigan town, the daughter of a local druggist, she owed her queer Christian name to the pungent, red berries which dot the moss-covered soil in the great pine-forests of that state. Her mother had always nourished a desire for these miniature fruits and, during the period of her daughter's gestation, she had cried out for them incessantly. In the last hours of her confinement she had screamed Wintergreen so lustily that it seemed predestined that the child should bear the name.
The mother had died in childbirth, and from that time on the father had neglected his profitable drug-business in order to indulge a secret conviction that he was a great inventor. Silas Waterbury's fantastic inventions—it will suffice to state that one of them was an extraordinary formula for metamorphosing grass into milk without the aid of a cow—came to nothing, and when the improvident druggist died, the heavy mortgages on such property as he apparently still possessed—he had borrowed ​money right and left to provide funds whereby he might carry out his preposterous schemes—were immediately foreclosed, and Wintergreen found herself penniless. Without any discernible ability—she had never even learned how to cook properly—the girl, nevertheless, had her dreams. She had watched with envy the rapidly ascending star of an old school-friend, Lottie Coulter, much less favoured in the matter of looks than Wintergreen herself. Only two years previously Lottie had gone on the stage in New York, and already she had acted two parts with the Provincetown Players, had been invited to become a member of the Actors' Equity Association, and had had her picture published twice in the New York Morning Telegraph. It was at Lottie's behest, with Lottie's encouragement, that Wintergreen determined that she, too, would go to New York. To accomplish this purpose, she wrote to Lottie for money, and received a cheque for seventy-five dollars by return mail.
The re-encounter of the two friends was a trifle strained. Wintergreen discovered that her old schoolmate had changed considerably. Her manner was more easy, her conversation—so sprinkled was it with the current argot of Broadway—well-nigh incomprehensible. Lottie, on her part, wondered exactly what she could do with the fresh, green country girl who stood before her. For the moment she could do nothing less than invite her to share her apartment. This apartment, on West ​Forty-ninth Street, offered abundant evidence of prosperity. Lottie explained to Wintergreen that she had furnished it with the profits of her two engagements with the Provincetown Players and, for the moment, until some of the greenness had worn away, Lottie considered it advisable to treat her old friend with circumspection, permitting her only such glimpses of her personal life as it seemed possible to surround with the requisite glamour of respectability. She need have made no exceptional effort in this direction. Wintergreen saw nothing irregular in the visits and conduct of the many young men who swarmed in and out of the place. For the rest, Lottie had warned them that they must keep their hands off the milkmaid.
For the moment, however, until she could be broken in, it was more convenient for Lottie to have Wintergreen out of the place a good part of the day, and she ransacked her brains and pestered her friends for a job for the druggist's daughter. It was difficult to arrive at a decision regarding the nature of this occupation, because, as has been stated, there was nothing that Wintergreen could do. Fortuitously, it was Wintergreen herself who solved the troublous problem. Thoroughly discouraged one day, she was a listless passenger on a Fifth Avenue bus. A man on the seat opposite her interrupted her confused reverie by accosting her politely and demanding if she were a model. At the moment she had not any very precise picture in ​her mind of what a model really was. The gentleman—she could see that he was a gentleman, because he was so polite—persisted in his attentions, inviting her to visit his studio, suggesting that he would offer her the customary stipend in exchange for the artistic use of her body. In desperation, she agreed to accept his proposition, not, however, without certain misgivings. To compensate for these she forced herself to consider her employment merely in the light of a makeshift, something to do until she might discover a more suitable profession. What this might be she had never previously been able to decide, but posing gave her an inspiration: she would become a painter.
From the beginning, she refused point-blank to pose nude, but her face was so pretty, so completely free from expressiveness of any kind, her features so even and unintelligent, that she made a superb model for the girl's head which plays so important a rôle on the cover of the American magazine, and soon she was in great demand. It cannot be denied that her beauty also won her other compliments. Artists, and brokers she met in their studios, besieged her with their unwelcome attentions, but one after another soon tired of the quest and dropped her, although she continued to give satisfaction in her professional capacity. They dropped her for the best of all reasons, because, apparently, she was impossible to possess.
Paul met her one afternoon at Jerry Trude's ​studio, whither he had repaired for cocktails. Struck at once by her dazzling appearance, he asked her to dine with him. Now, aside from her ruling passion, Wintergreen observed one other rule of conduct: she never refused food in whatever form it was offered. She had, therefore, been lunching or dining with Paul ever since, and had even consented to motor with him. She still, however, preserved her virginity, in every literal, physiological sense.
For Paul, her innate stupidity was part of her charm. It seemed to him that he had never before encountered any one who was stupid on so magnificent a scale. Even Amy and Vera would have lost the silver cup in any competition with this damsel. Paul held a theory about his peculiar taste for this sort of thing. He believed that he preferred to know women like Campaspe—was there, however, another?—as friends, but for a comfortable life with a wife or a mistress he invariably picked a moron.
One evening, after they had been acquainted for about a week, Paul determined to persuade this pretty lass to put herself to a more practical use on his account. He began the attack by ordering cocktails, doubles, moreover.
Wintergreen stared at him, wide-eyed, when the waiter set the brimming glasses before them.
You know I never drink, she expostulated.
Just one, tonight, he pleaded.
You wouldn't ask me to do that if you really re​spected me, she whimpered. It seemed probable that she was about to cry. Wintergreen had the instinct of tears. Where other women were compelled to act their grief, it came quite naturally to this simple child of Michigan. If any untoward incident occurred, especially anything directed at the validity of that vague condition which she was pleased to define as the respect due her from men, her eyes immediately were flooded. Pressed, she began to moan. If matters went further, she bawled. This was the protection the good God had given her for the virtue she held most dear. There was something about the spectacle of Wintergreen Waterbury in noisy sorrow which corroded the lust in strong men's hearts. Hardened roues had backed away from a demonstration of it in disgust; half-hearted swains turned and ran away from it for half-a-mile or so before they summoned enough courage to look over their shoulders. Paul was aware of this idiosyncrasy and of its habitual effect on others. It was obvious that it might easily cause the permanent destruction of his own desire, and so he did not press the point of cocktails.
I ordered them both for myself, dear, he explained.
Wintergreen's gloom lifted at once. She did not appear to have the faintest notion that alcohol in another person foreboded any danger to herself. It is doubtful, indeed, if she were aware when a man ​was drunk in her presence. Her stubborn theory in regard to liquor was limited to one axiom: drink, when consumed by young girls, invariably effected their downfall: Whether she had read this somewhere, or had been told, is not known. However that may be, she held the belief firmly.
Paul, who was patience itself when he had an object in view, did not relinquish the siege. Ona later occasion he ordered champagne. This beverage, curiously enough, she imbibed willingly, apparently under the impression that it was a variety of ginger ale—Paul had selected a particularly sweet brand. Nevertheless, she still remained recalcitrant. There seemed to exist in her some blind, preservative instinct which continued to protect her, even after the small quantity of wine she had swallowed began to make its effect. She permitted Paul to hold her in his arms, to kiss her respectfully; she even went so far as to call him Dearie once or twice, but she baulked when he experimented tentatively in more significant directions. Their relationship resembled a game, which, indeed, so far as Paul was concerned, was as amusing as, possibly more amusing than, any consummation could possibly be. Apparently, in Wall Street, he was known as the possessor of a highly desirable mistress; in artistic circles, where the girl's reputation for the maintenance of strict behaviour was celebrated, it was supposed that he had been successful where all others had failed. Paul was aware of these mis​conceptions, and they added to the zest with which he pursued this unamorous phantom.
Wintergreen, on her side, was beginning to feel the need of a guide and confidante. So far, Lottie had not appealed to her as a sufficiently sympathetic listener, but there was no one else, and at last, one day, Wintergreen was inspired to recount to her some of the attentions Paul had paid her, concluding with. He's going to marry me.
Lottie, reclining on the bed, abruptly sat upright. Paul Moody! she exclaimed. Has he said so?
Why, no man would ever go so far with a girl as he has gone with me unless he wanted to marry her, would he? He loves me.
In your hat and over your ear! Has he said so?
Why, I kissed him!
You poor heel, you, was Lottie's comment. I don't know where you get 'em, if any.
Get what?
Brains, kid, brains. The tall blond can't marry you even if he wants to. He's married.
Married? Why didn't you tell me before? Wintergreen began to wail.
Well, for one thing, nitwit, because you only just this minute loosened up on his name.
But he'll divorce her to marry me!
Ha!
He will. You'll see! The girl was defiant. She had even stopped crying.
​Has he said so?
No-o.
You poor, simple heel, you, how do you get that way? Somebody oughta crown you. Maybe that'd help.
Wintergreen began whimpering again. Why, what do you mean? she demanded.
I mean you gotta get wise. This ain't a boilermaker. These Wall Street johns can be trimmed.
Why, what do you mean? Wintergreen repeated.
Make him say something or do something.
I'm as pure as you are, Lottie Coulter! How dare you!
Snap it off, kid, snap it off. If you're as pure as I am you've got to go some. Don't you read the papers?
The papers? What papers? Wintergreen looked bewildered.
No papers, doll-baby, but the world knows the worst. My life's an open sewer.
Lottie!
I've reformed in a way, Lottie went on, rubbing the burning end of the stump of her cigarette against a plate which had held crackers, as she reflected that the hour for frankness had arrived. I've quit the hop for the junk.
The . . . ?
I've cut out lying on my hip and taken to inhaling the snow. . . . Waving away the demand for further explanation she foresaw would be forth​coming, she hurried on, Well, let's leave that. Ancient history ain't any more important than the parsley on fish, but open your eyes, kid, open your eyes.
Wintergreen obeyed her literally.
We've got to get something on this guy, something juicy. Lottie lighted a new cigarette and puffed away thoughtfully. After a little, she continued. Then we'll have grounds for a breach of promise suit.
Wintergreen was incensed by this suggestion. He'll marry me, you'll see, she insisted.
May your children be acrobats! He'll marry Aunt Lottie sooner. But we'll prove that he wanted to marry you. To begin with you might scramble off that chaste lounge, and snatch a look at my pink taffeta. Do you know anything that'll take spots out? I spilled a whole dish of soup on it last night?
I've heard that ether. . . .
Snap it off, kid. If I had any ether I'd drink it.
In the Moloch Club at this moment, Florizel Hammond, who had a fancy for old English ditties, was singing: