# The Smart Set/Volume 41/Issue 3/The Purple Phantasm

from The Smart Set, Nov 1913, pp. 1–12. A Page from the Book of Broadway
THE PURPLE PHANTASM
A Page from the Book of Broadway
By George Bronson-Howard
Observe the beehive—a moth lies dead at its entrance; observe its splendid, gorgeous wings. Yet far from welcoming a beautiful playfellow, the guardians of the gate have straightway stung her to death. Observe that bees are wise, and know that lovely things, like ballet dancers with iridescent skirts, may have within them that uncleanly spawn that rots out in an hour the lifework of the swarm.
Observe, also, that man is not so wise. Like the bees, he has gates to guard, outposts of the spirit; and if these are left unguarded in the pursuit of wealth or fame, that purple-winged phantasm, Passion, flies through the warderless gate and, in a single moment, a life of palace building is undone. . . .
II
Observe the cases of the boy with pretty eyelashes—of Potter Playfair—Rose Rhett—Guy Bassity, to each of whom, at the brink of success, passion came; and so absorbed had they been in building palaces, they had no time to consider these might be destroyed.
First of all let us consider Rose Rhett; in our Broadway solar system she is the moon round which those satellites, the pretty-eyelashed boy, Playfair, and Bassity—wane or wax.
She was not always of Broadway—she had to come there by wide concurrent orbits. A rowdy open air honky-tonk—drunken men throwing dimes and quarters—waiters slipping to her surreptitiously brass checks representing half the price of drinks purchased in her honor—these constituted her first theatrical experience.
More and more the younger generation becomes cognizant that riches and honor are not necessarily allied. Rose Rhett's father had thought so; thus at fifty, after thirty-five years' service in certain mills, discharged for incompetency, he had only a small paid-up insurance policy for income. So Rose must quit her training for that Mecca of all poor, clever girls—a school teacher's place—and work in mills, too. But new ideas were abroad: the newspapers and magazines were pointing out that great fortunes were often less the result of great brains than of mean ones. Socialists shrieked on street corners, giving detailed histories of great financial highwaymen: in these idealistic frenzies overlooking selfishness, the root of most human endeavors: so, instead of their citations teaching men to band together and be brothers as the Socialists imagined they would, they but uncovered for them a new fact—that honesty was seldom the best policy—if one would be a favorite of the Golden Gods.
Thus Rose Rhett read in her favorite Sunday journals the history of a little dancer who drew two Presidents' salaries for having loved a king; she read of a French demi-mondaine who asserted that one President's salary was only sufficient to dress one really smart woman for one year—and many similar statements and stories, granted more space than the greatest scientific discovery—far more admiration being given these light ladies and their famous friends, men who seemed to spend their lives hanging jewels on fair necks; and thus reading, Rose, lying late in her slum bedroom on Sundays, began to regard her hard-working father and mother as mentally deficient for dedicating their pretty daughter to a life of toil.
Each week she would wait eagerly for Sunday's latest stories of fortune's newest favorites, their jewelry, Pomeranian dogs, “bijou houses,” sartorial eccentricities, theatrical triumphs; and reading, waited her chance; until one Monday morning she answered a published call for “young ladies to sing and dance.”
They were required, it proved, for the summer season at Eureka Park. They must be on duty daily for “vaudeville,” two until twelve, and, while singing and dancing, must strive to catch the eyes of as many drink purchasers as possible—for there was no admission fee—and when invited must order no less than twenty-five cents' worth of drink: to encourage which they received on each half the purchase price—the drinks they were commanded to order being water colored with green to pass for crême de menthe, and all profit.
No respectable girl could consider the job; as a number of girls told the plain-spoken cigar-chewing owner before departing in dudgeon.
“Don't want 'um respectable,” he growled. “But,” said Rose, nerving herself, “that's all, isn't it?” He surveyed her in approval. “That's the talk! Sure, it's all, s'far's I'm concerned. There you sit under ten dollars' worth of electricity an hour—as safe as if God had you in His pocket. But no screaming or fighting jest becuz of an arm around you or a pinch on the cheek. Gi 'em some run for their money—so long as they sit and spend; and a smart, pretty girl like you kin tuck away a half-century every pay night when you cash in your checks. I pays fifteen bucks wages, alone.”
Rose had realized, with a sudden inspiration, her superiority to those girls who had insisted on “respectability.” Let them run back to their five-dollar-a-week jobs and maybe marry some “hick” making ten or twelve, and sweat and stew in tenements with their dirty brats. The time had passed when “poor but honest,” “poor but respectable,” had any magic power to move her. They taught ignorant people to be those things, priests and parsons and school teachers did, and then were glad to be invited to dinner with rich people who hadn't been anything of the kind. . . .
Men—that was a woman's job. This Eureka Park affair would be only a stepping stone: she would learn how to face an audience, save some money for good clothes, then betake herself elsewhere. It was better to go to school outside and burst upon Broadway competent, fascinating.
It required just such a strong stimulant to go through what followed. Her first appearance—how weakly she had sung, and how much off key! But someone had shouted at her, encouragingly, that it was “all right, kid”; and his admiring eyes reminded her she was pretty and young and well-shaped, and that her low-cut short-skirted pink dress and her pink silk stockings concealed none of these charms. . . . How hard it had been afterward to thread the long aisles of tables and chairs with those stupid oxen leering at her ankles! But she had set her teeth, and soon the shame was swallowed up by the triumph of easy victory. Even on her first day, she surpassed all Eureka Park records. “Half a century?” With her wages, she was never to pocket less than sixty or seventy; and she received an offer from every visiting manager of burlesque shows—whose custom it is to make the rounds of these summer park “honkatonks” in hopes of discovering comedians and comely choristers. If they imagined, however, that their shining social superiority and influential powers commanded Rose's admiration, they soon met disconcerting rebuffs.
“I get enough of that out there,” she panted one night, as she dealt one of these gentlemen a staggering reward for an attempt at familiarity. “I hate men—the whole lot of you!” Indeed, her duties in front, once learned, were accomplished mechanically. She knew the sort of smile, the tone of voice, the veiled half-promise, to set her men a-tingle, causing them to buy drink after drink, crudely imagining her melting under alcoholic influence—drinks Rose learned how to spill dexterously, unnoticed. And she knew how to pick her men. Gay young ribbon clerks and such never became insolvent by spending their Saturday night dollars on her. Fascinating young gentlemen ogled her in vain. She picked the sturdy mechanics and small storekeepers, the dullards and the middle-aged. . . . As her envious companions said, she seemed to “smell money.” As a matter of fact the signs were obvious after a little study to anyone with brains; or, at any rate, the signs of those who had none, or who did not mean to spend it; at least among the simple types that frequented Eureka Park. She soon yearned for subtler game.
But she was to find one cannot be game at all and be subtle: the wise and fools are curiously alike in the pursuit of the purple phantasm. . . .
A burlesque show carried her to Broadway. Six months later Potter Playfair told her he was a cave man.
III
“A cave man,” Mr. Playfair repeated, adding a sort of low growl through the teeth that firmly clenched the cigar. “I go in for elemental things; my plays have guts—guts,” he added in Roman letters. “I look for motives—raw and bleeding—and I write plays around them. Big red-blooded plays—primitive—primordial.” (He had recently acquired the latter word from the works of the California Kipling.) “Yes, my girl, primordial. To hell with conventions!” He smashed them all with a wave of his hand. “To hell with religion, education, colleges—all the things that make mollycoddles. Give me man in the rough. . . . That's the man's way—Playfair's way.”
You are to imagine all this out of the same corner of the mouth that held the cigar, the eye above it almost permanently closed, the mouth twisted downward, flattening out the jowls into a heavy chin. You are to imagine clothes of loose, heavy cloth that gave their wearer an appearance of bulk; and, in the street, a sombrero further obscuring that luckless left eye. Rose Rhett seemed to imagine and to admire. Her hands were clasped; her eyes held artless admiration.
“I never met a man like you,” she said dreamily.
“And yet—they don't understand me,” growled Mr. Playfair in a dissatisfied voice. He told her he was then engaged in staging at his own expense a play on which no manager would risk money. “A play about a man like me—a real man. He comes to this effete East” (Mr. Playfair had been born in Troy) “and he makes these mollycoddles jump through hoops. But they don't appreciate it, these managers—they're mollycoddles themselves. . . . I don't know why I'm telling you all this—”
“Isn't there such a thing as people just fitting in?” she asked. “Understanding—well, just naturally—if you know what I mean—”
He regarded her with gloomy preoccupation. “How I need somebody who understands!” he said. “Not vampires—'the women who never can understand.' . . .”
“I know,” said Rose softly. “How glad it makes me to feel I've met a man who understands women! It's so easy for women to deceive most men. But a man like you—a big man—sees through our petty, shallow little brains. . . .” She was quoting liberally from a novel she had read recently.
“Some are not petty. Some—” But the great thought could not find ready words. “Some understand,” he compromised vaguely.
“Some,” was her wistful response, “but oh, how few! And when men meet them, they're so soured by the others they don't trust them, don't give them their due. Not that I am complaining. It isn't the men's fault.” And feeling she had gone far enough for the moment, she asked him quickly about rehearsals.
“I'm going to let her understudy the lead,” he told his stage director when that worthy opened reproachful eyes at this superfluous expense. “She's got brains—we need somebody in the company with brains.”
Really, he was just as easily handled as the others, this first famous man of her acquaintance. Famous? “Lucky” was a better word. What had Mr. Playfair that any average man had not?
IV
Her question was well put. It was the trade, not the man. Others had seen fit to study the mechanics of steam engineering, gas fitting, plumbing. Mr. Playfair had learned instead the mechanics of the stage, and successful plays are more apt to be a question of mechanics than of genius: jobs better suited to commonplace men than extraordinary ones who have ideas that play sad havoc with the self-satisfaction of the bourgeoisie.
One of Mr. Playfair's early sorrows had been that he was conventional of conduct and appearance—that he liked the things everybody liked. But the growth of his literary ambitions changed all this. It was then that Mrs. Playfair, a quiet little woman with a habit of babies, had developed vampirian instincts—failing to conceal from him a deadly sense of humor, urging that a large sombrero was funny upon a short man with fat legs: begging him to have a care how he scowled and : spoke harshly to car conductors, who, not knowing their new importance, carried them past their block; or to restless but heavily built men who jostled them in crowds—other malefactors; pointing out in a most disparaging tone that his hands were too soft to give a good account of themselves at fisticuffs.
At which he would frown heavily upon her, and flattening his jowls upon his collar to thicken his naturally thin voice, would speak malevolently, cruelly, of the surgical operation he would perform upon them. And, next time, his voice would be fiercer in its scorn of the offender. Soon he came to dislike nothing so much as her quiet smile; with his first royalties, removing himself from his bookkeeper's high stool, his native town, her and his four children—who knew him afterward only as a holiday visitor and a writer of inadequate cheques.
In New York, he had no wife to give him uneasiness as to the possible puerility of his personal prowess, to check a flow of romantic imagination in attire and accounts of adventure; nor had anyone there been a schoolmate and licked him for tattling to teacher or correcting the vagaries of luck at marbles. He was able to work unhindered at the greatest character in his gallery of creations—Potter Playfair, the Cave Man.
V
Rose, meanwhile, had been getting ready for him. Her intimate experience with men had begun early after her Broadway arrival. She had struck town at an ill moment for engagements—just after the last wave of autumn productions had washed to the feet of the Christmas trees and before those of the early spring were about to go into rehearsal. Only a few musical pieces were getting ready, and these could choose from the survivors of all the season's shipwrecks; what chance for a girl with no Broadway acquaintance and without a good singing voice? But before her small savings left from the purchase of striking-looking millinery had vanished, she had learned of the Actors' Club on a street in the forties, and had removed her belongings to a hotel opposite; in a lobby window of which, on the day of her hegira, we see her—a cat at a mouse-hole; and, whenever there passed from the club entrance opposite a player whom she recognized from published photographs as well known in musical comedy, she might be observed to hasten forth and pass that player; after which she betrays no haste at all. The first actor looks curious, half starts toward her at her shop window; perhaps the fact that the window contains jewelry causes reconsideration. The second, though she does not frown at his steady stare—is it that he remembers that speech, without the acquaintance of the lady spoken to, is considered a heinous crime by police judges? . . . And, for this reason or another, all the others failed to figure as Lotharios, and, late in the afternoon, as she returned for the eighth time to her crow's nest, she was reduced to bowing boldly to a boy with long eyelashes but unknown to her by photographic fame, who had only the doubtful prestige of being seen quitting the club.
“How do you do, Mr. Cassell?”—the address and the bow of one slightly acquainted. She was too pretty to have such a misconception of his identity, so he hastened to explain and to “hope that is no handicap.” But, no—she couldn't think of it . . . she could sink right through the ground for her stupid blunder . . . if he was a gentleman he would immediately leave her. . . .
They dined together daily after that; but she knew there was another woman from the fact that the boy always chose out-of-the-way restaurants; because when she had suggested he use his influence to place her in the piece in which he would soon begin rehearsals, he had quickly hastened to assure her the piece was impossible—he wouldn't have her waste her time—it was a certain sour one—would set critical teeth on edge.
In nowise deceived, she soon forced him to confess that the female to be starred liked his long eyelashes. So there was nothing to do but, on the night of this revelation, to give herself quite deliberately, and without the slightest passion; but crying aloud in a choking voice that he must not persuade her . . . that it was unfair to take advantage because he knew of her love for him . . . she had not thought he was that sort of a man.
The next day, the boy threw to the winds the “sure fire” part that would have won him golden opinions from the majority of those critical gentlemen who think actors write their own parts. After a scene as dramatic as in any play—an actor and an actress let loose on an “I love another” scene, he rang down the curtain on a no longer youthful favorite of the public prostrate on a sofa; hieing him from thence to agencies, where, having some little reputation, he was engaged for a commonplace juvenile in a Viennese operetta, in which, as Rose had intimated, they could be together—“dearest.” Before signing his contract, he made “dearest” a proviso.
Through him, Rose met the actors and managers of his acquaintance: no more out-of-the-way places now, but Curate's and Sydenham's, where she could learn to know celebrities by their nicknames. But, it appeared, luck had deserted the pretty boy, who laid it, superstitiously, at the door of his ingratitude to the lady who had given him his chance when an amateur, his first chance: had advanced him by rapid stages, and. . . .
“Why don't you go back to your old lady then?” Rose would ask scornfully; and in wild despair—for his inamorata's love grew cold as his ill-luck increased—he would poetize wildly and dramatically: the world well lost with her in his arms . . . such things must atone for the utter failure of the operetta after eight weeks' rehearsals and nineteen consecutive performances; atone for his failure to obtain other paying work, for the abnormal hit his successor achieved with the discarded part, and the rumor that he would soon be co-starred with the discarded lady.
Rose was glad when the exigencies of the privy purse took him to the only opening—a stock “lead” in Louisville. No, she would not go with him “and be a burden”; she must find a position for herself and he must “save”; and they would be reunited and solvent in the autumn. He wrote her a hundred despairing folios; and, until she met Playfair and because the room rent must be paid, she answered daily.
The pretty boy never got back to Broadway: his actorial pride prevented taking on unimportant juveniles again, he who had been the object of the Louisville matinee girls' admiration. The purple phantasm had met him in mid-ocean:—he must thereafter be a Flying Dutchman who could never make the right shore.
VI
Correspondingly, it was so with Potter Playfair. Given another year unimpeded by personal distractions, he would have been wealthy. The tide of just his kind of middle-class melodrama was high, and he rode on the early wavelets. The failure of his “social drama”—the invasion of Fifth Avenue by the hairy man—would have taught him not to produce plays deemed impossible by all managers; those gentlemen being fair judges of the sort of mediocrity that will make much money. Chastened, he would have returned to his melodrama and to other men's ideas; but, as it was, he had a further handicap: an unknown girl upon whom he insisted as the leading lady; and when the new piece was given a provincial try-out with her, and she demonstrated she needed years of experience, the man behind the bank-roll gave as ultimatum another leading lady or no New York première—provoking Playfair into his celebrated cave man portrayal and an offer to buy back the production rights, thus becoming his own producer again.
Rose had realized the justice of the manager's contention: realized the play was as saffron as any of the Fourteenth Street tribe; realized that there had been only a temporary revival of interest in such pieces, the public having sickened of “problems” and imitations of Oscar Wilde; realized, because she read the leading periodicals for “culture,” that a nugget of cheap sensation could be so polished with realistic acting, gorgeous scenery and lights that it would seem virgin gold. It was to ride in the wake of the original discoverer of this fact that a manager had accepted Playfair's first play, put an expert craftsman to work teaching the author to give rubber stamp villains and heroes natural dialogue, and had engaged an all-star cast. So with the other Playfair successes.
Rose knew this new one was utterly impossible with an amateur leading lady and other actors such as Playfair would engage: he saw no necessity for expensive protagonists—“the village choir can give 'Down on the Suwanee River,'” was his favorite contention. So it was with utter selfishness that she encouraged his insurgency. She knew the average newspaper critic would blame the play; not a pretty girl; meanwhile her pictures as leading lady would adorn theater and hotel lobbies and magazine covers, would be reproduced in every illustrated periodical in the country. Fame! Worth dollars, too. Let the play fail—which it accordingly did.
But for a few weeks on the strength of his former hits it drew small audiences, and Playfair kept paying losses and advertising it widely as the “season's first success”—“with Rose Rhett in her great impersonation of Selina Slue”—this latter at her insistent demands: any demand of hers was law to the cave man.
He was no longer, however, the cave man with her. Once he had welcomed the purple phantasm, she had ceased to be the woman who “understood.” True, she still salved his pride by pretending to believe in his greatness and in his primitiveness—that cost nothing, and she knew hurt vanity was a terrible enemy to usurping phantasms. But she allowed him no assurance of a lifelong love, showing decided interest in the leading man of the company, answering vivaciously letters from a more noted brother author, encouraging a reporter who came to interview her. Also she smiled when well known citizens occupied boxes—and often they sent her flowers and candy, which Playfair would pitch into the stage door alley, grinding his teeth and tearing at his scanty hair. He even went so far as to discharge the leading man and threaten the reporter.
All of which made it easy for Rose to feather her nest. She impressed on him that much jewelry could hang about her neck if she listened to the importunities of admiring box occupants. She called his attention to the motor cars of other girls: how cheerfully would a certain manufacturer bestow one on her were he his instead of Playfair's. She told of an utterly fictitious offer of a large salary from a Chicago manager—this, she encouraged Playfair to think, a preparatory step to more personal offers. Thus, in addition to the expense money for their joint apartment, her modiste's, milliner's and other bills, Rose soon had many huge solitaires, always convertible into cash, her car, and savings accounts in several banks. And Playfair strained personal credit to the breaking point.
Worst of all—for this held no return for expenditure—his wife had sued him at the height of his earning capacity, naming Rose as corespondent; and had been adjudged alimony founded on the income of those years when he had successful plays running. Whereas, now, he had none. All in all, he knew he would be a bankrupt unless some desperate coup were made. Yet he had neither the inspiration, the confidence nor the time to write another play. And he could write only plays. Hearing him, night after night, groaning by her side, watching him in the early morning hours sit by the open window, head between his palms, Rose saw she was killing the golden egg layer; and, while his sufferings moved her not in the least, this goose was valuable and must live. Giving the matter urgent thought, she suggested vaudeville: Miss Rose Rhett, late star of “The Heart of the Wolf,” in “So-and-So-So-and-So,” the first contribution to vaudeville of the famous playwright, Potter Playfair, author of those successes of the century, “Mated with an Eagle,” “Iron Hands,” “Red Blood and Blue,” etc., etc. The luster of his name was not yet dimmed with vaudeville audiences; the act would command a high price; she would be able to impress them with her own fame through the mere juxtaposition of Playfair's name and hers. A success—and she knew her lack of art would be no handicap here—she had only to be careful to select conventional heroics or coarse comedy construction by vaudeville “sure fire” authors; and she could continue at a high salary, without any further assistance.
VII
Vaudeville audiences had just progressed to the point of appreciating the discarded fashions of the legitimate stage, when misfortune turned to other business and let Playfair alone for a while. The playlet that would have been laughed off by Playfair's former audiences created a sensation with his new one; but Rose was considered more responsible than he, and was approached by many booking agents with flattering offers. So at last she had accomplished her purpose: she was no longer dependent upon anyone's favor; she could sign tomorrow contracts for two years' continuous booking. In vaudeville it is names that count; material is easily obtained from any number of words-and-music mongers who can write sure fire stuff for their unintelligent audiences in a purely perfunctory manner; the difficulty is to do the accidental thing that will make the hit and command the salary. . . . She no longer needed Playfair nor anyone.
And, for the first time since that Monday morning when she went to Eureka Park instead of to the mills, she relaxed. She was tired of posing, tired of being a lady, weary of pretending affection every time she wanted a new hat, fed up with listening sympathetically to ambitions and affectations in order to negotiate an extra amount of spending money; had had enough of calculating the effect of every word, gesture, action, . . . everything, as a matter of business. Now that she had achieved her ambition, she wanted pleasure. Before, she could do nothing that would offend the ethics of men. Now that she had no need to transmute their admiration into bank accounts, they could think what they liked; and she plunged into pleasure as boldly as she had into business, overlooking no possibilities, playing now for the attention of the sort of males whom, hitherto, she had avoided—those attractive to the women of Advertisement Alley because of notorious reputations, handsome faces, evil minds. Eluding Playfair on all possible occasions, she accompanied them to to the town's hidden dissipations—the rathskellers where people speak openly, even proudly, of forbidding vices: back rooms where cocaine and heroin circulate as freely as beer: all this she found novel and amusing. She—in a phrase—yearned for thrills.
Poor Playfair realized none of this iniquity—only knew that her usual hour for returning home was approximating daybreak. Then one morning she was absent from breakfast, and he did not see her until she reported at the matinee; when, in desperation and dismay, he relapsed into a frayed cave man portrayal; which was greeted with mirth long concealed. A painful scene ensued, in which she saw a naked soul—and what a poor pitiful thing it was; so poor and pitiful that she forgave him his bad man's sombrero, the cigar between clenched teeth, the flattening of jowls for heavy chin and voice. The poor fellow had done all these things for fear someone would discover he had a woman's soul.
But now that he was to lose her, all the barriers went down; and she saw the boy who had run to mother, who had taken vengeance for the insults and rough treatment of other boys by writing tales of knightly prowess and bloody adventure, in all of which he, the hero, made short work of his cowardly enemies: saw the little man who had continued those dreams on a bookkeeper's stool and at night had lived them and put them into plays; who had at length timidly ventured to create out of his own poor clay one of the characters he had ever longed to be.
In his boyhood, when he had come wildly weeping to his mother's knee, she had wiped away the tears and taken him into her arms. But there was no one now, and: “Oh, God!” he sobbed. “Oh, God! Oh, God!”
And then: “I'll do anything . . . only tell me . . . anything. I'll work twice as hard—I'll give you everything. Only, don't leave me—oh, for God's sake don't—don't, don't leave me! Rose, my Rose, mine, you can't be so cruel when I love you so . . .”
And, in the end, “Oh, God!” he shrieked, throwing himself down full length before her. “Oh, God! . . . Oh, God!! Oh, God!!!”
It was eight months later that she face downward on a bed in a London hotel, her rifled jewel box and ravished purse nearby, shrieked out just these same words.
VIII
Guy Bassity, the rifler and ravisher, had made a business of women just as she had of men; and, searching for someone who would lead her into that wonderland of the senses of which she had seen so much written, heard so much talk—Rose had been attracted to him by the stories of his fascination: how a famous prima donna had succumbed at a single meeting, how some young heiress had to be sent away to keep Mr. Bassity out of the family—while, for ordinary conquests, there were a dozen women of Rose's acquaintance who telephoned in vain. She had been intensely proud that she had been seen with him three nights running. Then she became one of the brigade of reproachful telephoners. Ever and again he would relent and come to a special dinner at her apartment; but finally he told her frankly he could not afford theaters and restaurants. As she made no comment on this, he came no more to dinner; until she bethought herself in desperation to explain that she had engaged theater seats. Finding this effectual, she loaned him her purse and suggested supper afterward. Whereupon, he became immediately gay, convulsed her with cynical stories and impressed upon her his weariness of women.
Perhaps the purple phantasm, lurking at the guarded gate, got its first chance to wedge in its way when Rose determined she would show Sir Egotist that here was one with whom he would not get the chance to grow weary. Then tears of humiliation when he bade her good night at the down stairs door resolved her to make him love her desperately, then to discard him as coolly as she had Playfair. How she would laugh then at this self-proclaimed conqueror of women!
And, as a result, she now lay weeping in that London hotel. What easy game she had been for him; what insults she had endured, what blows; with every one loving him more fiercely, willing to accede to anything sooner than that the other eagerly waiting women—of whom he never forbore telling her—should snatch him away. For Bassity—although he bore no resemblance to a cave man, being instead rather foppish in appearance—knew how to arouse in women the same terror that the character Playfair portrayed so badly had aroused in his mate. Nothing was too evil if it proved him their master: no speech was too harsh, no oath too vile, no blow too hard, to teach them not to contest him in either word or deed. He beat down the bulwarks of their self-esteem and made them think themselves even less important than they were: while correspondingly increasing their belief in his superiority; moreover, he knew instinctively that a woman feels some of the passionate pain of childbirth in the blows of her beloved. He knew all these things, not that he was by nature masterful, but because he had enough of the feminine in his own nature to know unerringly what they thought and why they thought it: paying small attention to anything said or done, as indexes of character.
So, when he struck Rose the first time and she had screamed out her hatred and bade him never to speak to her again, he had smiled and gone his way; and in a few hours she was telephoning, to find he was not at his rooms. The picture of him in another woman's arms had arisen to her tortured brain: had stood between her and sleep. To banish it, she took the one chance of disproval: telephoned every restaurant, café, rathskeller and “joint” he frequented; and, finally locating him, wept tears of thankfulness. So he returned to her, knowing he was master at last. . . . Strange that Rose did not see he was pursuing almost precisely the same policy as hers with Playfair. But, just as the purple phantasm had banished the playwright's brain then, now it was hers that was banished; passion sees nothing, understands nothing.
Bassity had finally tired of her just as she had of Playfair; but he had been less pitiless: had gone while she was at the theater, leaving gaping purse and empty jewel box to tell its own story—he had advised her not to bank her salary when they came to England but to keep it in cash until their return to America, saving exchange rates; and he had persuaded her not to take her jewels to the theater—she must remember how dressing-rooms were robbed: all this in anticipation of a “getaway” when the amount of cash should be large enough. And, while she sobbed out her “My God! my God!” Bassity was on the Dover boat headed for Calais and Paris.
IX
Most voyageurs have a hazy idea that when they have visited Maxim's and the Abbaye, they have exhausted all nocturnal Parisian possibilities. Really, the Abbaye is the thing only directly after the theater, then Fyssher's, Maxim's around three, and afterward there are the rowdy ones. Bassity knew this much, and the early morning of the next day—he had left on a matinee train—found him in the Royale, chuckling over his new freedom and a plentifully provided future. The scene suited his unruly emotions. He had no longer to play the superior person, to profess a lack of interest in pleasure. Here he could give way to any fancy; he was unknown, surrounded by just the sort of women he liked best, whom he could have and discard at will, with whom he need play no game. He might drink deeply, too—a sensation he loved; but always he had conquered it when on business bent: a drunken man says endearing things; foolish things; betrays himself; lacks masterfulness.
In New York, when he had wanted so to indulge, he had slipped away to lower resorts than those in the Broadway ken; and, among the women frequenters of such places, was considered a good investment. He knew and rather enjoyed this; pretending to believe in their endearments and in their sad stories; perfectly conscious of their attempts to rob him; checkmating them with glee, even in his drunkenest moments; and, when he bade them good night, with a drunken laugh sent his love to “Bert” or “Ed.” . . .
He had not intended on the night of his arrival to dissipate: it had been too late to hire a safety deposit box, and he had his treasures upon his person; to hand them over to the safe keeping of a concierge, a hall porter, was too risky for one who had, if anything, too low an estimate of the price a man's honesty could withstand. But, having heard of Apaches, he had secured himself against such by having a policeman pick him a chauffeur guaranteed, one who had stood the test of years on that Capucines corner; and that chauffeur had been told to wait at every place visited: he was waiting outside the Royale now.
Bassity had heard of Apaches, yes, just as other Americans had heard of “gunmen”: conceptions at which he had often sneered and at their inspiration, pictures in popular magazines of low lurking fellows, collarless, unshaven. Yet he was willing to believe in the French Apache pictures, in the corduroy-skirted, bandanna-bloused girls, their men with red neckerchiefs and heavily visored caps drawn low. Consequently, it never occurred to him to suspect that the cabaret dancer he admired, and her poetical-looking admirer, were down on Monsieur the Prefect's list as of that tribe.
She was Spanish—just as the tango dancer at the Café de Paris was South American: he being from Brooklyn, she from Belleville. She was not there to capture men except so far as they might be encouraged to contribute to her plate, to pay for her supper and champagne. Puinpinesse's poetry sought to be like Villon's in all but the “Grosse Margot” period; he was dainty as to what money he took. So, although she danced before Bassity's table in hope of more than ordinary contribution, she had had her supper, and she shook her head at the invitation of the second glass he had the waiter fill. Bassity observed then that an exception had been made in favor of the poetical-looking chap—the custom being that wine must be served, a custom complied with at all tables except where stood the poet's absinthe; from which it was easy for one acquainted with the etiquette of fast society to deduce their relationship.
Which made it all the better—to snatch her away and force her to pretend sudden infatuation for a stranger, all the while racked lest “dearest” console himself with arms ever welcoming—Bassity knew all women believe “dearest” is desperately desired by others most fascinating: a delusion “dearest” does his best to promote and preserve.
He had a savage pleasure in the knowledge that the mere sight of his wealth would bring about this triangle, these conflicting emotions. To watch their working-out, all the while pretending stupidly to believe in her: to force her to laughter and dancing and embracing were what he would have described as “'water on his wheel” . . . and so was ostentatious about calling back the waiter to pay him, displaying a large packet of English banknotes before he drew out a handful of gold.
Had he seen the poet's knee knock against hers at that moment, Bassity might have reconsidered. He was going on the theory of appearances, which he would never have done in his own country where he knew savage clubbers of citizens at elections, professional thugs in political pay, who often wore eyeglasses and silk shirts; the Playfairs were more apt to look like pirates. But the poet make-up was associated in his mind with peaceable—nay, piffling—instincts. He did not know that in Belleville bars the Villon legend persists: that even the Parisian lower classes have a genuine appreciation of, and pride in, their national literature, and that poetry often inflames them into desperate deeds, even into revolutions.
He had once defined a “sucker” as one who played another man's game. He did not realize he was now doing just that. The purple phantasm had lured him into imagining, for all their different language and customs, he could read nature as readily here as in his own country—a belief responsible for the wealth of “wire-tappers,” who would be immediately distrusted by many victims if their profession had really anything to do with tapping wires.
As a result of his carelessly displayed wealth, a conversation ensued between poet and dancer, carried on at first in tones so very low that not even those nearby could hear; but the frown on the poet's face assured Bassity of the correctness of his analysis; and, when their voices rose high enough to be heard, anyone knowing the argot would have understood that the poet's frown, now a scowl, was significant of his speech, the dancer's anxious half-smile of pleading, also. Followed a furious quarrel and the poet's departure: then, as the firebrand had foretold, she came to him with a forced mile and put an arm around his neck: her voice declaring adoringly that he was “très chic,” with many little affectionate slang phrases: “petit cochon”—“méchant”—“'petit chameau” . . . finally yielding to his importunities. But he must wait until her time was up: she must dance every quarter-hour until four.
Then, because of her position at the place, her gentle ways, her choice of a poet lover, Bassity, who hated waste, perceived it was useless to pay his cabman to wait any longer, so descended and dismissed him; and, an hour or so later, descended again, entering a cab that came forward at the sight of the pair.
Once within, Bassity gave himself utterly into the purple phantasm's arms. One who has degraded all the natural instincts into servants of his will must need something evil to rouse him; and it was the thought that the girl hated him because of the quarrel with her lover, yet must conceal this and do his will, that thrilled him into a savage ecstasy; and he seized her roughly, hurting her arms with his clutch, shouting at her ugly English words, commanding her in bad French to say she loved him better than the poet, that she hated the poet, that he would do anything her conqueror asked; and, when she had obeyed, he laughed brutally and shouted in a harsh, cruel voice, pinching her bare arms until she cried out in pain and the driver craned his neck to look in.
He deposited them in a street that coiled up like a great snake at the foot of a great church: a narrow street of many windings, shuttered shop fronts, the entrances of arched courts here and there: a dark, depressing, dank and dirty street; but Bassity was too full of his evil vision to heed. He followed her into one of the arched entrances, into darkness. . . . The blow that blotted out his senses came upon him while he was chuckling over a new and uglier fancy—a picture never to be painted.
“Sacred mother of a blue camel!” said the poet excitedly, as, after transferring the banknotes and gold to his pockets, the patch of shaded light from his pocket torch revealed the contents of the chamois bag about Bassity's neck—pure white rays, deep blue and ruby red. . . .
“All single stones, absolutely not to be traced,” gasped the cabman; while the dancer shrilled her shock.
The poet buffeted her head against the wall of the archway, calmly, as one who does his duty. Understanding her fault, she wiped away the blood from her mouth, unprotesting. The light disappeared while poet and cabman cogitated. In the darkness, one could hear the girl shiver as though she read their sinister thoughts.
“But this is different, quite,” said the poet finally. “To regain such jewels, he will go to his consulate, even to his ambassador—”
“We should have left him to revive,” urged the cabman defensively; “as to the money, he could prove nothing. He had too much wine; who knows what he spent? And he slipped down in his drunkenness and she left him. The scandal would cost him more than he has lost. But not more than these jewels. . . . Therefore . . .”
“Don't . . . don't,” begged the girl. “Don't, Raoul, don't.”
“And I will be locked up because I'm your friend, hein?” snarled the poet. “Then when they are returned it is New Caledonia. And not returned, it is to drag away months, maybe a year, in the Force or the Madeleine. No!”
“Oh, don't, Raoul!” sobbed the girl. He swung at her blindly this time, driving her down to her knees. “A franc—a sou,” he demanded, harshly, stretching out his hand to the other man, who felt for him in the darkness, complying. “Choose,” said the poet. The cabman called his choice, thickly, and the light flashed on the poet's palm, showing a copper piece, lying face upward. “Your luck,” snarled the poet; and the light winked again and showed that he was kneeling near Bassity's upturned face, on which a blue lump was thrusting itself outward, tightening the skin of the forehead. . . .
“Oh, don't, don't, Raoul!” sobbed the kneeling, crouching girl. But the poet's right hand was busy with the pocket torch, and the other held that with which he did not care to discipline her—not then. As it shot downward, the light went out again.
A little later, a huge, shapeless mass moved through the dark of the Bois: two men carrying from a cab another whose knees dragged the ground and who was flung into a thicket to lie face downward. But he could not cry out to God, nor to any other thing.
Now if human beings were only bees . . .
This work was published before January 1, 1930, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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