# Firecrackers/Chapter 8

To his amazement Paul discovered that his Wall Street experiment was providing him with more amusement than any recognized form of diversion he had ever practised. In the course of his rounds, ambling from office to office, from bank to bank, he encountered familiar faces everywhere. He was greeted with a hearty Hello, Paul! almost as frequently as he would have been at the country club or on an opening night at the Follies. He had previously formed no conception of the vast number of men of his acquaintance who laboured in the city. Through recent observation of these old friends under conditions new to him, he was beginning to understand why so many pretty, young women who were married to elderly men found it agreeable to occupy themselves with interior decorating or to assume positions as clerks in bookshops. In business, apparently, one met all the people one knew without the disadvantages inherent in the home. Between commercial transactions, vividly exciting in themselves, one listened to all the gossip of the town. Most of these boys were well provided with Orkney, Booth's, and Bacardi. Late in the afternoon, the cocktail shaker tinkled as incessantly as ​it did in any uptown drawing-room. Cigars were plentiful and a profusion of varieties of expensive cigarettes inhabited boxes on every desk. Paul particularly enjoyed the interminably prolonged luncheons at the Moloch Club, quartered in luxuriously furnished rooms directly under the roof of one of the tallest sky-scrapers where, after devouring a female lobster, one might sit about for an idle hour, with Vanity Fair in one's lap, bending a careless ear to the fellow sitting next to you on the deep, comfortable couch, upholstered in brown leather, and discovering, quite casually, all the details surrounding the latest spouse-breach.
It was not so much, Paul was beginning, justifiably, to believe, to support extravagant wives that men toiled in the city, as was the opinion generally expressed, especially by foreign visitors, as it was to escape from these wives. All his life Paul had listened to business men, in the cloak-rooms at evening parties, or before the sideboard, cocktail glass in hand, or at table, after dinner, bemoan their desperate lot, threatening to retire as soon as they had succeeded in amassing a sufficiently substantial roll. Reflection engendered by his recent personal experience reminded him that he had never known one of these men to carry out this blustering plan. Nevertheless, they continued to reiterate this story to the effect that they were jumping like hell for the dollar today, but that tomorrow they proposed to quit so that they might spend the remainder of ​their days chasing pleasure around Europe with the Mrs.
This routine, but unpractised, philosophy, Paul soon discovered, was reserved exclusively for uptown dispensation. Observation of these fellows in their proper milieu gave him an entirely new impression of them which, quite reasonably, he conceived to be the true picture. They were having, he was by way of informing himself, an extraordinarily good time. To be sure, they dashed nimbly after the dollar, but even that part of the game resembled gambling or fox-hunting. It was an adventure replete with thrills, false trails, happy discoveries, comic coincidences. There was so much, indeed, of sportsman's luck in everything that went on there that Wall Street was prone to impress him as a kind of glorified Monte Carlo, the Circassian walnut cabinets in each office, stored with liquors and tobacco, supplying the place of the bar, while the Stock Exchange made an excellent substitute for the salle de jeu.
His spirits, accordingly, had risen appreciably, and he even found it possible to enjoy a dinner at home alone with Vera, when it was his present custom to refer portentously, after the best manner of his confreres, to his hard day in the city, and to brag of the transaction he had contrived to carry through by resorting to a vast amount of bluff, while his wife sat by, humbly esteeming this industrial brilliancy on the part of her Viking-like husband.
​One day in the club, Paul encountered John Armstrong, who laid a strong arm across his shoulders as he saluted him with a Well, old fellow, what are you doing here?
I'm with Lorillard and Company, Paul explained.
The hell you are! How's Mrs. Lorillard? I haven't run into her in years.
'paspe's just the same.
A cold woman! I never understood her. Inconceivable as it might seem, John Armstrong appeared to be brooding. I don't think I've seen her, he went on, after a pause, since the night we all went to Coney Island.
And picked up Zimbule.
That's the night! Say, she's somebody now! Well, he continued, I've been married since then. Got a kid.
That's quick work. I think I heard something about it.
Yep. Husband and father now. We live out at Great Neck. No good to keep a wife too near town. She wants to lunch with you if she's close enough. After my hard day's work I drive out, get home in time to see the kid before he goes to bed. Say, it's great! Come out with me some day.
I'd like to, John.
Whenever you want to. Just drop around to the office about four any day. We'll have a little drink and then I'll drive you out with me. John ​Armstrong sought a card which he passed over to Paul. Then he changed the subject: Say, do you know the ropes?
What ropes, John?
Well, for examp, the bars. Two floors up and knock three times and there's a drink for you . . . after you've been introduced.
Two floors up where?
Any damned building below Chambers Street. Say, I'll put you wise to something else, Armstrong added darkly. Look out for stenographers.
Do they belong to the Ku Klux? Paul demanded, smiling.
Worse. The cuties sit on your lap and invite you by their willing manner to take them out to dinner, and first thing you know along comes a shyster lawyer with a breach of promise blackmailing prospectus.
Whew! Paul exclaimed, not incredulous.
Sure. Cupid's been stung several times.
His name never gets into the papers.
Sure it doesn't, John Armstrong explained with some disgust. He fixes it up. Last time cost him thirty-five thous. Say, it would have paid him to stick to moving-picture stars. Zimbule O'Grady let him off easy. He's a heel when it comes to skirts. I never get caught myself, but then, he added, the Janes are crazy about me. Nuts, he emphasized, plain nuts over your Uncle John.
​Then there was the other type of conversation, equally fascinating to Paul, which ran something like this:
Castor-oil's sixty-seven: watch out for a slump.
I'm getting out.
Well, I'm glad you told me. I was going to unload sooner or later, but if you're getting out that'll overload the market more'n the traffic can bear. I'll get out today myself.
That's my advice to you.
George Everest had been extremely valuable to Paul in the manipulation of certain transactions, Florizel Hammond was a mine of indelicate gossip, and Jack Draycott was always ready to take or dispense a drink. It was even amusing to lunch with Harvey Wetmore, who always asked the waiter if one order would be enough for two, as was the custom with men as rich as Harvey Wetmore. That was why, Paul reflected, they were rich.
Paul found enchantment in this delightful novelty. The rules for playing the game differed in every respect from the rules which governed uptown life, and it was part of the fun to acquire a knowledge of these. Paul wondered, indeed, why he had not experimented with the business world sooner. Far from the worst feature of this career was the fact that it seemed to be comparatively easy to make money. When you made any at all, Paul noted, you made more than he had ever been able to extract from his father at one time. Occasionally, ​of course, some poor chap lost his shirt, but usually a good gamble on the market, played with a tip from Cupid or George, would bring it back to him in no time. With Cupid as guardian, indeed, Paul believed he stood no chance of losing at all. He began to have dreams, as a matter of fact, of an independent income.
Cupid, he demanded one day, why the hell didn't you tell me long ago how damned attractive it was down here?
They were sitting in Mr. Lorillard's private office, panelled to the ceiling with Circassian walnut, richly grained and polished, their chairs and the desks, of the same wood, standing on a blue and yellow Chinese rug. The windows, opening between copper-coloured hangings, overlooked—the room was on the thirty-ninth floor—streets lying low in vast canyons formed by rows of towering sky-scrapers. The view included the bridge, gracefully swung on its cables across the East River, which was alive with tugs and barges. On a roof nearby, a lad with a long pole stirred a flock of Pigeons to flight.
Cupid, bald and podgy, whose countenance never seemed to lose a pitiful expression of anxiety, was obviously puzzled. It's all right here, of course, he replied, but just what do you mean?
Why, the game's great, the view's immense, and it's all so damned much fun.
I suppose it is, Cupid admitted lugubriously, and ​yet I never enjoy it very much. Nothing ever seems to go right with me.
Bosh, old chap. Campaspe had often informed Paul that Cupid was pathetic, but somehow he had never sensed this quality in Mr. Lorillard before today. After all, one so seldom saw him on Nineteenth Street.
There's Campaspe, for instance, Cupid continued in his plaintive strain. I don't understand her and I never shall. You wouldn't either, he asserted, flushed and defiant, if you were married to her.
I understand Vera to the last eyelash. Paul grinned sardonically.
Well, there's a difference. You're not in love with Vera. I've always been wild about my wife and she treats me like . . . like . . . Cupid hesitated for a figure.
Like the father of your sons, Paul suggested.
Well, I don't know that she even does that, Cupid dubiously dissented. Then there was Zimbule, he went on, and Susan and Emily and Armide . . .
Armide?
Yes, it was her name that got me, too. She was French.
Did she burn the palace and escape on a hippogryph? Paul demanded.
I'm not sure about the hippogryph, but she certainly burned the palace. She burned it last week. The little man sighed.
​I heard something about it, Paul responded sympathetically, but I didn't catch her name.
Paul, Cupid groaned, I'm a boob with women, a simp. They can get anything out of me, and the only way I can find love is to buy it. Nobody cares for me for myself.
You're a good egg, Paul assured him.
You bet your life I'm a good egg, good and easy enough to eat! Do you know what the trouble is, Paul? I should never have gone into business. I used to play the bass-viol, and if I had kept up my music I would have led an entirely different life . . . got something out of it.
Paul lighted a cigarette. What about those stocks, Cupid? he inquired.
Cupid gave him a quick, intense glance. I can't understand you, Paul. This interest of yours in affairs. You always come back to stocks. God! You're exploding a proverb! Lucky in business and lucky with women, too.
I suppose it's because I know their place, Paul explained modestly.
Don't you ever fall for a skirt? Cupid queried, wide-eyed. Doesn't it ever get you?
Paul reflected. I've fallen once or twice, he responded, but I guess it wasn't for a skirt. More likely, it was for a mesh-bag.
​That night in the great dining-room, facing the vast wall-painting by Rubens, representing Helena Fourment in the foreground as the central figure of a Sabine rape, Paul sat at table with Vera.
I didn't like it one bit at first, that lady admitted, the dimples in her round cheeks deepening under her smiles, but now I'm proud of you, Paul.
Proud?
Yes, dear. I hate your being away all day, but I console myself by remembering that you used to go out just as much before you went to work. And now, after all, I know where you are, with all those big, strong, manly men down in Wall Street, fighting the fight for bread. Why, Mr. Whittaker was as poor as anything when he started out.
It always amused Paul to hear more about Mr. Whittaker; he took up the subject.
Did he fight hard, Vera?
Did he? She served herself to a bountiful helping of a particularly fattening variety of pudding. Did he? Well, he just fought until he conquered down among the bears and oxen. It was wheat that made his fortune, she mused. Ceres, the great nature goddess, did that for us. I always told Bristol that we should worship nature! Now if I had been a Roman. . . . ! Her imagination was not equal to rounding out this sentence and a spoonful of pudding which she had just inserted in her mouth would have rendered the feat difficult in any case.
​Wheat? Paul purred interrogatively.
O, I don't mean he mowed, Vera explained, but he took off his coat in the pit . . . and did—she waved a chubby arm as if an understanding of such matters was beyond the scope of a young and pretty woman—what men do, she concluded limpingly.
And where, she demanded, would I be if it hadn't been for Bristol fiercely tramping up and down in the pit with his coat off? Where would you be, for that matter? We're enjoying the fruits of his struggles, and Paul—her husband noted that she had assumed her most endearing manner, the manner he most feared—at first I didn't see why we shouldn't, and that's why I cried so hard when you went down there too. O! I said to myself, isn't it enough that one man has done it? Isn't one martyr enough for one cause? Why has my beloved Paul got to go down and suffer and sweat and take off his coat and die when Mr. Whittaker has already done it and left us enough to feed an army with? I thought it would be just dreadful to have you away too, Paul, until the other day I remembered that you're away so much anyway, with your friends, that it is an actual relief to know approximately where you are, and you've done so splendidly now, and it gives me so much to talk about when I go out. Paul, she concluded, offering him the glance of an amorous and dying swan, I tell everybody that you are supporting me now!
It must surprise them.
​It petrifies them. And Paul, I hope you won't mind . . . but I bought this ring today. She exhibited an emerald, cut en cabochon, the size of a wren's egg.
Vera dear, why should I mind? So long as Mr. Whittaker's gold, won in the sweat and turmoil of the pit, holds out, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't buy anything you like.
O, but Paul, I haven't told you everything. I explain that you gave it to me!
After dinner they sat in the spacious drawing-room with its guilloches carved by Grinling Gibbons, which had been purchased by the late Mr. Whittaker from an impecunious English peer, with its massive Dutch marquetry cabinets, on which were ranged pots of splendid flowering plants, created by patient Chinese artists out of jade, alabaster, jacinth, sardonyx, beryl, agate, crystal, and cornelian. In needle-point arm-chairs husband and wife faced each other in front of the fire. Silence had fallen between them. Vera yawned occasionally; Paul, frequently.
I'm going out, Paul announced a little later.
On this awful night! Vera reproached him. It's damp and chilly and there's a nasty drizzle. I'm so afraid you'll catch cold. Where are you going? she questioned him suspiciously.
To see Gunnar.
That acrobat! I don't want to seem fussy about ​your friends, Paul, only you've known some strange people in your old bohemian days—I'll never forget that ridiculous Bunny—and now that you're in business I had hoped . . .
Paul rose, stretching himself, and yawned again.
Still—she was consoling herself aloud for the ineffectuality of her remonstrance—Campaspe knows him. There must be something.
There is, Vera, I assure you, there is something. Bending over her chair he lightly brushed the back of her head with his lips. When he had departed, the tears coursed slowly down the lonely woman's chubby cheeks. Mr. Whittaker, stern, unyielding in the matter of his prejudices, with a firmly fixed idea that a wife's place was in her home, had ruled her with his strong will, and now Paul Moody was able, she had discovered, to rule her by his very nonchalance. Well, she reflected, to salve the pain of the knowledge, men must work and women must weep.
Paul did not call the car from the garage, nor did he hail a taxi. He had donned a heavy, waterproof coat and, without the protection of an umbrella, he strode with long paces through the rain-swept streets. The beating of the stinging drops against his cheeks invigorated and refreshed him. His customary cheerful spirit returned. Life was amusing, after all. Work was amusing. Even Vera contributed her share to the savour of his ​happiness. She made so little trouble and she possessed such a delightfully unconscious vein of humour. As Paul stepped into a doorway to light a cigarette, he began to chuckle over a new idea which had occurred to him. How ironic, how ludicrously perverse, it would be to support Vera, supposing war or failure or some other great human or natural force should suddenly sweep away the Whittaker millions!
With such idle reflections he whiled away his walk until, almost before he was aware of it, he was climbing the stairs which led to the atelier of the Brothers Steel. In response to his knock Mrs. Hugo opened the door.
O, Mr. Moody, she cried, I'm so glad to see you!
Where are the boys?
Why, they're not home from the show yet. I was just cookin' supper for them.
Paul consulted his watch. It's just after ten, he said. How long . . . ?
Any minute, now. They got a better spot on the bill this week. They're Number 1.
Where are they working?
Brooklyn. Of course, she went on, with a courageous interpretation of the facts of life, the while she stirred a mixture in the pot on the stove with a long spoon, Number 1 isn't the best spot, but it's better to have folks walkin' in on you than walkin' out on you.
In the circumstances Paul considered this excellent ​philosophy; under other conditions he wondered if it would be as true.
At this juncture, the knob turned slowly in the door and the brothers, muffled in scarfs and greatcoats, entered. Their manner was gloomy and solemn, and they were unaccompanied.
Hello, mother. Hello, Paul, they glumly muttered in unison.
Why, what's the matter? Mrs. Hugo dropped her spoon.
Just as bad as can be, said Robin.
Worse, Hugo moaned.
Their jaws dropped.
Well now, is your time cancelled?
Worse, Hugo jerked out.
You didn't sprain your wrist again? She felt the pulse of her physically sound husband.
Worse, Robin groaned, much, much worse.
Gunnar's left us, mother, Hugo was at last able to explain.
Gone! Robin sobbed.
The twins had seated themselves side by side on the bench against the wall, their huge shoulders meeting, the pattern of their moustaches repeating itself ridiculously on their dejected countenances.