Big Money

Mary French

Mary French had to stay late at the office and couldn’t get to the hall until the meeting was almost over. There were no seats left so she stood in the back. So many people were standing in front of her that she couldn’t see Don, she could only hear his ringing harsh voice and feel the tense attention in the silence during his pauses. When a roar of applause answered his last words and the hall filled suddenly with voices and the scrape and shuffle of feet she ran out ahead of the crowd and up the alley to the back door. Don was just coming out of the black sheetiron door talking over his shoulder as he came to two of the miners’ delegates. He stopped a second to hold the door open for them with a long arm. His face had the flushed smile, there was the shine in his eye he often had after speaking, the look, Mary used to tell herself, of a man who had just come from a date with his best girl. It was some time before Don saw her in the group that gathered round him in the alley. Without looking at her he swept her along with the men he was talking to and walked them fast towards the cor ner of the street. Eyes looked after them as they went from the groups of furworkers and garmentworkers that dotted the pavement in front of the hall. Mary tingled with the feeling of warm ownership in the looks of the workers as their eyes followed Don Stevens down the street.

It wasn’t until they were seated in a small lunchroom under the el that Don turned to Mary and squeezed her hand. “Tired?” She nodded. “Aren’t you, Don?” He laughed and drawled, “No, I’m not tired. I’m hungry.”

“Comrade French, I thought we’d detailed you to see that Comrade Stevens ate regular,” said Rudy Goldfarb with a flash of teeth out of a dark Italianlooking face.

“He won’t ever eat anything when he’s going to speak,” Mary said.

“I make up for it afterwards,” said Don. “Say, Mary, I hope you have some change. I don’t think I’ve got a cent on me.” Mary nodded, smiling. “Mother came across again,” she whispered.

“Money,” broke in Steve Mestrovich. “We got to have money or else we’re licked.” “The truck got off today,” said Mary. “That’s why I was so late getting to the meeting.” Mestrovich passed the grimed bulk of his hand across his puttycolored face that had a sharply turnedup nose peppered with black pores. “If cossack don’t git him.”

“Eddy Spellman’s a smart kid. He gets through like a shadow. I don’t know how he does it.”

“You don’t know what them clothes means to women and kids and… listen, Miss French, don’t hold back nothin’ because too raggedy. Ain’t nothin’ so ragged like what our little kids got on their backs.”

“Eddy’s taking five cases of condensed milk. We’ll have more as soon as he comes back.”

“Say, Mary,” said Don suddenly, looking up from his plate of soup, “how about calling up Sylvia? I forgot to ask how much we collected at the meeting.” Young Goldfarb got to his feet. “I’ll call. You look tired, Comrade French… Anybody got a nickel?”

“Here, I got nickel,” said Mestrovich. He threw back his head and laughed. “Damn funny… miner with nickel. Down our way miner got nickel put in frame send Meester Carnegie Museum… very rare.” He got up roaring laughter and put on his black longvisored miner’s cap. “Goodnight, comrade, I walk Brooklyn. Reliefcommittee nine o’clock… right, Miss French?” As he strode out of the lunchroom the heavy tread of his black boots made the sugarbowls jingle on the ta bles. “Oh, Lord,” said Mary, with tears suddenly coming to her eyes. “That was his last nickel.”

Goldfarb came back saying that the collection hadn’t been so good. Sixtynine dollars and some pledges. “Christmas time coming on… you know. Everybody’s always broke at Christmas.” “Henderson made a lousy speech,” grumbled Don. “He’s more of a socialfascist every day.”

Mary sat there feeling the tiredness in every bone of her body waiting until Don got ready to go home. She was too sleepy to follow what they were talking about but every now and then the words centralcommittee, expulsions, oppositionists, splitters rasped in her ears. Then Don was tapping her on the shoulder and she was waking up and walking beside him through the dark streets.

“It’s funny, Don,” she was saying, “I always go to sleep when you talk about party discipline. I guess it’s because I don’t want to hear about it.” “No use being sentimental about it,” said Don savagely. “But is it sentimental to be more interested in saving the miners’ unions?” she said, suddenly feeling wide awake again. “Of course that’s what we all believe but we have to follow the party line. A lot of those boys… Goldfarb’s one of them… Ben Compton’s another… think this is a debatingsociety. If they’re not very careful indeed they’ll find themselves out on their ear… You just watch.”

Once they’d staggered up the five flights to their dingy little apartment where Mary had always planned to put up curtains but had never had time, Don suddenly caved in with fatigue and threw himself on the couch and fell asleep without taking off his clothes. Mary tried to rouse him but gave it up. She unlaced his shoes for him and threw a blanket over him and got into bed herself and tried to sleep.

She was staring wide awake, she was counting old pairs of trousers, torn suits of woolly underwear, old armyshirts with the sleeves cut off, socks with holes in them that didn’t match. She was seeing the rickety children with puffy bellies showing through their rags, the scrawny women with uncombed hair and hands distorted with work, the boys with their heads battered and bleeding from the clubs of the Coal and Iron Police, the photograph of a miner’s body shot through with machinegun bullets. She got up and took two or three swigs from a bottle of gin she kept in the medicinecloset in the bathroom. The gin burned her throat. Coughing she went back to bed and went off into a hot dreamless sleep.

Towards morning Don woke her getting into the bed. He kissed her. “Darling, I’ve set the alarm for seven… Be sure to get me up. I’ve got a very important committeemeeting… Be sure and do it.” He went off to sleep again right away like a child. She lay beside his bigboned lanky body, listening to his regular breathing, feeling happy and safe there in the bed with him.

Eddy Spellman got through with his truck again and distributed his stuff to several striking locals U.M.W. in the Pittsburgh district, although he had a narrow squeak when the deputies tried to ambush him near Greensburg. They’d have nabbed him if a guy he knew who was a bootlegger hadn’t tipped him off. The same bootlegger helped him out when he skidded into a snowdrift on the hill going down into Johnstown on the way back. He was laughing about it as he helped Mary pack up the new shipment. “He wanted to give me some liquor… He’s a good feller, do you know it, Miss Mary?… Tough kinder… that racket hardens a feller up… but a prince when you know him…‘Hell, no, Ed,’ his name’s Eddy too, I says to him when he tried to slip me a pint, ‘I ain’t goin’ to take a drink until after the revolution and then I’ll be ridin’ so high I won’t need to.’” Mary laughed. “I guess we all ought to do that, Eddy… But I feel so tired and discouraged at night sometimes.” “Sure,” said Eddy, turning serious. “It gits you down thinkin’ how they got all the guns an’ all the money an’ we ain’t got nothin’.”

“One thing you’re going to have, Comrade Spellman, is a pair of warm gloves and a good overcoat before you make the next trip.”

His freckled face turned red to the roots of his red hair. “Honest, Miss Mary, I don’t git cold. To tell the truth the motor heats up so much in that old pile of junk it keeps me warm in the coldest weather… After the next trip we got to put a new clutch in her and that’ll take more jack than we kin spare from the milk… I tell you things are bad up there in the coalfields this winter.”

“But those miners have got such wonderful spirit,” said Mary.

“The trouble is, Miss Mary, you kin only keep your spirit up a certain length of time on an empty stumick.”

That evening Don came by to the office to get Mary for supper. He was very cheerful and his gaunt bony face had more color in it than usual. “Well, little girl, what would you think of moving up to Pittsburgh? After the plenum I may go out to do some organizing in western Pennsylvania and Ohio. Mestrovich says they need somebody to pep ’em up a little.” Eddy Spellman looked up from the bale of clothes he was tying up. “Take it from me, Comrade Stevens, they sure do.”

Mary felt a chill go through her. Don must have noticed the pallor spreading over her face. “We won’t take any risks,” he added hurriedly. “Those miners take good care of a feller, don’t they, Eddy?” “They sure do… Wherever the locals is strong you’ll be safer than you are right here in New York.” “Anyway,” said Mary, her throat tight and dry, “if you’ve got to go you’ve got to go.”

“You two go out an’ eat,” said Eddy. “I’ll finish up… I’m bunkin’ here anyway. Saves the price of a flop… You feed Miss Mary up good, Comrade Stevens. We don’t want her gettin’ sick… If all the real partymembers worked like she does we’d have… hell, we’d have the finest kind of a revolution by the spring of the year.”

They went out laughing, and walked down to Bleecker Street and settled happily at a table in an Italian restaurant and ordered up the seventyfivecent dinner and a bottle of wine. “You’ve got a great admirer in Eddy,” Don said, smiling at her across the table.

A couple of weeks later Mary came home one icy winter evening to find Don busy packing his grip. She couldn’t help letting out a cry, her nerves were getting harder and harder to control. “Oh, Don, it’s not Pittsburgh yet?” Don shook his head and went on packing. When he had closed up his wicker suitcase he came over to her and put his arm round her shoulder. “I’ve got to go across to the other side with… you know who… essential party business.”

“Oh, Don, I’d love to go too. I’ve never been to Russia or anywhere.” “I’ll only be gone a month. We’re sailing at midnight… and Mary darling… if anybody asks after me I’m in Pittsburgh, see?” Mary started to cry. “I’ll have to say I don’t know where you are… I know I can’t ever get away with a lie.” “Mary dear, it’ll just be a few days… don’t be a little silly.” Mary smiled through her tears. “But I am… I’m an awful little silly.” He kissed her and patted her gently on the back. Then he picked up his suitcase and hurried out of the room with a big checked cap pulled down over his eyes.

Mary walked up and down the narrow room with her lips twitching, fighting to keep down the hysterical sobs. To give herself something to do she began to plan how she could fix up the apartment so that it wouldn’t look so dreary when Don came back. She pulled out the couch and pushed it across the window like a windowseat. Then she pulled the table out in front of it and grouped the chairs round the table. She made up her mind she’d paint the woodwork white and get turkeyred for the curtains.

Next morning she was in the middle of drinking her coffee out of a cracked cup without a saucer, feeling bitterly lonely in the empty apartment when the telephone rang. At first she didn’t recognize whose voice it was. She was confused and kept stammering, “Who is it, please?” into the receiver. “But, Mary,” the voice was saying in an exasperated tone, “you must know who I am. It’s Ben Compton… bee ee enn… Ben. I’ve got to see you about something. Where could I meet you? Not at your place.” Mary tried to keep her voice from sounding stiff and chilly. “I’ve got to be uptown today. I’ve got to have lunch with a woman who may give some money to the miners. It’s a horrible waste of time but I can’t help it. She won’t give a cent unless I listen to her sad story. How about meeting me in front of the Public Library at two thirty?” “Better say inside… It’s about zero out today. I just got up out of bed from the flu.”

Mary hardly knew Ben he looked so much older. There was grey in the hair spilling out untidily from under his cap. He stooped and peered into her face querulously through his thick glasses. He didn’t shake hands. “Well, I might as well tell you… you’ll know it soon enough if you don’t know it already… I’ve been expelled from the party… oppositionist… exceptionalism… a lot of nonsense… Well, that doesn’t matter, I’m still a revolutionist… I’ll continue to work outside of the party.”

“Oh, Ben, I’m so sorry,” was all Mary could find to say. “You know I don’t know anything except what I read in the Daily. It all seems too terrible to me.” “Let’s go out, that guard’s watching us.” Outside Ben began to shiver from the cold. His wrists stuck out red from his frayed green overcoat with sleeves much too short for his long arms. “Oh, where can we go?” Mary kept saying.

Finally they went down into a basement automat and sat talking in low voices over a cup of coffee. “I didn’t want to go to your place because I didn’t want to meet Stevens… Stevens and me have never been friends, you know that… Now he’s in with the comintern crowd. He’ll make the centralcommittee when they’ve cleaned out all the brains.”

“But, Ben, people can have differences of opinion and still…”

“A party of yesmen… that’ll be great… But, Mary, I had to see you… I feel so lonely suddenly… you know, cut off from every You know if we hadn’t been fools we’d have had that baby that time… we’d still love each other… Mary, you were very lovely to me when I first got out of jail… Say, where’s your friend Ada, the musician who had that fancy apartment?”

“Oh, she’s as silly as ever… running around with some fool violinist or other.”

“I’ve always liked music… I ought to have kept you, Mary.”

“A lot of water’s run under the bridge since then,” said Mary coldly.

“Are you happy with Stevens? I haven’t any right to ask.”

“But, Ben, what’s the use of raking all this old stuff up?”

“You see, often a young guy thinks, I’ll sacrifice everything, and then when he is cut off all that side of his life, he’s not as good as he was, do you see? For the first time in my life I have no contact. I thought maybe you could get me in on reliefwork somehow. The discipline isn’t so strict in the relief organizations.”

“I don’t think they want any disrupting influences in the I.L.D.,” said Mary.

“So I’m a disrupter to you too… All right, in the end the workingclass will judge between us.”

“Let’s not talk about it, Ben.”

“I’d like you to put it up to Stevens and ask him to sound out the properquarters… that’s not much to ask, is it?”

“But Don’s not here at present.” Before she could catch herself she’d blurted it out.

Ben looked her in the eye with a sudden sharp look.

“He hasn’t by any chance sailed for Moscow with certain other comrades?”

“He’s gone to Pittsburgh on secret partywork and for God’s sake shut up about it. You just got hold of me to pump me.” She got to her feet, her face flaming. “Well, goodby, Mr. Compton… You don’t happen to be a stoolpigeon as well as a disrupter, do you?”

Ben Compton’s face broke in pieces suddenly the way a child’s face does when it is just going to bawl. He sat there staring at her, senselessly scraping the spoon round and round in the empty coffeemug. She was halfway up the stairs when on an impulse she went back and stood for a second looking down at his bowed head. “Ben,” she said in a gentler voice, “I shouldn’t have said that… without proof… I don’t believe it.” Ben Compton didn’t look up. She went up the stairs again out into the stinging wind and hurried down Fortysecond Street in the afternoon crowd and took the subway down to Union Square.

The last day of the year Mary French got a telegram at the office from Ada Cohn. PLEASE PLEASE COMMUNICATE YOUR MOTHER IN TOWN AT PLAZA SAILING SOON WANTS TO SEE YOU DOESN’T KNOW ADDRESS WHAT SHALL I TELL HER. Newyearsday there wasn’t much doing at the office. Mary was the only one who had turned up, so in the middle of the morning she called up the Plaza and asked for Mrs. French. No such party staying there. Next she called up Ada. Ada talked and talked about how Mary’s mother had married again, a Judge Blake, a very prominent man, a retired federal circuit judge, such an attractive man with a white vandyke beard and Ada had to see Mary and Mrs. Blake had been so sweet to her and they’d asked her to dinner at the Plaza and wanted to know all about Mary and that she’d had to admit that she never saw her although she was her best friend and she’d been to a newyearseve party and had such a headache she couldn’t practice and she’d invited some lovely people in that afternoon and wouldn’t Mary come, she’d be sure to like them.

Mary almost hung up on her, Ada sounded so silly, but she said she’d call her back right away after she’d talked to her mother. It ended by her going home and getting her best dress on and going uptown to the Plaza to see Judge and Mrs. Blake. She tried to find some place she could get her hair curled because she knew the first thing her mother would say was that she looked a fright, but everything was closed on account of its being newyearsday.

Judge and Mrs. Blake were getting ready to have lunch in a big private drawingroom on the corner looking out over the humped snowy hills of the park bristly with bare branches and interwoven with fastmoving shining streams of traffic. Mary’s mother didn’t look as if she’d aged a day, she was dressed in darkgreen and really looked stunning with a little white ruffle round her neck sitting there so at her ease, with rings on her fingers that sparkled in the grey winter light that came in through the big windows. The judge had a soft caressing voice. He talked elaborately about the prodigal daughter and the fatted calf until her mother broke in to say that they were going to Europe on a spree; they’d both of them made big killings on the stockexchange on the same day and they felt they owed themselves a little rest and relaxation. And she went on about how worried she’d been because all her letters had been returned from Mary’s last address and that she’d written Ada again and again and Ada had always said Mary was in Pittsburgh or Fall River or some horrible place doing social work and that she felt it was about time she gave up doing everything for the poor and unfortunate and devoted a little attention to her own kith and kin.

“I hear you are a very dreadful young lady, Mary, my dear,” said the judge, blandly, ladling some creamofcelery soup into her plate. “I hope you didn’t bring any bombs with you.” They both seemed to think that that was a splendid joke and laughed and laughed. “But to be serious,” went on the judge, “I know that social inequality is a very dreadful thing and a blot on the fair name of American democracy. But as we get older, my dear, we learn to live and let live, that we have to take the bad with the good a little.”

“Mary dear, why don’t you go abroad with Ada Cohn and have a nice rest?… I’ll find the money for the trip. I know it’ll do you good… You know I’ve never approved of your friendship with Ada Cohn. Out home we are probably a little oldfashioned about those things. Here she seems to be accepted everywhere. In fact she seems to know all the prominent musical people. Of course how good a musician she is herself I’m not in a position to judge.”

“Hilda dear,” said the judge, “Ada Cohn has a heart of gold. I find her a very sweet little girl. Her father was a very distinguished lawyer. You know we decided we’d lay aside our prejudices a little… didn’t we, dear?”

“The judge is reforming me,” laughed Mary’s mother coyly.

Mary was so nervous she felt she was going to scream. The heavy buttery food, the suave attentions of the waiter and the fatherly geniality of the judge made her almost gag. “Look, Mother,” she said, “if you really have a little money to spare you might let me have something for our milkfund. After all miners’ children aren’t guilty of anything.”

“My dear, I’ve already made substantial contributions to the Red Cross… After all, we’ve had a miners’ strike out in Colorado on our hands much worse than in Pennsylvania… I’ve always felt, Mary dear, that if you were interested in labor conditions the place for you was home in Colorado Springs. If you must study that sort of thing there was never any need to come East for it.”

“Even the I.W.W. has reared its ugly head again,” said the judge.

“I don’t happen to approve of the tactics of the I.W.W.,” said Mary stiffly.

“I should hope not,” said her mother.

“But, Mother, don’t you think you could let me have a couple of hundred dollars?”

“To spend on these dreadful agitators, they may not be I Won’t Works but they’re just as bad.”

“I’ll promise that every cent goes into milk for the babies.”

“But that’s just handing the miners over to these miserable Russian agitators. Naturally if they can give milk to the children it makes them popular, puts them in a position where they can mislead these poor miserable foreigners worse than ever.” The judge leaned forward across the table and put his blueveined hand in its white starched cuff on Mary’s mother’s hand. “It’s not that we lack sympathy with the plight of the miners’ women and children, or that we don’t understand the dreadful conditions of the whole mining industry… we know altogether too much about that, don’t we, Hilda? But…”

Mary suddenly found that she’d folded her napkin and gotten trembling to her feet. “I don’t see any reason for further prolonging this interview, that must be painful to you, Mother, as it is to me…”

“Perhaps I can arbitrate,” said the judge, smiling, getting to his feet with his napkin in his hand.

Mary felt a desperate tight feeling like a metal ring round her head. “I’ve got to go, Mother… I don’t feel very well today. Have a nice trip… I don’t want to argue.” Before they could stop her she was off down the hall and on her way down in the elevator.

Mary felt so upset she had to talk to somebody so she went to a telephone booth and called up Ada. Ada’s voice was full of sobs, she said something dreadful had happened and that she’d called off her party and that Mary must come up to see her immediately. Even before Ada opened the door of the apartment on Madison Avenue Mary got a whiff of the Forêt Vierge perfume Ada had taken to using when she first came to New York. Ada opened the door wearing a green and pink flowered silk wrapper with all sorts of little tassels hanging from it. She fell on Mary’s neck. Her eyes were red and she sniffed as she talked. “Why, what’s the matter, Ada?” asked Mary coolly. “Darling, I’ve just had the most dreadful row with Hjalmar. We have parted forever… Of course I had to call off the party because I was giving it for him.”

“Who’s Hjalmar?”

“He’s somebody very beautiful… and very hateful… But let’s talk about you, Mary darling… I do hope you ’ve made it up with your mother and Judge Blake.”

“I just walked out… What’s the use of arguing? They’re on one side of the barricades and I’m on the other.”

Ada strode up and down the room. “Oh, I hate talk like that… It makes me feel awful… At least you’ll have a drink… I’ve got to drink, I’ve been too nervous to practice all day.”

Mary stayed all afternoon at Ada’s drinking ginrickeys and eating the sandwiches and little cakes that had been laid out in the kitchenette for the party and talking about old times and Ada’s unhappy loveaffair. Ada made Mary read all his letters and Mary said he was a damn fool and good riddance. Then Ada cried and Mary told her she ought to be ashamed of herself, she didn’t know what real misery was. Ada was very meek about it and went to her desk and wrote out a check in a shaky hand for a hundred dollars for the miners’ milkfund. Ada had some supper sent up for them from the uptown Longchamps and declared she’d spent the happiest afternoon in years. She made Mary promise to come to her concert in the small hall at the Aeolian the following week. When Mary was going Ada made her take a couple of dollars for a taxi. They were both reeling a little in the hall waiting for the elevator. “We’ve just gotten to be a pair of old topers,” said Ada gaily. It was a good thing Mary had decided to take a taxi because she found it hard to stand on her feet.

That winter the situation of the miners in the Pittsburgh district got worse and worse. Evictions began. Families with little children were living in tents and in brokendown unheated tarpaper barracks. Mary lived in a feeling of nightmare, writing letters, mimeographing appeals, making speeches at meetings of clothing and fur workers, canvassing wealthy liberals. The money that came in was never enough. She took no salary for her work so she had to get Ada to lend her money to pay her rent. She was thin and haggard and coughed all the time. Too many cigarettes, she’d explain. Eddy Spellman and Rudy Goldfarb worried about her. She could see they’d decided she wasn’t eating enough because she was all the time finding on the corner of her desk a paper bag of sandwiches or a carton of coffee that one of them had brought in. Once Eddy brought her a big package of smearcase that his mother had made up home near Scranton. She couldn’t eat it; she felt guilty every time she saw it sprouting green mold in the icebox that had no ice in it because she’d given up cooking now that Don was away.

One evening Rudy came into the office with smiles all over his face. Eddy was leaning over packing the old clothes into bales as usual for his next trip. Rudy gave him a light kick in the seat of the pants. “Hay you, Trotzkyite,” said Eddy, jumping at him and pulling out his necktie. “Smile when you say that,” said Rudy, pummeling him. They were all laughing. Mary felt like an oldmaid schoolteacher watching the boys roughhousing in front of her desk. “Meeting comes to order,” she said. “They tried to hang it on me but they couldn’t,” said Rudy, panting, straightening his necktie and his mussed hair. “But what I was going to say, Comrade French, was that I thought you might like to know that a certain comrade is getting in on the Aquitania tomorrow… touristclass.” “Rudy, are you sure?” “Saw the cable.”

Mary got to the dock too early and had to wait two hours. She tried to read the afternoon papers but her eyes wouldn’t follow the print. It was too hot in the receptionroom and too cold outside. She fidgeted around miserably until at last she saw the enormous black sheetiron wall sliding with its rows of lighted portholes past the openings in the wharfbuilding. Her hands and feet were icy. Her whole body ached to feel his arms around her, for the rasp of his deep voice in her ears. All the time a vague worry flitted in the back of her head because she hadn’t had a letter from him while he’d been away.

Suddenly there he was coming down the gangplank alone, with the old wicker suitcase in his hand. He had on a new belted German raincoat but the same checked cap. She was face to face with him. He gave her a little hug but he didn’t kiss her. There was something odd in his voice. “Hello, Mary… I didn’t expect to find you here… I don’t want to be noticed, you know.” His voice had a low furtive sound in her ears. He was nervously changing his suitcase from one hand to the other. “See you in a few days… I’m going to be pretty busy.” She turned without a word and ran down the wharf. She hurried breathless along the crosstown street to the Ninth Avenue el. When she opened her door the new turkeyred curtains were like a blow from a whip in her face.

She couldn’t go back to the office. She couldn’t bear the thought of facing the boys and the people she knew, the people who had known them together. She called up and said she had a bad case of grippe and would have to stay in bed a couple of days. She stayed all day in the blank misery of the narrow rooms. Towards evening she dozed off to sleep on the couch. She woke up with a start thinking she heard a step in the hall outside. It wasn’t Don, the steps went on up the next flight. After that she didn’t sleep any more.

The next morning the phone woke her just when she settled herself in bed to drowse a little. It was Sylvia Goldstein saying she was sorry Mary had the grippe and asking if there was anything she could do. Oh, no, she was fine, she was just going to stay in bed all day, Mary answered in a dead voice. “Well, I suppose you knew all the time about Comrade Stevens and Comrade Lichfield… you two were always so close… they were married in Moscow… she’s an English comrade… she spoke at the big meeting at the Bronx Casino last night… she’s got a great shock of redhair… stunning but some of the girls think it’s dyed. Lots of the comrades didn’t know you and Comrade Stevens had brokenup… isn’t it sad things like that have to happen in the movement?” “Oh, that was a long time ago… Goodby, Sylvia,” said Mary harshly and hung up. She called up a bootlegger she knew and told him to send her up a bottle of gin.

The next afternoon there was a light rap on the door and when Mary opened it a crack there was Ada wreathed in silver fox and breathing out a great gust of Forêt Vierge. “Oh, Mary darling, I knew something was the matter… You know sometimes I’m quite psychic. And when you didn’t come to my concert, first I was mad but then I said to myself I know the poor darling’s sick. So I just went right down to your office. There was the handsomest boy there and I just made him tell me where you lived. He said you were sick with the grippe and so I came right over. My dear, why aren’t you in bed? You look a sight.”

“I’m all right,” mumbled Mary numbly, pushing the stringy hair off her face. “I been… making plans… about how we can handle this relief situation better.”

“Well, you’re just coming up right away to my spare bedroom and let me pet you up a little… I don’t believe it’s grippe, I think it’s overwork… If you’re not careful you’ll be having a nervous breakdown.” “Maybe sumpen like that.” Mary couldn’t articulate her words. She didn’t seem to have any will of her own any more; she did everything Ada told her. When she was settled in Ada’s clean lavendersmelling spare bed they sent out for some barbital and it put her to sleep. Mary stayed there several days eating the meals Ada’s maid brought her, drinking all the drinks Ada would give her, listening to the continual scrape of violin practice that came from the other room all morning. But at night she couldn’t sleep without filling herself up with dope. She didn’t seem to have any will left. It would take her a half an hour to decide to get up to go to the toilet.

After she’d been at Ada’s a week she began to feel she ought to go home. She began to be impatient of Ada’s sly references to unhappy loveaffairs and broken hearts and the beauty of abnegation and would snap Ada’s head off whenever she started it. “That’s fine,” Ada would say. “You are getting your meanness back.” For some time Ada had been bringing up the subject of somebody she knew who’d been crazy about Mary for years and who was dying to see her again. Finally Mary gave in and said she would go to a cocktail party at Eveline Johnson’s where Ada said she knew he’d be. “And Eveline gives the most wonderful parties. I don’t know how she does it because she never has any money, but all the most interesting people in New York will be there. They always are. Radicals too, you know. Eveline can’t live without her little group of reds.”

Mary wore one of Ada’s dresses that didn’t fit her very well and went out in the morning to have her hair curled at Saks’s where Ada always had hers curled. They had some cocktails at Ada’s place before they went. At the last minute Mary said she wouldn’t go because she’d finally got it out of Ada that it was George Barrow who was going to be at the party. Ada made Mary drink another cocktail and a reckless feeling came over her and she said all right, let’s get a move on.

There was a smiling colored maid in a fancy lace cap and apron at the door of the house who took them down the hall to a bedroom full of coats and furs where they were to take off their wraps. As Ada was doing her face at the dressingtable Mary whispered in her ear, “Just think what our reliefcommittee could do with the money that woman wastes on senseless entertaining.” “But she’s a darling,” Ada whispered back excitedly. “Honestly, you’ll like her.” The door had opened behind their backs letting in a racketing gust of voices, laughs, tinkle of glasses, a whiff of perfume and toast and cigarettesmoke and gin. “Oh, Ada,” came a ringing voice. “Eveline darling, how lovely you look… This is Mary French, you know I said I’d bring her… She’s my oldest friend.” Mary found herself shaking hands with a tall slender woman in a pearlgrey dress. Her face was very white and her lips were very red and her long large eyes were exaggerated with mascara. “So nice of you to come,” Eveline Johnson said and sat down suddenly among the furs and wraps on the bed. “It sounds like a lovely party,” cried Ada.

“I hate parties. I don’t know why I give them,” said Eveline Johnson. “Well, I guess I’ve got to go back to the menagerie… Oh, Ada, I’m so tired.”

Mary found herself studying the harsh desperate lines under the makeup round Mrs. Johnson’s mouth and the strained tenseness of the cords of her neck. Their silly life tells on them, she was saying to herself.

“What about the play?” Ada was asking. “I was so excited when I heard about it.”

“Oh, that’s ancient history now,” said Eveline Johnson sharply. “I’m working on a plan to bring over the ballet… turn it into something American… I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

“Oh, Eveline, did the screenstar come?” asked Ada, giggling.

“Oh, yes, they always come.” Eveline Johnson sighed. “She’s beautiful… You must meet her.”

“Of course anybody in the world would come to your parties, Eveline.”

“I don’t know why they should… they seem just too boring to me.” Eveline Johnson was ushering them through some sliding doors into a highceilinged room dusky from shaded lights and cigarettesmoke where they were swallowed up in a jam of welldressed people talking and making faces and tossing their heads over cocktail glasses. There seemed no place to stand so Mary sat down at the end of a couch beside a little marbletopped table. The other people on the couch were jabbering away among themselves and paid no attention to her. Ada and the hostess had disappeared behind a wall of men’s suits and afternoongowns.

Mary had had time to smoke an entire cigarette before Ada came back followed by George Barrow, whose thin face looked flushed and whose adamsapple stuck out further than ever over his collar. He had a cocktail in each hand. “Well well well, little Mary French, after all these years,” he was saying with a kind of forced jollity. “If you knew the trouble we’d had getting these through the crush.”

“Hello, George,” said Mary casually. She took the cocktail he handed her and drank it off. After the other drinks she’d had it made her head spin. Somehow George and Ada managed to squeeze themselves in on the couch on either side of Mary. “I want to hear all about the coalstrike,” George was saying, knitting his brows. “Too bad the insurgent locals had to choose a moment when a strike played right into the operators’ hands.” Mary got angry. “That’s just the sort of remark I’d expect from a man of your sort. If we waited for a favorable moment there wouldn’t be any strikes… There never is any favorable moment for the workers.”

“What sort of a man is a man of my sort?” said George Barrow with fake humility, so Mary thought. “That’s what I often ask myself.” “Oh, I don’t want to argue… I’m sick and tired of arguing… Get me another cocktail, George.”

He got up obediently and started threading his way across the room. “Now, Mary, don’t row with poor George… He’s so sweet… Do you know, Margo Dowling really is here… and her husband and Rodney Cathcart… they’re always together. They’re on their way to the Riviera,” Ada talked into her ear in a loud stage whisper. “I’m sick of seeing movie actors on the screen,” said Mary, “I don’t want to see them in real life.”

Ada had slipped away. George was back with two more cocktails and a plate of cold salmon and cucumbers. She wouldn’t eat anything. “Don’t you think you’d better, with all the drinks?” She shook her head. “Well, I’ll eat it myself… You know, Mary,” he went on, “I often wonder these days if I wouldn’t have been a happier man if I’d just stayed all my life an expressagent in South Chicago and married some nice workinggirl and had a flock of kids… I’d be a wealthier and a happier man today if I’d gone into business even.” “Well, you don’t look so badly off,” said Mary. “You know it hurts me to be attacked as a labor faker by you reds… I may believe in compromise but I’ve gained some very substantial dollarsandcents victories… What you communists won’t see is that there are sometimes two sides to a case.”

“I’m not a partymember,” said Mary.

“I know… but you work with them… Why should you think you know better what’s good for the miners than their own tried and true leaders?” “If the miners ever had a chance to vote in their unions you’d find out how much they trust your sellout crowd.”

George Barrow shook his head. “Mary, Mary… just the same headstrong warmhearted girl.”

“Rubbish, I haven’t any feelings at all any more. I’ve seen how it works in the field… It doesn’t take a good heart to know which end of a riotgun’s pointed at you.”

“Mary, I’m a very unhappy man.”

“Get me another cocktail, George.”

Mary had time to smoke two cigarettes before George came back. The nodding jabbering faces, the dresses, the gestures with hands floated in a smoky haze before her eyes. The crowd was beginning to thin a little when George came back all flushed and smiling. “Well, I had the pleasure of exchanging a few words with Miss Dowling, she was most charming… But do you know what Red Haines tells me? I wonder if it’s true… It seems she’s through; it seems that she’s no good for talkingpictures… voice sounds like the croaking of an old crow over the loudspeaker,” he giggled a little drunkenly. “There she is now, she’s just leaving.”

A hush had fallen over the room. Through the dizzy swirl of cigarettesmoke Mary saw a small woman with blue eyelids and features regular as those of a porcelain doll under a mass of paleblond hair turn for a second to smile at somebody before she went out through the sliding doors. She had on a yellow dress and a lot of big sapphires. A tall bronzefaced actor and a bowlegged sallowfaced little man followed her out, and Eveline Johnson talking and talking in her breathless hectic way swept after them.

Mary was looking at it all through a humming haze like seeing a play from way up in a smoky balcony. Ada came and stood in front of her rolling her eyes and opening her mouth wide when she talked. “Oh, isn’t it a wonderful party… I met her. She had the loveliest manners… I don’t know why, I expected her to be kinda tough. They say she came from the gutter.”

“Not at all,” said George. “Her people were Spaniards of noble birth who lived in Cuba.”

“Ada, I want to go home,” said Mary.

“Just a minute… I haven’t had a chance to talk to dear Eveline… She looks awfully tired and nervous today, poor dear.” A lilypale young man brushed past them laughing over his shoulder at an older woman covered with silver lamé who followed him, her scrawny neck, wattled under the powder, thrust out and her hooknose quivering and eyes bulging over illconcealed pouches.

“Ada, I want to go home.”

“I thought you and I and George might have dinner together.” Mary was seeing blurred faces getting big as they came towards her, changing shape as they went past, fading into the gloom like fish opening and closing their mouths in an aquarium.

“How about it? Miss Cohn, have you seen Charles Edward Holden around? He’s usually quite a feature of Eveline’s parties.” Mary hated George Barrow’s doggy popeyed look when he talked. “Now there’s a sound intelligent fellow for you. I can talk to him all night.”

Ada narrowed her eyes as she leaned over and whispered shrilly in George Barrow’s ear. “He’s engaged to be married to somebody else. Eveline’s cut up about it. She’s just living on her nerve.”

“George, if we’ve got to stay…” Mary said, “get me another cocktail.”

A broadfaced woman in spangles with very red cheeks who was sitting on the couch beside Mary leaned across and said in a stage whisper, “Isn’t it dreadful?… You know I think it’s most ungrateful of Holdy after all Eveline’s done for him… in a social way… since she took him up… now he’s accepted everywhere. I know the girl… a little bitch if there ever was one… not even wealthy.”

“Shush,” said Ada. “Here’s Eveline now… Well, Eveline dear, the captains and the kings depart. Soon there’ll be nothing but us smallfry left.”

“She didn’t seem awful bright to me,” said Eveline, dropping into a chair beside them. “Let me get you a drink, Eveline dear,” said Ada. Eveline shook her head. “What you need, Eveline, my dear,” said the broadfaced woman, leaning across the couch again, “… is a good trip abroad. New York’s impossible after January… I shan’t attempt to stay… It would just mean a nervous breakdown if I did.”

“I thought maybe I might go to Morocco sometime if I could scrape up the cash,” said Eveline.

“Try Tunis, my dear. Tunis is divine.”

After she’d drunk the cocktail Barrow brought Mary sat there seeing faces, hearing voices in a blank hateful haze. It took all her attention not to teeter on the edge of the couch. “I really must go.” She had hold of George’s arm crossing the room. She could walk very well but she couldn’t talk very well. In the bedroom Ada was helping her on with her coat. Eveline Johnson was there with her big hazel eyes and her teasing singsong voice. “Oh, Ada, it was sweet of you to come. I’m afraid it was just too boring… Oh, Miss French, I so wanted to talk to you about the miners… In ever get a chance to talk about things I’m really interested in any more. Do you know, Ada, I don’t think I’ll ever do this again… It’s just too boring.” She put her long hand to her temple and rubbed the fingers slowly across her forehead. “Oh, Ada, I hope they go home soon… I’ve got such a headache.”

“Oughtn’t you to take something for it?”

“I will. I’ve got a wonderful painkiller. Ask me up next time you play Bach, Ada… I’d like that. You know it does seem too silly to spend your life filling up rooms with illassorted people who really hate each other.” Eveline Johnson followed them all the way down the hall to the front door as if she didn’t want to let them go. She stood in her thin dress in the gust of cold wind that came from the open door while George went to the corner to get a cab. “Eveline, go back in, you’ll catch your death,” said Ada. “Well, goodby… you were darlings to come.” As the door closed slowly behind her Mary watched Eveline Johnson’s narrow shoulders. She was shivering as she walked back down the hall.

Mary reeled, suddenly feeling drunk in the cold air and Ada put her arm round her to steady her. “Oh, Mary,” Ada said in her ear, “I wish everybody wasn’t so unhappy.”

“It’s the waste,” Mary cried out savagely, suddenly able to articulate. Ada and George Barrow were helping her into the cab. “The food they waste and the money they waste while our people starve in tarpaper barracks.” “The contradictions of capitalism,” said George Barrow with a knowing leer. “How about a bite to eat?”

“Take me home first. No, not to Ada’s,” Mary almost yelled. “I’m sick of this parasite life. I’m going back to the office tomorrow… I’ve got to call up tonight to see if they got in all right with that load of condensed milk…” She picked up Ada’s hand, suddenly feeling like old times again, and squeezed it. “Ada, you’ve been sweet, honestly you’ve saved my life.”

“Ada’s the perfect cure for hysterical people like us,” said George Barrow. The taxi had stopped beside the row of garbagecans in front of the house where Mary lived. “No, I can walk up alone,” she said harshly and angrily again. “It’s just that being tiredout a drink makes me feel funny. Goodnight. I’ll get my bag at your place tomorrow.” Ada and Barrow went off in the taxicab with their heads together chatting and laughing. They’ve forgotten me already, thought Mary as she made her way up the stairs. She made the stairs all right but had some trouble getting the key in the lock. When the door finally would open she went straight to the couch in the front room and lay down and fell heavily asleep.

In the morning she felt more rested than she had in years. She got up early and ate a big breakfast with bacon and eggs at Childs on the way to the office. Rudy Goldfarb was already there, sitting at her desk.

He got up and stared at her without speaking for a moment. His eyes were red and bloodshot and his usually sleek black hair was all over his forehead. “What’s the matter, Rudy?”

“Comrade French, they got Eddy.”

“You mean they arrested him.”

“Arrested him nothing, they shot him.”

“They killed him.” Mary felt a wave of nausea rising in her. The room started to spin around. She clenched her fists and the room fell into place again. Rudy was telling her how some miners had found the truck wrecked in a ditch. At first they thought that it had been an accident but when they picked up Eddy Spellman he had a bullethole through his temple.

“We’ve got to have a protest meeting… do they know about it over at the Party?”

“Sure, they’re trying to get Madison Square Garden. But, Comrade French, he was one hell of a swell kid.” Mary was shaking all over. The phone rang. Rudy answered it. “Comrade French, they want you over there right away. They want you to be secretary of the committee for the protest meeting.” Mary let herself drop into the chair at her desk for a moment and began noting down the names of organizations to be notified. Suddenly she looked up and looked Rudy straight in the eye. “Do you know what we’ve got to do… we’ve got to move the relief committee to Pittsburgh. I knew all along we ought to have been in Pittsburgh.”

“Risky business.”

“We ought to have been in Pittsburgh all along,” Mary said firmly and quietly.

The phone rang again.

“It’s somebody for you, Comrade French.”

As soon as the receiver touched Mary’s ear there was Ada talking and talking. At first Mary couldn’t make out what it was about. “But, Mary darling, haven’t you read the papers?” “No, I said I hadn’t. You mean about Eddy Spellman?” “No, darling, it’s too awful, you re member we were just there yesterday for a cocktail party… you must remember, Eveline Johnson, it’s so awful. I’ve sent out and got all the papers. Of course the tabloids all say it’s suicide.” “Ada, I don’t understand.” “But, Mary, I’m trying to tell you… I’m so upset I can’t talk… she was such a lovely woman, so talented, an artist really… Well, when the maid got there this morning she found her dead in her bed and we were just there twelve hours before. It gives me the horrors. Some of the papers say it was an overdose of a sleeping medicine. She couldn’t have meant to do it. If we’d only known we might have been able to do something, you know she said she had a headache. Don’t you think you could come up, I can’t stay here alone I feel so terrible.” “Ada, I can’t… Something very serious has happened in Pennsylvania. I have a great deal of work to do organizing a protest. Goodby, Ada.” Mary hung up, frowning.

“Say, Rudy, if Ada Cohn calls up again tell her I’m out of the office… I have too much to do to spend my time taking care of hysterical women a day like this.” She put on her hat, collected her papers, and hurried over to the meeting of the committee.