Francis Fitzgerald - Tales of the Jazz Age

A girl named Marion Cloud, considered the second best belle of Toledo, changed the gist of the situation by a remark she made to Betty.

“Well,” she said maliciously, “it’ll all blow over, dear. The courts will annul it without question.”

Betty’s angry tears dried miraculously in her eyes, her lips shut tight together, and she looked stonily at Marion. Then she rose and, scattering her sympathizers right and left, walked directly across the room to Perry, who stared at her in terror. Again silence crept down upon the room.

“Will you have the decency to grant me five minutes’ conversation—or wasn’t that included in your plans?”

He nodded, his mouth unable to form words.

Indicating coldly that he was to follow her she walked out into the hall with her chin uptilted and headed for the privacy of one of the little card-rooms.

Perry started after her, but was brought to a jerky halt by the failure of his hind legs to function.

“You stay here!” he commanded savagely.

“I can’t,” whined a voice from the hump, “unless you get out first and let me get out.”

Perry hesitated, but unable any longer to tolerate the eyes of the curious crowd he muttered a command and the camel moved carefully from the room on its four legs.

Betty was waiting for him.

“Well,” she began furiously, “you see what you’ve done! You and that crazy license! I told you you shouldn’t have gotten it!”

“My dear girl, I—”

“Don’t say ‘dear girl’ to me! Save that for your real wife if you ever get one after this disgraceful performance. And don’t try to pretend it wasn’t all arranged. You know you gave that colored waiter money! You know you did! Do you mean to say you didn’t try to marry me?”

“No—of course—”

“Yes, you’d better admit it! You tried it, and now what are you going to do? Do you know my father’s nearly crazy? It’ll serve you right if he tries to kill you. He’ll take his gun and put some cold steel in you. Even if this wed—this thing can be annulled it’ll hang over me all the rest of my life!”

Perry could not resist quoting softly: “’Oh, camel, wouldn’t you like to belong to the pretty snake-charmer for all your—”

“Shut-up!” cried Betty.

There was a pause.

“Betty,” said Perry finally, “there’s only one thing to do that will really get us out clear. That’s for you to marry me.”

“Marry you!”

“Yes. Really it’s the only—”

“You shut up! I wouldn’t marry you if—if—”

“I know. If I were the last man on earth. But if you care anything about your reputation—”

“Reputation!” she cried. “You’re a nice one to think about my reputation now . Why didn’t you think about my reputation before you hired that horrible Jumbo to—to—”

Perry tossed up his hands hopelessly.

“Very well. I’ll do anything you want. Lord knows I renounce all claims!”

“But,” said a new voice, “I don’t.”

Perry and Betty started, and she put her hand to her heart.

“For Heaven’s sake, what was that?”

“It’s me,” said the camel’s back.

In a minute Perry had whipped off the camel’s skin, and a lax, limp object, his clothes hanging on him damply, his hand clenched tightly on an almost empty bottle, stood defiantly before them.

“Oh,” cried Betty, “you brought that object in here to frighten me! You told me he was deaf—that awful person!”

The camel’s back sat down on a chair with a sigh of satisfaction.

“Don’t talk ‘at way about me, lady. I ain’t no person. I’m your husband.”

“Husband!”

The cry was wrung simultaneously from Betty and Perry.

“Why, sure. I’m as much your husband as that gink is. The smoke didn’t marry you to the camel’s front. He married you to the whole camel. Why, that’s my ring you got on your finger!”

With a little yelp she snatched the ring from her finger and flung it passionately at the floor.

“What’s all this?” demanded Perry dazedly.

“Jes’ that you better fix me an’ fix me right. If you don’t I’m a-gonna have the same claim you got to bein’ married to her!”

“That’s bigamy,” said Perry, turning gravely to Betty.

Then came the supreme moment of Perry’s evening, the ultimate chance on which he risked his fortunes. He rose and looked first at Betty, where she sat weakly, aghast at this new complication, and then at the individual who swayed from side to side on his chair, uncertainly, menacingly.

“Very well,” said Perry slowly to the individual, “you can have her. Betty, I’m going to prove to you that as far as I’m concerned our marriage was entirely accidental. I’m going to renounce utterly my rights to have you as my wife, and give you to—to the man whose ring you wear—your lawful husband.”

There was a pause and four horror-stricken eyes were turned on him,

“Good-by, Betty,” he said brokenly. “Don’t forget me in your new-found happiness. I’m going to leave for the Far West on the morning train. Think of me kindly, Betty.”

With a last glance at them he turned and his head rested on his chest as his hand touched the door-knob.

“Good-by,” he repeated. He turned the door-knob.

But at this sound the snakes and silk and tawny hair precipitated themselves violently toward him.

“Oh, Perry, don’t leave me! Perry, Perry, take me with you!”

Her tears flowed damply on his neck. Calmly he folded his arms about her.

“I don’t care,” she cried. “I love you and if you can wake up a minister at this hour and have it done over again I’ll go West with you.”

Over her shoulder the front part of the camel looked at the back part of the camel—and they exchanged a particularly subtle, esoteric sort of wink that only true camels can understand.

This somewhat unpleasant tale, published as a novelette in the “Smart Set” in July, 1920, relates a series of events which took place in the spring of the previous year. Each of the three events made a great impression upon me. In life they were unrelated, except by the general hysteria of that spring which inaugurated the Age of Jazz, but in my story I have tried, unsuccessfully I fear, to weave them into a pattern—a pattern which would give the effect of those months in New York as they appeared to at least one member of what was then the younger generation.

There had been a war fought and won and the great city of the conquering people was crossed with triumphal arches and vivid with thrown flowers of white, red, and rose. All through the long spring days the returning soldiers marched up the chief highway behind the strump of drums and the joyous, resonant wind of the brasses, while merchants and clerks left their bickerings and figurings and, crowding to the windows, turned their white-bunched faces gravely upon the passing battalions.

Never had there been such splendor in the great city, for the victorious war had brought plenty in its train, and the merchants had flocked thither from the South and West with their households to taste of all the luscious feasts and witness the lavish entertainments prepared—and to buy for their women furs against the next winter and bags of golden mesh and varicolored slippers of silk and silver and rose satin and cloth of gold.

So gaily and noisily were the peace and prosperity impending hymned by the scribes and poets of the conquering people that more and more spenders had gathered from the provinces to drink the wine of excitement, and faster and faster did the merchants dispose of their trinkets and slippers until they sent up a mighty cry for more trinkets and more slippers in order that they might give in barter what was demanded of them. Some even of them flung up their hands helplessly, shouting: