John Passos - The 42nd Parallel

In September a couple of cold northeasters right after Labor Day emptied the Ocean House and the cottages. The Colonel talked bigger about the coming boom and his advertising campaign, and drank more. Johnny took his meals with him now instead of at Mrs. Ames’ boardinghouse. The booklet was finished and approved and Johnny had made a couple of trips to Philadelphia with the text and the photographs to get estimates from printers. Running through Wilmington on the train without getting off there gave him a pleasant feeling of independence. Dr. Strang looked more and more worried and talked about protecting his investments. They had not talked of Johnny’s engagement to his daughter, but it seemed to be understood. Annabelle’s moods were unaccountable. She kept saying she was dying of boredom. She teased and nagged at Johnny continually. One night he woke suddenly to find her standing beside the bed. “Did I scare you?” she said. “I couldn’t sleep… Listen to the surf.” The wind was shrilling round the cottage and a tremendous surf roared on the beach. It was almost daylight before he could get her to get out of bed and go back to the hotel. “Let ’em see me… I don’t care,” she said. Another time when they were walking along the beach she was taken with nausea and he had to stand waiting while she was sick behind a sanddune, then he supported her, white and trembling, back to the Ocean House. He was worried and restless. On one of his trips to Philadelphia he went round to The Public Ledger to see if he could get a job as a reporter.

One Saturday afternoon he sat reading the paper in the lobby of the Ocean House. There was no one else there, most of the guests had left. The hotel would close the fifteenth. Suddenly he found himself listening to a conversation. The two bellhops had come in and were talking in low voices on the bench against the wall.

“Well, I got mahn awright this summer, damned if I didn’t, Joe.”

“I would of too if I hadn’t gotten sick.”

“Didn’t I tell you not to monkey round with that Lizzie? Man, I b’lieve every sonofabitch in town slep’ with that jane, not excludin’ niggers.”

“Say, did you… You know the blackeyed one? You said you would.”

Johnny froze. He held the paper rigid in front of him.

The bellhop gave out a low whistle. “Hotstuff,” he said. “Jeez, what these society dames gits away with’s got me beat.”

“Didye, honest?”

“Well, not exactly…’Fraid I might ketch somethin’. But that Frenchman did… Jeez, he was in her room all the time.”

“I know he was. I caught him onct.” They laughed. “They’d forgot to lock the door.”

“Was she all neked?”

“I guess she was… under her kimono… He’s cool as a cucumber and orders icewater.”

“Whah didn’t ye send up Mr. Greeley?”

“Hell, why should I? Frenchman wasn’t a bad scout. He gave me five bucks.”

“I guess she can do what she goddam pleases. Her dad about owns this dump, they tell me, him an ole Colonel Wedgewood.”

“I guess that young guy in the realestate office is gettin’ it now… looks like he’d marry her.”

“Hell, I’d marry her maself if a girl had that much kale.”

Johnny was in a cold sweat. He wanted to get out of the lobby without their seeing him. A bell rang and one of the boys ran off. He heard the other one settling himself on the bench. Maybe he was reading a magazine or something. Johnny folded up the paper quietly and walked out onto the porch. He walked down the street without seeing anything. For a while he thought he’d go down to the station and take the first train out and throw the whole business to ballyhack, but there was the booklet to get out, and there was a chance that if the boom did come he might get in on the ground floor, and this connection with money and the Strangs; opportunity knocks but once at a young man’s door. He went back to his cottage and locked himself in his bedroom. He stood a minute looking at himself in the glass of the bureau. The neatly parted light hair, the cleancut nose and chin; the image blurred. He found he was crying. He threw himself face down on the bed and sobbed.

When he went up to Philadelphia the next time to read proof on the booklet:

OCEAN CITY (Maryland)

VACATIONLAND SUPREME

He also took up a draft of the wedding invitations to be engraved:

Dr. Alonso B. Strang

announces the marriage of his daughter

Annabelle Marie

to Mr. J. Ward Moorehouse

at Saint Stephen’s Protestant Episcopal Church,

Germantown, Pennsylvania, on November fifteenth

nineteen hundred and nine at twelve noon

Then there was an invitation to the reception to be sent to a special list. It was to be a big wedding because Dr. Strang had so many social obligations. Annabelle decided on J. Ward Moorehouse as more distinguished than John W. and began to call him Ward. When they asked him about inviting his family he said his mother and father were both invalids and his brothers and sisters too little to enjoy it. He wrote his mother that he was sure she’d understand, but that as things were and with Dad the way he was… he was sure she’d understand. Then one evening Annabelle told him she was going to have a baby.

“I thought maybe that was it.”

Her eyes were suddenly scaringly cold black in his. He hated her at that minute, then he smiled blue-eyed and boyish. “I mean you being so nervous and everything.” He laughed and took her hand. “Well, I’m goin’ to make you an honest woman, ain’t I?” He had the drop on her now. He kissed her.

She burst out crying.

“Oh, Ward, I wish you wouldn’t say ‘ain’t.’”

“I was just teasing, dear… But isn’t there some way?”

“I’ve tried everything… Dad would know, but I don’t dare tell him. He knows I’m pretty independent… but…”

“We’ll have to stay away for a year after we’re married… It’s rotten for me. I was just offered a job on The Public Ledger .”

“We’ll go to Europe… Dad’ll fix us up for our honeymoon… He’s glad to get me off his hands and I’ve got money in my own right, mother’s money.”

“Maybe it’s all a mistake.”

“How can it be?”

“How long is it since you… noticed…?”

Her eyes were suddenly black and searching in his again. They stared at each other and hated each other. “Quite long enough,” she said and pulled his ear as if he were a child, and went swishing upstairs to dress. The Colonel was tickled to death about the engagement and had invited them all to dinner to celebrate it.

The wedding came off in fine style and J. Ward Moorehouse found himself the center of all eyes in a wellfitting frock coat and a silk hat. People thought he was very handsome. His mother back in Wilmington let flatiron after flatiron cool while she pored over the account in the papers; finally she took off her spectacles and folded the papers carefully and laid them on the ironing board. She was very happy.

The young couple sailed the next day from New York on the Teutonic. The crossing was so rough that only the last two days was it possible to go out on deck. Ward was sick and was taken care of by a sympathetic cockney steward who spoke of Annabelle as the “Madam” and thought she was his mother. Annabelle was a good sailor but the baby made her feel miserable and whenever she looked at herself in her handmirror she was so haggard that she wouldn’t get out of her bunk. The stewardess suggested gin with a dash of bitters in it and it helped her over the last few days of the crossing. The night of the captain’s dinner she finally appeared in the diningroom in an evening gown of black valenciennes and everybody thought her the bestlooking woman on the boat. Ward was in a fever for fear she’d drink too much champagne as he had seen her put away four ponies of gin and bitters and a Martini cocktail while dressing. He had made friends with an elderly banker, Mr. Jarvis Oppenheimer and his wife, and he was afraid that Annabelle would seem a little fast to them. The captain’s dinner went off without a hitch, however, and Annabelle and Ward found that they made a good team. The captain, who had known Dr. Strang, came and sat with them in the smokingroom afterwards and had a glass of champagne with them and with Mr. and Mrs. Oppenheimer and they heard people asking each other who could that charming scintillating brilliant young couple be, somebody interesting surely, and when they went to bed after having seen the lighthouses in the Irish Sea, they felt that all the seasick days had been thoroughly worth while.