John Passos - The 42nd Parallel

When they were sitting over Napoleon brandy in big bowlshaped glasses and cigars, Ward got up his nerve to bring out the Ocean City (Maryland) booklet that had been burning a hole in his pocket all through lunch. He laid it on the table modestly. “I thought maybe you might like to glance at it, Mr. Oppenheimer, as… as something a bit novel in the advertising line.” Mr. Oppenheimer took out his glasses and adjusted them on his nose, took a sip of brandy and looked through the book with a bland smile. He closed it, let a little curling blue cigarsmoke out through his nostrils and said, “Why, Ocean City must be an earthly paradise indeed… Don’t you lay it on… er… a bit thick?” “But you see, sir, we’ve got to make the man on the street just crazy to go there… There’s got to be a word to catch your eye the minute you pick it up.”

Mr. McGill, who up to that time hadn’t looked at Ward, turned a pair of hawkgray eyes on him in a hard stare. With a heavy red hand he reached for the booklet. He read it intently right through while Mr. Oppenheimer went on to talk about the bouquet of the brandy and how you should warm the glass a little in your hand and take it in tiny sips, rather inhaling it than drinking it. Suddenly Mr. McGill brought his fist down on the table and laughed a dry quick laugh that didn’t move a muscle of his face. “By gorry, that’ll get ’em, too,” he said. “I reckon it was Mark Twain said there was a sucker born every minute…” He turned to Ward and said, “I’m sorry I didn’t ketch your name, young feller; do you mind repeating it?” “With pleasure… It’s Moorehouse, J. Ward Moorehouse.” “Where do you work?” “I’m on The Paris Herald for the time being,” said Ward, blushing. “Where do you live when you’re in the States?” “My home’s in Wilmington, Delaware, but I don’t guess I’ll go back there when we go home. I’ve been offered some editorial work on The Public Ledger in Philly.” Mr. McGill took out a visiting card and wrote an address on it. “Well, if you ever think of coming to Pittsburgh, look me up.” “I’d be delighted to see you.”

“His wife,” put in Mr. Oppenheimer, “is the daughter of Dr. Strang, the Philadelphia nose and throat specialist… By the way, Ward, how is the dear girl? I hope Nice has cured her of her tonsilitis.” “Yes, sir,” said Ward, “she writes that she’s much better.” “She’s a lovely creature… charming…” said Mr. Oppenheimer, draining the last sip out of his brandyglass with upcast eyes.

Next day Ward got a wire from Annabelle that she was coming up to Paris. He met her at the train. She introduced a tall Frenchman with a black vandyke beard, who was helping her off with her bags when Ward came up, as “Monsieur Forelle, my traveling companion.” They didn’t get a chance to talk until they got into the cab together. The cab smelt musty as they had to keep the windows closed on account of the driving rain. “Well, my dear,” Annabelle said, “have you got over the pet you were in when I left?… I hope you have because I have bad news for you.” “What’s the trouble?” “Dad’s gotten himself in a mess financially… I knew it’d happen. He has no more idea of business than a cat… Well, that fine Ocean City boom of yours collapsed before it had started and Dad got scared and tried to unload his sandlots and naturally nobody’d buy them… Then the Improvement and Realty Company went bankrupt and that precious Colonel of yours has disappeared and Dad has got himself somehow personally liable for a lot of the concern’s debts…. And there you are. I wired him we were coming home as soon as we could get a sailing. I’ll have to see what I can do… He’s helpless as a child about business.”

“That won’t make me mad. I wouldn’t have come over here anyway if it wasn’t for you.”

“Just all selfsacrifice, aren’t you?”

“Let’s not squabble, Annabelle.”

The last days in Paris Ward began to like it. They heard La Bohème at the opera and were both very much excited about it. Afterwards they went to a café and had some cold partridge and wine and Ward told Annabelle about how he’d wanted to be a songwriter and about Marie O’Higgins and how he’d started to compose a song about her and they felt very fond of each other. He kissed her again and again in the cab going home and the elevator going up to their room seemed terribly slow.

They still had a thousand dollars on the letter of credit Dr. Strang had given them as a wedding present, so that Annabelle bought all sorts of clothes and hats and perfumes and Ward went to an English tailor near the Church of the Madeleine and had four suits made. The last day Ward bought her a brooch in the shape of a rooster, made of Limoges enamel and set with garnets, out of his salary from The Paris Herald. Eating lunch after their baggage had gone to the boat train they felt very tender about Paris and each other and the brooch. They sailed from Havre on the Touraine and had a completely calm passage, a gray glassy swell all the way, although the month was February. Ward wasn’t seasick. He walked round and round the firstclass every morning before Annabelle got up. He wore a Scotch tweed cap and a Scotch tweed overcoat to match, with a pair of fieldglasses slung over his shoulder, and tried to puzzle out some plan for the future. Wilmington anyway was far behind like a ship hull down on the horizon.

The steamer with tugboats chugging at its sides nosed its way through the barges and tugs and carferries and red whistling ferryboats of New York harbor against a howling icybright northwest wind.

Annabelle was grouchy and said it looked horrid, but Ward felt himself full of enthusiasm when a Jewish gentleman in a checked cap pointed out the Battery, the Custom House, the Aquarium and Trinity Church.

They drove right from the dock to the ferry and ate in the red-carpeted diningroom at the Pennsylvania Station in Jersey City. Ward had fried oysters. The friendly darkey waiter in a white coat was like home. “Home to God’s country,” Ward said, and decided he’d have to go down to Wilmington and say hello to the folks. Annabelle laughed at him and they sat stiffly in the parlorcar of the Philadelphia train without speaking.

Dr. Strang’s affairs were in very bad shape and, as he was busy all day with his practice, Annabelle took them over completely. Her skill in handling finance surprised both Ward and her father. They lived in Dr. Strang’s big old house on Spruce Street. Ward, through a friend of Dr. Strang’s, got a job on The Public Ledger and was rarely home. When he had any spare time he listened to lectures on economics and business at the Drexel Institute. Evenings Annabelle took to going out with a young architect named Joachim Beale who was very rich and owned an automobile. Beale was a thin young man with a taste for majolica and Bourbon whisky and he called Annabelle “my Cleopatra.”

Ward come in one night and found them both drunk sitting with very few clothes on in Annabelle’s den in the top of the house. Dr. Strang had gone to a medical conference in Kansas City. Ward stood in the doorway with his arms folded and announced that he was through and would sue for divorce and left the house slamming the door behind him and went to the Y.M.C.A. for the night. Next afternoon when he got to the office he found a special delivery letter from Annabelle begging him to be careful what he did as any publicity would be disastrous to her father’s practice, and offering to do anything he suggested. He immediately answered it:

DEAR ANNABELLE:

I now realize that you have intended all along to use me only as a screen for your disgraceful and unwomanly conduct. I now understand why you prefer the company of foreigners, bohemians and such to that of ambitious young Americans.