Джеймс Кейн - Root of His Evil [= Shameless]

The secretary went and in a moment there came a rap on the door. I tried to look casual and said, “Come in.” Grant was standing there, the green shade still over his eyes, acting terribly nervous and not quite looking me in the eye. I struggled for control so I could act naturally, and yet it was a second or so before I heard myself say: “Well! How have you been?”

“Very well, thank you.”

But he sounded shaky and queer. I held out my hand and he took it. “And how have you been?”

“Quite well, thank you.”

“You’re looking well.”

“Thank you.”

“And you’re certainly a success.”

“Oh, am I?”

“A Wall Street celebrity, I should say. The whole place has practically suspended activity trying to find out what you’re going to do next.”

“I didn’t know I was that important.”

“Oh, you’re pretty important... You’ve become prominent in the labor movement, Bernie tells me.”

“Oh — I keep in touch.”

“I got interested in it myself once.”

“Oh, yes. I seem to remember, now you speak of it.”

“I guess I’m not cut out for large affairs, though. It never occurred to me it could be used as a basis for market speculation.”

He sounded a little bitter as he said this, and I replied: “I’m afraid you disapprove of my career in the market.”

“Oh, no. I’m merely learning things. What’s your part in the movement?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t any just at present. I was a sort of traveling secretary.”

“Oh.”

He licked his lips once or twice as though they were dry, and I knew he was dying to ask about Mr. Holden, but I volunteered nothing. There was a long uncomfortable pause and then he said suddenly: “What name are you using now, Carrie?”

This caught me wholly by surprise. I had been half enjoying the foolish talk we had been carrying on but now the same icy feeling began to creep around my heart that I had had in the last days before he left me. “...Why — that’s something I hadn’t quite got around to. The court gave me permission to resume my maiden name, and traveling around that’s what I use. But on my bank accounts and in my business transactions I’m still using yours. Why?”

“Oh, nothing. I just wanted to know.”

“Nothing was said about it in the agreement that was drawn up.”

“No, I saw to that.”

“If my use of your name bothers you—”

“Not at all. In fact, it’s not on my account I raised the question. But mother—”

“Oh, ‘mother’ again!”

“...I guess I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“So after the way you treated me, after you let that woman wrap you around her finger like some kind of worm—”

“We don’t have to go into that.”

“Oh, yes, we do! After all that, all you can think of to say to me now is that you don’t want me to use your name because that simpleton finds it a little inconvenient to have a second Mrs. Harris around to spoil her solitary eminence! Well, I’m going to use your name!”

“It’s quite all right, Carrie.”

“But for a reason you don’t know anything about yet. I don’t know my own name!”

“You—? What did you say?”

“That’s something the newspapers didn’t find out about me, with all their snooping around. I don’t know my name! And while I was perfectly welcome to use my foster-parents’ name, yours is the first name that was ever legally mine. And I’m going to use it! The court didn’t say I had to use my former name. It only said I could if I chose. I choose. I’m going to use your name. Not that I like it. But it’ll do until I get another which, praise God, may not be long now.”

This last slipped out on me, for I truly hadn’t given Mr. Holden a thought all morning. But I was so bitter over the whole discussion that I couldn’t help saying it. He wheeled around, his eyes blazing, caught my hand and tried to jerk me up so that I would be standing, facing him. “What do you mean by that?”

I sat where I was and slowly twisted my hand out of his grasp before I answered. “What I mean by it is none of your business. You left me, you let your mother pay me to get a divorce, and now I’m free. This was your choice, not mine. Isn’t that true?”

I looked at him when I said this and his eyes dropped. He walked around the office two or three times, picking up things and putting them down, and then abruptly turned and walked out.

A minute or two after that Mr. Hunt breezed in, kissed me and was perfectly lovely, but the meeting with Grant had taken all the fun out of my nice surprise. I explained briefly the reason for my strained manner, and switched at once to what I had come there about. I told him I was ready to pay back Mrs. Harris what I had taken from her, shut him up when he began to protest, and said I wanted him to have her at my hotel promptly at eleven o’clock the next morning, to have the money with him in cash, and then I would wash my hands of everything called

Harris, and before many days were out even get rid of the name itself. When he saw I was not to be shaken in my decision he stopped arguing and got down to other matters he had to straighten out, chiefly concerning the large balance I was carrying with him and what he was to do with it.

However, we were interrupted by the entrance of the secretary, who told him Mrs. Jerome was waiting to see him, and he excused himself a minute. When he came back he was laughing. “Baby, are you a sensation! When that woman found out you were in here she just camped down, and a fat chance I can get rid of her until she shakes your money-clutching paw.”

“I don’t want to meet her.”

“You did meet her, at my house.”

“Oh — yes, I remember her. I can’t see her! I’m not in the humor! I... this thing has upset me and I don’t want to see anybody!”

“Carrie! Just for a minute — then I’ll ride you uptown in the car and we’ll wind up our business at lunch. Listen! This woman means dough to me.”

So he brought her in. She was a big fat woman with gray hair and I remembered her from Mrs. Hunt’s cocktail party. She began gushing over me and inviting me to spend the weekend at her place on Long Island. I said I had made engagements for the weekend. She became so insistent that, to get her out of there, Mr. Hunt said he wanted to show us his shop as he called it. I said I had to go, but he reminded me he was driving uptown and there was nothing I could do but tag along with them, though what there would be to see I couldn’t for the life of me imagine. As he went out the glass door I looked toward Grant’s desk but he was gone.

There was a big electrical board in the place but that was an old story to me now and I sat on the edge of a desk while he explained it to her. It was a desk belonging to a “customer’s man,” as they call it in the brokerage offices. The board is a great big affair which occupies one whole wall and has all the stocks listed, with the numbers winking on and off in lights as the sales are made. Some distance out from the board are chairs where people sit and watch the quotations, but directly in front of it is the battery of customers’ men, each with a separate desk on which are two telephones, one for incoming calls and the other direct to the floor of the Exchange. As the orders come in these men accept them, then phone them to the floor man at the Exchange, who executes them. There were four desks in front of this board and at three of them men were busy at their phones. However, the man on whose desk I was sitting had gone off somewhere. A secretary came up, looked around, then tucked a yellow slip into the blotting pad. I don’t remember being curious about it and must have glanced at it mechanically. But I felt my mouth go hot from fury at what I saw.