The Fires of Spring (36 page)

He walked up Thirteenth Street. Billy Penn’s clock said midnight. On Market the all-night movies were grinding on. At Race he turned right and wandered down that bedizened alley. He looked for the night-prowlers who would know where Betty’s house was. Drunks, old and young, male and female, lurched along the lurid street. A Chinese laundryman locked his door and tucked the key into his pocket. At Ninth Street David approached a young man lounging under a light. “Where’s Betty’s house?” he asked.

“That the one Max Volo runs?” the lounger inquired.

“Yes.”

The lounging man blew smoke through his nose. “The yellow house,” he said.

When David knocked at the door a Negro opened it and said, “We don’t want nothin’.”

“I’m looking for Betty,” David insisted.

“Betty don’t live here.”

“Max Volo sent me.”

“Where you know Max Volo?” the Negro asked suspiciously.

“Paradise.”

“Mis’ Betty!” the Negro called. A handsome woman appeared and asked imperiously, “Who are you?”

“I’m David Harper.”

“Yes!” the handsome woman cried. “I didn’t remember you!” She thrust out a big, firm hand. Expansively she led David through a hallway and into a large, carefully furnished room. There were pictures on the wall, mountain scenes mostly, and expensive furniture. Some men in their fifties, quite at ease, sat about the room talking to four attractive girls who wore perfectly laundered summer dresses.

“This is David Harper,” Betty gushed expansively. “And this is Helen and Patty and Louise and this lovely little girl is Floramae. Floramae is from Charlottesville, down in Virginia.”

Quietly Betty took Floramae by the hand and said, “Max told me that if you ever showed up I was to be very nice to you. Floramae, why don’t you show Dave the place?” The little Southern girl placed her hand in David’s.

“I’ve got to see Max,” David said.

“Why don’t you and Floramae just look around a bit?”

“Thanks, Floramae, but I’ve got to see Max right away.”

Betty sent Floramae back to the other girls. “You in trouble, Dave?” she asked.

“No!” he insisted, reassuringly.

“Then what do you want to see Max for?”

“A friend of mine’s in trouble,” he explained.

“A girl?”

“Yes.”

Betty laughed heartily. Her gold tooth sparkled brilliantly. “A friend in trouble. A girl friend. Dave, we hear that every day. She going to have a baby?”

“Heavens no!” David laughed. Somehow he never thought of Mona having a baby.

“I don’t get what you’re driving at, Dave, but Max has never forgotten how you behaved at the fire. He said you could see him any time. I’ll send you over with Hampton.”

The Negro shrugged his shoulders and left to get a car. Soon David was riding up Race Street toward the center of town. Hampton parked the car and led David to Volo’s expensive suite of rooms. Max was there.

“What’s up, kid?” the little man asked brusquely.

“A very beautiful girl I know has a chance to bust into pictures. She needs a five-thousand-dollar stake.”

“Five grand! Just like that!”

“She’s a good risk. She has talent.”

“You been sleepin’ with her? Guys sleepin’ with dames always think they have talent.”

“No, Max. I met her up at Paradise. You know her. The girl who sang with Klementi Kol.”

“I don’t know Kol,” Max snapped in an extremely businesslike manner.

“The orchestra leader.”

“Dance band?”

“No, Max!” David explained. “The good musician who took Sousa’s place each summer.”

“Oh! That Kol! The guy who croaked himself.
That
dame! Hell, kid! That girl’s got all kinds of class!”

“She needs five thousand.”

“What for?” Volo asked suspiciously.

“It may sound funny,” David said slowly. “She has an offer from Hollywood. But she has no money. She says that if she goes out there broke, they’ll treat her like nobody. She wants to make a splash so she’ll be too big to be pushed around.”

Volo snapped his fingers loudly. “That girl’s smart. Where is she?”

There was a long pause during which David thought: “I shouldn’t let Max meet her.” But the hour was late and Max Volo was in a hurry; so against his better judgment David led Max to Mona’s dingy hotel. When he knocked on her door, Mona threw a thin robe about her shoulders and allowed her nightgown to twist awry as if she had just risen from sleep. She pulled at it until her bosom partially showed. Slowly she opened the door.

“Oh, Dave!” she cried. “You shouldn’t have come here!”
Quickly she pressed her nightgown against her throat. Then slowly she brought her other arm across her bosom and stood with her wrists crossed. She was tenderly exquisite and blushed in embarrassment. “This awful room!” she said.

Max closed the door and proceeded to business. David was astonished at how quickly Max and Mona understood each other. “Miss Meigs,” Max said graciously after the loan had been arranged, “I got friends in Hollywood. Important people, I can assure you. When you get there I arrange flowers, cars, and even should you want it a band.”

“That’s sweet of you, Mr. Volo,” Mona said. “I’m scared, and I’m going to need all the luck I can scrape together.” She smiled brilliantly at Max, showing her iridescent teeth.

Then Volo did a very silly thing. He bent low and kissed Mona’s hand. David was already in the hallway and did not hear what happened next, but Mona permitted her hand to linger in the little man’s and said softly, “But all you get out of this is the five thousand paid back. That’s all, Mr. Volo.”

“I’m willing to gamble on that,” Max replied. He was smiling happily when he overtook David. “Any time you want favors like tonight, look me up! It’s a pleasure!”

When the list of visiting examiners was posted David received a jolt. In American legal development, Thurman Arnold. In English history, Mr. David Dalling, of Oxford. David looked at the list and whistled. “I’m to be examined by such men!” He became panicky and hurried off to study in all directions. “Boy!” he grunted when his long absence from books started to tell. “I waited too long!”

But Joe Vaux helped him to get organized. Joe reviewed the books that Dalling had written and pronounced the man to be archconservative, anti-Macaulay, pro-Walpole, anti-Earl Grey, and pro-Sir Thomas More. Following this analysis he tracked down a dozen books and joined with David in a systematic summary of the great writers: Ostrogorski, Dicey and the rest. But at night Joe snarled at the men on his hall: “It’s a damned disgrace to bring a man like Dalling to America. Reactionary, Troy, anti-labor. And an Englishman! Well, here’s one Boston Irishman that don’t give a damn if he graduates or not. Wait till you see what I do to Mr. David Dalling!”

The written exams came first, ten days of them with three-hour papers each morning and afternoon. On the first day David felt chilly and truly afraid, but then he saw Mr.
Dalling’s exam. It was one question: “What events in British constitutional history might be studied in an effort to understand Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln in their defense of union?” David grinned at the question and a sweet sense of power came upon him. “I could write for days on that one!” he muttered.

He did well for eight days, and when students compared notes, word flashed across the campus: “Dave is knocking them dead.” He was not sure, but he did know that few questions were asked which he and Joe had not studied. At the beginning of each exam they nodded gravely to each other; and then on the eighth afternoon David was handed a telegram as he left the examination room: “Must see you tonight. Dinner. The Bellevue. Mona.”

“No!” he cried, immersed in the problems of the next exam. Then, as he stood with the crumpled paper in his hand, he sensed the terrible right of intrusion that people retain if they have slept with each other. “Mona!” he mumbled to himself. “I’d like to see you tonight, but I just can’t leave!”

He destroyed the telegram and said nothing to Joe, but Mona forced her way into his book and he rubbed his eyes. “No!” he cried again. “Damn it all, no!”

Outside his window there was a honking and students began to shout, “Harper! Harper! It’s the longest car east of Hollywood!” He went to the window and recognized Max Volo’s special limousine. Two plug-uglies were in front. “Hiya, kid,” they called. “Max is giving a farewell for the blonde. You’re to come along.” For a moment David was determined to slam the window and get back to work. Then he thought of Mona and her last night in Philly.

“Vaux!” he shouted. “Leave me your outlines of Chaucer. I’ll be back late.”

The farewell dinner was a gala affair and all during it David pushed away the glasses and bottles of Max’s bootleg. But when Mona toasted “The first man to tell me I’d make good! Dave Harper!” he felt a lump in his throat and drank a full glass to her success. He had two more following Max’s speech and two more after a tearful tribute to Klementi Kol. Then he waved his empty glass and said, “To the best of them all, John Philip Sousa!”

At eleven two limousines drove the party to West Philadelphia, where Mona boarded the train for Chicago. She had a suite, and Max had ordered it filled with flowers. David
lugged her baggage in, and then he and Max stood in the doorway. “Thank you!” she cried in thick tones. “Thank you both!” But it was David she kissed.

The conductor cried, “Everybody off that’s getting off!” and Max disappeared; but the announcement of actual departure frightened David, and he had a sense that he might never again see Mona. Swaying gently, he watched her shaking her lovely head to clear away the mists, and in this last moment of their time he blurted out: “Mona? What was wrong with Uncle Klim?”

“What do you mean?” she snapped, trying to focus her champagned eyes on David. “Who said there was anything wrong with good old Klim?”

“Was he injured when he was a boy? Or in the war?” David was fighting for one last understanding of the man he had wronged. “I mean, why couldn’t he make love to you?”

“Why, you dirty …” Mona began. “You get out of here with your filthy mind!” She shoved him toward the door and then recognized who he was. She stood swaying before him, and the conductor blew his whistle. “Dave,” she explained hurriedly. “Sometimes a man can be the best man in the world. He can be kind to people and love a girl until his heart breaks. But things don’t work out for him, so he shoots himself.” Her lips moved vacantly and then, as if she knew that one day she might herself be subjected to the whim of an implacable injustice, she flung her unsteady arms about David and begged, “Wish me luck, kid. Wish me luck!”

When the train chugged away Max asked, “Were you sweet on that dame?”

“Sure!” David replied defiantly. “Who wasn’t?” Then he saw a clock and cried, “My God, Max! I got to get back to college!”

“They lock you in at night?” Max asked.

“Exams.”

“You’re smart enough already,” Max objected roughly, shoving David toward the cars. “We’ll celebrate.”

“Max!” David protested weakly, and even when he staggered up the steps to Betty’s house on Race Street he was still talking about Chaucer.

“Meet Mr. Chaucer!” Max cried in taut accents. The girls were delighted and laughed at the unsteady college student.

“Sing us a college song!” they demanded. Their voices were shrill and exciting and David said, “I’ll sing you the
daddy of ’em all!” And he began to intone “Fair Dedham, in that distant day …” The words reminded him of college. “Hey!” he roared. “I got to get to college!”

The night wore on. Betty and the girls sang. An expensive radio picked up stations ever westward as the eastern ones closed down. Max sat regally in a red chair and studied the clowns about him as might Caesar have studied Egyptian dancing girls and Grecian fools. At three he said, “OK. Let’s get going.” He and Betty piled into the limousine and ordered three men to lift David in after them. The big car roared back to West Philly, and Max boarded a Pullman. The train disappeared into the night and David asked, “Where’s he going?” And big Betty replied, “He’s going out to Hollywood. He catches up with Mona’s train in Chicago.”

There was a buzzing in David’s head and he never knew how he got back to Dedham or how the two men dragged him up to Joe Vaux’s room. The first thing he remembered was looking up at Joe from a bed. “You look just fine!” Joe declared.

“God! My head!” David moaned. He belched and added, “My stomach, too.”

“Get into the shower!” Carefully Joe herded him under the cold water and then gave him a brisk rubdown. “Drink this,” he said.

“I don’t wanna drink anything!” David protested.”

Joe smacked him in the face. “Dave!” he said pleadingly. “This is where they separate the men from the boys!” He propped him up and started reading the notes on Chaucer, but before he had reached the second page David was asleep. Joe allowed him to lie in his stupor until ten minutes to nine. Then he thrashed the half-drunken student into shape and dragged him off to the examination room.

“My head!” David repeated. When he sat down, the room remained standing and he could not get it to obey him. Then he saw the white paper staring up at him and three thoughts flashed through his throbbing mind. First he thought: “I’m going to be sick, like the women in the poorhouse.” Next he tensed his stomach muscles and thought: “This is where they separate the men from the boys.” Finally he saw that name on the examination paper: Chaucer! And he began to grin. If there was in all the history of the world one man upon whom to write after a night of drunken foolery and kissing fair women good-bye and singing to the stars and being young and turbulent and in love and confused and wildly
happy, that man was Geoffrey Chaucer. And David thought: “Especially in the spring.”

In the public interrogation David did very well and experienced a new sense of affection for Dedham and its intellectual fellowship. At each question the Dedham faculty leaned forward, visibly hoping that their prize student would answer with distinction. But it was the interrogation of Joe Vaux that filled the hall! For three weeks Joe had publicly been threatening to humiliate the crisp English visitor. “If you want to hear something good,” Joe had said grimly, “listen to me tear into that pompous ass.” He launched his assault on Mr. Dalling’s first question: “In your opinion, Mr. Vaux, how do you account for Pitt the Younger’s intransigent resistance to Napoleon?”