XVI
For five minutes or so there was no sound but that of one man's food
going in and going down. Then suddenly the man stopped, with his
knife and fork upright on the table in each hand, and cried: "Mr.
Carpenter, you ain't eatin' nuttin'!"
The stranger, who had apparently been in a daydream, came suddenly
back to Prince's. He looked at the quantities of food spread about
him. "If you'd only let me take a little to those men outside!" He
said it pleadingly.
But T-S tapped imperiously on the table, with both his knife and
fork together. "Mr. Carpenter, eat your dinner! Eat it, now, I say!"
It was as if he were dealing with one of the five little T-S's. And
Carpenter, strange as it may seem, obeyed. He picked up a bit of
bread, and began to nibble it, and T-S went to work again.
There was another five minutes of silence; and then the picture
magnate stopped, with a look of horror on his face. "My Gawd! He's
cryin'!" Sure enough, there were two large tears trickling, one down
each cheek of the stranger, and dropping on the bread he was putting
into his mouth!
"Look here, Mr. Carpenter," protested T-S. "Is it dem strikers?"
"I'm sorry; you see--"
"Now, honest, man, vy should you spoil your dinner fer a bunch o'
damn lousy loafers--"
"Abey, vot a vay to talk at a dinner-party!" broke in Maw.
And then suddenly Mary Magna spoke. It was a strange thing, though I
did not realize it until afterwards. Mary, the irrepressible, had
hardly said one word since we left the beauty parlors! Mary, always
the life of dinner parties, was sitting like a woman who had seen
the ghost of a dead child; her eyes following Carpenter's, her mind
evidently absorbed in probing his thoughts.
"Abey!" said she, with sudden passion, of a sort I'd never seen her
display before. "Forget your grub for a moment, I have something to
say. Here's a man with a heart full of love for other people--while
you and I are just trying to see what we can get out of them! A man
who really has a religion--and you're trying to turn him into a
movie doll! Try to get it through your skull, Abey!"
The great man's eyes were wide open. "Holy smoke, Mary! Vot's got
into you?" And suddenly he almost shrieked. "Lord! She's cryin'
too!"
"No, I'm not," declared Mary, vialiantly. But there were two drops
on her cheeks, so big that she was forced to wipe them away. "It's
just a little shame, that's all. Here we sit, with three times as
much food before us as we can eat; and all over this city are poor
devils with nothing to eat, and no homes to go to--don't you know
that's true, Abey? Don't you know it, Maw?"
"Looka here, kid," said the magnate; "you know vot'll happen to you
if you git to broodin' over tings? You git your face full o'
wrinkles--you already gone and spoilt your make-up."
"Shucks, Abey," broke in Maw, "vot you gotta do vit dat? Vy don't
you mind your own business?"
"Mind my own business? My own business, you say? Vell, I like to
know vot you call my business! Ven I got a contract to pay a girl
tirty-five hunded dollars a veek fer her face, and she goes and gits
it all wrinkles, I ask any jury, is it my business or ain't it? And
if a feller vants to pull de tremulo stop fer a lot o' hoboes and
Bullsheviki, and goes and spills his tears into his soup--"
It sounded fierce; but Mary apparently knew her Abey; also, she saw
that Maw was starting to cry. "There's no use trying to bluff me,
Abey. You know as well as I do there are hungry people in this city,
and no fault of theirs. You know, too, you eat twice what you ought
to, because I've heard the doctor tell you. I'm not blaming you a
bit more than I do myself--me, with two automobiles, and a whole
show-window on my back." And suddenly she turned to Carpenter. "What
can we do?"
He answered: "Here, men gorge themselves; in Russia they are eating
their dead."
T-S dropped his knife and fork, and Maw gave a gulp. "Oh, my Gawd!"
"There are ten million people doomed to starve. Their children eat
grass, and their bellies swell up and their legs dwindle to
broom-sticks; they stagger and fall into the ditches, and other
children tear their flesh and devour it."
"O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oh!" wailed Maw; and the diners at Prince's began
to stare.
"Now looka here!" cried T-S, wildly. "I say dis ain't no decent way
to behave at a party. I say it ain't on de level to be a feller's
guest, and den jump on him and spoil his dinner. See here, Mr.
Carpenter, I tell you vot I do. You be good and eat your grub, so it
don't git vasted, and I promise you, tomorrow I go and hunt up
strike headquarters, and give dem a check fer a tousand dollars, and
if de damn graftin' leaders don't hog it, dey all git someting to
eat. And vot's more, I send a check fer five tousand to de Russian
relief. Now ain't dat square? Vot you say?"
"What I say is, Mr. T-S, I cannot be the keeper of another man's
conscience. But I'll try to eat, so as not to be rude."
And T-S grunted, and went back to his feeding; and the stranger made
a pretense of eating, and we did the same.
