—Jesus! he said. I don’t think I’ve had one minute of real peace since I left Raintree County. Tell you the truth, John, I envy your quiet life—yes, and your family, and all. Hell, those were happy days before the War when all I had was a feedstore to manage. Since then, it’s been one goddam thing after another and nowhere I could let go. Other men can retire when they get old, but not me. I haven’t any children to give my wealth to, and most of it’s reinvested. O, of course, I suppose, if I had to, I could liquidate my holdings, sell out, and come up with a cold million or so to live on comfortably. But tell you the truth, I never was in it for the money exactly. You probably don’t believe that, but it’s true. It wasn’t the money exactly. It was—
Cash leaned back.
Mr. Shawnessy and the Perfessor waited a long time for Cash to say what it was. Finally, Mr. Shawnessy said,
—It was the times. You just went along with the Republic. You’re a poet of finance, Cash, and here in America you found your poet’s paradise—a perfect playground for your type of imagination—great resources of land and labor, enormous vitality in yourself and others, the most fluid system of credit and finance the world has ever known. You took these ingredients and began to build your own republic, Cash, and you’ve built it around you like a cage. But of course you have to remember that there are other republics besides your own and that all of them are trying to mingle and become one Republic, which always seems to want to conform to the old pattern envisioned by its creators. We’re beginning to reinterpret the Declaration.
—Ah, John, the Perfessor said, I see now, boy, that you were right to stay here in Raintree County. They ought to build a Chinese Wall around it so that you never see the ugly world outside. In America, boy, our old religion, our old morality, our old idealism are going to smash. Moses, Christ, and Plato are finally going to be buried in Oshkosh six feet under and packed down. Democritus and Darwin are going to come into their own. For here are your Americans, the race of dreamers, the idealists of government, and look at ’em! They’re the most materialistic people who ever lived. How do they spend their lives? In accumulations. In blind, dirty grubbing for gold. Americans are the first people in history to get down on their knees and worship brute mass. Their idols no longer have a soul—or any particular form—which is, after all, the same thing. Why, they tell me they’ve started building a new type of building in Chicago called a skyscraper, and the idea seems to be to see how tall you can build it before it falls over. They say you shoot right up to the top in speedy elevators, and there’s no limit to how high they’ll go. Wouldn’t surprise me if Americans went right on doing that, only worse.
The Perfessor bounced to a forward-leaning position and said,
—You believe in values, John. Well, let me tell you something. In America, we’ve found a quick way to express all values. Everything here fits into the price system. Everybody goes around wearing a pricetag of one kind or another. The looks of the dame you can afford to keep are a pricetag. The house you can afford to live in is a pricetag. The cigar you can afford to smoke is a pricetag. Your degree from the university is a pricetag. The books in your bookcase are pricetags. The color of your collar is a pricetag. The whole cockeyed civilization is a series of pricetags hanging out for people to read each other by. And life in America consists of trying to accumulate more and more spectacular pricetags. Everything is on the block in America and can be had for a price. Money will buy anything from a to zebra.
—Everything but truth, wisdom, beauty, goodness, Mr. Shawnessy said. And love, he added, feeling a little embarrassed as he said it.
But Cash Carney went on smoking, his eyes staring, his left hand fondling the gold watch.
—John, the Perfessor said, you’re clinging to a way of life that’s doomed. Go and look at the modern City. How can anyone look at it and believe in love? Or morality? Or the Eternal Ideas? Or the Inalienable Rights? How can anyone believe in the real existence of Raintree County, which you, dear boy and endlessly courageous dreamer, have taken as your image of the enduring values of human life? Yes, go and look at the City, and then look at your little Raintree County, child. Shed a nostalgic tear for it, because the City’s going to eat it up. The God of the City is going to kill the ancient God of Raintree County, who has nothing but a couple of stone tablets and a golden rule for weapons.
—Still corrupting the youth, I see, Cash Carney said. Don’t believe him, John. He’s the same old Perfessor and hasn’t changed a bit.
—What is this? Mr. Shawnessy said. A contest for my soul? The Perfessor laughed.
—I don’t know why it is, he said, but everybody was always trying to corrupt you, John.
Mr. Shawnessy slowly lit a cigar and watched the smoke ascend.
Good-by to Raintree County, incorrigible enthusiast of ideas. Good-by to the good small roads of Raintree County, the horse-and-buggy roads. Hard roads and wide will run through Raintree County, and its ancient boundaries will dissolve. People will hunt it on the map, and it won’t be there.
For America will become the City. America will hunt for a tree of life whose fruit is gold. And that man shall be the Hero of the County who plucks from the high branches the heaviest dividends. And he shall get the most beautiful woman of the City, and he shall lie all night betwixt her breasts. And she will cheat him too, and cheat you too, because she is the City.
—Yes, the Perfessor was saying, in the modern City we can read the doom of our race. For in the City all the women are whores more or less. Some get cash on the bedhead, and the rest get a form of payment in installments called marriage. The City woman has learned to cheat you and herself and the race. Hell, it’s really tough on an old bachelor like me, these days. There’s no love left in the sex. They simper, vamp, and lead you on, and wear love’s life out in sterile preliminaries. I tell you, the race is doomed. The bugs have it all over us and will win out in the end. The roach doesn’t require a dowry before he gets his, and the common housefly doesn’t insist on a church ceremony. But in the City of the Love of Brothers and the Shy Reserve of Sisters, everyone counts the Cost, and the Price is rising all the time, everyone counts and counts and counts the Cost, and the Price is rising all the time.
—About time for my train to come along, Cash said. Well, I see you two haven’t changed much. Still carrying on your lifelong argument. By the way, John, before I forget it, Laura said she might stop off here by herself, next week sometime. Appreciate it if you’d put her up a few nights. Be perfectly frank, I don’t know why she wants to—except to see you again, of course. I mean, she hates Indiana, says she’d just as soon live in a gopher hole. And, after all, Waycross isn’t the most exciting place in the State for a woman like Laura.
—Of course, with John in it—the Perfessor started to say, but immediately began to cough. I’m getting hoarse as hell, he said.
—Tell you the truth, Cash said, she told me to feel the situation out a little. So when you write the letter, John, don’t let her know I told you. I guess you haven’t seen Laura since the night of the big Ball in ’77. That was some night.
—You can emphasize, elaborate, and repeat that statement, the Perfessor said, winking at Mr. Shawnessy. By the way, whatever happened to Laura’s house on Fifth Avenue? That was one fancy pile.
—That’s been gone a long time, Cash said. That land got so expensive, even I couldn’t afford the tax. The whole neighborhood there is chockablock with office buildings now.
—That was quite a house, the Perfessor said. Remember that big stair right up the middle of it?
He winked at Mr. Shawnessy again.
—I don’t clearly remember the way it looked inside, Cash said. You wouldn’t believe the way rents are rising on the Rock right now. Christ, no one but Rockefeller or Carnegie could afford to have a house in that neighborhood now. Hell, some mathematical genius was computing what it would cost a man to pay the upkeep on a six-foot burial lot there in the center of the City fifty years from now, a
nd I forget how many thousands of bucks it would cost you every year just to rot in that earth. Talk about your skyscrapers in Chicago—they ought to start building them that way in New York to save taxes on the land. It’s the most expensive dirt in the world, and the Indians just gave us the whole island for a bottle of whiskey.
—They can have it back, the Perfessor said. They cheated us.
—Why, you wouldn’t know that part of the City now, John, if you went back, Cash said. I think there’s a bank right there where that house of Laura’s was. It’s really fierce what things cost you nowadays. And the Cost just keeps rising all the . . .
Time, time, time. The Cost keeps rising all the time. They build much taller buildings now, and instead of stairs they go shooting straight up in elevators. But do they still find a Forbidden Room on the top floor?
What was I seeking up that stair? What was I doing up there anyway?
For I was lost among the moneychangers. I wandered in the chambers of a gilded age. I wanted to find love even in the City, where the trains are always changing in the station and the Cost is rising all the time. For I had faith even in the City, heard its seductive language, thought that its meanings were my meanings.
And now if I went back, would I ascend the Grand Stair again? Would I want to taste the City once again from its red mouth smeared with ointment? And now if I went back, would I retrace the last steps of my gilded days? O, would I walk down streets and streets to find my little City sweetheart
July 25—1877
BEFORE THE FOOTLIGHTS AND BEHIND THE SCENES
of New York City, Miss Laura Golden had promised Mr. John Shawnessy a private performance on their return from Pittsburgh. Just what she had in mind, he didn’t know, but his curiosity had become an obsession by the time he arrived before the Broadway Theatre on Wednesday evening and read the playbill announcing:
A BELLE OF THE BEAUTIFUL WEST
Starring MISS LAURA GOLDEN
and a Distinguished Supporting Cast
Also
‘The Mississippi Minstrels’
Minstrel Comedians
and
Burlesque
His excitement increased tenfold when he sat in the steepwalled womb of the theatre looking at the drawn curtains, shrouded entrance to a world of mystery and revelation. When at last the curtains rolled back, he watched the vulgar pomps and promenades of the supporting numbers as if they concealed some wondrous secret—young ladies of the burlesque, clad in a travesty of Greek costume, giving the audience saucy glimpses of legs and breasts; corkblack comedians grotesquely clacking their lips in tiresome jokes.
And when the main show started and the Heroine, Brave as she was Beautiful, rode out to conquer with her Virtue and her Beauty the Untamed West, he felt that he saw a drama greater than its stage, an emotion stronger than its gesture—and as such typically American. Costumed America seemed incapable of any but tinsel gestures before the footlights, but behind the scenes a greater drama strove like a buried titaness, convulsive in her bonds.
Outside the theatre, he went by a side alley around to the Stage Door, where several gay gentlemen were pressing for admittance. He showed a card and was admitted behind the scenes of the Broadway Theatre.
He walked through the dim, cluttered world out of which were born the painted postures that he had been watching. Here the colossal artifice of the theatre became nakedly plain in the daubed faces of the women, the white necks of the Negro comedians, the cheesecloth backdrops, the mouldy canvas tombs, the echoing vault filled with platforms and cables where the stage crew toiled at swinging ropes like mariners in a crazy ship.
In the cellared world beneath the stage he found a door with the sign
MISS LAURA GOLDEN
and knocked.
—Who is it?
The voice had come to him musical and muffled, as from a cave.
—John Shawnessy.
—Come on in, dear.
He opened the door. There seemed to be no one in the little dressing room.
—I’m back here, Laura said, speaking from behind a folding screen. Just make yourself at home. How was I?
—You were completely lovely and charming, my Little Belle of the Beautiful Unwest.
He heard her laughing above a silken rustle of clothing.
—You know, he said, I’ve never been behind the scenes in a big theatre before. This is the real theatre of course. Most of our life is lived behind the scenes, don’t you think? Only now and then we manage to get the right props together, smear our faces with makeup, and appear briefly for a little playacting. My own life, I’m sure, has been a rehearsal for a big show that never quite came off. Pardon me—I sound like the Professor tonight. I’m a little sad.
—Don’t be sad tonight, dear, she said, her voice thrillingly distinct behind the screen.
The walls of the little dressing room were thick with photographs, pictures of Miss Laura Golden in various roles that she had made famous. One picture in especial took his fancy. A penned inscription at the bottom said
Daphne Fountain, 1865.
The girl in the picture was rather thin, with great eyes in a broad, sharply contoured face. She was standing in half-profile looking back over her shoulder. Something about the posture and the girl’s eyes gave him a dreadful start. He passed his hand over his forehead.
—What are you doing out there, dear?
—Looking at pictures of you. Are they all you?
—Most of them.
—You look like a hundred different women.
—I am a hundred different women, dear.
—I like this one taken in 1865. That’s the girl I almost met in Washington.
—I was skinny then. You would like me much better now, dear.
He stood for a long time studying the pictures, listening to the sound of a woman dressing behind a screen. The secret of a soul lay feline and recumbent in the mystery of the passing years, elusive in a gallery of faded photographs.
—Here I am, dear. Let’s go.
She came out from behind the screen. Her gown was a black velvet trimmed with gold, drawn very tight at the waist, following and flowing on the curves of her hips and thighs. From this black dress, her neck, arms, and shoulders shone with a sensual pallor. Little gold balls swung from her ears. She wore a heavy gold ring set with a black stone. Her red mouth glistened with ointment. Her face, her full cheeks, her forehead had a kind of pale radiance in the bad light of the little dressing room. He had never seen anyone look so costumed, so contrived. She looked impossibly, stonily beautiful.
He could not repress an exclamation.
—Laura!
—I knew you’d like it, she said, supremely conscious of his admiration. An Egyptian touch—for our play, you know.
She led the way up the stair. In the darkness, he could see only her white neck and gold hair and the beginning of her back with its graceful furrow. He followed this floating disembodied head, faint in the scent of her perfume. Backstage, the lights were out except for a single gasjet. Everyone had already gone. Turning, Laura tossed her head triumphantly.
—This is my world, Johnny! she said. Here I am queen!
She led the way through the wings out upon the stage, still set with the closing scene, dimly illumined through joints in the scenery. Her face was a pale moon floating in this nocturnal world.
—The West! she said. It’s ridiculous, isn’t it, dear! My whole life is just make-believe. But it’s only by making believe that I’ve become anybody at all.
She seemed preternaturally excited.
—Let’s take a curtain call, she said.
Together they pressed through the drawn curtains. Beyond them was the pit, empty of spectators, a great cave of shadows. He couldn’t see her face at all now.
—You see, Mr. Shawnessy, this is the way I express myself. You sit in a room and make your gorgeous words and think your noble thoughts. And I—I go before the footlights and become a hundred dif
ferent women.
—In order to keep from being whom?
—Myself, maybe.
She had been speaking in a great stage whisper, of which there were innumerable repetitions in the empty theatre. She was hovering very close, enunciating her words almost in his ear with wonderful distinctness.
—You know, dear, she said, I do believe that everyone has gone home. We’re quite alone.
Yes, they were quite alone, quite, quite alone, he and someone on an empty stage. Suppose now he fulfilled one of the ancient images of his life and took this woman in his arms. What better place to enact the beautiful audacity of love than the stage of the Broadway Theatre? But he was paralyzed by a strange anxiety. He was afraid of this woman who walked beside him in the dark. It seemed to him that if he were able to illuminate her face suddenly, he would find that it was the face of someone he had forgotten or someone he had dreamed once in a dream or someone he had never seen before and would never see again. It might even be the face of someone who was dead.
—Johnny, she said, you’re strangely quiet.
—We’re in your world now, Laura. You talk.
—All right, she said, I will. In your play, you have the hero attempting to realize an old image—that of finding a little actress waiting for him in a costume closet, someone to love in the great modern City.
—Yes?
—And the woman who comes to symbolize his passion is a woman of a hundred masks and moods.
—Yes?
—But some innermost part of what she is is hidden—kept, as it were, in a Forbidden Room.
—Yes. I suppose each of us has a Forbidden Room, containing some photographs, somethings that we’d rather not have the world see.
—You, too, Johnny?