U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [438]
"Here's Mr. Anderson, Doris," said Mrs. Humphries. Doris turned with a jump and ran up to him and threw her arms round his neck and kissed him on the cheek. "You darling to come down." Then she introduced him to a red-faced young Englishman in an English plaid overcoat who was carrying a big bag of golfclubs. "I know you'l like each other."
"Is this your first visit to this country?" asked Charley.
"Quite the contrary," said the Englishman, showing his yel ow teeth in a smile. "I was born in Wyoming." It was chil y on the wharf. Mrs. Humphries went to sit in the heated waitingroom. When the young man with the golfsticks went off to attend to his own bags, Doris said,
"How do you like George Duquesne? He was born here and brought up in England. His mother comes from peo-ple in the Doomsday Book. I went to stay with them at the most beautiful old abbey. . . . I had the time of my life in England. I think George is a duck. The Duquesnes have copper interests. They are almost like the Guggen-heims except of course they are not Jewish. . . . Why, Charley, I believe you're jealous. . . . Sil y . . . George and I are just like brother and sister, real y. . . . It's not like you and me at al , but he's such fun."
It took the Humphries family a couple of hours to get
-222-through the customs. They had a great many bags and Doris had to pay duty on some dresses. When Mrs. Hum-phries found she was to drive uptown in an open car with the top down she looked black indeed, the fact that it was a snakylooking Packard didn't seem to help. "Why, it's a regular rubberneck wagon," said Doris. "Mother, this is fun . . . Charley'l point out al the tal buildings." Mrs. Humphries was grumbling as, surrounded by handbag-gage, she settled into the back seat, "Your dear father, Doris, never liked to see a lady riding in an open cab, much less in an open machine." When he'd taken them uptown Charley didn't go back
to the plant. He spent the rest of the day til closing at the Askews' apartment on the telephone talking to Ben-ton's office. Since the listing of Standard Airparts there'd been a big drop in Askew-Merritt. He was hocking every-thing and waiting for it to hit bottom before buying. Every now and then he'd cal up Benton and say, "What do you think, Nat?
"
Nat stil had no tips late that afternoon, so Charley spun a coin to decide; it came heads. He cal ed up the office and told them to start buying at the opening figure next day. Then he changed his clothes and cleared out before Grace brought the little girls home from school; he hardly spoke to the Askews these days. He was fed up out at the plant and he knew Joe thought he was a slacker. When he changed his wal et from one jacket to the other he opened it and counted his cash. He had four cen-turies and some chickenfeed. The bil s were crisp and new, straight from the bank. He brought them up to his nose to sniff the new sweet sharp smel of the ink. Before he knew what he'd done he'd kissed them. He laughed out loud and put the bil s back in his wal et. Jesus, he was feeling good. His new blue suit fitted nicely. His shoes were shined. He had clean socks on. His bel y felt hard
-223-under his belt. He was whistling as he waited for the ele-vator. Over at Doris's there was George Duquesne saying how ripping the new buildings looked on Fifth Avenue.
"Oh, Charley, wait til you taste one of George's alexanders, they're ripping," said Doris.
"He learned to make them out in Constant after the war. . . . You see he was in the British army. . . . Charley was one of our star aces, George."
Charley took George and Doris to dinner at the Plaza and to a show and to a nightclub. Al the time he was feeding highpower liquor into George in the hope he'd pass out, but al George did was get redder and redder in the face and quieter and quieter, and he hadn't had much to say right at the beginning. It was