MARGO DOWLING 1 страница

Margo Dowling was sixteen when she married Tony.
She loved the trip down to Havana on the boat. It was
very rough but she wasn't sick a minute; Tony was. He
turned very yellow and lay in his bunk all the time and
only groaned when she tried to make him come on deck to
breathe some air. The island was in sight before she could
get him into his clothes. He was so weak she had to dress
him like a baby. He lay on his bunk with his eyes closed
and his cheeks hollow while she buttoned his shoes for
him. Then she ran up on deck to see Havana, Cuba. The
sea was still rough. The waves were shooting columns of
spray up the great rocks under the lighthouse. The young
thinfaced third officer who'd been so nice all the trip
showed her Morro Castle back of the lighthouse and the
little fishingboats with tiny black or brown figures in them
swinging up and down on the huge swells outside of it.
The other side the pale caramelcolored houses looked as if
they were standing up right out of the breakers. She asked
him where Vedado was and he pointed up beyond into the
haze above the surf. "That's the fine residential section,"
he said. It was very sunny and the sky was full of big
white clouds.

By that time they were in the calm water of the harbor
passing a row of big schooners anchored against the steep
hill under the sunny forts and castles, and she had to go
down into the bilgy closeness of their cabin to get Tony up
and close their bags. He was still weak and kept saying
his head was spinning. She had to help him down the gang-
plank.

The ramshackle dock was full of beadyeyed people in
white and tan clothes bustling and jabbering. They all
seemed to have come to meet Tony. There were old ladies
in'shawls and pimplylooking young men in straw hats and

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an old gentleman with big bushy white whiskers wearing
a panamahat. Children with dark circles under their eyes
got under everybody's feet. Everybody was yellow or cof-
feecolored and had black eyes, and there was one grey-
haired old niggerwoman in a pink dress. Everybody cried
and threw up their arms and hugged and kissed Tony and
it was a long time before anybody noticed Margo at all.
Then all the old women crowded around kissing her and
staring at her and making exclamations in Spanish about
her hair and her eyes and she felt awful silly not under-
standing a word and kept asking Tony which his mother
was, but Tony had forgotten his English. When he finally
pointed to a stout old lady in a shawl and said la mamá
she was very much relieved it wasn't the colored one.

If this is the fine residential section, Margo said to her-
self when they all piled out of the streetcar, after a long
ride through yammering streets of stone houses full of
dust and oily smells and wagons and mulecarts, into the
blisteringhot sun of a cobbled lane, I'm a milliondollar
heiress.

They went through a tall doorway in a scabby peeling
pinkstucco wall cut with narrow barred windows that went
right down to the ground, into a cool rankishsmelling ves-
tibule set with wicker chairs and plants. A parrot in a cage
squawked and a fat piggy little white dog barked at Margo
and the old lady who Tony had said was la mamá came
forward and put her arm around her shoulders and said a
lot of things in Spanish. Margo stood there standing first
on one foot and then on the other. The doorway was
crowded with the neighbors staring at her with their mon-
keyeyes.

"Say, Tony, you might at least tell me what she's say-
ing," Margo whined peevishly. "Mother says this is your
house and you are welcome, things like that. Now you
must say muchas gracias, mamá." Margo couldn't say any-
thing. A lump rose in her throat and she burst out crying.

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She cried some more when she saw their room, a big
dark alcove hung with torn lace curtains mostly filled up
by a big iron bed with a yellow quilt on it that was all
spotted with a brown stain. She quit crying and began to
giggle when she saw the big cracked chamberpot with roses
on it peeping out from under.

Tony was sore. "Now you must behave very nice," he
said. "My people they say you are very pretty but not
wellbred."

"Aw, you kiss my foot," she said.

All the time she was in Havana she lived in that alcove
with only a screen in front of the glass door to the court.
Tony and the boys were always out. They'd never take her
anywhere. The worst of it was when she found she was
going to have a baby. Day after day she lay there all
alone staring up at the cracked white plaster of the ceil-
ing, listening to the shrill jabber of the women in the court
and the vestibule and the parrot and the yapping of the
little white dog that was named Kiki. Roaches ran up and
down the wall and ate holes in any clothes that weren't put
away in chests.

Every afternoon a hot square of sunlight pressed in
through the glass roof of the court and ran along the edge
of the bed and across the tiled floor and made the alcove
glary and stifling.

Tony's family never let her go out unless one of the old
women went along, and then it was usually just to market
or to church. She hated going to the market that was so
filthy and rancidsmelling and jammed with sweaty jostling
negroes and chinamen yelling over coops of chickens and
slimy stalls of fish. La mamá and Tia Feliciana and Carné
the old niggerwoman seemed to love it. Church was bet-
ter, at least people wore better clothes there and the tinsel
altars were often full of flowers, so she went to confession
regularly, though the priest didn't understand the few
Spanish words she was beginning to piece together, and

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she couldn't understand his replies. Anyway church was
better than sitting all day in the heat and the rancid smells
of the vestibule trying to talk to the old women who never
did anything but fan and chatter, while the little white dog
slept on a dirty cushion on a busted gilt chair and occasion-
ally snapped at a fly.

Tony never paid any attention to her any more; she
could hardly blame him her face looked so redeyed and
swollen from crying. Tony was always around with a mid-
dleaged babyfaced fat man in a white suit with an enor-
mous double gold watchchain looped across his baywindow
whom everybody spoke of very respectfully as el señor
Manfredo. He was a sugarbroker and was going to send
Tony to Paris to study music. Sometimes he'd come and
sit in the vestibule on a wicker chair with his goldheaded
cane between his fat knees. Margo always felt there was
something funny about Sefior Manfredo, but she was as
nice to him as she could be. He paid no attention to her
either. He never took his eyes off Tony's long black lashes.

Once she got desperate and ran out alone to Central
Park to an American drugstore she'd noticed there one
evening when the old women had taken her to hear the
military band play. Every man she passed stared at her.
She got to the drugstore on a dead run and bought all the
castoroil and quinine she had money for. Going home she
couldn't seem to go a block without some man following
her and trying to take her arm. "You go to hell," she'd
say to them in English and walk all the faster. She lost
her way, was almost run over by a car and at last got to
the house breathless. The old women were back and raised
Cain.

When Tony got home they told him and he made a big
scene and tried to beat her up, but she was stronger than he
was and blacked his eye for him. Then he threw himself
on the bed sobbing and she put cold compresses on his eye
to get the swelling down and petted him and they were

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happy and cozy together for the first time since they'd
come to Havana. The trouble was the old women found
out about how she'd blacked his eye and everybody teased
him about it. The whole street seemed to know and every-
body said Tony was a sissy. La mamá never forgave
Margo and was mean and spiteful to her after that.

If she only wasn't going to have the baby Margo would
have run away. All the castoroil did was to give her ter-
rible colic and the quinine just made her ears ring. She
stole a sharppointed knife from the kitchen and thought
she'd kill herself with it, but she didn't have the nerve to
stick it in. She thought of hanging herself by the bedsheet,
but she couldn't seem to do that either. She kept the knife
under the mattress and lay all day on the bed dreaming
about what she'd do if she ever got back to the States and
thinking about Agnes and Frank and vaudeville shows and
the Keith circuit and the St. Nicholas rink. Sometimes
she'd get herself to believe that this was all a long night-
mare and that she'd wake up in bed at home at Indian's.

She wrote Agnes every week and Agnes would some-
times send her a couple of dollars in a letter. She'd saved
fifteen dollars in a little alligatorskin purse Tony had given
her when they first got to Havana, when he happened to
look into it one day and pocketed the money and went out
on a party. She was so sunk that she didn't even bawl him
out about it when he came back after a night at a rumba-
joint with dark circles under his eyes. Those days she was
feeling too sick to bawl anybody out.

When her pains began nobody had any idea of taking
her to the hospital. The old women said they knew just
what to do, and two Sisters of Mercy with big white but-
terfly headdresses began to bustle in and out with basins
and pitchers of hot water. It lasted all day and all night
and some of the next day. She was sure she was going to
die. At last she yelled so loud for a doctor that they went
out and fetched an old man with yellow hands all knobbed

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with rheumatism and a tobaccostained beard they said was
a doctor. He had goldrimmed eyeglasses on a ribbon that
kept falling off his long twisted nose. He examined her
and said everything was fine and the old women grinning
and nodding stood around behind him. Then the pains
grabbed her again; she didn't know anything but the pain.

After it was all over she lay back so weak she thought
she must be dead. They brought it to her to look at but
she wouldn't look. Next day when she woke up she heard
a thin cry beside her and couldn't imagine what it was. She
was too sick to turn her head to look at it. The old women
were shaking their heads over something, but she didn't
care. When they told her she wasn't well enough to nurse
it and that it would have to be raised on a bottle she didn't
care either.

A couple of days passed in blank weakness. Then she
was able to drink a little orangejuice and hot milk and
could raise her head on her elbow and look at the baby
when they brought it to her. It looked dreadfully little.
It was a little girl. Its poor little face looked wrinkled and
old like a monkey's. There was something the matter with
its eyes.

She made them send for the old doctor and he sat on
the edge of her bed looking very solemn and wiping and
wiping his eyeglasses with his big clean silk handkerchief.
He kept calling her a poor little niña and finally made her
understand that the baby was blind and that her husband
had a secret disease and that as soon as she was well enough
she must go to a clinic for treatments. She didn't cry or say
anything but just lay there staring at him with her eyes
hot and her hands and feet icy. She didn't want him to go,
that was all she could think of. She made him tell her all
about the disease and the treatment and made out to un-
derstand less Spanish than she did, just so that he wouldn't
go away.

A couple of days later the old women put on their best

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black silk shawls and took the baby to the church to be
christened. Its little face looked awful blue in the middle
of all the lace they dressed it in. That night it turned
almost black. In the morning it was dead. Tony cried and
the old women all carried on and they spent a lot of money
on a little white casket with silver handles and a hearse and
a priest for the funeral. Afterwards the Sisters of Mercy
came and prayed beside her bed and the priest came and
talked to the old women in a beautiful tragedy voice like
Frank's voice when he wore his morningcoat, but Margo
just lay there in the bed hoping she'd die too, with her
eyes closed and her lips pressed tight together. No matter
what anybody said to her she wouldn't answer or open her
eyes.

When she got well enough to sit up she wouldn't go to
the clinic the way Tony was going. She wouldn't speak to
him or to the old women. She pretended not to under-
stand what they said. La mamá would look into her face
in a spiteful way she had and shake her head and say,
"Loca." That meant crazy.

Margo wrote desperate letters to Agnes: for God's sake
she must sell something and send her fifty dollars so that
she could get home. Just to get to Florida would be
enough. She'd get a job. She didn't care what she did if
she could only get back to God's Country. She just said
that Tony was a bum and that she didn't like it in Havana.
She never said a word about the baby or being sick.
Then one day she got an idea; she was an American
citizen, wasn't she? She'd go to the consul and see if they
wouldn't send her home. It was weeks before she could
get out without one of the old women. The first time she
got down to the consulate all dressed up in her one good
dress only to find it closed. The next time she went in the
morning when the old women were out marketing and got
to see a clerk who was a towheaded American collegeboy.
My, she felt good talking American again.

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She could see he thought she was a knockout. She liked
him too but she didn't let him see it. She told him she was
sick and had to go back to the States and that she'd been
gotten down there on false pretenses on the promise of an
engagement at the Alhambra. "The Alhambra," said the
clerk. "Gosh, you don't look like that kind of a girl."

"I'm not," she said.

His name was George. He said that if she'd married a
Cuban there was nothing he could do as you lost your
citizenship if you married a foreigner. She said suppose
they weren't really married. He said he thought she'd said
she wasn't that kind of a girl. She began to blubber and
said she didn't care what kind of a girl she was, she had
to get home. He said to come back next day and he'd see
what the consulate could do, anyway wouldn't she have tea
with him at the Miami that afternoon.

She said it was a date and hurried back to the house feel-
ing better than she had for a long time. The minute she
was by herself in the alcove she took the marriagelicense
out of her bag and tore it up into little tiny bits and
dropped it into the filthy yellow bowl of the old water-
closet in the back of the court. For once the chain worked
and every last bit of forgetmenotspotted paper went down
into the sewer.

That afternoon she got a letter from Agnes with a fifty-
dollar draft on the National City Bank in it. She was so
excited her heart almost stopped beating. Tony was out
gallivanting around somewhere with the sugarbroker. She
wrote him a note saying it was no use looking for her,
she'd gone home, and pinned it on the underpart of the
pillow on the bed. Then she waited until the old women
had drowsed off for their siesta, and ran out.

She wasn't coming back. She just had the clothes she had
on, and a few little pieces of cheap jewelry Tony had given
her when they were first married, in her handbag. She
went to the Miami and ordered an icecreamsoda in Eng-

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lish so that everybody would know she was an American
girl, and waited for George.

She was so scared every minute she thought she'd keel
over. Suppose George didn't come. But he did come and
he certainly was tickled when he saw the draft, because he
said the consulate didn't have any funds for a case like
hers. He said he'd get the draft cashed in the morning and
help her buy her ticket and everything. She said he was a
dandy and then suddenly leaned over and put her hand in
its white kid glove on his arm and looked right into his
eyes that were blue like hers were and whispered, "George,
you've got to help me some more. You've got to help me
hide. . . . I'm so scared of that Cuban. You know they
are terrible when they're jealous."

George turned red and began to hem and haw a little,
but Margo told him the story of what had happened on
her street just the other day, how a man, an armyofficer,
had come home and found, well, his sweetheart, with an-
other man, well, she might as well tell the story the way
it happened, she guessed George wasn't easily shocked
anyway, they were in bed together and the armyofficer
emptied all the chambers of his revolver into the other
man and then chased the woman up the street with a
carvingknife and stabbed her five times in the public
square. She began to giggle when she got that far and
George began to laugh. "I know it sounds funny to you
. . . but it wasn't so funny for her. She died right there
without any clothes on in front of everybody."

"Well, I guess we'll have to see what we can do," said
George, "to keep you away from that carvingknife."

What they did was to go over to Matanzas on the
Hershey electriccar and get a room at a hotel. They had
supper there and a lot of ginfizzes and George, who'd told
her he'd leave her to come over the next day just in time
for the boat, got romantic over the ginfizzes and the moon-
light and dogs barking and the roosters crowing. They

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went walking with their arms round each other down the
quiet chalkycolored moonstruck streets, and he missed the
last car back to Havana. Margo didn't care about anything
except not to be alone in that creepy empty whitewalled
hotel with the moon so bright and everything. She liked
George anyway.

The next morning at breakfast he said she'd have to let
him lend her another fifty so that she could go back first-
class and she said honestly she'd pay it back as soon as she
got a job in New York and that he must write to her every
day.

He went over on the early car because he had to be at
the office and she went over later all alone through the
glary green countryside shrilling with insects, and went in
a cab right from the ferry to the boat. George met her
there at the dock with her ticket and a little bunch of
orchids, the first she'd ever had, and a roll of bills that
she tucked into her purse without counting. The stewards
seemed awful surprised that she didn't have any baggage,
so she made George tell them that she'd had to leave
home at five minutes' notice because her father, who was
a very wealthy man, was sick in New York. She and
George went right down to her room, and he was very
sad about her going away and said she was the loveliest
girl he'd ever seen and that he'd write her every day too,
but she couldn't follow what he was saying she was so
scared Tony would come down to the boat looking for her.

At last the gong rang and George kissed her desperate
hard and went ashore. She didn't dare go up on deck until
she heard the engineroom bells and felt the shaking of the
boat as it began to back out of the dock. Out of the port-
hole, as the boat pulled out, she got a glimpse of a dapper
dark man in a white suit, that might have been Tony,
who broke away from the cops and ran yelling and waving
his arms down to the end of the wharf.

Maybe it was the orchids or her looks or the story about

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her father's illness, but the captain asked her to his table
and all the officers rushed her, and she had the time of her
life on the trip up. The only trouble was that she could
only come on deck in the afternoon because she only had
that one dress.

She'd given George a cable to send so when they got to
New York Agnes met her at the dock. It was late fall and
Margo had nothing on but a light summer dress, so she
said she'd set Agnes up to a taxi to go home. It was only
when they got into the cab that she noticed Agnes was
wearing black. When she asked her why Agnes said Fred
had died in Bellevue two weeks before. He'd been picked
up on Twentythird Street deaddrunk and had died there
without coming to. "Oh, Agnes, I knew it . . . I had a
premonition on the boat," sobbed Margo.

When she'd wiped her eyes she turned and looked at
Agnes. "Why, Agnes dear, how well you look," she said.
"What a pretty suit. Has Frank got a job?""Oh, no,"
said Agnes. "You see Miss Franklyn's teashops are doing
quite well. She's branching out and she's made me man-
ageress of the new branch on Thirtyfourth Street at sev-
entyfive dollars a week. Wait till you see our new apart-
ment just off the Drive. . . . Oh, Margie, you must have
had an awful time."

"Well," said Margo, "it was pretty bad. His people are
pretty well off and prominent and all that but it's hard to
get on to their ways. Tony's a bum and I hate him more
than anything in the world. But after all it was quite an
experience . . . I wouldn't have missed it."

Frank met them at the door of the apartment. He
looked fatter than when Margo had last seen him and had
patches of silvery hair on either side of his forehead that
gave him a distinguished look like a minister or an ambas-
sador. "Little Margo. . . . Welcome home, my child.
. . . What a beautiful young woman you have become."
When he took her in his arms and kissed her on the brow,

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she smelt again the smell of bayrum and energine she'd
remembered on him. "Did Agnes tell you that I'm going
on the road With Mrs. Fiske? . . . Dear Minnie Mad-
dern and I were children together."

The apartment was a little dark, but it had a parlor, a
diningroom and two bedrooms and a beautiful big bath-
room and kitchen. "First thing I'm goin' to do," said
Margo, "is take a hot bath. . . . I don't believe I've had
a hot bath since I left New York."

While Agnes, who had taken the afternoon off from the
tearoom, went out to do some marketing for supper,
Margo went into her neat little bedroom with chintz cur-
tains on the walls and took off her chilly rumpled summer
dress and got into Agnes's padded dressinggown. Then she
sat back in the morrischair in the parlor and strung Frank
along when he asked her questions about her life in
Havana.

Little by little he sidled over to the arm of her chair,
telling her how attractivelooking she'd become. Then sud-
denly he made a grab for her. She'd been expecting it and
gave him a ringing slap on the face as she got to her feet.
She felt herself getting hysterical as he came towards her
across the room panting.

"Get away from me, you old buzzard," she yelled, "get
away from me or I'll tell Agnes all about you and Agnes
and me we'll throw you out on your ear." She wanted to
shut up but she couldn't stop yelling. "Get away from me.
I caught a disease down there, if you don't keep away
from me you'll catch it too."

Frank was so shocked he started to tremble all over.
He'let himself drop into the morrischair and ran his long
fingers through his slick silver and black hair. She slammed
her bedroom door on him and locked it. Sitting in there
alone on the bed she began to think how she would never
see Fred again, and could it have been a premonition when
she'd told them on the boat that her father was sick. Tears

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came to her eyes. Certainly she'd had a premonition. The
stearnheat hissed cozily. She lay back on the bed that was
so comfortable with its clean pillows and silky comforter,
and still crying fell asleep.

NEWSREEL LVII

the psychic removed all clothing before séances at Har-
vard. Electric torches, bells, large megaphones, baskets, all
illuminated by phosphorescent paint, formed the psychic's equip-
ment

My brother's coming
with pineapples
Watch the circus begin

IS WILLING TO FACE PROBERS

the psychic's feet were not near the professor's feet when
his trouser leg was pulled. An electric bulb on the ceiling
flashed on and off. Buzzers rang. A teleplasmic arm grasped
objects on the table and pulled Dr. B.'s hair. Dr. B. placed
his nose in the doughnut and encouraged Walter to pull as
hard as possible, His nose was pulled.

Altho' we both agreed to part
It left a sadness in my heart

UNHAPPY WIFE TRIES TO DIE

SHEIK DENTIST RECONCILED

Financing Only Problem

I thought that I'd get along
and now
I find that I was wrong
somehow

Society Women Seek Jobs in Vain as Maids to Queen

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NUN WILL WED GOB

I'm broken hearted

QUEEN HONORS UNKNOWN SOLDIER
Police Guard Queen in Mob

Beneath a dreamy Chinese moon
Where love is like a haunting tune

PROFESSOR TORTURES RIVAL

QUEEN SLEEPS AS HER TRAIN DEPARTS

Social Strife Brews

COOLIDGE URGES ADVERTISING

I found her beneath the setting sun
When the day was done

Cop Feeds Canary on $500 Rich Bride Left

While the twilight deepened
The sky above
I told my love
In o-o-old Ma-an-ila-a-a

ABANDONED APOLLO STILL HOPES FOR RETURN OF WEALTHY
BRIDE

MARGO DOWLING

Agnes was a darling. She managed to raise money
through the Morris Plan for Margo's operation when Dr.
Dennison said it was absolutely necessary if her health
wasn't to be seriously impaired, and nursed her the way
she'd nursed her when she'd had measles when she was a
little girl. When they told Margo she never could have

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a baby, Margo didn't care so much but Agnes cried and
cried.

By the time Margo began to get well again and think of
getting a job she felt as if she and Agnes had just been
living together always. The Old Southern Waffle Shop
was doing very well and Agnes was making seventyfive
dollars a week; it was lucky that she did because Frank
Mandeville hardly ever seemed able to get an engage-
ment any more, there's no demand for real entertainment
since the war, he'd say. He'd become very sad and respect-
able since he and Agnes had been married at the Little
Church Around the Corner, and spent most of his time
playing bridge at the Lambs Club and telling about the
old days when he'd toured with Richard Mansfield. After
Margo got on her feet she spent a whole dreary winter
hanging around the agencies and in the castingoffices of
musical shows, before Flo Ziegfeld happened to see her
one afternoon sitting in the outside office in a row of other
girls. By chance she caught his eye and made a faint ghost
of a funny face when he passed; he stopped and gave her
a onceover; next day Mr. Herman picked her for first row
in the new show. Rehearsals were the hardest work she'd
ever done in her life.