MORNING

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JACK ERECT

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Mr. Frederick Jack rose quite early in the morning and he liked the sense of power. The best of everything was good enough for him, and he also loved his family dearly. He liked the odor of strong inky news-print together with the sultry and exultant fragrance of black boiling coffee the first thing in the morning. He liked lavish plumbing, richly thick with creamy porcelain and polished silver fixtures, he liked the morning plunge in his great sunken tub, the sensual warmth of clean sudsy water and the sharp aromatic clean-ness of the bath salts. He had a keen eye for aesthetic values, too, and he liked to watch the swarming dance of water spangles in their magic shift and play upon the creamy ceiling of the bathroom. Most of all, he liked to come up pink and dripping, streaked liberally from head to toe all over his plump hairy body with strong wholesome soap-suds, and then he loved the stinging drive and shock of needled spray, the sense of bracing conflict, hardihood, triumph and, finally, of abundant glowing health as he stepped forth draining cleanly down upon a thick cork mat and vigorously rubbing himself dry in the folds of a huge crashy bath-towel.

Mr. Jack also liked the opulent bowled depth and richness of the creamy water-basin, and he liked to stand there for a moment with bared lips, regarding with considerable satisfaction the pearly health and hue of his strong front teeth, the solid clamp and bite of the molars edged expensively with gold. Then he liked to brush them earnestly with a brush of stiff hard bristles and an inch of firm thick paste, turning his head strongly from side to side around the brush, and glaring at his image in the glass until he foamed agreeably at the mouth with a lather of pink spittle tinged pleasantly with a fresh and minty taste. This done, he liked to spit it out, soft flop and fall of blobsy bubbled pink into the open basin where clean running water washed it down, and then he liked to rinse his mouth and wash his throat and tonsils with the tonic antiseptic bite of strong pale listerine.

Mr. Jack also liked the tidy crowded array of lotions, creams, unguents; of bottles, tubes, brushes, jars, and shaving implements that covered the shelf of thick blue glass above the basin. He liked to lather his face heavily with a large silver-handled shaving brush, rubbing the lather strongly in with firm stroking finger tips, brushing and stroking till his jaws were covered with a smooth thick layer of warm shaving cream. Then Mr. Jack took the razor in his hand and opened it. He used a long straight razor, murderously sharp, and he always kept it in excellent condition. At the crucial moment, just before the first long downward stroke, Mr. Jack would flourish slightly forward with his plump arms and shoulders, raising the glittering blade aloft in one firm hand, his legs would widen stockily, crouching gently at the knees, and his lathered face would crane carefully to one side and upward, and his eyes would roll aloft, as if he was getting braced and ready underneath a heavy burden. Then holding one cheek delicately between two daintily arched fingers, he would advance deliberately upon it with that gleaming blade. He grunted gently, with satisfaction, at the termination of the stroke. The blade had mown smoothly, from cheek to jowl, an even perfect swath of pink clean flesh across his ruddy face. He exulted in the slight tug and rasping pull of wiry stubble against the smooth and deadly sharpness of the blade, and in the relentless sweep and triumph of the steel. Then he liked to rinse his glowing face first with hot, then with cold water, to dry it in a crisp fresh towel, and to rub face and neck carefully with a soft, fragrant, gently stinging lotion. This done, he stood for a moment, satisfied, regarding his image, softly caressing the velvet texture of shaved ruddy cheeks with gentle finger tips.

Mr. Jack also liked to twist his close-clipped moustache ends into fine waxed points and carefully to part exactly in the middle his grey distinguished-looking hair, which was somewhat thin, and cropped closely up the sides in German fashion.

Elegant in dress, even perhaps a trifle foppish, but always excellently correct, Mr. Jack wore fresh garments every day. No cotton touched him. He wore undergarments of the finest silk and he had over forty suits from London. Every morning he surveyed his wardrobe studiously, and he chose with care and with a good eye for harmony the shoes, socks, shirts and neckties he would wear, and before he chose a suit he was sometimes lost in thought for several minutes. He loved to open wide the door of his great closet and see them hanging there in thick set rows with all their groomed and regimented elegance. He liked the strong clean smell of honest cloth, the rich dull texture of good material, and in those forty several shapes and colors he saw forty pleasing reflections and variations of his own character. They filled him, as did everything about him, with a sense of morning confidence, joy, and vigor.

Mr. Jack also had the best room in the house, although he had not asked for it. It was an immense and spacious chamber, twenty feet each way and twelve feet high, and in these noble proportions was written quietly a message of wealth and power. In the exact centre of the wall that faced the door was placed Mr. Jack’s bed, a chaste fourposter of the Revolutionary period. A chest of antique drawers was placed in the centre of another wall, a gate-legged table, with a row of books and the latest magazines, two fine old Windsor chairs, a few tasteful French prints on the walls, an old well padded easy chair, another little table at the side of his bed, on which was set a small clock, a book or two and a little electric lamp, and curiously, an enormous chaise longue, such as women use, but of a sober grey hue and long and wide enough to receive the figure of an eight foot man, which stood at the foot of the bed, and in which Mr. Jack liked to stretch himself and read—this was about all the furniture the room had in it. The total effect was one of a modest and almost austere simplicity combined quietly and subtly with a sense of spaciousness, wealth, and power. Finally, the floor was covered with a thick and heavy carpet of dull grey. Mr. Jack liked to walk across it in his bare feet, the floor below it neither creaked nor sagged. It was as solid as if it had been hewn in one single block from the timber of a massive oak.

Mr. Jack liked this. He liked what was solid, rich, and spacious, made to last. He liked the sense of order and security everywhere. He even liked the thick and solid masonry of the walls, through which the sounds of the awaking city all around him came pleasantly to his ears with a dull, sustained, and mounting roar. He liked to look through the broad window of his room into the canyon of the street below, and see the steep cool morning shadows cut cleanly by the young and living light of May. He liked to raise his eyes aloft upon the glittering pinnacle of the building opposite him and see the young light of the morning flame and glitter on the arrogant bright silver of the city’s spires and ramparts. He liked to look down upon the oiled bluish ribbon of the street below him and watch the trucks and motors as they began to charge furiously through that narrow gulch in ever-growing numbers. The thickening tide of the man-swarm, as it began to stream past to its labors in a million little cells, was also pleasing to him. Founded like a rock among these furious, foaming tides of life Mr. Jack saw nothing but security, order, and a radiant harmony wherever he looked.

And all of this, he felt, was just exactly as it should be. He loved the feeling of security and power that great buildings and rich and spacious dwellings gave to him. Even in the furious thrust and jostle of the crowd his soul rejoiced, for he saw order everywhere. It was the order of ten million men who swarmed at morning to their work in little cells, and who swarmed at evening from their work to little cells. It was an order as inevitable as the seasons, as recurrent as the tides, and in it Mr. Jack read the same harmony and permanence that he saw in the entire visible universe around him. And he liked order. He did not like for things to shake and tremble. When things shook and trembled, a slight frown appeared between his eyes, and an old unquiet feeling, to which he could not give a name or image, stirred faintly in his heart. Once, when he awoke at morning, he thought he felt a faint vibration, a tremor so brief and slight he could not be certain of it, in the massive walls around him. Then Mr. Jack had asked the door man who stood at the street entrance a few questions. The man told him that the building had been built across two depths of railway tunnels, and that all that Mr. Jack had heard was the faint vibration that might have come from the passing of a train twelve depths below him. Then the man assured him it was all quite safe, that the very trembling in the walls, in fact, was just another gauge and proof of safety.

Still, Mr. Jack did not like it. The news disturbed him vaguely. He would have liked it better if the building had been built upon the solid rock.

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For breakfast he liked orange juice, two leghorn eggs, soft boiled, two slices of crisp thin toast, and tasty little segments of pink Praguer ham, which looked so pretty on fresh parsley sprigs, and coffee, coffee, he liked strong fragrant sultry coffee, cup by cup.

With simple comforts such as these Mr. Jack faced the world each morning with strong hope, with joy breast and back as either should be. The smell of the earth was also good, and fortified his soul. Up through the pavements of thick stone, out of the city’s iron breast, the smell of the earth was coming somehow, immortal and impalpable, cool, pregnant, moist and flowerful. It was loaded to its lips with the seeds of life and always coming onward, upward, out of steel and stone or subterranean rock, never to be seen or touched and like a miracle as it impended in the bright living morning air in waves of subtle and premonitory fragrance.

Mr. Jack, although city bred, could feel the charm of Mother Earth. Accordingly with eyes half closed, the strong deep volutes of his nostrils trembling gently, he arose and sniffed that living laden air with zestful satisfaction. This was more like it, now. Made him feel like a young colt again. He breathed deeply, slowly, deliberately, his hands pressed with firm tenderness against his swelling diaphragm.

He liked the cultivated forms of nature: the swarded greens of great estates, gay regiments of brilliant gardened flowers, the rich clumped masses of the shrubbery, even the gnarled old apple tree of other times which had been left cunningly by the architect to lend a homely and familiar touch at the angle of the master’s room. All this delighted him, the call of the simple life was growing stronger every year, and he was building a big house in Westchester County.

He also liked the ruder and more natural forms of beauty: he liked the deep massed green that billowed on a hillside, the smell of cleanly mown fields, and he liked old shaded roads that wound away to quietness from driven glares of speed and concrete. He knew the values in strange magic lights of green and gold, and he had seen an evening light upon the old red of a mill, and felt deep stillness in his heart (all—could anyone believe it?—within thirty miles of New York City). On those occasions the distressful life of that great and furious city had seemed very far away. And often he had paused to pluck a flower or to stand beside a brook in thought. But after sighing with regret as, among such scenes, he thought of the haste and folly of man’s life, Mr. Jack always came back to the city. For life was real, and life was earnest, and Mr. Jack was a business man.

Mr. Jack also liked the more expensive forms of sport. He liked to go out in the country to play golf; he loved bright sunlight and the fresh mown smell of fairways. The rich velvet of the greens delighted him, and afterwards when he had stood below the bracing drive of needled showers, and felt the sweat of competition wash cleanly from his well-set form, he liked to loaf upon the cool veranda of the club, and talk about his score, and joke and laugh, pay or collect his bets, and drink good Scotch with other men of note. And he liked to watch his country’s flag flap languidly upon the tall white pole because it looked so pretty there.

It was of golf that Mr. Jack was now thinking as he sniffed the morning air.

Mr. Jack also liked to gamble and he gambled everywhere he could. He gambled every day upon the price of stocks: this was his business. And every night he went and gambled at his club. It was no piker’s game he played. He never turned a hair about a thousand dollars. Large sums did not appall him. He counted by the hundred thousand every day; he was not frightened by amount or number. When he saw the man-swarm passing in its million-footed weft he did not sicken in his heart. Neither did his guts stir nauseously, growing grey with horror. And when Mr. Jack saw the ninety story buildings all about him, did he fall down grovelling in the dust? Did he beat a maddened brain against their sides, as he cried out, “Woe! O woe is me!”? No. He did not. The brawling shift and fury of great swarms of people warmed his heart, and beetling cliffs of immense and cruel architectures lapped his soul in strong security. He liked great crowds and every cloud-lost spire of masonry was a talisman of power, the monument to an everlasting empire. It made him feel good. For that empire was his faith, his fortune, and his life. He had a place there. Therefore, the fury of great crowds, the towering menace of great buildings did not oppress his soul. He never felt that he was drowning. A ruddy compact human atom, five feet seven inches tall, he was, he knew, if not a man among a million, at least a man among some thousands.

Yet, his neck was not stiff, nor his eye hard. Neither was he very proud. For he had seen the men who lean upon their sills at evening, and those who swarmed from ratholes in the ground, and often he had wondered what their lives were like.

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Mr. Jack was a wise man, too, who knew the world, the devil, and the city well. He liked the brilliant shock and gaiety of evening and, although kind, he was not averse to a little high-toned cruelty at night. It gave a spice and zest to things, a pleasant tinge of wickedness, and after all, it broke no bones. A nice juicy young yokel, say, fresh from the rural districts, all hands and legs and awkwardness, hooked and wriggling on a cruel and cunning word—a woman’s, preferably, because they were so swift and deft in matters of this nature, although there were men as well whose skill was great—some pampered lap-dog of rich houses, to his preference, some fiesty nimble-witted little she-man whose lisping mincing tongue was always good for one or two shrewd thrusts of poison in a hayseed’s hide. Or a nice young couple, newly married, say, eager to make their way among smart people and determined to go forward with sophisticated knowingness—to ply their stage fright smoothly with strong drink, until the little woman indiscreetly showed a preference for some insolently handsome youth, who should be present to give a touch of pleasant menace to the evening, was discovered in his arms, say, in a bed room, or sat upon his lap before invited guests, or merely lolled upon him with an intoxicated ardour—why surely moments such as these, even the strained smile, the faint green pallor of the husband’s face, were innocent enough, and did no lasting harm to anyone.

Of the two enjoyments, however, Mr. Jack felt he rather liked the wincing of the solitary yokel better: there was something so much like innocence, youth, and morning in the face of a nice freshly baited country boy, as it darkened to a slow dull smouldering glow of shame, surprise, and anger, and as it sought with clumsy and inept words to retort upon the wasp which had stung it and winged away, that Mr. Jack, when he saw it, felt a sense of almost paternal tenderness for its hapless victim, a delightful sense of youth and innocence in himself. It was almost as if he were revisiting his own youth: it was far better than a trip out to the country, and the sight of dewy meadows, or the smells of hay and milk and butter.

But enough was enough. Mr. Jack was neither a cruel nor an immoderate man. He liked the great gay glitter of the night, the thrill and fever of high stakes, and the swift excitements of new pleasures. He liked the theatre and saw all the worthwhile plays, and the better, smarter, wittier revues—the ones with sharp satiric lines, good dancing, and Gershwin music. He liked the shows his wife designed because his wife designed them, he was proud of her, and he also enjoyed these evenings of ripe culture at the Guild. He also went to prize fights in his evening clothes and once when he came home he had the red blood of a champion on the white boiled bosom of his shirt. Few men could say as much.

He liked the social swim, the presence of the better sort of actors, artists, writers, and the wealthy cultivated Jews around his table, he liked the long velvet backs of lovely women, and the flash and play of jewelry about their necks, he liked a little malice and a little spicy scandal deftly hinted in a word. He liked the brilliant chambers of the night with their smooth baleful sparkle of vanity and hate. He breathed their air agreeably, without anguish or confusion. He even liked a little quiet fornication now and then, and all the other things that men are fond of. All this he had enjoyed himself, but decently and quietly, all in its proper time and place, without annoyance to other people, and he expected everyone to act as well as he.

But ripeness with this man was all, and he always knew the time to stop. His ancient and belraic spirit was tempered with an almost classic sense of moderation. He prized the virtue of decorum highly. He knew the value of the middle way. He had a kind heart and a loyal nature. His purse was open to a friend in need. He kept a lavish table and a royal cellar, and his family was the apple of his eye.

He was not a man to wear his heart upon his overcoat, nor risk his life on every corner, nor throw himself away upon a word or at any crosswind of his fancy, nor spend the heart and strength out of his life forever just on the impulse of a moment’s wild belief. This was such madness as the Gentiles knew. But, this side idolatry and madness, he would go as far for friendship’s sake as any man alive. He would go with a friend up to the edge of his own ruin and defeat, and he would ever try to hold him back from it. But once he saw a man was mad, and not to be persuaded by calm judgment, he was done with him. He would leave him where he was, although regretfully. Are matters helped if the whole crew drown together with a single drunken sailor? He thought not. He could put a world of sincere meaning in the three words: “What a pity!”

Yes, Mr. Frederick Jack was a wise and kind and temperate man, and he had found life pleasant, and won from it the secret of wise living. And the secret of wise living was founded in a graceful compromise, a tolerant acceptance. If a man wanted to live in this world without getting his pockets picked, he had better learn how to use his eyes and ears in what is going on around him. But if he also wanted to live in this world without getting hit over the head, or without all the useless pain, the grief, the terror, and the bitterness that scourges man’s sad flesh, he had better learn how not to use his eyes and ears, in what is going on around him. This sounds difficult but it had not been so for Mr. Frederick Jack. Perhaps some great inheritance of pain and suffering, the long dark ordeal of his race, had left him, as a kind of precious distillation, this gift of balanced understanding. At any rate, he had not learned it because it could not be taught. He had been born with it.

Therefore, he was not a man to rip the sheets in darkness or beat his knuckles bloody on a wall. He would not madden furiously in the envenomed passages of night, nor strangle like a mad dog of his hate and misery in the darkness, nor would he ever be carried smashed and bloody from the stews. A woman’s falseness, the lover’s madness, the pangs of misprized love were no doubt hard to bear, but love’s bitter mystery had broken no bones for Mr. Jack and, so far as he was concerned, it could not murder sleep the way an injudicious wiener schnitzel could, or some drunk young Gentile fool ringing the telephone at one A.M.

Mr. Jack’s brow was darkened as he thought of it. He muttered wordlessly. If fools are fools, let them be fools where their folly will not injure or impede the slumbers of a serious man.

Yes. Men could rob, lie, murder, swindle, trick, and cheat—the whole world knew as much. And women could be as false as hell and lie their guilt away from now to doomsday with a round rogue’s eye of innocence, ten thousand oaths, and floods of tears. And Mr. Jack also had known something of the pain, the madness, and the folly that twists the painful and indignant soul of youth—it was too bad, of course, too bad, but regardless of all this the day was day, and men must work, the night was night, and men must sleep, and it was, he felt intolerable—

Ein!—

Red of face, to tune of tumbling morning water, in big tub, he bent stiffly, with a grunt, a plump pajamaed figure, until his fingers grazed the rich cream tiling of the bathroom floor.

Intolerable!—

Zwei!—

(He straightened sharply with a grunt of satisfaction—)

—that a man with serious work to do—

Drei!

(His firm plump arms shot strongly to full stretching finger tips above his head, and came sharply down again until he held clinched fists against his breast—)

Vier!—

—should be pulled out of his bed in the middle of the night by the ravings of a manic—ja! a crazy young fool—

(His closed fists shot outward in strong driving crosswise movement, and came strongly to his sides again).

Ein!—

—It was intolerable and, by God, he’d tell her so!

(Head to waist, stiff-legged and grunting vigorously, he bent again until his fingers grazed the floor).