The Eleventh Virgin · Part II · Chapter 2 2 (3/3)

In the evening when one of the four brought home guests, which happened practically every night, it was understood that he should bring with him extra food. There was always steak. That Hugh insisted on for he often worked all night and went to bed after breakfast. June contributed strange-looking vegetables which no one knew how to cook and the recipes of the Italian grocer were seldom satisfactory. Kenneth favored complicated pastries of Greek, Turkish or French origin and Daniel saw to it that there were sensible and well known things such as potatoes and salad.

The meals were always successful. There were editors and authors, and artists who always had to be prevented from drawing on the attractive surface of the table.

There were nights when everyone insisted upon assisting with the dishes, to hasten matters, thereby hindering them, and the big orange table, which could seat twelve was cleared for cards. Around the corner⁠—you could buy everything around the corner⁠—someone bought “stingers,” cocktails which were supposed to be especially insidious, but which only made June more than ever cautious at poker. She was always a cautious player. She realized that she had to be or one of the three others of the ménage (peremptorily fraternal) would order her out of the game. She never allowed herself to lose more than five dollars of her weekly salary and she seldom allowed that. For there were always preconceived purposes to which the salary was to be devoted.

More often discussion was the rule, the war, the Russian revolution, especially the draft. For all the men who came to the house were of draft age and the matter was of such importance to them that June regretted that she wasn’t a man also in order that she might have such a mighty matter on her conscience.

The night before registration day was one which she would never forget. Russell was there, that adventurous romantic who had rushed to the thick of the trouble in Mexico and who afterwards was to become an important figure in the revolution in Russia and lose his life there.

Remington, a blithe freelancer who spoke with a lisp and who had written three books of criticism on music before he was twenty-eight. Afterwards he became a newspaper correspondent and travelled and disappeared in that fascinating bit of Russian territory, Georgia.

His wife, a plain-looking short-haired girl with a cunning chuckle, who went there to look for him and who many years after found him living the life of a mystic in India.

Bonwit, a black-haired silent boy of twenty-two who was later imprisoned in Germany where he was sent as a correspondent for a radical publication.

And a young Jewish student from Columbia who served three days for publishing an anti-conscription pamphlet, who later escaped the draft by fleeing to Mexico, who somehow managed to get into Russia to attend the Third International and who finally decided he preferred life on a Mexican plantation.

His wife, a soft-eyed Gentile, who went with him as far as his first trip to Mexico and then eloped with an artist to Spain.

And that artist, big, blustering and pro-German, somehow unpopular although he was a good landscape painter and contributed every month to the Flame.

More attractive, Francis Stubble, an editorial writer and authority on international politics. His face was curiously bloated and grey and looked as though a depression would remain if you poked your finger in his cheek.

All decided against registration in that discussion which lasted until three in the morning. And then next morning, bright and early, they registered. It was better to prolong their usefulness in the radical world by sacrificing their principles, was their argument.

The women who came to the house were various. For instance, there were Hugh’s former sweethearts and June decided that it was a point in his favor, much as she disliked his idea of lovemaking, that they continued their friendship with him in after life, and even with each other. One married, not long after June met her and went to live in the Middle West and raise babies. She was the sweetest of them all, June thought. She was delicately immaculate, both mentally and physically, and somehow reminded you of Galsworthy’s heroines.

Another was a tall, voluptuous brunette with a deep soft voice. She would sing after dinner⁠—love lyrics and negro spirituals, strange, twisted fragments of tunes. You thought of low soft couches, the Nile, jades and scarabs and sandalwood perfume.

There was one adorable little thing with fluffy blonde hair, blue eyes and a thin little face. There was a flyaway look about her and you felt ponderous when with her. Perhaps that was why Hugh and she lived together for only two months.

The evenings were not all devoted to dinner parties. Daniel liked to visit burlesque shows occasionally, although once when he and June and Kenneth went to one on Fourteenth Street, he got up and walked out because too much emphasis was laid on the osculatory habits of the French comedian. Daniel was fiercely pro-French. The war seemed to enter into everything.

Kenneth developed a penchant (he called it that himself) for riding on Staten Island ferry boats, and, if the night were especially warm, continuing to South Beach on the front seat of an open car. If it was hot, the four of them and whoever else happened to be along, threw off their clothes on the dark beach and scampered into the surf. It was quite black and June did not feel that she was being immodest.

There was even a night at Coney Island, and Hugh, who had never been there before, insisted on riding on all the roller coasters and kissing June in the tunnels. And they all squealed at each steep descent.

From the many holidays they took to celebrate nothing in particular you would naturally think that no work was done at the Flame office. But the manuscripts were read and returned, book reviews were written, the accepted contributions sent to the printer and engraver, and the magazine came out as usual once a month.

On a magazine dealing with ideas about the news of the month rather than the news itself, exciting things do not happen with enough frequency to make them commonplace. Newspaper life is crammed with events, which taken by themselves would provide ideal situations around which to write many novels. But they come so thick and fast that they lose in emphasis. When June had worked on the Flame for six months she began to feel as though she were regaining perspective.

There was excitement though. For instance, one of the artists drew at random a picture of two women, one upright and lofty, looking to the horizon, the other kneeling at her feet and gazing up at her wistfully.

“Didn’t draw anything for this issue,” he told Hugh vaguely. “I was working on a portrait. Can you use this, do you think?” and he drew the picture of the two women from his portfolio.

“We need a cover for this issue and that ought to show up well.”

And the drawing was accepted as listlessly as it had been offered for it was a hot day and no one cared much whether the August number had a cover on it or not.

Later, in view of the trouble with the suffragists in Washington, Hugh decided to call it “the militant” with the result that when the magazine appeared on the newsstands it caught the eye of the suffrage party who immediately ordered five thousand copies of the drawing, and afterwards bought the original to hang at headquarters. There was much enthusiasm around the office that day for the artist was a poor man.

Twice also within the last year (but this was before June joined) the issues of the paper had aroused much excitement. Once for a Christmas poem about Mary and more especially about the nobility of Joseph who married her when she was pregnant and in danger of disgrace. There was also a picture of Christ on the cover with the announcement “Christ will speak in Brotherhood Hall.” Unfortunately, the men at the head of the company who controlled the newsstands in the subway and elevated stations were Catholics and objected to the issue. And now the Flame was no longer sold on the stands which they owned.

Another month a large clothing firm gave a full page advertisement to the magazine, offering prizes for the best essays written on several economic subjects. They had made a custom of offering prizes every year, but the Flame had never been one of the magazines to carry the advertisement. The post office took this occasion to stop the number stating as a reason that the magazine was advertising a lottery. None of the other magazines which carried the advertisement received any notice whatever.

After war was declared the capitalist press took every opportunity to sneer at the radical monthly. One month a full column called attention to a bit of verse written by one of the editors which poeticized the hungry passion of a middle-aged woman at that period in her life which is more often treated by doctors and pathologists than by poets. The poem appealed to June’s erotic sensibilities but she did not much blame the newspaper for its jostling comment. The editors themselves took it, as they took all adverse criticism, as free advertisement.

Then, as the magazine daily received more attention, and the circulation steadily rose till it was higher than it had ever been before, the post office delayed the issues more frequently, and more reluctantly released them. With the end of September, came federal officers and all the back numbers of the magazine, the material for the next number, all the contributions which were in the editorial office and all the books and correspondence of the business office were confiscated. The end had come. Everyone knew that even before more federal officers came with warrants for five of the editors and two outside contributors. June felt rather out of it⁠—for she did not regard the arrests at all seriously⁠—until she also received a slip of paper which proved to be a subpoena. The date of the trial had not been set, but until after the trial she would feel that her work on the Flame was not yet over. Meanwhile, there was nothing to do.