Gargoyles. Ben Hecht
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Ben Hecht
Gargoyles
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4057664622778
Table of Contents
1
The calendars said—1900. It was growing warm. George Cornelius Basine emerged from Madam Minnie's house of ill fame at five o'clock on a Sabbath May morning. He was twenty-five years old, neatly dressed, a bit unshaven and whistling valiantly, "Won't you come home, Bill Bailey, won't you come home?"
Considering the high estate which was to be his, as the estimable Senator Basine, the introduction savors of malice. But, it must be remembered, this was twenty-two years ago, and moreover, in a day before the forces of decency had triumphed. The soul of man was still unregenerate. Prostitutes, saloons, hell-holes still flourished unchallenged in the city's heart. And Basine even at twenty-five was not one of those aggravating anomalies who pride themselves upon being ahead of their time; or behind their time. Basine was of his time.
And on this day which witnessed him whistling on the doorstep of Madam Minnie's, the Devil was still a gentlemen, albeit a gentleman in bad standing. But, being a gentleman, he was tolerated. Tradition, in a manner, still clothed him in the guise of a Rabelaisian clown, high born but fallen. He walked abroad in his true character, flaunting his red tights, his cloven hoof, his spiked tail and his mysterious horns. A Mid-Victorian Devil innocent of further disguise, his face still undisfigured by the Kaiser's mustachio or the Bolshevist's whiskers. A naive, unctuous lout of a Devil with straightforward Tempter's proclivities. An antagonist not for Dr. Wilsons and M. Clemenceaus and the Societies for the Spread of True Americanization, but an unpolitical, highly orthodox, leering, pitchfork-brandishing vis â vis for simple men of God. In short, the Devil was still a Devil and not a Complex.
It was growing warm and the calendars said—a new century ... a new century. And the great men of the day pointed with stern, pregnant fingers at the calendars and proclaimed—a new century ... a new century.
Beautiful phrase. The soul of man, in its struggle toward God knows what, paused elatedly to contemplate the new milestone. Elated as all youth is elated for no other reason than that there is a tomorrow, a tomorrow of unknown and multiple milestones. Elated with the knowledge of progress—that sage and flattering word by which the soul of man explains the baffling phenomenon of its survival.
The great men of the day stood staring through half-closed eyes at the calendars. To anticipate by a single day! But the future no less than the past remains a current mystery. And the great men—the prophets—confined themselves with stentorian caution to the prophecy—a new century has dawned.
Basine, whistling and waiting for his companion to emerge on Madam Minnie's doorstep, regarded the scene about him with the hardened moral indifference of youth. It was growing warm. The May sun was striding, an incongruous, provincial virgin, through a litter of blowzy streets. Under its mocking light the rows of bawdy-houses and saloons suffered an architectural collapse. Walls, windows, roofs and chimneys leered tiredly at each other. The district seemed indeed an illustration for a parable of Vice and Virtue drawn by the venomously partial pen of some unusually half-witted cleric—dirty-faced brothels, tousled café signs, bleery sidewalks, toothless storefronts all cowering before the rebuke of God's sun.
A few mysterious solitaries lent a vague life to the scene. The figure of a drunk, unchastened, zigzagging humorously down the pavement like some nocturnal clown prowling after a vanished Bacchanal. A hastily dressed prostitute carrying her night's earnings as an offering to early devotion. A few unseasoned revellers overcome with a nostalgia for clean bathrooms and Sunday morning waffles at the family board, sleepily fleeing the scenes of their carouse.
All this formed no part of the preoccupations of the whistling one. He was waiting for his companion and for the fifteenth time the tune of "Bill Bailey" came softly from his lips. The companion appeared, a crestfallen young man of twenty-three, Hugh Keegan by name. An idiotic wistfulness marked the blond vacuity of his face. They said nothing and walked to the street car track.
Here they must wait. There was no car in sight. Basine employed the wait, jumping out from the curbing and peering with