This effort, which Dexter appropriately entitled “Southern Gentlemen All,” he now removed from the typewriter, and, when a lull had come in their exhausted clamor, he cleared his throat gently and read it to them with deep and melancholy feeling.
“Yes, sir,” said Jim, paying no attention to Dexter. He was now standing in the middle of the floor with a gin glass in his hand, talking to himself. “Three weeks from now I’ll be on my way. And I want to tell you all something—the whole damn lot of you,” he went on dangerously.
“Boys, boys,” said Dexter sadly, and hiccoughed.
“When I walk out that door,” said Jim, “there’s going to be a little sprig of mistletoe hanging on my coat-tails, and you all know what you can do about it!”
“Southern gentlemen, all,” said Dexter sadly, then sorrowfully belched.
“If anyone don’t like my way of doing,” Jim continued, “he knows what he can do about it! He can pack up his stuff right now and cart his little tail right out of here! I’m boss here, and as long as I stay I’m going to keep on being boss! I’ve played football all over the South! They may not remember me now, but they knew who I was seven or eight years ago, all right!”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” someone muttered. “That’s all over now! We’re tired hearing of it all the time! Grow up!”
Jim answered bitterly: “I’ve fought all over France, and I’ve been in every state of the Union but one, and I’ve had women in all of ’em, and if anyone thinks I’m going to come back here now and be dictated to by a bunch of little half-baked squirts that never got out of their own state until a year ago, I’ll damn soon teach ’em they’re mistaken! Yes-sir!” He wagged his head with drunken truculence and drank again. “I’m a better man right now—physically—” he hiccoughed slightly “—mentally—”
“Boys, boys,” Dexter Briggs swam briefly out of the fog at this point and sorrowfully began, “Remember that you’re Southern——”
“—and—and—morally—” cried Jim triumphantly.
“—gentlemen all,” said Dexter sadly.
“—than the whole damn lot of you put together—” Jim continued fiercely.
“—so be gentlemen, boys, and remember that you’re gentlemen. Always remember that—” Dexter went on morbidly.
“—so to hell with you!” cried Jim. He glared around fiercely, wildly, at them, with bloodshot eyes, his great fist knotted in his anger. “The hell with all of you!” He paused, swaying for a moment, furious, baffled, his fist knotted, not knowing what to do. “Ahhh!” he cried suddenly, high in his throat, a passionate, choking cry, “To hell with everything! To hell with all of it!” and he hurled his empty gin glass at the wall, where it shivered in a thousand fragments.
“—Southern gentlemen all,” said Dexter sadly, and collapsed into his cups.
Poor Jim.
Two of them left next day. Then, singly, the others went.
So all were gone at last, one by one, each swept out into the mighty flood tide of the city’s life, there to prove, to test, to find, to lose himself, as each man must—alone.
CHAPTER 16
Alone