* * * * *

Vestal embraced him. “Oh, my darling, darling Neil! I’m getting it through my thick head now what it’s all about. Never mind those shirttail Nazis. We’ll stick right here.”

“You realize tough things could happen?”

“Hallelujah!”

The ghost of Sophie Concord smiled on Neil with a wistful benediction and was gone.

He complained, “Why didn’t you let me hit Vander?”

“They’d have had you arrested, and that would get in the papers and make a lovely case against us. Besides,” judiciously, “I think probably Mr. Vander would have licked you, and I don’t want to have you beaten up. I need you around. Oh, Neil, we’ll live now, even if we die from it!”

Chapter 49

But next morning Neil felt low and cold as he tramped the streets, trying not to slip on the ice. He could not afford to break his legs now; they had to carry him until he could find a job.

And suddenly, that March day, he had a job.

He had gone into the establishment of Brandl: The Beltrami Avenue Florist to see if he could buy a crocus or two for Vestal. The little old Bavarian, Ulrich Brandl, who in grander days had sold him orchids (white scarf and white kid gloves and Vestal’s smile and glitter and all the white man’s memories), hailed him cozily:

“Ah, Captain, let me have the pleasure to give you this small bunch of crocuses. I have heard about your braveness. I understand it, for I was born a German and, though I hated Hitler and all oppression, and though I have been a good American for thirty-five years, when I come in a saloon for my glass of beer, I hear certain fellows say, ‘The only good German is a dead German.’ All prejudice is one. Could I shake your hand?”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a job for me, would you?”

“That also, perhaps. I would be flattered if you worked for me.”

So Neil became a florist’s clerk, probably knowing less about flowers and the freshening of them and their packing than anybody except Hack Riley of Mayo Street. But he was zealous, and the customers did not indicate that they were undergoing any horrors in being waited upon by a Negro. The jungle dampness of the shop, the gilded tinfoil, the piles of unwrinkled tissue paper, were relaxing, after miles of factories and the hard chairs outside the boss’s office.

All day long he argued mildly with Mr. Brandl, who inveighed against all prejudices and superstitions, and himself, it proved, was prejudiced against nothing except Englishmen, Jews, Brazilians, Irishmen, Presbyterians, Mormons, chewing-gum, sunflowers, Heinrich Heine, and two-door coupés.

But Neil could not, on his pension and his tentative salary at Brandl’s, keep up the home which had become his extreme symbol of dignity and independence. He must turn to—what?

Then he was betrayed from inside.

* * * * *