Fromhis place in the corner of the basement room Wilfred watched the other diners covertly. Had he but possessed a mantle of invisibility his happiness would have been complete. As it was, his pleasure in looking at people vanished when they looked at him. There were four places at a table, and he was most comfortable when all were taken. People sitting so close, never looked at you; and they made a sort of screen for you; moreover he was able to listen to their talk, and to build upon it.
He ate his dinner in this place on West Tenth street once or twice a week; or as often as he could scare up the necessary thirty-five cents. He told his Aunts he had to work late at the office. How scandalized they would have been could they have seen him sitting there with a bottle of wine before him. They would never realize that he was grown. The place had no license of course, and you had a pleasant feeling of lawlessness; at any moment the police might come banging at the door. But they never had. A plain and friendly place, it supplied something that Wilfred had apprehended in novels of foreign life. He had got in the first time by attaching himself to the tail of a party at the door. Now he was known there and hailed by name. The generous minestrone, ravioli, etc., made his stomach purr. When he sat back and lighted a cigarette, life ceased to appall.
It was run by a handsome Italian woman with a heavenly smile, named Ceccina. Her husband, Michele, held sway over the kitchen, which was revealed through an open door; and their three children Raymo, Alessandro and Enriqueta helped their mother to wait upon the tables. Simple people; Wilfred loved them from a distance, except the little girl, who was pert without being engaging. It was the fault of the fond patrons. Wilfred felt it his duty to discourage her. He had a specially warm spot for Alessandro the bullet-headed one, a blonde sport in that dark family. Alessandro, always watching for a chance to sneak out and play in the streets, was often in trouble with his father, who swore at him in English, without being aware of the comic effect of his aspersions on the boy’s parentage.
The round table in the middle of the room, which would hold six at a squeeze, was reserved for a little company of friends that included two known authors; a lady editor; an artist; and a long-legged young man of unknown affiliations, whom the others called the bambino. These people constituted the focus of interest in the place. Wilfred watching them, and listening, decided against them. Let the authors be known as well as they might, their circle was not the real thing; its brilliancy was self-conscious. One author looked like a walrus with his tusks drawn; the other like an elderly trained poodle. The artist had a voluminous cape to his overcoat; and rattled his stick against the door-frame when he entered. Somebody said he designed labels for tomato cans. The room was small enough for Wilfred to scoop in these bits of information, as they flew about.
These and others in the room were of the general show; there was one group that Wilfred had taken for his own; whom he regarded with an intensity of interest that hurt. Young fellows, no more than a year or two older than himself; lively young fellows; and good friends! Until he had come to Ceccina’s he had never seen any young men like these, but he immediately understood them; he seemed to have been waiting for such. The conventions upon which young men ordinarily formed themselves, had no force with them. Their eyes seemed to see what they were turned upon; they were interested in things; they could let themselves go; and how they talked!
Two of them came every night. These addressed each other as Stanny and Jasper. Stanny was short and sturdily built; with an expression of doughty wistfulness that arrested Wilfred. He had a tenor voice with rather plaintive modulations, that went with his eyes. A man every inch of him, from the set of his strong shoulders, and his courageous glance; but a man who felt things and wondered. Up to this time Wilfred had despairingly supposed that manliness was the capacity for not feeling things. Jasper, with his crisp, bronze, wavy hair, and warm color, was full of a slow, earthy zest. His face generally wore a sleepy half-smile; and he had a trick of squinting down his big nose. Wilfred inferred that he must have wit, from the surprised laughter which greeted his rare sallies.
These two were sometimes joined by an older man with a fine, reticent face and silky black beard, whom they called Hilgy. Hilgy had his features under such control, that it was impossible to decide whether he was speaking in jest or in earnest. Wilfred observed that sometimes his own friends did not know how to take him. Hilgy liked to string them. Sometimes a thin, handsome youth no older than Wilfred, made one of the party. They called him Binks; and so exuberant and audacious was his style, that all hung upon his words, though he was the youngest among them.
Unfortunately for Wilfred, these fellows, unlike the party at the center table, talked low and all he could get of it was a phrase here and there. He had gathered that they were all artists, though they wore their hair short, and dressed like anybody else. They forced him to reconsider all his notions about artists. Art! the word rang hopefully in Wilfred’s consciousness; it was a way other than business, of making one’s living. Of course he couldn’t be a painter, because his fingers were all thumbs. But a writer, perhaps; that was an art, too. Years ago, his grandfather had told him he had imagination; he had been hugging the assurance ever since. Nobody else had ever suggested that he had any worthy quality. Still, a writer!—how ridiculous to dream of such a thing, when he lacked a college education.
For many nights Wilfred had been watching these happy fellows. Such friends! What would he not have given for one friend, and each of these had three! Talk boiled out of them. Sometimes at a heard phrase, Wilfred’s own breast would froth up like yeasty beer. It was so extraordinary to discover that they talked about the same things that troubled his mind! They were clever. They poked sly fun at the other diners. Once Wilfred caught Stanny’s nickname for the writer who looked like a poodle: “Flannel-belly!” Inexplicably right! he laughed whenever he thought of it.
Wilfred had taken two of the four to his heart; Stanny and Binks. But his feelings toward them were different: for the one he felt a violent affection and sympathy; for the other, a violent, helpless admiration. One or another of these two, or both of them, linked arms with Wilfred in his waking dreams; and into their attentive ears he poured the frothy stuff that choked his breast. When he came to himself, he would smile, to think how in his dreams, he did all the talking.
On this night none of the fellows had come, and Wilfred was obliged to swallow his disappointment. Ceccina had finally been obliged to give their places to a party of overdressed strangers from up-town, who stared rudely around the room, and made audible comments. Such people cheapened everybody in the place. Wilfred cursed them under his breath.
Then the bell rang, and Stanny and Jasper entered the room, a good half hour after their usual time. Wilfred’s heart leaped like a lover’s; then set up a tremendous pounding; for the only two vacant places together, were at his table. The two crossed the room as a matter of course; and Stanny asked him politely if they might share his table.
“Certainly!” stammered Wilfred, keeping his eyes down. He simply had not the courage to look at them so near to.
They sat down side by side opposite him. Wilfred’s breast was in a commotion. His confusion must have affected the other two, for they were silent at first. Undoubtedly they thought him a churl, who hugged his solitude. He could not bring himself to look at them. He was bitterly upbraiding himself. You fool! What a poor figure you are cutting! Why can’t you be natural? These are simple, likable fellows, willing to be friends. They are your kind. What a chance! And you’re throwing it away! You won’t get another such chance. This is what comes of dreaming! Unfits you for the reality. . . .
Their soup was brought; and they hungrily applied themselves to it, with encomiums upon its flavor. While waiting for their next course, they picked up a conversation that had evidently been dropped a little while before. They spoke low; but Wilfred’s sharpened ears heard every word.
“I think you’re foolish,” said Stanny, “after working in the office all day, to sit in your basement nights, hacking away at your carving. With a book of Italian verbs open besides you, too. Or if you’re not there, you’re sitting in Madame Tardieu’s stuffy room, droning French with that tiresome old soul!”
“She needs the money,” mumbled Jasper. His shy, unsure utterance endeared him to Wilfred.
“Well, that’s not your fault,” said Stanny, slightly exasperated. “You’re too easy. She knows she’s got a good thing, and she’s nursing it along. . . . I say, it’s not natural at our age.”
“What else is there to do, nights?” grumbled Jasper. “We haven’t any money to spend.”
“Loaf!” said Stanny, promptly. “A certain amount of loafing is necessary to the soul’s health. You’re doing violence to your nature with this continual grind. It’ll get back at you some day. This self-improvement business can be carried too far. How can you improve when you’ve worked yourself into a half-doped state? . . . I bet you fall asleep in your chair at Mme. Tardieu’s many’s the night, while the old body drools on.”
“It’s a fact,” confessed Jasper.
While they talked together, ignoring him, Wilfred quieted down. It was better they should ignore him, he thought; for if, as was probable, they should not like him, that would be worse. Meanwhile what a glimpse into their lives he was getting!
“Last night,” said Jasper in his diffident, masculine voice, “I was sitting in Madame Tardieu’s room. It’s true, I was half asleep. I happened to look out of the window. . . . In the house opposite, there was a girl going to bed. She’d forgotten to pull down the shades. . . . Damn nice-looking girl! When she put up her arms to unpin her hair . . . lovely round arms . . . such a picture! . . . Well . . . I lost my head. I said good-night to the old lady in a hurry, and I went . . . I mean I went across the street. . . .”
“What!” exclaimed Stanny.
“It’s a rooming house. The outer door was closed. I waited on the stoop until one of the lodgers came home. Told him I’d lost my key. He let me in. I went up to the girl’s room and went in. . . .”
“Good God! what didshesay?” demanded Stanny.
“Oh, she was surprised,” said Jasper shyly. “But she didn’t make much of a fuss . . . I stayed. . . .”
“Suppose shehadmade a fuss?”
“I didn’t think of that.”
“You had been drinking!”
“No. . . . Something got into me. . . .”
Wilfred was astounded and delighted by this anecdote. Such delicious effrontery was almost inconceivable to him. It wasright, thought Wilfred; that was the gallant way; the mad, imprudent jolly way! Jasper loomed a hero in his eyes. He ventured to steal a look at the pair of them. Stanny was a little scandalized by the story—but only a little. Evidently it was much the sort of thing a friend might expect to hear from Jasper. Then Wilfred looked at Jasper; and at the same moment Jasper happened to raise his shy, wicked eyes to Wilfred’s face. A spark was struck, and suddenly they laughed together.
Wilfred blushed scarlet. “I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I couldn’t help hearing. . . .”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Jasper, blushing, too. “You know how it is.”
A warm tide of joy coursed through Wilfred. To be hailed by Jasper as a fellow!
Stanny now included Wilfred in his remarks. He was annoyed. “A piece of folly, if you ask me,” he said. “God knows what might have happened!”
“But it wouldn’t, to him,” said Wilfred. “There wasn’t any room in his mind for it to happen.”
Stanny looked at Wilfred dubiously. Wilfred blushed again. What nonsense am I talking? he thought.
“He understands,” said Jasper, with a jerk of his head in Wilfred’s direction.
“Yes, I understand,” said Wilfred, a little breathlessly. “But I wouldn’t have had the nerve to carry it through, myself. I think it was fine!”
“Huh!” said Stanny. “You don’t know this idiot as well as I do. Works himself into a state of stupefaction. Then suddenly blows up, and doesn’t know what he’s doing. I don’t call that rational!”
“Oh well, reason isn’t everything!” said Wilfred grinning.
“Hear! Hear!” said Jasper.
Stanny’s irritation was only on the surface. He grinned back at Wilfred. “You shouldn’t encourage him!” he said with an affectionate glance at Jasper. “The old stove-in-bottom! You wouldn’t think he was capable of it, to look at him, would you?”
“I’m not bragging about it,” said Jasper with an aggrieved air. “I only told you how it was. I’m ashamed of myself now, I felt rotten about it all day.”
“If it had been me, I wouldn’t be ashamed,” murmured Wilfred.
“Anyhow, you’re no Joseph!” said Jasper to Stanny. “How about Myrtle?”
A flicker of disgust made Stanny’s face look pinched. “Oh, that was just a common or garden pick-up,” he said; “all conducted according to rule. It’s ended. Two nights ago I blew her to a ride in a hansom. Bowling down Fifth Avenue. Felt like a lord! She spoiled it by getting mercenary. I invited her to get out, and came home alone.”
“Why shouldn’t she be mercenary?” asked Jasper mildly.
“Sure, I’m a sentimentalist!” said Stanny.
Wilfred experienced a pang of sympathy. Glancing in Stanny’s face, he thought: He deserves better than that!
Spaghetti was brought to Stanny and Jasper; and they applied themselves to it. Wilfred, who had finished his meal, lit a cigarette with slightly trembling fingers; and prayed that this might not be the end. In his mind he searched furiously around for interesting matter to carry on the talk; while at the same time another part of his mind warned him not to force the occasion, or it would break down as it always did; but to let the occasion use him. While he was still distracted between these inner voices, the talk started of itself.
Said Stanny: “When I came down-town to-night, I saw that they had taken away the female figures leading up to the Dewey Arch on either side. Charlotte Marshall posed for those figures. She comes here sometimes.”
“I’ve seen her,” said Wilfred. “What a strange creature!”
Stanny smiled at him good-naturedly, in a way that made Wilfred feel very young. Of course! thought Wilfred. I was trying to be wise. Iwillbe natural!
“All legs,” grumbled Jasper.
“Well, that’s the sculptor’s ideal,” said Stanny.
“The degenerate sculptor’s ideal!”
“Anyhow, it looks a lot better without them—or her,” said Stanny. “I like it, though it’s been damaged a bit by the weather, and by the hubs of the busses driving through. Wish you could have seen the pair of drivers I saw to-night, racing through abreast, licking their horses like the chariot race in Ben-Hur.”
“It’s not really good,” said Jasper. “Just a lot of miscellaneous architecture.”
“Well, you ought to know, old Goat and Compasses!”
“I like to look at it,” said Wilfred shyly. “Just because it was run up for a sort of festival. It was a damn fool thing to spend all that money on a monument of lath and plaster. That’s why I like it. Everything else is so damned useful. . . .”
He suddenly became aware that both young fellows were listening to him. Self-consciousness supervened, and his tongue began to stumble. They listen! he thought. I can talk too.
“Do you paint?” asked Stanny.
Wilfred shook his head. “I’m only a millionaire’s office boy,” he said, trying to carry it off with a grin.
“That’s nothing,” said Stanny quickly. “I make line drawings for James Gordon Bennett, and Jasper here, draws plans for a millionaire jerry-builder.”
“Some day I hope to write,” Wilfred said. In that moment his resolution was formed.
“That so?” said Stanny with interest. “We haven’t got a writer in our bunch.”
Wilfred’s heart almost burst out of his breast. Did he mean anything by that? . . . But probably not.
Thenceforward, talk never failed.
The three youths left the restaurant together. A despair had seized upon Wilfred. There was nothing further he could do to prolong the occasion. He had no place where he could ask them to come. This was the end! They paused on the sidewalk.
“Which way you go?” asked Stanny, offhand.
“I live in Eleventh street.”
“Walk around by the Avenue with us.”
So he obtained five minutes reprieve. At the Eleventh street corner they paused again. Wilfred’s heart was low. His tongue clave to his palate.
Stanny said in the forthright manner that became his doughty self so well: “Look here; I’ve got a garret up on Fourteenth street. Jasper’s coming up. Would you like to come and look at my stuff?”
Would he! Wilfred could scarcely reply. “Oh yes!” he murmured. “I was hoping you would ask me.”
Both lads looked at him with quick pleasure. Without knowing it, he had said exactly the right thing. They marched up-town three abreast.
“Got anything to drink?” mumbled Jasper.
“Divil a drop, you sponge!”
“I . . . I wish you’d let me . . . stand treat,” stammered Wilfred. With his fingers, he made sure of the limp dollar bill in his trousers pocket. That was for lunches the balance of the week, but . . . !
“All right,” said Stanny. “We’ll go round by Maria’s, and get a bottle of Nebiola . . .”
Towardsthe close of the business day, Joe Kaplan dropped in at Harry Bannerman’s little office on Nassau street. He had been there before. In his sphere, Harry occupied much the same relation to Mr. Gore that Joe did in his. It had been no part of Mr. Gore’s plans to make his two favorites known to each other, but they had in a way of speaking smelled each other out. No doubt it had occurred to Harry, as it certainly had to Joe, that an alliance would be useful. How else could they keep tab on each other? It had greatly amused Joe to watch Harry’s face when he had unexpectedly come into Mr. Gore’s office one day to find Joe seated by the millionaire’s desk. Joe could imagine Harry going to Dobereiner for information; and Dobereiner getting off his innocent spiel about the clever young man whom Mr. Gore was educating! How Harry must have been tormented by the sums in cash he was forced to draw every week! Well, now, unknown to Mr. Gore and Dobereiner, Harry and Joe had become “intimate” friends. That was funny, too!
“ ’Lo, Harry!” said Joe. He allowed a shadow to appear on his brow, and rolled his Eden perfecto moodily between his lips.
“This is out o’ sight!” cried Harry. “I’ll be through directly. We’ll go out and have something.”
Behind this parade of heartiness, Joe perceived the glitter of hatred, and exulted. He dropped on a chair, and extending his elegantly trousered legs plucked at the creases. A sickly look appeared in Harry’s eyes. Don’t he wish he was me! thought Joe.
Joe said, gloomily: “I need a drink!”
“What’s the matter, old fel’?” asked Harry.
Joe, observing the spring of eager malice in his eyes, thought: He’s a smart fellow; but I’m smarter. I can play on him like the piano. I can surround him all about, and be ready for him to move in any direction! Joe said: “You’ve got me in a hole, that’s what!”
“I?” said Harry, opening his china blue eyes, candid for once in his astonishment.
Joe chuckled inwardly; and looking Harry over, made him wait for the explanation. Harry was a young man, but not so young as he looked. He made a business of being a young man. He was slender; yet somehow he gave the impression of being soft and plump. A dimple in one cheek contributed to that effect. From the neck up he had a naked look, though his head was furnished with a sufficient quantity of hair. It was one of those heads of hair that suggest a wig. He even had a small, stiff mustache, every hair of which was laid in order. Just the same his face had a naked look.
“How could I get you in a hole?” he asked.
“I been talkin’ too much about you up at the flat,” said Joe. “About our gettin’ to be friends, and goin’ around together, and all.”
“Has she toldhim?” asked Harry sharply.
“Nah! That kid is wise. She don’t tell the old man anything but what he wants to hear.”
“What’s the trouble then?”
Joe scowled. “Aah! She wants me to bring you up there while the old man’s out of town.”
Harry quickly lowered his lids—not so quickly, though, but that Joe perceived what was under them. It was funny! Harry of course, was out of his mind with curiosity concerning the flat on Fifty-Eighth street, and it’s occupant. “Well . . . why not?” said Harry with a shrug.
“Good God! man!” cried Joe. “Suppose the old man got on to it?”
“Why should he get on to it, if the girl is on the level with us?”
“Suppose she was to get stuck on you?” said Joe. “Where would I be?”
Harry fiddled among the papers on his desk. “Oh, you can leave that to me,” he said with a laugh. “I’m not going to let her . . . I might ask you the same question. Where wouldIbe if she did?”
“I don’t see how you could help yourself,” said Joe. “If you attempted to discourage her, it would only make her worse. I tell you frankly, after a certain pointIcan’t handle her.”
“What did she say?” Harry asked, keeping his face averted from Joe—but Joe marked the deepening dimple.
“Said she was bored, seeing nobody but the old man and me.”
“Well . . . you’re not old,” suggested Harry.
“Oh, I’m like her brother,” said Joe. “We scrap all the time.”
“I mean, what did she say about me?”
“Said if I didn’t bring you up, she’d come down here.”
“So this has been going on some time?”
“Oh, a couple of weeks.”
“Well . . . it’s up to you,” said Harry. “You’re running that show.”
“Do you want to come?” asked Joe.
“Oh, I’m only human,” said Harry, shrugging. “I’m curious to see what the old man’s taste is. . . . But it makes no real difference. I have other interests as you know.”
Joe grinned inwardly. Does he think he’s taking me in, the jay-bird! He said, grumblingly: “Well, I suppose I’ll have to take you. I’ll get no peace until I do! . . . Look here, if there should be any trouble, can I count on you to do the right thing by me? Suppose the old man should get on to something, will you tell him it wasn’t my fault?”
“Why, sure!” said Harry, with a reproachful look. “You ought to know me better than that, Joe! . . . Make your mind, easy. There isn’t going to be any trouble. I’m the quietest little pot of tea that ever brewed on the back of the stove!”
“All right,” said Joe. “We’ll go on up, after we’ve had a drink. We can have dinner sent in from outside.”
Shortly after midnight Joe and Harry issued out of the house on Fifty-Eighth street. Apparently there was nothing to choose between them for mellowness; but Joe was not as mellow as he was making out to be. He linked his arm affectionately within Harry’s.
“You’re a damn good fellow, Harry! I think the world of you! . . . Just the same there’s going to be trouble as a result of this night’s work!”
“You’re foolish!” said Harry, dimpling. “She didn’t care. . . .”
“I know her!” said Joe significantly. “She wasn’t going to let anything on to you, of course. And me being there, too. . . .”
“Well,” said Harry expansively, “even so! Need the heavens fall? . . . Oh my God! what a skin! Like old white velvet. . . . What the old man don’t know won’t hurt him!”
“Look at the position it puts me in!”
“You don’t need to know, either.”
“Aah . . . !” Joe grew vague. “Well, I can’t help it. . . . ’S too soon to go home, old fellow.”
“My club is near here,” said Harry. “Come in for a nightcap.”
Nested in a deep leather chair, with a fresh cigar between his lips, Joe’s gaze at the dying fire appeared to become slightly rapt. “Look here, Harry, you’re the best friend I’ve got. I can talk to you. God! the life we lead, we never get a chance to open up. You don’t dare to let yourself go with any ordinary guy. . . . I want to tell you something, Harry. I suppose to you I appear just a fly kid; happy-go-lucky, and all that. But that ain’t the real me. I hate the position I’m in. You’re a whole lot better off than me; still, it’s much the same. I don’t see how you can stand it either!”
“Stand what?” asked Harry sharply.
“Sucking up to that —— —— ——!”
“Well, there are good pickings!” said Harry with a sickly smile.
“To hell with pickings! Are you going to be satisfied with his droppings all your life? Not me! . . . We only have to look around us. Everybody on the inside is making pots of money right now, pots! There’s never been anything like it. Why shouldn’t we? Wouldn’t you like to have money enough of your own to tell that old swell-front to go to hell, and close the door as he went out?”
Harry twisted in his chair without answering.
“Well, I mean to,” said Joe. “I want a pile, and I’m going to grab it.”
“How?” asked Harry.
“Well, I been picking up quite a bit about the ways of the Street, one place and another,” said Joe. “I make the old man talk about it, without his getting on to how much he’s giving away. All the talk is of mergers now. The air is full of it. That is how the money is made. Millions in a stroke of the pen!”
“Everything is merged, now,” said Harry.
“Not quite everything. I’ll tell you about a cunning little merger that I have in mind. These electric cabs that have increased so fast the last two or three years. You see them everywhere now. There are five small companies operating them. The damn things are so expensive, and they break down so often, the companies are all bankrupt, and only keep going by selling more stock all the time. You can always stick the public with a new thing like that. How about merging all the New York cab companies?”
“But if they’re all bankrupt . . . ?”
Joe wagged his hand. “What do I care about that? Think of the publicity! Everybody is interested in cabs. Cabs are romantic. Cabs are always associated with going on the loose. And horseless cabs have news value. Look here! First you go round to the different companies and make an agreement with each one. Oh, it ain’t much of an agreement. They simply agree to come in if the others do, see? Anybody will agree to that. But the five agreements make a good-looking bunch of documents to shake in a sucker’s face, see? He won’t read ’em. Then you incorporate. There’s regular men you can get for incorporators. I’m going to call it the Consolidated Cab Co. Con. Cab ’ll look good on the ticker. . . .”
“It’s a con, all right,” said Harry.
“By God! that’s right!” said Joe pulled up short. “A cheap josh might ruin us. Well, call it the Manhattan Cab Company, then. Man. Cab on the ticker. . . . Soon as you’re incorporated, you let loose your publicity. ‘Big Corporation formed to take over all New York cabs!’ That’s news, see? You don’t have to pay for it. It’s good for a front page spread. Then you place an order for a thousand new cabs. That’s another news story. Then you get an option on an abandoned car-barn, and announce a super-garage, see? And so on. You tell how wonderful the new service is going to be, and quote the reduced rates. The papers will eat it up.
“When you get the public appetite sharpened, you begin to put out your stock on the curb in a small way. You must have real nice engraved certificates; none of your filled-in stuff. Of course the wise guys know there is nothing behind it but hot air, but some of them will take a chance on it. They always do. Hundred dollar shares will sell for four or five or six on the curb. That’s enough when you can issue all you want. It’ll pay expenses. You hire a nice office—nothing showy; and engage a polite old geezer with white hair to take in the visitors’ cards. And so on. Then I’ll have Amasa Gore approached. . . .”
“Do you think for a moment you’re going to stinghim?” said Harry.
“Nothing like it! He’ll be invited to share in the profits! . . . Suppose the stock is selling on the curb at six, see? He’ll be offered a thousand shares out of the treasury, or as much as he wants, at three, see? Then it will be announced that Amasa Gore is taking an active interest in Manhattan Cab, and will be elected as vice-president at the next directors’ meeting. The stock will jump to ten or twelve then, and he’ll sell out on the q.t. You know he does that all the time. He told me so himself.”
“And when it becomes known that he has sold?” said Harry.
“Oh, anybody that wants, can have Manhattan Cab then,” said Joe with a grin. “I’ll be short on the stock, myself.”
“Where will you get yours?” asked Harry.
“After the company’s incorporated, I’ll have a set of directors of course. I’ll have them vote me a thousand shares out of the treasury stock for my services in promoting the company. Then I mean to put some real money into it, too. When the stock is first put out on the curb, I’ll be the buyer, see? To create a market. I’ll get it cheap. I’ll have two or three thousand shares when the time comes to sell.”
“It listens good,” said Harry.
“Oh, I’ve only given you the rough outlines. I’ve got the details all planned out.”
“But you’re not nineteen yet,” objected Harry. “Your face is too smooth. You couldn’t command attention.”
“Lord! what do you think I am!” said Joe. “I’m not going to appear in this personally. It would queer me, after. This isn’t going to be my last deal on the street. I’ll get fellows to act for me. You don’t think I’d undertake to sell Amasa Gore any stock, do you? He don’t look on me in that light. And you know how sore it makes him when anybody disarranges his ideas. . . . No, I want you to put me onto somebody who will take on the promotion of the company, after I’ve got my thousand shares. I want a young fellow with plenty of vim and go; enthusiastic, but nottoosmart. What they call idealistic, see? It’ll be my job to fire up his steam. A fellow with a name that is known in the street, if possible.”
“There is Silas Moore Bristed,” suggested Harry.
“That’s a good-sounding name. I’ve heard it before.”
“Sure, you have. He’s grandson to the first Silas Moore Bristed, the famous inventor, whose name is borne by several big corporations. But it’s all passed out of the family. Young Silas is as poor as a church mouse. He’s a salesman in a bond house.”
“A good sort of fellow?” asked Joe, conveying a certain intimation.
“Innocent as a lamb,” said Harry.
“Well, I’ll look him over.”
“I’ll introduce you.”
“No you don’t! Just tell me where he’s to be found, and I’ll get next him. He mustn’t know of any connection between you and me, because later, he’ll have to come to you, when he wants to make his proposition to Amasa Gore.”
“Oh, I see!” said Harry with a thin smile.
There was a silence.
“Well . . . I suppose I got to go,” said Joe, smothering a yawn.
“Look here,” said Harry in a voice that showed strain, “what is there in this for me?”
Joe clapped him affectionately on the shoulder. “Why, you’ll be right in on the ground floor, old fel’! I’ll tell you the exact right moment when to buy and when to sell. You ought to clean up a nice little pile on it!”
“How about a little treasury stock for me, too?”
“What for?” asked Joe with a cold stare.
“You really need me in this,” said Harry. “You’ve got ideas, I grant, but I’ve got the experience. You and I ought to be working together shoulder to shoulder in the background.”
“I certainly am grateful for any help you can give me,” said Joe, “but I hadn’t counted on regularly taking anybody in with me. There isn’t enough in it for two.”
“Oh hell!” said Harry, “what’s a few shares of treasury stock more or less. Issue me a thousand shares, and I’ll guarantee to get Amasa Gore into it. You know what influence I have there.”
“Is that a threat?” asked Joe calmly.
Harry appeared to be wounded to the quick. “What do you think I am!” he cried. He looked around him as much as to say: In my own club, too!
“Because, if it is,” said Joe, coolly, “there’s nothing to it. Whether you get any treasury stock or not, you have a chance to make thousands buying and selling the stock on the curb. You’re not going to queer that!”
“If you think that way about me, I can’t talk to you,” said Harry, with dignity.
Joe looked at him quizzically. “Aah! climb down!” he said.
There was a silence. At length Harry said: “Well, do I get the thousand shares?”
“Youdonot!” said Joe promptly. “This is my scheme. You can’t expect to come in on the same basis as me!”
“Well, five hundred, then,” said Harry.
“Oh hell!” said Joe, “I can’t Jew a friend down! I want you in with me, Harry; that’s a fact! I look up to you, Harry. You’ve taught me a lot. I’ll make it five hundred shares. . . .”
Wilfredcould scarcely credit his own situation. There he lay, he the solitary one, inside man of four lads stretched out on two cots placed against the wall of Stanny’s studio in the assumption that they would afford more room when they were shoved together. The other three were asleep. Sleep was far from Wilfred’s eyes. His head hummed with wine. He lay on his back, very still in his strait place for fear of disturbing Stanny, who was alongside him. Jasper was on the other side of Stanny; and Jasper’s young brother Fred had the perilous outside place.
It had started to rain fitfully on the tin roof overhead. Wilfred remembered how the low-hanging clouds had rosily given back the glow of the street lights. That delicate glow was coming through the skylight now, pervading the room with a ghostly radiance. The front of the room came down like a low forehead to two windows, set in only a foot above the floor. You had to go down on your knees to look out. Below, all day, was spread the panorama of the shoppers on the busy side of Fourteenth street opposite, and the sidewalk vendors with their baskets. The skylight was in the high part of the room at the back.
That room was dear to Wilfred beyond measure. Not for its beauty, because it contrived at the same time to be both bare and littered—it was a chaos now, after parties on two succeeding nights. It was the first room where he had been free; a man’s room, smelling of tobacco, where you could spread yourself. It didn’t have to be tidied up until you felt like it; dirty clothes could be kicked into the corners. The paraphernalia of Stanny’s trade lay about—Stanny, his friend, whose thick shoulder lay warmly against Wilfred’s thin one now; drawing-boards; sheets of bristol board; drawings stood up with their faces turned to the wall; and everywhere, thumb-tacks and Higgins ink bottles with their tops like black nipples. To the walls were pinned several of Stanny’s best drawings; distant prospects of landscape that stung Wilfred with their beauty. It was marvellous to him that such effects could be created with a scratching pen. When Stanny drew people, their faces all had a slightly tormented look. Funny!
It had been a lively thirty hours in the lives of the friends. Wilfred went over it in his mind, smiling into the darkness. Jasper’s young brother Fred had come down from Lockport to see the town; and they had had a supper of canned lobster and Nebiola in his honor. That started it. To their provender had been added a fruit cake, brought from home by the guest—such a fruit cake as Wilfred had never tasted. Canned lobster and fruit cake! Nobody had been sick but the guest.
At first they had been rather disconcerted by their guest. Jasper didn’t know his brother very well, it appeared. Fred knew all about New York from hearsay, and undertook to tell them. He didn’t say so; but it was clear he was a little surprised at there being no ladies included in the supper party. He drank largely of Nebiola; and unquestionably enjoyed himself; but his air of implying that there was something naughty about it all, rather dashed the others. Until Hilgy began to jolly him in his quiet way. But after Fred had been sick, he returned to the table with a pale and thoughtful cast, and they liked him better.
That soft-voiced, poker-faced mockery of Hilgy’s was rather terrible. None of them was safe from it; not Hilgy himself: because when he desired sympathy, the others supposed that he was still mocking. Then Hilgy would get a little sore. He was a handsome fellow, with his silky black beard, and the subdued manner that concealed such powerful batteries. You never knew you had been hit, until a moment or two afterwards. Wilfred was in awe of him, he was so much older; almost thirty. It annoyed Hilgy that anybody should be in awe of him, so Wilfred struggled to treat him as offhandedly as Stanny and Jasper did; whereupon Hilgy, perceiving the struggle, with characteristic perversity started mocking Wilfred subtly. So intercourse was a little difficult. Yet Wilfred admired Hilgy without stint.
What a privilege it was to be associated with such fellows. Wilfred doubted if there was a circle in all New York that could show the same average of brilliancy. Unfortunately he couldn’t recall any of the bright things that had been said; he hadn’t that kind of a memory; but he had the scene of the party to a hair. There were only three chairs in the room; and they had dragged up the cot to make two seats more, while Wilfred sat on an up-ended suit-case. Stanny at the head of the table—How Stanny blossomed under the influence of Nebiola, yet never lost his plaintive air; Jasper at the foot, looking down his nose with an expression of. . . .
What was the word to describe Jasper’s expression when he had had a drink or two? Sly drollery? . . . no! Recondite glee! . . . no! Arch solemnity? . . . well that was better, but notthephrase. I shall never be a writer! thought Wilfred sadly. Epithets do not explode in my head like they do in Stanny’s.
. . . Hilgy and Binks sitting on the cot; and Fred alongside Wilfred. Five keen, vital faces to watch, revealing their characteristics in the wrinkles of merriment—well, say four faces, because Fred’s was rather a pudding; united in good fellowship, yet betraying such fascinating differences of nature, and suggesting such mysteries! Wilfred was unable to imagine a greater pleasure.
When the laughter and gibes were suddenly turned against Wilfred himself, he was ready to sink under his confusion; but he liked it nevertheless. It assured him that he had an identity too.
After supper Binks had become delightfully silly. A special bond united Wilfred and Binks; the kids of the crowd, exactly the same age. They had to conceal their kiddishness from the older fellows, but might reveal it to each other when alone. They were intensely jealous of each other. Wilfred had to be content with second place, because Binks surpassed him in everything. Binks at nineteen already had his drawings in the best magazines. Wilfred was enslaved by his admiration of Binks’ elegant air that was not dependent upon dress, his outrageous audacity; his faculty for making friends. Binks was nonchalantly one with gangsters, and with the Four Hundred. What a Godsend that would be to me, thought Wilfred; if I had it.
Amazing fellow, Binks! He had said: “My boss asked me to lunch on Wednesday. He runs what he calls the Simple Life Club. Not so damn simple. Has in the fellows who write and draw for his magazine to amuse the society dames he knows. I sat next to Mrs. Van Buren. . . .”
“Mrs. Peter Polk Van Buren?” asked Wilfred, amazed.
“Yes, that’s her.”
“The most beautiful woman in New York!” said Wilfred, “and the greatest name!”
“That so”? Well, she was a peach all right. As we took our places she kicked my foot under the table. She begged my pardon, and I said: ‘Oh, go as far as you like!’ It sort of broke the ice. She said she was dying to smoke; but she didn’t know how the other women would take it. I said: ‘Oh, go ahead. When they see you start they’ll all smoke themselves black in the face!’ Across the table sat:” he named names that took Wilfred’s breath away. “Some party! . . . I came home afterwards, and carried down the washing from the roof for my mother.”
By degrees Wilfred had perceived that Binks’ affections were not warm like Stanny’s and Jasper’s. With sharpest pain he thought: The fellows he met last night for the first time are just the same to him as us. . . . Oh well, that’s his nature. You have to take him as he is. When Binks got drunk, and, no longer clever, made believe that the studio was a skating rink, Wilfred felt like a father to him. At any rate I can carry my liquor better than Binks, he told himself.
After supper there came a point when Jasper burst into flower like that night-blooming plant whose name Wilfred couldn’t remember. He stood behind a chair, haranguing them in the manner of a rabbit-toothed curate with his spectacles slipping off his nose. A rag-tag parody of biblical quotations, and pulpit jargon. The congregation rolled helplessly on the floor. At such moments, Wilfred thought, Jasper under his unsure manner revealed richer ore than any of them.
The supply of Nebiola had given out; and they went cascading down the four flights of stairs for a fresh supply. They found Maria’s restaurant empty; and in the back room Binks banged on the piano while the others danced. Oh! the combination of Hilgy’s grave, sad head and skittish legs. Hilgy never laughed; he only caused the others to. It seemed to Wilfred that as his friends became wilder, he grew ever more sober. But as they stopped to read a sign in the street, an enormous laugh was suddenly directed against him when it was discovered that he was holding one eye shut. I must have been drunk, too; thought Wilfred, surprised.
The rest was merely noise and wild laughter. Pictures leaped out of the dark. The foolish Fred, dressed up like d’Artagnan and posed upon the model stand for Stanny to sketch—he had no idea he was being joshed; Stanny’s expression of indignant wistfulness when he tried to rise from the floor, and discovered that he was sitting in the glue which somebody had overturned. Oh, how good it was to laugh! It washed you out! Oh, Nebiola, and the pink foam in the glasses! How these expansive rackety nights drew fellows together! After two such nights on end, Wilfred felt that he had a real hold upon them.
The next day was Sunday. They met at noon in a cheap restaurant on Fourteenth street. There was renewed laughter at the sight of Jasper’s morose expression as he pushed a piece of dry toast around his plate with a fork. Fred was pitiful; all the Lockport doggy air had gone out of him. It transpired that Jasper had invited Hilgy (who lived up-town) to spend the night with him and his brother, and the bed had collapsed under the triple load. There had been a high old row. The widow with whom Jasper lodged had fired them on the spot; and it was only after much persuasion that she had relented to the extent of letting them stay out the night.
“She had a mash on Jasper,” said Hilgy, “and what really made her sore was him seeing her in her nighty and curlpapers. She realized that she could no longer hope.”
The situation was awkward since practically all their money had been spent in Fred’s entertainment. However Stanny had said they could share his studio until they scraped together enough to pay an advance on another room.
The moving was the occasion of the second party. It was more restrained than the first owing to a certain shortage of supplies, still . . . ! At midnight between two showers they had issued out to conduct the hegira. Returning, what a circus! A treat for the occasional passer-by. Hilgy first with rolls and rolls of tracing paper under one arm; and in the other hand the front end of Jasper’s trunk. Jasper next with the hinder end of the trunk in one hand; and in the other the front end of a folding cot. Binks had the stern end of the cot in one hand; and an end of a drawing-table in the other; Wilfred the other end of the drawing-table and one handle of a Gladstone bag; Stanny the remaining handle of the bag, and more rolls of drawings and tracings. Fred brought up the rear, walking alone, with a suit-case in each hand, and more rolls caught under his arms.
Thus they made their way up the midnight Avenue, like one of those wooden-jointed snakes that were sold on Fourteenth street. Whenever anybody stopped to stare at them, the grave Hilgy capered like a goat. In the middle of the street, Jasper’s suit-case (carried by Fred) burst with a loud report, flinging soiled under-clothing, broken shoes and lead pencils far and wide. Fred, dropping the suit-case, fled up the street, and made out he wasn’t with them. The others as well as they could for laughing, gathered up the debris. Hilgy held up a torn union suit in an attitude of pensive regard. Oh, Gee!
At the Fourteenth street corner a suspicious cop had stopped Hilgy with a question. This was nuts to Hilgy. Putting down his end of the trunk, he walked down the line, introducing each fellow by name to the officer with a childlike air. . . .
Wilfred lost in the scene he was picturing, snickered aloud. A low voice at his ear recalled him to his surroundings; the bed; Stanny’s room; Stanny himself alongside.
“Aren’t you asleep, Wilf?”
“No. I thought you were.”
“Hell! I can’t sleep.”
Stanny slipped his arm through Wilfred’s. It was the first time since Wilfred could remember, that anybody had made such an overture in his direction; he caught his breath and felt quite silly and confused. He pressed Stanny’s arm hard against his ribs, and neither said anything.
Finally Stanny asked: “What were you laughing at?”
“At Hilgy and the cop,” said Wilfred. “I’ve been going over it in my mind . . . trying to find words.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” said Stanny, “when you start dramatizing a thing you spoil it!”
“I know,” said Wilfred eagerly, “I know just the point when analysing things becomes barren. I stop short of that now. It’s all right to think about things when you can keep yourself detached from them.”
“But you never can!”
“Oh yes, I can, now,” said Wilfred confidently. Suddenly his confidence ran out of him. “Well, sometimes I can,” he amended.
Stanny chuckled derisively.
“I know, I’m foolish . . . But you like me . . . ?”
Stanny squeezed his arm.
“I . . . I can’t tell you what you are to me, Stanny. . . .”
“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t try!” said Stanny quickly.
“To have somebody I can talk to like this . . . I can’t believe it! I had made up my mind that I was a freak. I expected to be laughed at, so I intended to hold my tongue all my life. . . . Do you think I am effeminate, Stanny?”
“Oh, for God’s sake . . . !”
Hedoesthink so; thought Wilfred; but it doesn’t matter if he is my friend.
“It isn’t important,” said Stanny, groping for expression; “all this bunk about manliness . . . if you have mind . . . if you have character. . . .”
“Yes, but have I?” demanded Wilfred.
“Don’t worry about it . . . ! You’re too self-conscious.”
“Sure! But how can I help that? You’re like my Aunts. When I was little they were always telling me I was too thin-skinned. You might as well blame a man for being blind.”
“Don’t think about yourself so much.”
“Everything comes back to yourself. Yourself is the only measure you have for other things. . . . I’ve read hundreds of books, but I’ve never had anybody to tell me things. I don’t even know how to pronounce the words I have read, because I never heard anybody say them. . . . Only my grandfather, and he died when I was eleven. He was a man! I read his books. They are stored in a packing-room next to my room. Darwin, Huxley, Spencer and Tyndall were his favorites. I can’t make much of Huxley or Herbert Spencer, but Darwin! Oh, Gee! Darwin is my man!”
“Why Darwin in particular?”
“I dunno. Sort of mental hero. Always willing to face a new fact though it destroyed all his work up to that moment. . . . My grandfather wasn’t a one-sided man. He read the poets too; also Emerson and Carlyle. I’m crazy about Carlyle. . . . . It was fine to discover that your nature and mine were alike, Stanny!”
“You hop about so!” grumbled Stanny. “The hell they are!”
“I know. . . . It is you and the others, who have cured me, made me healthy in my mind. I used to think I was going crazy. . . . But especially you. There’s something between you and me . . . like this, we can talk about things. . . .”
A start of laughter escaped Stanny, which had not altogether a merry sound.
“Why do you laugh?” asked Wilfred.
“Well, when we talk . . . you do most of the talking.”
“I suppose I do. . . . But you must know that nothing would please me better than to have you talk to me about yourself. How can I lead you on to talk about yourself, except by going on about myself?”
“I know,” mumbled Stanny. . . . “It’s not from any lack of friendliness that I don’t. It’s all inside,” he touched his breast; “but I can’t get it out. It hurts. . . .”
“I know,” whispered Wilfred.
“You don’t know!” said Stanny irritably. “Things come out of you easy enough. We’re different. You think over to-night and last night, and it makes you chuckle. I don’t feel like chuckling. I drank too much wine. It brings things up in me that I can keep under most times. I drink to forget, and it only makes things clearer. I dread the end of the evening, when I’ve got to lie here staring. . . .”
“What things?” asked Wilfred in concern.
“I don’t know. . . .” Wilfred heard his teeth click together in pain. “I’ve got my head against a stone wall. Always have had.”
“You’ve got a stubborn kind of nature . . .” hazarded Wilfred.
“Oh, to hell with my nature!”
“Now my nature I suppose is light. . . .”
“Happy Wilf!” said Stanny.
Happy Wilf! Wilfred snatched at the phrase. It supplied the identity he was in search of. The moment it was spoken he recognized its truth, though up to that time he had regarded himself as among the unhappiest of mortals. This would necessitate the recasting of his whole scheme. It started a dozen rabbits in his mind. There was evidently an unhappiness to which he was a stranger. Was it worse not to be able to explain one’s unhappiness? And so on. These rabbits must be run down one by one later. Happy Wilf! Stanny had given him a character!
“What’s the matter?” whispered Stanny, alarmed by his silence.
“Nothing. What you said made me think. . . .”
Stanny snorted.
Wilfred, recollecting that he had Stanny to console, pulled himself together. “Things are buried way down in you,” he said. He heard the heavy tone in his own voice, and was dissatisfied with it. “That’s why it hurts when they struggle up. . . .”
“Oh, for God’s sake! I wish you wouldn’t always be trying to explain me to myself!” interrupted Stanny. “It’s a most irritating way that you have. . . . Things are not so easy explained. I’m like . . . I’m like a man standing with his back to the shore, and the waves breaking over his head!”
“I’m sorry,” whispered Wilfred. “I’ve got to be trying to explain things. I can’t rest with them. But you mustn’t mind what I say. I’m only . . . I’m only . . . what is the word? I’m only speculating. I don’t insist on anything.”
“You’re too young. . . .”
“Oh, I don’t think age has got much to do with it. I knew the same things when I was a child. Age only seems to bring you the words to put them to.”
“Words! Huh! They don’t explain anything.”
“It’s the same with books,” Wilfred went on. “You don’t learn much from books. In books you just seize on what has already been whispered to you.”
“Oh, for God’s sake! You’re beany!”
Wilfred clung to his arm. “I know,” he murmured. “Let me be that way with you. Let me let everything come out without having to watch myself, or be sorry for it afterwards. You’re my only safety valve.”
Stanny returned the pressure of his arm. “Oh, blow off as much as you want to,” he grumbled. “Don’t mind my cursing.” He struggled with what he had next to say: “The truth is . . . the truth is . . . I need you too. There is no curtain between us. . . . But I’ll never admit it again.” Then very gruffly: “And don’t think you have me explained with your literary phrases!”
“I don’t, really. All my life I’ll be speculating about you, without ever being sure of anything.”
“Well, don’t let me know you’re doing it, that’s all.”
When he opened his eyes in the morning, Stanny looked at Wilfred in horror. “My God! what a lot of rot we talked last night! We were drunk! For God’s sake forget it, Wilf!”
“Sure,” said Wilfred, grinning.
PART THREE: YOUNG MEN