“Here I am at the top, and I don’t find it no different. At heart I’m the same kid that used to swipe apples offen t’ pushcarts out there. Gee! I never found a street I liked as well as Rivington. . . . In them days I thought it would be different to be rich. A kind of dream, like. But everything stays just the same. Not but what I enjoy all the big stuff at that; conferring with prominent men, and making them do what I want; being God to thousands of little men; and living in a God-damn palace and all. But not so much as I did. I’m used to it now. And there’s always that feeling somehow that it ain’t quite real. I’ve got a child, and I swear I can’t feel that he’s mine at all. . . . Funny! . . .
“When I was a kid, once in a while I’d wake up in my bed all in a sweat. I don’t know . . . I can’t exactly name it. A sort of where-am-I feeling, and not a damn thing to grab hold of. God! for a minute, it makes you fair sick at your stomach. Well . . . that’s what I mean. Up there on the Avenue in my fancy bed—it was Louis the something or other’s bed, or one of those guys; I swear I have the same dream every once in a while, and wake up sweating just the same old way. So what have I got out of it all? Me, myself, inside, I’m just the same. I’ve got you; but I had you when I was a kid, and hadn’t nothing else. . . .
“It’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. I don’t mean to be complaining. I’ve had a hell of a good time, and still do. I have everything a man could have. I travel light. I don’t worry about nothing. It’s wonderful what a lot of things I don’t worry about! They call me heartless. Well, —— them! A pack of coyotes. They used to yelp at me in their newspapers. Well, I bought their newspapers. I’m one of the most powerful men in New York they say. I suppose I am. But . . . somehow it don’t seem quite real . . . !”
He dropped down, and put his hands around her thick throat. “Only this . . . ! By God! this is real . . . !”
“I thought you was gonna tahk all night,” murmured Jewel sleepily. “Such foolishness . . . !”
Joe chuckled.
Wilfredand Frances Mary were having tea at the Plaza. One of the children had been sick, and a temporary nurse had been had in for the others. The sick child was better, and this was the nurse’s last day. Hence the jaunt to town. After all, tea is not an expensive meal. They had come early in order to secure one of the coveted tables beside the tall East windows, and had made the meager provender last out. The great room was now full.
Wilfred affected to despise this kind of a show; but what a bursting-forth it provided in Fanny’s restricted life. Her shabby coat was thrown back over the chair, revealing her in a pretty new dress she had had no opportunity to wear before. Her hat was becoming. Blue was Fanny’s color. A hint of pink warmed her dusky cheeks, and the tired eyes were beaming. For himself, Wilfred had succeeded in putting the unpaid bills out of mind. The child was better! It was a good moment; he swam in it.
“Look at that extraordinary little fat man with the party of girls,” said Frances Mary. “He could play the Earl of Loam in Barrie’s comedy.”
“But the Earl of Loam was a respectable husband and father,” said Wilfred.
“I was just thinking of his legs. They must be the same thickness all the way down like chimney pots.”
“I should say he’d do better as Silenus.”
“Is it possible that a man so old can still enjoy that sort of thing?” she speculated, looking at the girls.
“I don’t know. He has to make believe to. With a face like that he wouldn’t be accepted in any other part.”
“Ah! what fun it is to watch people!” she murmured.
Wilfred smiled at her with quick warmth. But the suggestion of gratitude in his smile troubled Frances Mary. The roomful ceased to interest her. “You are thinking,” she said, crumbling a bit of cake, “that it is the only thing we can really share.”
Wilfred’s expanding petals were slightly frost-bitten. Why would she insist on dragging his secret thoughts out into the light? He hid the damage as well as he could. “Not the only thing,” he said. “And anyhow, it’s a lot!”
She remained pensive. “We tease each other so!” she murmured.
“What of it?” he said; “do we not also. . . .”
“Oh, don’t start on compensation,” she said. “I must have my absolutes!”
“You’re a little mixed,” said Wilfred. . . . “You’re welcome to them. . . . Look here, people with such sensitive feelers as we have are bound to find marriage full of little wounds. I think we do pretty well, considering. The only settled grievance I have against you is that you worry every little difficulty like a cat with a mouse. The mice are not important.” Thrusting his feet out, he embraced hers between them unseen. This he knew was more potent with Frances Mary than yards of argument. “Can you imagine us not married to each other? Or childless?”
She looked at him deeply and shook her head.
“Well, then, what the hell . . . !”
She sighed with appeasement; and her glance returned to embrace the room at large. “What a glittering spectacle!”
“Im-hym,” said Wilfred. “Glittering’s the word. Slightly unreal. Because they’re all on parade. How wonderful if one could see a crowd of people really letting themselves out.”
“But where could one see such a thing?”
“I don’t know. . . . Once I saw a festa in an Italian street here. Little side street up-town. They had arches thrown across the roadway, decorated with colored lamps. And all the people’s faces wore a look of escape. They were swarming in and out of their church. . . .”
“Look, Wilfred, here’s a distinguished-looking pair coming in.”
Wilfred turned around in his chair—and very quickly straightened again. Confusion came striding into his contented mind, swinging a scythe. “Lord!” he said in an uncertain voice, “it’s Joe Kaplan and his wife. I hope to God they don’t see us!”
She glanced at him sharply. “They’re coming this way,” she remarked.
Wilfred looked down. “My back is toward them. They don’t know you.”
“So that is what she’s like!” murmured Fanny.
“Fortunately there is no vacant table near us,” muttered Wilfred.
As he heard steps come abreast of the table, he looked out of the window. It was a harrowing moment. The steps ceased; recommenced; stopped again. Then Elaine’s clear voice:
“Wilfred! I knew the back of your head!”
From across the table Wilfred could feel Frances Mary congeal. He looked up with too much of a start, and rose. His face felt as if it were turning red and green. He despairingly hoped that with the passage of the years he had acquired a modicum of inscrutability. The sight of her took his breath away. She had blossomed in splendor. Most beautifully dressed, of course, but that was not it; the spirit of the woman shone out of her array. Queenly. There was not a woman in the room who could approach her. And an entirely good-humored queen! According to Wilfred’s calculations, her eyes at least ought to have betrayed wretchedness; but they were serenely clear. His whole scheme of things tottered; he felt like a clown.
“Hello!” he cried with a false heartiness. “What a fortunate accident! . . . This is my wife . . . Mrs. Kaplan.”
“How do you do?” said Elaine, putting out her hand, and looking at Frances Mary with frank and friendly curiosity. She was likewise saying to herself: So this is what you’re like!
Wilfred and Joe shook hands, and Joe was duly presented to Frances Mary. Wilfred was even more astonished at Joe’s appearance. Young, slim, clear-skinned, at the highest point in the arc of manhood’s vigor; where were the marks of an evil nature, of evil living, that ought to have shown before now? Standing close to him, Wilfred observed the peachy quality of Joe’s skin, verging into a cool grey upon his miraculously shaven chin. In seven years Joe’s face had grown in composure; the habit of authority had given it a high look. One of the leaders of men! Wilfred thought with twisted bitterness. Well . . . one must face it! He felt reluctantly drawn to Joe. For the thousandth time he wished he were not so at the mercy of physical beauty. But presently the bitterness passed with the thrilling thought: What regions there are in man still to explore!
“You still live in New York?” Elaine said to Wilfred. “How is it we never see you?”
“Well, we hardly move in the same circles,” said Wilfred smiling, and immediately sensible that he could scarcely have said a worse thing.
“This is too good a chance to be lost,” said Elaine, looking around for a chair. “May we sit down with you for a minute?”
“By all means,” said Wilfred, signalling to a waiter. Inwardly he cursed the situation. Frances Mary was smiling like plate glass. It will take me hours, days perhaps, to bring her round, he thought despairingly.
No more did Joe welcome the situation. “My dear,” he said, “the Beekmans have seen us. They are signalling.”
How strangely that “My dear!” rang through the corridors of Wilfred’s consciousness! He thought of the seven years of intimacy between these two. Face to face, stripped of all disguise—buthadthey ever revealed their souls to each other? One would never know!
Waiters had pushed up two chairs, and Elaine seated herself. She said to Joe: “Go over and explain to them that we have unexpectedly met some old friends. We’ll be with them in five minutes.”
Joe marched off, rubbing his upper lip.
The eyes of everybody in the vicinity were addressed to their table, which was rather cruel on Frances Mary and Wilfred in their undistinguished attire. Elaine, of course, was oblivious. She addressed herself to Frances Mary.
“My husband and yours have been acquainted for many years.”
“Yes, Wilfred has spoken of it,” said Frances Mary.
In this opening, Elaine betrayed herself to be not so candid as she appeared. She had apprehended Frances Mary’s antagonism, and the latter had instantly perceived it. There was nothing gauche about Frances Mary, only the glassiness of her eyes warned Wilfred of jarring voices within. He was painfully aware of the worn lining of his wife’s coat over the back of the chair. Joe would mark that when he came back. Why had he ever brought her here? They did not belong to it. Wilfred’s sympathies were all on the side of Fanny—well, his main sympathies, the outside part of him; the sprite was for Elaine, because Fanny had intrenched herself, whereas Elaine was skirmishing pluckily in the open.
Elaine was momentarily at a loss. It must have occurred to her to wonder why she had insisted on sitting down. Like most impulses, it would not bear a critical examination. Wilfred’s heart went out to her; it had been a generous impulse. It was not often that she troubled to come out of her shell like this. It was Fanny who played the grudging part. Well, there Elaine was. She tried again.
“You have several children, haven’t you? Somebody told me.”
“Three,” said Frances Mary. “Two girls and a boy.”
“I envy you,” said Elaine. “I have only one little boy. So bad for a child not to have any brothers and sisters.”
“Yes,” said Frances Mary politely. She looked down in her plate. The question was between them, large, unspoken: Well, why don’t you give him some?
Elaine turned to Wilfred. “How does the writing go?” she asked in her whole-hearted way.
Wilfred, thinking of Frances Mary, shivered for the speaker. What a false note to issue from the ringing Elaine! Once she stepped out of her charmed circle, she was but mortal clay. It endeared her to him.
“No better nor worse than usual,” he said, smiling unhappily. Whatcouldone answer to such a question?
“I haven’t come across your name lately,” said Elaine, meaning well.
This remark made the silent Fanny savage. Wilfred made haste to answer, lightly: “You wouldn’t. There are so many underground ways of making one’s living by the pen.”
From his wife’s somber glance he gathered that this had not helped him withher. Oh dear! Oh dear! he thought; why must everybody have so many corns to get trodden on!
Joe returned with a bland, blank face. He did not give a hang about them, Wilfred saw; indeed, he had probably recalled Wilfred to mind only with difficulty. But his politeness was perfect. It was Joe who saved the face of the situation.
“Beekman tells me there’s a report going the rounds that the suffragettes tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament, and that the news was suppressed.”
Wilfred was grateful. He had to confess to himself that polite people have their uses.
“Good Heavens!” said Frances Mary. “Do you suppose it’s true?”
Joe shrugged. “It amuses people to pass these stories round.”
“Well, I hope they did!” said Frances Mary.
Wilfred stared. Could this be his Fanny?
Joe smiled deprecatingly. “I approve of their cause, but hardly of their methods,” he said.
“Perhaps they are the only effective methods,” said Frances Mary.
“Oh, Englishmen could not possibly give in to intimidation,” said Joe.
“We shall see,” said Frances Mary, smiling back.
Elaine had scarcely listened to this. She was bent like a child on making friends. She said to Joe: “Mr. Pell is a writer, you remember.”
“Ah,” said Joe. “I had forgotten. . . . What is your line, Pell?”
“Fiction,” said Wilfred. It struck him that there was something deliciously appropriate in the word. It was his little private joke. No other eye betrayed any consciousness of it.
“I control several fiction magazines,” said Joe, with his deprecatory air. “You must submit your stories to my editors.”
Frances Mary was on the verge of an ironic speech here, but Wilfred managed to divert it with a warning touch of his foot under the table. “Thanks, I will,” he said pleasantly to Joe.
“What are the children’s names?” Elaine asked of Frances Mary.
“Mary, Constance, and Stephen.”
“I like those names. Mary, I suppose, is . . .”
“Six.”
“The same age as my Sturges. . . . I wish you’d come to see me some day, Mrs. Pell. And bring Mary. I mean it. Shall I write and set a day?”
“Oh, thanks,” said Frances Mary, with a sky-like candor; “I should like to come ever so much; but I’m afraid it will be impossible. We live in Rockland County, you see; and I have no nurse. My days in town are few and far between.”
Wilfred gritted his teeth. Ah well, one had to endure these things. Frances Mary’s spirit was admirable; but why need she have rebuffed the generous Elaine?
“I could send a car out to get you,” suggested Elaine.
“You are too kind! I have made it a rule never to go visiting with the children while they are small.”
Upon that Wilfred saw that Elaine gave up. “I’m so sorry!” she said, resuming her usual unconcerned surface. Meanwhile Joe, out of politeness, was telling Wilfred the latest news of the government’s Philippine policy, in which Wilfred was not the least interested.
Presently Elaine arose. “We must be getting on to our friends. So glad to have run into you. Good-bye. . . . Good-bye, Wilfred.”
She went with a frank, final smile at him, that was hard to bear. If she had gone without looking at him, he could have built on that. Her whole attitude had been rather devastating to a man’s vanity. He could hardly tell himself that she had lived to regret her refusal of him. Seeing his wife there in her two-seasons-old coat, and hearing about the three children and no help! Then Wilfred grinned inwardly at his own expense. Incorrigible! Still prone to strut, drawing the rags of his egotism about him!
His eyes followed Elaine. He saw her whisper to Joe, and could read her lips. “What a tiresome woman!” And Joe’s courteous acquiescence. . . . Even though Elaine and Joe might be perfectly indifferent to each other, what a beautiful picture their life made! Eighteenth century beauty. Maybe there was a sort of peace in a loveless marriage. Was love really worth all the wear and tear that it entailed? . . . By way of contrast, he and Fanny returning to their jerry-built house, and their niggling domestic cares . . . ! But no bitterness! The child was better! . . . And anyhow, he could more fully apprehend the beauty of an elegant life than its possessors. So was it not really his more than theirs? An inexpensive and a comforting doctrine . . . ! One’s own life, too. Sometimes you were able to survey it from a slight elevation. A bit of meaning emerged from the welter. Oh yes, you gained something on the distracting pilgrimage, though you might not realize it at the time. Bitterness was gone. He could be thrilled by Elaine’s splendid air, without experiencing the sting of desire. . . . He must store away this last sight of her. How well he knew the gallant carriage of her flat back, and the little half curls at the nape of her neck! He had recovered her. She was glorious again! . . .
He sat down facing the cold reality of Frances Mary. He debated how best to deal with her; and while he was considering it, heard the mild words coming out of his own mouth: “Why do you act so? She is nothing to me!”
“Your eyes are full of her!” said Frances Mary, darkly.
Wilfred sighed, and made a feeble gesture.
“She was trying to make us feel cheap!” said Frances Mary.
“You are quite wrong,” he said quickly. “Not until the very end, and you forced that on her.”
“You understand her of course,” she said.
Wilfred experienced a sort of collapse. Of what use this endless struggle? No advance was possible. And how tired he was! Was ithisfault? Why did the onus invariably fall upon him? Oh, to be alone and at peace, away from the pulling of all these hands, big and little! To be at sea with men for his shipmates . . . !
“Let’s go,” said Frances Mary, bleakly. “We have just time to catch the 5:23.”
Wilfred roused himself automatically. “No hurry,” he said. “We’re not going on the 5:23. . . . It would be too ridiculous to let this accident spoil our day; to lie down under it! Just for that, we’re going to make a night of it now. We’re going to walk down the avenue, looking in all the shop windows. We’re going to Mouquin’s to dinner, and afterwards to a play. We can send a telegram to nurse. . . .”
Frances Mary shook her head. “It would be silly to spend the money. I shouldn’t enjoy it now. Come on. . . .”
“You’ve damned wellgotto enjoy it!” said Wilfred. “We’re not going home with our tails between our legs. . . .”
“The thought of those people. . . .”
“Forget them . . . ! If I can only find a play with some good laughs in it. . . .”
She picked up her gloves. “You stay. I’d rather go home, really.”
“Well, go ahead!” said Wilfred recklessly. “And by God! I’ll get drunk! Sometimes it’s the only rejoinder . . . !”
Frances Mary laid down her gloves.
They were walking down the avenue. Apropos of nothing, Frances Mary said: “Anyway, the man was impossible! Such insolence!”
A great rush of gratitude filled Wilfred’s breast. She was coming ’round! Cheers! He cunningly hid his joy. He did not honestly think that Joe had been insolent, but one could concede that! “I always told you what he was.”
“The cheek of his pretending that he had never heard of you, when you’re a regular contributor to one of his rotten magazines!”
“It’s quite on the cards that he may never read his magazines,” said Wilfred. “Indeed, I hope it may be true that I am unknown to him. That’s why I kicked you under the table.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Suppose this meeting irritated him,” said Wilfred. “Mind you, I don’t think he noticed us one way or t’other; but if it was called to his attention that he had the power to injure me, he might write to his editor telling him to step on my stuff hereafter. That’s the worst of power: a man can’t always resist the temptation of making it felt, even if there’s nothing in particular to be gained.”
“Oh, Wilfred . . . !”
“He and his like are our masters,” said Wilfred serenely, “and it behooves us to step warily in their presence.”
“How can you be so calm about it?”
“Well,” said Wilfred, grinning sideways at her, “I have, to use that word which you despise, compensations!”
Fanny suddenly slipped her arm through his.
“Oh, Wilfred . . .” she faltered. “You’re such a dear . . . ! I’m sorry . . . ! I believe I’m going to cry. . . . Now, I’m sure I am! I can’t keep it back . . . !”
“That’s all right! We’ll turn down this side street. Let her fly, old girl! . . .”
THE END
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.