"Now, Wenny, you haven't come here so bright and early to make love to me," she said with a hurried, nervous laugh.
"Don't, Nan." He yanked at her hand.
"Wenny, you hurt me, you're spilling my coffee.... Look, are you drunk?"
"I swear to God I've never been so serious in my life."
"Hold your horses, Wenny boy, we are too old friends to carry on this way. It's too silly. Do talk sensibly."
"I've been holding myself in so long.... I can't do it any more. I'm going to live like a human being, do you understand, Nan? From this moment on you and I are going to live."
As he jumped to his feet his knee hit the table, bowling over the cream pitcher.
"O, the carpet, Wenny," said Nan in a whining little voice. "Have you no respect for my carpet?"
"Damn the carpet, Nan. I'm crazy about you. I want to kiss you."
He fell back into the chair and covered his face with his hands, his fingers writhed in his hair that was curly with sweat. Nan ran out into the kitchenette and was back with a cloth sopping up the white puddle of milk. She rubbed the carpet tensely as if everything depended on its being unspotted.
"Nan, I'm so sorry to give you all that trouble."
"You are such a little silly."
"O what can I do? Nan, for God's sake understand that I love you. I must have you love me."
He went towards her blind with his arms out. She put her hands roughly on his shoulders and shook him the way an angry school teacher shakes a child. Her voice was full of shrill hatred.
"Be quiet, I tell you. You shall be quiet."
"You mean you don't love me."
"Of course not, you little fool.... Please go away, it's my time to practice. I don't love anyone that way."
Her eyes were dilated and burning. The kimono had fallen from one shoulder and showed the beginning of the curve of a breast. Her long fingers dug into the flesh of his shoulder. His back was against the door.
"O this is fearful, Nan."
The hat in his hand, red gleam of varnish on the door closing behind him. Then stairs again, numbered doors, milk bottles, newspapers. He brushed against the elevator man, whose eyes rolled white in a black face, and through the glass door where climbed the letters of Swansea in reverse, and out into the grey street. As he crossed a truck nearly hit him. A man with a grease smudge on an unshaven cheek under a shiny visored cap leaned out snarling: "Wanter git kilt ye sonofabitch?"
Sure I want to git kilt, sure I want to git kilt.
... Wenny picked his way very carefully across a snowpile and sat hunched on a bench under a skinny tree. Anything to forget Nan, her ringing voice saying: Of course not, you little fool, the warm curve of her breast, the down in the hollow of her back under the green crepe. He beat against his forehead with his fists. O he'd go mad if he didn't stop thinking of her. Anything to stop thinking of her. Death to stop thinking of her, death a motortruck hurtling down the frozen street and a voice shrieking: Wanter git kilt ye sonofabitch, and hard blackness, eternal. To crawl into bed and draw the covers up to your chin and sleep. That's what it would be like to git kilt. No more agony of hands to touch, lips to kiss, so downy and warm it would be asleep in a bed of blackness.
The back of the bench was hard against the nape of his neck. He was shivering. He got to his feet. The sky had become overcast with dovecolored mackerel clouds that cast a violet gloom over the apartment houses and the etched trees and the rutted yellow slush of the street. Wenny tugged at his watchfob. The familiar round face, slender Roman numbers. God, only half past nine? How many hours ahead. He walked on numbly.
* * * *
"Some cold, aint it?" came a voice beside him. "Aint no time for keepin' the benches warm." Wenny turned his head. Beside him on the bench was a fellow without an overcoat of about his own age, a compact, snubnosed face with lips blue and a little trembling from the cold. It was afternoon; he was sitting on the Common.
"Of course it's cold," said Wenny testily. He was staring straight before him through the trees at the dark shapes of people and automobiles passing in front of the shopwindows, gay and glinting along Tremont Street. Like that his thoughts passed and repassed, miserable silhouettes against the shine and color of his memories. It hurt him to leave the mood of processional sadness he had slipped into at the end of dumb hours of walking. After a long silence the man at the other end of the bench continued in the same confidential tone.
"Aint no time for keeping the benches warm I can tell you.... Out of a job, are you?"
Wenny nodded.
"Up against it?"
Wenny got to his feet.
"I guess I'll walk along," he said.
"Mind if I walk with you?" said the young man jumping up and thrashing his arm about. "Bad onct you let yesself git cold this weather. You don't never git warm agin. Got a flop for the night?"
Wenny nodded. They started walking down the path.
"I aint yet. I'll git one though. It's too tumble cold out."
"Are you flat?"
"Like a buckwheat cake."
"I mean, haven't you any money?"
"Money!" Wenny's companion stopped in his tracks shaking with laughter. "Jumpin' jeeze, that's funny. That sure strikes me funny. Why I aint had a piece of change the size of your little finger for so damn long ..."
"How do you make out?"
"O, I make out fine, 'xceptin' when my luck goes back on me like today."
"Been in Boston long?"
"Nope. Tumbled in here 'bout three days ago from Albany. Too cold up there. I aint got the hang of it yet. Bum town, I'd say. Though you can't tell about a town till you learn it."
A rolled up newspaper lay on the path before them. The young man without an overcoat made a grab for it, shooting a skinny chapped forearm out of the frayed sleeve of his coat.
"Useful things, newspapers," he said as they walked on. Then he turned and looked at Wenny fixedly a minute. "Lost your job?... You aint bummed much, have you? Lost your job?"
"I've hardly been out of Boston."
They were rounding the dry basin of one of the ponds that was piled with muddy snow from the paths.
"Et today?"
"Of course.... Look, I've still got a couple of dollars. Suppose you come and have a drink with me. Say, what's your name?"
"The guys called me Whitey down where I come from. And say, if you want to set me up to something for Gawd's sake make it a hamburger steak. Honest, I aint et a thing since I been in Boston city."
"Gosh, come along. I'll take you to Jake's."
"Hell, it don't hurt you not to eat onct you git used to it. I kin go days without eatin' an' never notice it."
"Gee, I'm hungry too. I forgot to eat any lunch."
In the German restaurant there was a thick smell of beer and fat wurst and sawdust. Whitey took off his cap exposing a closely cropped tow head and sat stiffly on the shiny reddish wooden bench. Wenny ordered beer and hamburger and potatoes of a fat-faced waiter who looked from one to the other out of suspicious pig eyes.
"Gee, you're treatin' me white. I guess you're millionaire on the loose."
"I wish I was," said Wenny laughing. "No, I just had a fight with my father."
"Like me when I left home."
"How long have you been bumming round like this?"
"'Bout a year an a half."
"Where do you come from?"
"Perkinville, a little jerkwater town back in South Dakota."
"Good beer, isn't it?"
"I'll tell the world it is.... So you had a fallin' out with the old man, did ye too?"
"I sure did."
"Did he trun a flatiron after you?"
"No," said Wenny laughing, his mouth full of potato.
"Mine did. A red hot one too."
"How did it happen?"
"O, I dunno. Things was pretty rough round our shack anyway. I used to run away for a week at a time an' stay with some guys I knew an' the old man kep' sayin' how's I ought to be workin' to support the family an' all that. He wasn't workin' but he always wanted us kids to work.... An' I come home one night feelin' top notch with a couple of drinks in me. We'd all been down the line, an' I was tellin' myself how I was goin' to lay off that stuff an' hold down a job. An' just as I gits to the house I hears em hollerin' blue murder.... Ma took in washin' an' used to do the ironin' in the evenin's.... Well, I looked through the kitchen winder and, jeeze, there was Ma and the old man chasin' her around the kitchen with the ironin' board an' beatin' at her with it, an' there was a tub full o' clothes to soak by the stove, and Ma just picked up that tub an' dumped it on the old man's head sayin': Take that, ye dirty beast, an' ran out of the house. And, jeeze, I was mad at him... An' I runs in and tells him to quit beatin' up Ma, and he had the clothes all hangin' round his neck and the water pourin' off his neck. But he was roarin' drunk though; jeeze it'd a been funny if I hadn't been so scared. I always was scared of the old man. An' he stood up with his eyes all red lookin' at me scoldin' an' cursin' at him. Curse at yer father, you yellow-bellied bastard, he said. An' then he picked up two flatirons, red hot on the stove, an' came after me... Honest to Gawd, I couldn't move, I was so scared, like when you're scared in your sleep. All I could do—jeeze, I remember it clear as anything—was yell: They're red hot, they're red hot. One of 'em went through the winder with an awful noise an' I ran out of the house and used my legs till I fell down cryin' on the side of the road a mile out o' town.... I jumped a freight an' went to Milwaukee, an' I aint been back since. I'm goin' though in about a year an' plant myself among the weeds. This aint no life for a white man."
"What about girls?"
"O, they don't bother me. I get it now and then. But I don't miss it."
"It bothers me."
"What I like is goin' round to new towns, hoppin' freights an' all that. Jeeze, I been some places in the last year. I've worked in Akron an' Cleveland, an' Chicago, an' Atlanta, Georgia. If I'd had the sense to stay down south I wouldn't be freezin' to death at this minute.... An' Tallahassee an' Key West. I passed up a chance to go to Havana. 'Count the lingo. An' Galveston an' South Bend an' Topeka an' Pittsburgh. That's where they pick you up an' put you on the stone crushers. An' Duluth an' Cairo an' Albany an' New Orleans. Ought to see them high yallers down there if you're stuck on girls. I didn't get to the coast but I was in New York and Philly...."
"Have some more beer?"
"No... Jeeze, I'm talkin' too much, I guess."
"Hell no, I like to hear you."
"Well, I'll beat it this time. Got to meet a friend o' mine on the Common.... See you some time."
He pulled his cap over his eyes, put up his collar and slouched out the door. Wenny sat sipping his beer. He wished Whitey had not gone. His mind was fearfully empty and dark. Why couldn't I do that, bum from town to town? That's the worst that can happen to me anyway, and that sounds fun. That way I can forget her and all this life. Start afresh as if I had just been born. He got to his feet firmly, put his two dollars down beside the cheque and walked out into the street. A sudden wild elation had seized him. He hadn't a cent in the world. What should he do now, reborn without a cent?
It was already dark. The wind made his cheeks tingle. Of course he knew what to do. He'd pawn his watch. Down the street a little way three gold balls glinted above a show window in the full glare of an arclight.
* * * *
His forehead and eyes in the carmine ring of a Ward 8 becoming oval as he tipped it to his mouth, half a slice of orange bobbing in the midst of it, the lemony claret taste in his mouth and excitement shooting in hot and cold shivers through his blood. Opposite a girl's face, cheeks firm under powder giving way suddenly in loose purplish skin under the eyes, hair fuzzy and yellow. Beyond, through blue arabesques of tobacco smoke, tops of instruments from the orchestra playing Goodby, Girls I'm Through, a chromo of George Washington in a gold frame hung with a festoon of red frilled paper. In his mind muddled the towns Whitey had told him about, Akron and Cleveland and Chicago and Atlanta, Georgia, and Tallahassee and Key West, and Fanshaw's delicately intoned voice saying: Like beautiful leanfaced people of the Renaissance lost in their vermillion barge.... Ellen wasn't leanfaced; plump cheeks, plump breasts. He was living now. Now he'd forget how his father looked with his collar round backwards, he'd forget Nan with Ellen, realer than old fool Fanshaw's vermillion barge.
"You're one of these college boys, aren't you, dear?"
Her tired fingers, overwhite, played nervously with a cigarette box on the table.
"Why?"
"Cause you keep askin' me my life history. I'm not a fiction magazine. Tellin' stories isn't in my line, see?"
"I'm sort of interested in people's life histories today, Ellen. I'm just beginning mine."
"I knew I was robbin' the cradle," she said, and laughed, showing to the gums a set of teeth like the teeth in a dentist's showcase. "But I didn't know it was that bad."
Wenny felt himself blushing. He took another long drink of the Ward 8. Leanfaced people of the Renaissance with falcons on their wrists, quoting Greek in bed with their great-limbed rosy lemans, riding days over parched hills to find the yellow, half-obliterated parchment that once spelled out would resolve the festering chaos of the world into radiant Elysian order. Whitey loafing on street corners in New Orleans watching the high yallers drive by in barouches. By God, I must live all that.
"Ever been abroad, Ellen?"
"The Fall River boat's about the biggest liner I ever took."
"Waiter, two more Ward 8's."
"Make mine a ginger ale highball, kiddo."
Silly, this blather of the Renaissance, ham actors mouthing To be or not to be... Like Whitey, that was better. But first I'll have to be so girls don't bother me. Shall I go home with her? I wish she was better looking. He wouldn't care how she looked.... I get it now and then, but I don't miss it. And Nan; is Nan just girls bothering me?
"You're blue this evenin', kiddo, ain't they treatin' you right? Tell it to mommer."
Wenny jerked his chair round and put an arm round her waist. Her head sank on his shoulder. Smell of her hair, what was the perfume she used? Rouge too, sweetish fatty smell of rouge from her lips. She beads her eyes. His hand touched her breast limp under her bodice. Firm Nan's breasts would have been. This morning how he had wanted to put his hands on Nan's firm breasts and kiss her. Don't think of it. When I am sated I will forget Nan, everything. He kissed her lips. Her eyes were bored unfired between their beaded lashes.
"Look out, kiddo, don't get too close. This is a respectable joint. I doan wanter get in wrong here."
Wenny seemed to stand apart from this body of his touching the girl's body, to look at it critically through the tobacco smoke as if from the bleary eyes of the chromo of Washington. And when he is sated, his voice seemed to say, when his flesh has grown very cold he'll be like Whitey, going round to new towns, walking down roads, hopping freights: Tallahassee and South Bend and Havana and Paris and Helsingfors and Khiva and Budapest and Khorasan ... riding over more parched hills than the leanfaced people of the Renaissance rode over, in search of words, of old gods' names more powerful than any they ever dreamed of. Under the table his hand was on her thigh. His heart was pounding.
"What do you think about when you're blue, Ellen?"
"Me? I don't think when I'm blue. I drink."
At the next table a man with three chins whose bald head swayed from side to side was trying to stroke with a puffy ringed hand the arm of the redhaired girl opposite him. A waiter hovered over them threateningly. The room was swinging round in smooth spirals to the sound of The Blue Danube from the orchestra.
Wenny's heart was pounding. His hands were cold. Afraid, are you? a voice sneered in his head. To live you can be afraid of nothing. The Greeks were not afraid. The lean-faced men were not afraid. By god they were. Men flagellated themselves round the altar of Apollo on Delos. They recanted on their deathbeds and stuck their tongues out eagerly for the wafer. And can David Wendell, silly little Wenny, son of a minister with his collar on backwards, can I conquer fear. I must. Her flesh was hot under his hand.
"Let's go, Ellen. Where do you live?"
"Aint so far from here. I'll show you. I got a swell room."
The wind blew cold down streets of blank windows. At the corner she slipped on a frozen puddle.
"Oopsidaisy!" He caught her with a laugh.
"Jeeze, I wrenched my ankle..." She drew the breath in sharply through her teeth. "Hell of a note... Say, kiddo, got plenty of jack?"
"I've got enough."
"I'll treat you nice, honest I will. I like you, real pash. Make it twenty, will you? A buck don't go far nowadays. Make it twenty, kiddo."
"I don't think I can give you as much as that. I'm broke."
Nan this morning in her green kimono shaking him, her long fingers digging into his shoulders. O, I must forget her.
"Not often you can get a girl like me, deary. I'm mighty careful...
"Don't worry, I'll give you all I've got."
They passed a Chinaman in a fur coat standing under an arclight.
Nan, I hate you. Nan, I'll kill you out of my mind. Tomorrow when I've killed you utterly, I'll begin to live.
They stopped at a red brick house with a sign Furnished Rooms in the window. The key was in the door, clicked; the door opened. Dim gaslight in the hall.
Whitey had said: O, they don't bother me.
I get it now and then, but I don't miss it. I'll be like that tomorrow.
The carpet on the stairs had big roses on green; it was frayed and torn. The stairs creaked. The house smelt mustily of rotting wallpaper, of ratnests.
"Here we are, deary... Aint bad, is it. Wait a sec, I'll light up."
Nan, you are beaten, dead. Must not is dead too. Wenny's legs were trembling. His tongue moved about in his mouth like a thirsty dog's. He dropped into a chair by the door. Nan, God, how I love you, Nan.
"Tired are you, deary? D'you know you look powerful like a guy I had a crush on wonct. Near croaked of it, honest... You see, for all I could do he wouldn't give it to me... Kerist, I'm glad that's over. Worse than a spell of sickness..."
To be free of this sickness of desire. I must break down my fear. Of what, of what? The social evil, prostitutions of the Caananites, venereal disease, what every young man should know, convention, duty, God. What rot.
"You get into bed, deary... I must fix my hair. Sheets are nice and clean, see. I always have clean sheets on my bed... Maybe you'll come to see me often now. Safer, I'm tellin' ye to go to one girl steady. You know what you're gettin' then... Pretty, ain't it, this chimmy? Got it at Filene's in the bargain basement..."
He was standing against the door crumpling his felt hat in his hands. He tried to speak; no words came.
She was naked sitting on the edge of the bed under the gas jet, eyes wide and mocking; her breasts hung free as she leaned towards him. In his head was a ghastly sniggering. He was out the door.
She grabbed him by the wrist.
"No, you don't. I've had them kind before ... just want to peek an' run. Gimme somethin' or I'll raise the roof, you low-down sonofabitch of a cheap skate you."
"Here, take that, it's all I've got."
He piled crumpled greenbacks in her hands. A half-dollar fell to the floor. She stooped, naked, groping for it.
He rushed down the stairs, slammed the door, out into the icy glare of the arclight in the street. Coward, the word was like a pack of hounds screaming about his ears, yelping, tearing. This is what you've done to me, Nan. Tomorrow was colonnades of stage scenery tumbling about his ears. Through it he was fainting with desire for the woman's body naked on the bed under the gas jet. Nan's eyes, sea-grey, drowning him, the smell of her hair. He leaned against a lamp post and stared with stinging eyes down the empty darkness of the street.
On Fanshaw's desk was a large white envelope and within that envelope another envelope which contained engraved cards faced with tissuepaper. Fanshaw pulled off the tissuepaper and ran the nail of his little finger lightly across the lettering.
Mr. and Mrs. Heaton W. HarrendenAnnounce the Marriage of their DaughterAliceto Mr. Chamberlain C. Masonat Twelve O'clock, Noon,February Fifteenth, Nineteen Hundred and Twelveat Harrenden Manor, Durham, Massachusetts.
Mr. and Mrs. Heaton W. HarrendenAnnounce the Marriage of their DaughterAliceto Mr. Chamberlain C. Masonat Twelve O'clock, Noon,February Fifteenth, Nineteen Hundred and Twelveat Harrenden Manor, Durham, Massachusetts.
Then there was a little card
For the accommodation of guests a special train will leave the North Station, Boston, at eleven fifteen, returning from Durham at five thirty.
For the accommodation of guests a special train will leave the North Station, Boston, at eleven fifteen, returning from Durham at five thirty.
And another little card
Mr. and Mrs. Heaton K. Harrenden request the pleasure of your company at the wedding breakfast at two o'clock, February Fifteenth, Nineteen Hundred and Twelve, at Harrenden Manor.
Mr. and Mrs. Heaton K. Harrenden request the pleasure of your company at the wedding breakfast at two o'clock, February Fifteenth, Nineteen Hundred and Twelve, at Harrenden Manor.
A letter from Cham had been tucked in:
Dear Fanshaw: You've got to come. Mrs. Harrenden says she wants an old-fashioned wedding, but Allie and I are going to try to pep it up a bit.Yours, Cham.
Dear Fanshaw: You've got to come. Mrs. Harrenden says she wants an old-fashioned wedding, but Allie and I are going to try to pep it up a bit.
Yours, Cham.
Let's see, Fanshaw was thinking, what ought one to wear at a noon wedding? Noon. The time Cham and I took those two chorus girls canoeing at Norumbega Park, the mudsmell of the river.... And now Cham's marrying an heiress. Harrenden's Snowflake Meal. Like telegraph poles from the train the years slip by, so fast and nothing to catch hold of. Ought I to get a cutaway?
Through the coal smoke that gripped his throat Fanshaw caught a whiff of roses. A girl in a mink coat with a large bunch of pink roses at her waist had just brushed past him. She must be going to the wedding too, he thought, and started walking in the direction she had gone, following with his eyes the signs that announced the trains: Portland Express, North Shore Local....
"Hello, Macdougan, where the hell are you going?"
"I'm going to a wedding. What are you doing here this time of day, Henley?"
"I'm off to a wedding too." Henley had a booming voice; he was a tall dark man with a moustache, thickwaisted.
"Cham Mason's wedding?"
"Sure.... I didn't know that dignified people like you went in for weddings."
"I don't often, Henley.... But I roomed with Cham Mason when we were freshmen."
"Frankly, Macdougan, I find weddings of great anthropological interest.... Savage survivals."
They were in a crowd of very dressed people passing through a gate in the end platform, all about them fur coats, flowers, fuzzy hats, bright shoes. "O, how do you do, Mrs. Glendinning! Yes, dreadfully cold. Why everybody anyone ever knew in the world is here? No, those are the Pittsburgh people. Imagine having a special train. Yes, those are the Harrison-Smiths, my dear."
"Say, Macdougan, suppose we get in the smoker where we can chat quietly," whispered Henley fitting his derby back on his head. "This is too much of a good thing.... There's something so prurient about women at an affair like this."
"After all a wedding.... Go ahead."
"Why they are parlor cars.... Here we are.... Is the only piece of straight sex-ceremonial left to us."
"How's that?"
"The ring, my dear fellow, the ring.... What could be more of a symbol than a ring? Why, among the aborigines of the Caribbean ..."
"Why, look who's here?... Why, this is a class reunion, boys." A red, round face topped by straight black hair slicked across a bald forehead was poked in the door. "You remember me, don't you, Henley?"
"Sure I do, Randall. I haven't seen you since our last class day. How are you?... As I was saying, Macdougan, among the aborigines of the Caribbean ..."
"I think I'll join you fellers if you don't mind. Gee, it's great isn't it, that old Cham is gettin' hitched?"
"That depends...."
"Not if you know the bride," Randall hitched up his blue serge trousers and let himself sink down broadly on to the leather seat. "Ah ... A lovely, sweet girl."
"Yes, I know her," said Fanshaw frostily. He turned and looked out at the empty windows of the train on the next track. Through them he could see more windows, people sitting in a parlor car. There came a toot from the engine and the empty windows and the windows with people in them began to glide past. The seat rumbled; the train was moving, smoke cut out the view, cleared to reveal bridges and black water over which gulls veered screaming. Five gulls on the edge of a cake of ice.
A leather case of cigars was poked under his nose. "Thanks, I never smoke cigars." Fanshaw kept his face turned to the window, letting Henley talk to this Randall-man.
"Yes," he was saying with a heavy laugh, "I been to some mighty funny weddings."
"I never miss one when I can help it."
"There was a wedding down in Philadelphia I once went to where the groom passed out before the ceremony. That was a funny wedding."
"What was the matter?"
"Dry Martinis, that's all. We had to put him under the showerbath to bring him around enough to stagger up the aisle.... He got mixed up and tried to lead one of the bridesmaids up to the altar. It was a barrel of monkeys, that wedding was...."
Fanshaw was looking out at the bare trees and the rows of grey suburban houses. The smoke from the engine unrolled dense and white across the landscape against a leaden sky. Above the grinding rumble of wheels he could hear the two men talking beside him.
"I saw a man drop down stone dead at the altar once."
"You don't say."
"Dreadful thing... Heart failure it was that did it. The bride had just said about love, honor, and obey, when the fellow began to stagger around. When they picked him up he was dead. A good chap too, important in the Elks and secretary of the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce. It was a great shock to everyone. Marrying the girl he was going to marry had been thought the crowning success of his career."
"Funny time of year to have a country wedding, isn't it?"
Fanshaw turned laughing from the window.
"Most eccentric... Why, everything's full of hoar-frost."
When the train reached Durham station the sun was shining palely. The cars exuded furs and orchids and derby hats and canes from either end. Outside the station several limousines and taxicabs were lined up waiting for the guests, and in front of them, pacing up and down the platform with the stationmaster, was a tall sallow man in a silk hat and a frock coat of which the straight line was broken in front by a sudden little pot belly that looked like a football tucked in under his vest.
"That's Mr. Harrenden," said Henley. "Let's walk up to the house to avoid the rush... Gosh, look at that feather. I bet she's one of the Pittsburghers."
"In full warpaint too," said Fanshaw tittering.
"How do you do, Mr. Harrenden?"
"Howdy, boys... Glad to see you. Step right into one of those cars, or perhaps you'ld rather walk. Leave more room for the lovely ladies... See you up at the house... Why, how do you do, Mrs. Harrison-Smith?"
"Come on, Macdougan," said Henley. Fanshaw followed him through the station. They walked briskly through the main street of the town, past a row of new concrete stores, and out along a macadam road that crunched frostily underfoot. Now and then a limousine full of guests passed them.
"It's only half a mile and we have plenty of time."
"Do you know Miss Harrenden, Henley?"
"Very well... Why, I almost wanted to marry her myself at one time. She's a very lively young person."
Fanshaw glanced at him furtively out of the corners of his eyes. Henley had flushed red.
"Cold, the wind, isn't it?" Fanshaw said after a pause and turned up the velvet collar of his coat with a gloved hand.
"Extraordinary study a wedding is from the point of view of psychoanalysis."
"How do you mean?"
"Everybody gets a certain vicarious satisfaction out of it, don't you think so?"
"You mean the culmination of a romance? That sort of thing...?"
"I mean out of the two nice young things going off to bed together... The rest of it is just sublimation."
"I don't think that's altogether true... I think romance much more about how they are going to buy furniture and found a home and have new visiting cards printed."
"Sublimation all of it. Look how excited all those overdressed women are?"
"Just because they are going to a party and meeting their friends and trying to look their best... I don't agree with the Freudian emphasis on the lowest in our natures. I don't think it's a good thing... Anyway civilized people don't let themselves think about those subjects."
"That's what I'm saying... But what they think is just a veneer. Underneath our conscious thoughts and taboos we are over-sexed and anthropophagous savages."
They were walking up a drive bordered by barberry bushes of which the berries stood out scarlet over the greybrown lawn. They scraped the soles of their shoes against the scraper beside the door on the semicircular Colonial porch and found themselves being divested of their hats and overcoats by a maid who gave them numbered checks in return. Then clearing their throats slightly, smoothing the tails of their cutaways with one hand, they advanced up the hall to where in a black and silver dress with a tinsel Egyptian shawl over her shoulders stood Mrs. Harrenden smiling and pyramidal.
"Dick Henley, I haven't seen you for years. We must find time to have a chat... How do you do Mr... Mr..."
"Macdougan."
"Of course... You'll find the young people right upstairs in the library... I suppose you still are classed among the young people, Dick. All seems mere children to me at any rate... You will help me to make an oldfashioned jolly wedding of it, won't you? It's not a social affair at all. No one is invited but a few indispensable, intimate friends. So vulgar these great society weddings... So much nicer to have only a few intimate friends..."
With a silky swish Mrs. Harrenden stalked towards the door which was encumbered by a new car full of guests.
At the top of the brown-carpeted stairs they ran suddenly into Cham Mason who was crawling on his hands and knees across the upper hall.
"Hello, Cham."
"Why, if it isn't Fanshaw... Look, for crissake, help me... Susie Beveridge has broken her string of pearls. We're looking for them because with all these strange people... How do you do, Henley? I hadn't seen you." He got to his feet unsteadily and rubbed his hand across his closecropped yellow hair. "Gosh, I'm tight as a tick... Come into the library and have a cocktail... I got to have a lil' sip to sober me."
"I thought you were looking for the wedding ring," said Henley.
"Right after a lil' sip to sober up we mus' look for pearls again. Two of 'em rolled into the hall."
They followed Cham into the library, a great wainscoted room dense with the sweetness of the yellow mimosa that stood in pots in the fireplace. A group of girls and young men stood round a brass smoking table on which was a shaker and a great array of cocktail glasses shining in the grey light that poured in through a broad window. In a morrischair sat a fatfaced girl, her eyes brimmed with tears holding a lot of various sized pearls in her cupped hands.
"Count them again, Susie.... Maybe you've got them all," somebody said.
"Have a lil' cocktail with us and then we'll all look an we won't stop looking till we find every last one of 'em."
"But it's time, Cham," whined the girl in the morrischair.
"Well, where's Allie? I'm ready.... Here's looking at you, Fanshaw."
"Brush off your knees, they're all over dust.... I hear the orchestra tuning up. Come along, everybody."
"For God's sake, don't anybody get me started laughing," said Cham straightening himself up and goosestepping stiffly towards the door.
"Come on, Cham, they are waiting," said in a voice staccato with excitement a little grey-haired grey faced man in a frock coat too long for him who appeared in the door.
"All right, Dad, I'm coming.... But, where's Allie? I refuse to be married without Allie."
Fanshaw drank down his cocktail and followed. Behind him he heard a voice still whining, "I don't know where to put my pearls." He pulled the door to and started down the stairs beside a black toque with a cockade like a Westpointer's in it.
"My," the girl was saying, "You should have seen the rehearsal of the ceremony this morning. It was a scream. Everybody got the giggles so we couldn't go on."
"Sh-sh," went someone. Everything was quiet but for the rustle of dresses, an occasional cough or a sound of creaky tiptoeing. They were packed into a long drawing room down the middle of which an aisle had been made by a row of little orange trees in pots. Fanshaw flattened himself against the wall beside a picture that he was in constant fear of knocking down. The string orchestra grouped about the piano in the far corner behind the palms struck up. Everybody craned their necks.
"That's the overture," whispered someone.
"What, deary?" came in broken elderly tones.
"The overture, Mother,... Beethoven."
"Ah, Beethoven."
"Sh-sh."
The overture stopped. In the silence feverish whispering was heard in the hall and a man's voice loud and angry: "And for Heaven's sake don't forget which pocket it's in."
"Sh-sh."
The orchestra was playing Mendelssohn's Wedding March. Fanshaw could see the heads of people moving two by two up the aisle to the end of the room where the minister stood with a purple stole round his neck. The bride and groom were hidden by an orange tree but he could see the backs of the bridesmaids in peachcolored silk and a shimmer of orange tulle on their hats, and the light shining on Mr. Harrenden's bald head. A sneeze across the room was stifled in a handkerchief. There was some coughing in the wedding party and the minister began to read the service in a chanting nasal tone. Fanshaw was breathing deep of a heavy lemonsweet smell... Must be orange blossoms.
* * * *
The table stretched long and white in both directions, bordered by faces, black coats, bright colored hats. The shine of silver and plates and champagne glasses was blurred by cake crumbs, rind of fruit, nutshells, napkins.
Gracious, have I had too much to drink? the thought streaked across the shimmer of Fanshaw's brain and the sound of voices and the smell of food. He was half turned round in his chair, talking rapidly and smoothly, in spite of the fact that his tongue felt bigger than usual, to the girl next to him who wore a pink dress and kept laughing and laughing.
"Cultivated people in this generation," he was saying, "Are like foreigners who suddenly find themselves in a country whose language they do not know, whose institutions they do not understand, like people in one of those great state barges the Venetians had, that Canaletto drew so well..."
"Isn't this wedding a scream," said the girl in pink, laughing and laughing. "I've never been to such a nice wedding as this and this is my fourth already this winter... If a winter wedding's like this, what would a spring wedding be like? Aren't they just too lovely together? I think Chamberlain's awfully good-looking, don't you?"
They were standing up, moving into another room, bright dresses and black coats jamming the doorway. Fanshaw found himself sitting alone in a deep armchair smoking a cigar. What he needed was some coffee, he was saying to himself. After an oldfashioned jolly wedding he needed coffee. He got to his feet and walked with care and deliberation to the table where the coffee service was. My, things were happening fast. Careful, he must be careful. There was no one in the room but a short pudgy man in a grey suit who was drinking a whiskey and soda, shaking the glass meditatively between every sip.
"Where have they all gone?" asked Fanshaw querulously.
"Getting out the Stutz, I guess."
"How's that?" Fanshaw gulped some coffee.
"Didn't you know that the young couple were going on their honeymoon in the big red Stutz Harrenden gave them? An elegantly matched pair."
"Cham and I roomed together, Freshman year in college," Fanshaw found himself saying.
"Ah, College! That's the place to make connections."
They stood looking at each other nodding their heads knowingly, Fanshaw with his coffeecup, the pudgy man with his highball glass, when the sound of a racing motor attracted their attention. It was followed by a shout from the front of the house. Fanshaw went to the window and pulled back the curtain. The guests cheering and laughing filled the colonial porch and surged round a shaking roadster in the drive. Fanshaw caught a glimpse of Alice Harrenden's pale face under a little brown hat and veil as she climbed into the car. Her eyes were swollen and her lips tight as if she were going to cry. Cham waved a buff cap and opened the cutout. Rice hailed on the car. An old sneaker hit Cham in the head. He honked the horn, bent over the wheel and the car shot around the bend of the driveway. People looked at each other constrainedly and began going back into the house.
Somewhere quiet till this passes off, Fanshaw was thinking. He made his way back through the house and out into the garden. Why, I'm staggering down the path. Mucky underfoot from the thaw. Bench to sit on. Dry bench. He leaned back and stared up at the streaming greypurple clouds that brightened to yellow in spots where a little sun broke through. Oughtn't to have drunk so much champagne. After all, if no one noticed... Jolly thing an oldfashioned jolly wedding. My wedding. The Macdougan wedding. If it could be Nan. But Wenny... No, no. Someone I've not met yet. Perhaps she'd have red hair, auburn hair, a Titian blonde. Aretino had to flee Venice when he was accused of sodomy. He had eight beautiful mistresses in a great palace on the Grand Canal. And I've never had a woman. Wedding parties, fellows phoning easy girls, through all that lonely as a cloud. Horrible coward, I guess. That night walking with Wenny along the road to Blue Hill couples of girls wanting to be picked up, their eyes under the arclight clicking into ours. Hullo, kiddo. Hello, cutie. But Wenny, that sort of thing just isn't done. Danger of exposure too, scandal, disease. And the street through Somerville dark under the May-rustling trees, pink blobs of arclights and the shuddering green fringes of foliage about them and the hips, the wabbly hips of stumpy girls. When walking, when welldressed people walked, thinking of the Renaissance, of distant splendid things, all this surged about them out of the long streets of night. Festering web of desire, grimy probing hands, groping eyes, toughs and hard girls circling like dogs before a fight. Wrestling sweaty bodies, hands palping, feeling, feeling up.... O, I don't want to think of all that. Oldfashioned jolly wedding. Pull yourself together.
Fanshaw sat with his head buried in his hands, his elbows on his knees, staring at the gravel between his feet. After a while he got up, cold and stiff. The dazzle of the champagne had passed off. The orchestra in the house was playing a foxtrot. Probably caught a cold sitting out here like an idiot. He walked meditatively towards the conservatory, scraped his feet off on the mat and stepped in. The warm sugary air was soothing after the rawness of outdoors. He stood a long while looking at the little sprouts that had formed at the tips of the fronds of a big Australian fern. The door at the end of the conservatory opened letting in a burst of ragtime from the drawing room, voices, sliding of feet on a hardwood floor. All of a sudden he wanted to go away to be walking by himself down the road to the station. He went out into the garden again for fear someone should see him and speak to him. He'd slip away without saying goodby. Such a crowd no one could possibly notice. Groping in his pocket for his coatcheck he went round the house towards the front door. In an embrasure beside a fieldstone chimney was a trellised bench, on the bench a hat of orange tulle, beside the hat a fluffy peachcolored dress, a flushed face thrown back, a long lock of undone hair curling spikily over a shoulder, and stooped about her, half holding her up, a young man in a black suit. Her eyes were closed, his face crushed into hers. One hand gripped the young man hard like a claw by the elbow. Fanshaw stood a moment breathless staring at them. Then he walked off fast with the blood throbbing in his ears.
On the way to the station he kept thinking: And the years slip by like telegraph poles past you in the train and people marry and spoon on benches and I'm always, alone, moral, refined, restrained. If I were only made like Wenny, I'd enjoy life. Disgusting, though, out in the open like that where anybody could see, worse than factory hands at Norumbega.
One must try to be beautiful about life.
Drops fell shining from the trees about him into the trodden yellow slush of the path at his feet. In the air shuddering with the foretaste of spring of the thaw were constant rainbow glints of water. Wenny's knees and shoulders ached. His feet were swollen from frostbite. The bristles on his chin rasped against the upturned collar of his coat. Well, it would be spring soon, he was saying to himself, and this spring... Fanshaw's grey raincoat and long meditative stride and his rubbers flashed past among the Saturday afternoon crowd. Without thinking Wenny ran after him.
"Hello, Fanshaw."
"O, Wenny," Fanshaw thrust out both hands; "I've been almost worried sick about you. Where have you been? My dear boy, you look a wreck."
"I don't see why?"
"Here it is, three days you've vanished from the face of the earth."
"I haven't been anywhere else that I know of."
"Nan's been fearfully uneasy."
"That's funny."
"That's quite all right. She told me all about it. I told her it was just nerves, that morning. She thought it was, too. You must take better care of yourself. But Wenny, where have you been?"
"Looking for a job."
"You poor child! Look, I've got to go to the Touraine. We can wash up and go up to Nan's. She said she'd be in at teatime."
"No, I'd rather not."
"You must come, Wenny. O, when will you grow up? Let's walk along, we're obstructing traffic."
"First, you must lend me fifty cents," said Wenny with a dry little laugh. "I'm most split with hunger."
"Can't you wait till we get out to Nan's? She'll have tea for us."
"No, I can't, Fanshaw, you old fool. I haven't eaten since yesterday morning, or maybe it was the day before that."
"Good God! There's Dupont's opposite. Let's go up there, a horrid place, but you won't mind eating something there, will you? But Wenny, why didn't you tell me you were all out of money?"
As they climbed the stair a smell of food and baking powder filled Wenny's nostrils. He inhaled it eagerly. In the restaurant it was very stuffy, a couple of waitresses in starched aprons were sitting at tables. A grimy man in his shirtsleeves carried in a tray of freshwashed glasses in through a green baize door. As Wenny pulled off his overcoat he thought he was going to faint. Letting the coat drop to the floor he grabbed the table and lowered himself into a chair. The expression of consternation on Fanshaw's face as he picked up the coat made him laugh so that his eyes filled with tears.
"Well, what will you have? Don't eat too much, it might make you sick."
"O, Fanshaw, you're such an old woman."
The waitress, a rawboned woman with dead cod's eyes, hung over the table threateningly.
"Bring me some boiled eggs and tea and toast right away, please." Something in Wenny exulted strangely under the hostile glare of the waitress as she looked at his muddy shoes and unshaven chin.
"Three minutes?"
"Yes, and quickly please."
The waitress rustled starchily away.
"How funny Fanshaw, I'd been thinking of boiled eggs for hours and I never thought about their being three minutes."
"But, where have you been, you poor child?... I've been to Cham Mason's wedding."
"Heaps of wonderful places.... I've been finding my place in society."
"Where?"
"On the benches."
"But, why didn't you go to the Alumni Employment Bureau? They'd have found you a job."
"I didn't want that kind of a job."
The smell of the bread the waitress set before him was overpoweringly sweet. His fingers trembled so he spilt half the egg on the side of the glass breaking it. He ate hurriedly without tasting anything.
"Bring me two more eggs, please.... Lord, but tea is wonderful stuff." The warm savor of tea filled his head. All of a sudden he felt very talkative. "I tried to ship as a seaman. You stand in a large room full of pipesmoke and a man chalks up the names of ships on a blackboard.... The finest names of ships: there's been the Arethusa and the Adolphus Q. Bangs and the Heart's Desire and the Muskokacola or something like that.... But, I always seemed to get down to the office too late or I didn't have five dollars to give the mate or something. Didn't have much luck with bussboy either. It's amazing, Fanshaw, how many people are just crazy to wash dishes."
Wenny laughed and choked over a gulp of tea.
"Don't eat so fast," said Fanshaw in a strange hoarse voice.
"Why not?"
"You'll choke, that's why."
"God, I wish I would... Have you ever ... felt so's you didn't care if you choked or not? D'you know I met a fine kid named Whitey. He could go without eating three days an' never notice it. I could never do that. I don't guess there's much of any thing I could do."
Fanshaw was looking at his watch.
"Really, we should be going.... I've got to go out to dinner, Wenny, I wish there were something I could do to help."
"You can pay for my eggs, you old put you."
Fanshaw paid the cheque; then he said rather solemnly:
"Look, you must let me lend you some money."
"All right, give me five bucks."
At the door, Wenny waited a moment for Fanshaw to come from the washroom. His head was singing dizzily. It's all up now, he was saying to himself. He thought of his room and his bed; delicious it will be to stretch out between the clean smooth sheets and sleep.
Going up on the car he felt a haze of contentment stealing over him. All about people nodded to the joggle, hatchetfaced women and flabby jowled men. Fanshaw's talk and his own answers droned beyond a great drowsy curtain in which the phrase Par delicatesse j'ai perdu la vie, wove in and out endlessly. Outside autos slushed through streets running with the thaw. Fanshaw was saying something about the deceitful warmth of the day, spring-like.
In front of them, four seats ahead in a blue hat with cherries on it, was Ellen. Wenny clenched his teeth, why would his damn pulse speed up so? She turned and stared at him with a comical little expression about her mouth. He drew his eyes away quickly, felt himself hideously flushing.—You skunk afraid to recognize her because she's a whore, are you? Don't want Fanshaw to know, do you? snarled an angry voice in his head. Her lips were pale today. He remembered the sweetish fatty smell of the rouge on her lips that night. And only four nights ago; how long. He didn't dare look at her again.
The car stopped.
"Come on, Wenny," came Fanshaw's voice briskly.
They were splashing along towards the purple lacework of twigs of the Fenway trees. Fanshaw was talking unconcernedly about a Caravaggio the museum had bought that had turned out to be spurious. And there were the worn gold letters The Swansea sliding down the glass door and the oil smell of the elevator. O I must go away from here. Then Nan's oval face, her voice strangely caressing. Brainstorm, the comfortable word. Teacups clinking and the steam of the teapot and dusk very misty over the Fenway.
Why hadn't he gone away with Ellen, spoken to her, kissed her in front of Fanshaw. If she'd fallen in love with him it would have been up to the ears, the whole hog; those women were like that.
"You just missed Fitzie," Nan was saying. She had just poured herself out a cup of tea into which she shook meditatively a few drops of cream from the empty pitcher. "O she's such a scream... I don't know what I'd do without her. Now I know all the gossip and about the Summer Street murder case and everything... And do you remember the girl in the Fadettes we thought was the violinist at the Venice? Well, that wasn't the girl at all. Fitzie told me all about her... It seems she came back to try to get her job again and Mrs. Thing who runs it said of course it would be impossible. I don't see what her morals have to do with her playing, do you? And the poor girl's going to have a baby... Fitzie was so funny about it, said she thought it was terrible things like that should happen so soon... O what would I do without Fitzie?"
"But the fellow she went off with must be a scoundrel," said Fanshaw. "A man like that ought to be shot."
"She ought to have thought twice before she did it, that's all. It's not his fault particularly."
"And dry-rotted scraping out Light Cavalry for the Fadettes...." Wenny caught himself. No, he wasn't going to talk. Nan looked him full in the face for an instant. Her eyes were dark, dilated; he thought she was going to burst into tears.
"Such droll things have been going on at the Conservatoire." Nan, her face flushing, threw herself into a stream of talk. "Poor Isolda Jones is madly in love with Salinski and had hysterics during her violin lesson and there's a dreadful scandal about the last Symphony concert. It seems that..." She stopped talking. No one spoke. Fanshaw moved his spoon uneasily about in his saucer. "Wenny, have some more to eat," she said sharply and got to her feet and went to the window.
Wenny sat without moving, staring at her back dark and slender against the dusk.
"You must be dreadfully exhausted, Wenny," said Fanshaw in a low voice.
"The evening star's red tonight," said Nan from the window. "Is it on account of the mist, or is it Mars, I wonder?"
"We could look it up in the almanac," said Fanshaw vaguely.
Wenny stood for a moment in the window beside Nan. His blood throbbed with other remembered stars, blooming green in the amethyst sky above the Fenway, gulped suddenly by the stupid cubes of the further apartment houses. The green of them somehow shone in the lamps down brick streets where he and Nan had gone arm in arm in a forgotten dream of walking with her through a port town and seeing at the end of the street masts and tackle and bellying sails and white steam puffs from the sirens of steamers, and going off together alone some sunset. She's in love with me. If I had the courage....
"Well, I must be off to the Hargroves' for dinner," said Fanshaw cheerfully. "O it is a relief to know you are all right, Wenny. We were worried sick about you."
"I'm tired. I must go home," said Wenny firmly and turned away from Nan.
He went away without looking at her again.
* * * *
My dear son:It has pleased me more than I can say to hear of your sensible and manly course in taking a job. I am sure that earning your own living you will find inspiring and helpful, and that you will come to regret your past callousness and restlessness. Indeed, this great trial may be a disguised blessing. We all have to learn by experience. I myself went through moments in my youth inexpressibly painful for me to recall, bitter moments of profligacy and despair, and that I came through them with my soul alive was only by the merciful Help of the Allknowing and Allforgiving Creator in Whom I have never lost faith, nay not for one instant.You, my dear boy, I trust and pray will follow the same course. I cannot but think that had I not let my poor sister Elizabeth take you from us, from your real Christian home, your battle might have been less hard.Your mother joins me in love and in the earnest hope that you will come back to us.Your loving father,JONAS E. WENDELL.
My dear son:
It has pleased me more than I can say to hear of your sensible and manly course in taking a job. I am sure that earning your own living you will find inspiring and helpful, and that you will come to regret your past callousness and restlessness. Indeed, this great trial may be a disguised blessing. We all have to learn by experience. I myself went through moments in my youth inexpressibly painful for me to recall, bitter moments of profligacy and despair, and that I came through them with my soul alive was only by the merciful Help of the Allknowing and Allforgiving Creator in Whom I have never lost faith, nay not for one instant.
You, my dear boy, I trust and pray will follow the same course. I cannot but think that had I not let my poor sister Elizabeth take you from us, from your real Christian home, your battle might have been less hard.
Your mother joins me in love and in the earnest hope that you will come back to us.
Your loving father,
JONAS E. WENDELL.
Wenny folded the letter and put it back in his pocket. This was the third time he had read it. He gulped the rest of his coffee and left the lunchroom full of hurried breakfasters. Outside the east wind stung his face, made his eyes water.
Then it was March. Now it's April. Last time I told myself I'd kill myself if I stuck it another month. In September that was and in February and now it's April. The music of the spheres makes the months revolve... Think you fool, think. Bitter moments of profligacy and despair. That's me all right, except he got the profligacy and I get the despair. Go whoring and repent and yours is the kingdom of God. A fine system all right but he repented so damn hard he spoiled my chances. Like being a eunuch, funny that, a generation of eunuchs. Your sensible and manly course in taking a job wasting breath coaching Mr. Lelan's dubs, accounted quite a genius at it too. Inspiring and helpful. God! Poor Auntie's education. That's what it's done to me; and next winter teaching, helping to inoculate other poor devils with the same dry rot.
He was walking out along Massachusetts Avenue broad and dusty through the little jigsawed houses of Somerville. In was a bitter slategrey day of razorcold wind. In the irritation of his mood he took joy in the dust smarting in his eyes and the ache of the cold in his forehead. Gradually his thoughts faded under the regular beat of his steps. It was Sunday and church bells had begun to ring. Gee, I must go home or I'll be getting blue again, he said to himself; the biddy 'll have done the room. He walked back towards Cambridge without thinking of anything, shivering, his hands deep in his pockets. When he had slammed the door behind him he threw himself on the bed, his cheeks throbbing from the wind, and lay a long while staring blankly at the ceiling.
He looked at his watch. Ten-thirty. Now he's waiting while they sing the first hymn, fiddling with his prayerbook, wondering if he's forgotten any of the main headings of the sermon. And I'm just like him. Less energy that's all. A chip of the old block. Listen to them settling back flabbily into their pews in the mustard yellow, mudpurple, niggerpink light from the imitation stained glass windows. Now they're on their feet again, better than trained seals. His voice so suave so booming—my voice will be like that—Let us pray.
Wenny sat up on the edge of the bed. God damn my father; I will live him down if it kills me.
He started turning over the pages of the books on his table, seeking escape in their familiar chattering type, in the accustomedness of their smell from the eating acid of his thoughts.
* * * *
Outside of Herb Roscoe's door, Wenny was struck by the usual faint smell of oiled leather and pipesmoke. A tall man in a grey flannel shirt with face and neck and forearms lean and very tanned, opened the door slowly to his knock.
"How's the armory?" said Wenny.
"Pretty good. How's yourself?" said Roscoe in a deep drawling voice. "Sit down." As he spoke he swept a pile of books off the arms of the morrischair. Then he stood in the fireplace, where a pair of high leather moccasins were to soak in a pan of oil, polishing a rifle while he talked. "Gee, you should have seen the scores we made at rifle practice yesterday. Not a soul could hit a barn door. I think we'll have the rottenest damn team... God, I hate this place."
"So do I," said Wenny, lying back in the chair with his eyes half closed.
"Why don't you get out of it. I'm goin' the very minute I get my degree like a flash o' lightnin'."
"Haven't got the energy."
"Hell, man, it don't take much energy to buy a railroad ticket."
"Doesn't it?"
"How's your soft job?"
"I'm going to chuck it soon. I think I'll go to Mexico with you Herb."
"All right, come along. Better learn to shoot though."
"I've had another letter from my father."
"How's he now?"
"Tickled to death."
"Well, that's damn good. I'm damn glad to hear it. You know you oughtn't to be so highbrow about your father. I imagine he's a damn good scout." Roscoe put the rifle up on the rack over the mantel and began to fill a pipe slowly and methodically. "D'you know, I think all this father and son agitation is foolishness, Wendell. You are like your father, we all are, so why fuss about it? Nobody's forcin' you to live with him. But I wouldn't stay on round here. It isn't healthy for you, seeing how you feel about it. I wouldn't stay myself, except for the library."
Roscoe walked back and forth in front of the fireplace as he talked with the soft, lithe steps of a man trying to walk noiselessly through woods.
"Say, Herb, will you lend me that little .22 revolver of yours for a day or two?"
"What do you want with it? You aren't going to shoot up the dean of the Graduate School with it, are you?"
"No, no," said Wenny laughing a little shrilly. "It's curious ... I'd like to carry a gun for a day or two ... In the first place I've never done it, and the thought of death in my back pocket makes me a little nervous, and I'd like to try my nerve out, and then I just might need it ... I'll tell you why ... I'm going in for low life a little. Heavy slumming ... I'll tell you about it in a day or two, honestly I will, when things get under way a little. There's a woman in the case and everything, and a bum and a Chinaman."
"Gee, I wish you'll let me in on it. I'm just pining away for excitement in this dull hole."
"Honestly I'll tell you all about it in a day or two, but I'm such a damn coward I want to test my nerve out alone first. Don't be uneasy if I don't turn up for a day or two. I'll be all right."
Roscoe handed him a little blue steel revolver and a handful of cartridges.
"Don't get pinched for concealed weapons."
"Never fear," said Wenny jumping tensely to his feet.
"Do be careful, Wendell; it's always the man scared of a gun who shoots himself or the innocent bystanders instead of bagging his game. Get me?"
"O, I'll be careful. Anyway, there won't be any shooting. Just a precaution like rubbers. But I must be off. I have an engagement. Thanks a lot."
Wenny, going out the door, caught a contracted look of anxiety on Roscoe's tanned face as, puffing at his pipe, he strode back and forth in front of the fireplace. Wenny went down the dark brick corridor towards his own room, the gun in his back pocket pressing hard and cold on his thigh.
* * * *
Wenny walked among the muddy paths of the Fenway. Patches of snow among the shrubberies were crumbling fast in the tingle of spring that flushed the misty afternoon. The twigs of forsythias showed intensest yellow against the sopping grey of turf. In the gravel paths there was a tiny lisping sound of water as the frost came out of the ground. The rustle of it in the ruddy light was maddening like the rustle of silk. This womanish hysteria, he was saying to himself; to escape it tense and collected the way the earth slithers out from between the tight fists of winter. A man and a woman frowsy and middle-aged, a hat with mauve pansies beside a dust-grained derby; as Wenny passed the woman was tapping restlessly on the gravel with a narrow pointed toe. The thought came to him: Perhaps Nan and I will be like that, afraid to look in each other's eyes because we didn't dare when we were young and talk about if we'd done this and if we'd done that... What a rotten thing to think about the first day of spring.
In his back pocket a hard shape pressed against the fleshy part of his thigh; from its focus his whole being was stiffening to hardness.
He turned and with a sudden spring in his step crossed the street from the park, passed the livid tomblike oblong of the Dental Clinic, and pulled open the glass door of the Swansea. A grindorgan was playing at the curb. The glass door slammed behind him, cutting off the Marseillaise on an upward note. He ran up the stairs and stood still a moment in front of the reddish-stained door.
Through a bitter film of constraint he saw Nan in a pearlgrey dress pulling open the door for him.
"I never saw that one before."
"This dress? Do you like it?"
Down the hall came the aviary sound of people at tea.
"They'll be gone in a minute; don't look so worried." Nan looked in his face with a little mocking smile that faded out tremulously as she spoke. "Do wait, Wenny, I want to talk to you."
He followed the swish of her dress down the corridor. Richly the curve of her neck caught a glow of creamy rose from the pearlcolored silk.
"Have a cup of tea," she said in her hostess voice after introducing him to a large woman with beaded tragedy eyes and a lean whiny-voiced man who stood beside the teatable. Balancing a cup, Wenny settled himself against the wall beside the mantel, tried to think of nothing.
"... Dreadful, isn't it, how Boston is being transformed?"
"No, really, you wouldn't know it any more."
"We'd got used to the Irish, but now walking across the Common you don't see a soul who's not a Jew or an Italian."
"But don't you think they bring us anything?" Nan's voice, indifferent, from the teatable.
"What can they bring but fleas? The scum of south Europe...
"... O, Nancibel, you do have the most delightful teas."
"Why, Jane, I often wonder why on earth I do it. Doesn't it seem the height of absurdity to collect a lot of indifferent people, a regular zoo, in a room and pour a little tea down their throats and tell them: Now, have a good time?"
"But one must have some sort of society ... And you know perfectly well you are just fishing, Nancibel. Why, the cleverest people in Boston come to your teas, and as for celebrities!"
"Mr. Preston, won't you let me give you a little more tea? Yours looks cold and horrid...."
"... No, I wouldn't call 'The Way of All Flesh' a great novel.'"
"But, really, I'd like to know what is great then."
"A great satire, but not a great novel. . . . It's too embittered, not Olympian and balanced enough to be truly great."
"But as a philosopher ..."
"Ah, as a philosopher ..."
Through rigid glassy layers Wenny watched the nodding of heads, lifting of teacups, setting down of plates, brushing of fingertips. Occasionally he saw himself going through wooden gestures of politeness, heard himself speak. At last they had all gone; he was alone with Nan in the room that smelt of tea and scalded lemon and cake. Outside the windows the ruddy mist was purpling to twilight.
"O, Wenny, why on earth do I do it?"
"I guess because you like it, Nan."
"Probably you're right." She laughed happily. "I'd never thought of that before.... No, I hate it, and all those people. Imagine what Fitzie told me today. She said you always turned up as a sign that tea was over and it was time to wait not on the order of her going but go at once... Isn't she a fool? Then she added that it was rumored round Jordan that my engagement to Fanshaw would be announced any day... O, Wenny, people are a scream!"
"I probably do look rather grouchy when I come here and find a lot of those young hens cackling about your technique and that wretched old cadenza hound ..."
"It's pretty ridiculous, Wenny, that two people who know each other as well as we do can't talk...." Nan interrupted suddenly, speaking slowly, choosing her words: "Can't talk about our ... can't explain ourselves. O, I wonder if we'll ever know each other."
"Perhaps the fact that we need to explain ourselves ..."
"You mean it proves that we can't?"
Wenny nodded.
"Or perhaps it's just cowardice," he went on after a long pause, feeling everything within the cold bars of his ribs throb sickeningly. "Almost everything is that."
"Why can't we be sensible?"
"It's not sensible, it's alive I'd want to be ... But this is repeating," he said harshly with trembling lips, straightening himself up. It was as if a rind had burst in him letting out warm, sweetish floods; as if he were crying beside a grave where she had lain dead for years and lifetimes, his memory full of an ivory body he had loved.
They were silent, not looking at each other.
There was a knock at the door. Nan drew her breath in sharply and went to open. Wenny heard Fanshaw's voice in the hall.
"O I'm so glad to find you. I thought it'ld be just my luck to miss you both and spend a dull evening all alone. I have had the most detestable day."
"Let's walk in town to supper," said Nan in a hurried, throaty voice.
Walking down a broad street towards town, they had the dome of the Christian Science Church ahead of them swelled with purple against a tremendous scarletflaring sky across which grimy green clouds scudded on gusts of rising wind. Sharp flaws of cold were clotting the mist and chilling all reminiscence of thaw and spring out of the air. Footsteps rang shrill and fast on the pavements and were lost in the clang of streetcars and whirr of motors grinding slowly when they came out on Massachusetts Avenue. Overhead, above the bright shine of shop windows through which faces drifted steadily, outline drifting into outline, like snowflakes past an arclight, the sky was a churning of dark green clouds fast blotting the clear, fiery afterglow. Wenny could hear himself talking to Fanshaw as they walked, but all the while he was intent on the people he passed; smooth, velvety-warm masks of young men and girls, wooden masks of men bleached by offices, crumpled masks of old women; under them all seemed to tremble something jellylike and eager, something half caught sight of in their eyes that had thrilled to the warm afternoon, that this sudden cold searching through the dusty concrete grooves of the city congealed to shuddering crystals of terror. He felt a sudden maudlin desire to climb on a hydrant and talk, to draw people in circle after circle about him and explain all the joy and agony he felt in words so simple that they would tear off their masks and tell their lives too; it would be his face, his eyes, his mouth moulding words all about him when the masks were off. The picture brightened painfully in his mind.