AT the flower store in the station he bought a red carnation for his lapel and walked briskly toward the big clock.
A slim girl was there at the inquiry desk, very attractively dressed. His pulse bounded. She turned a forlornly pretty face and he saw that it was Hilda Hansen of Wisconsin.
Their hands met. They wandered off toward the dim corridor where the telephones are.
“It was dear of you to come,” said she rather shyly. “I shall feel better now. I was beginning to think—well, that you didn't like me very well.”
“Hilda—that's not fair!” he murmured. Murmured, IF the whole truth were told, rather blithely. For Hilda was pretty. Her soft dependence was the sweetest flattery. Her simple, easily satisfied mind was a relief after certain slightly more desperate adventures. And so, when he said, “I'm sorry you're going, Hilda. Is it for long?” he spoke as sincerely as is commonly done.
“For good!” she blurted out in reply to this; and the tears came. He took her arm and walked her farther down the corridor. The little story was tumbling out now, helter skelter. Her father had stopped her allowance, ordered her home. She was leaving forever the freedom of dear old Greenwich Village. Naturally Hy kissed her.
He kissed her again, right out on the train platform, with belated passengers elbowing by and porters looking on. It was Hy's little sacrament of freedom. He could kiss them now—in public—as he chose! For he was fired. No more gloomy old office! No more of the gliding Miss Hardwick! No more of the doctor's oratory! No more of that damn buzzer!
The thing to do, of course, was to go back and pack up his belongings; but he couldn't bring himself to it. So he stayed out until lunch time, filling in the odd hour with an eleven o'clock movie show. He lunched expensively and alone at the club, off a porterhouse steak with mushrooms, potatoes “au gratin,” creamed spinach, musty ale in pewter, romaine salad, Camembert cheese with toasted biscuit and black coffee.
When he reentered his office, who should be sitting there but the Worm. Before he could overcome a slight embarrassment and begin the necessary process of telling his story, a heavy crushing step sounded in the corridor, passed the door, went on into the big room in the corner.
The Worm rose abruptly.
“Isn't that the Walrus?” he asked.
“The same,” said Hy.
“I've got to see him. Will you take me in?”
“Oh, sit down! I can tell you more than he can.”
“Perhaps, but at another time.”
Hy emerged from his self-absorption at this point sufficiently to observe that the Worm, usually smiling and calm, was laboring under some excitement.
“All right,” said he, “come along!” And quite light of heart, afraid of nothing now, he led the Worm in and introduced him as, “My friend, Mr. Bates ofThe 'Courier.” Then, hearing his telephone ringing again, he hurried back to his own office.
It would be Betty, of course. Well, as far as the office was concerned, it didn't matter now. She could call! Anybody could call.... He picked up the receiver.
“Oh,” he murmured—“hello, Silvia! Wait a moment.” He got up and closed the door. “All right,” he said then. “What is it, little girl?”
“Oh!” said she, “thank God, I've found you! Hy, something dreadful has almost happened. It has done such things to my pride! But I knew you wouldn't want me to turn to any one else for help, would you?”
“Oh, no,” said he, with sudden queer misgivings, “of course not! Not for a minute!”
“I knew you'd feel that way, dear. Are you dreadfully busy? Could you—I know it's a lot to ask—but could you, for me, dear, run out for five minutes?”
“I will!” said he, with an emphasis aimed as much at himself as at her. “Where are you?”
“I'm talking from the drug store across the street, right near you. I'll wait outside.”
The misgivings deepened as Hy walked slowly out to the elevator and then out to the street. Hy would have to be classified, in the last analysis, as a city bachelor, a seasoned, hardened city bachelor. The one prospect that instantly and utterly terrifies a hardened city bachelor is that of admitting that another has a moral claim upon him. The essence of bachelordom is the avoidance of personal responsibility. Therefore it was a reserved, rather dignified Hy who crossed the street and joined the supple, big-eyed, conspicuous young woman in the perfect-fitting tailor suit. Another factor in Hy's mood, perhaps, was that the memory of Hilda Hansen's soft young lips against his own had not yet wholly died.
He and Silvia walked slowly around the corner. “I don't know how to tell you,” she said in an unsteady voice. There were tears in her eyes, too. “Hy, it's awful! It's my—my furniture!” The tears fell now. She wiped them away. “They say positively they'll take it away tonight. Every stick. I've cried so! I tried to explain that I'm actually rehearsing with Cunningham. Before the end of the month I can take care of it easily. But—” Hy stopped short, stood on the curb, looked at her. His head was clear and cold as an adding machine. “How much would it take?” said he.
“Oh, Hy.” She was crying again. “Don't talk in that way—so cold—”
“I know,” he broke in, “but—”
“It's fifty dollars. You see—”
“I haven't got it,” said he.
There was a perceptible ring in his voice. She looked at him, puzzled.
“Silvia, dear—I'm fired.”
“Fired? Hy—when?”
“To-day. Chucked out. I haven't got half of that—to live on, even.”
“Oh, my dear boy, you oughtn't to live in this careless way, not saving a cent—”
“Of course I oughtn't. But I do. That's me.”
“But what on earth—what reason—”
“Conduct. I'm a bad one.” He was almost triumphant. “Only last night I was seen leaving a questionable restaurant—where they dance and drink—with a young lady—”
The tears were not falling now. Miss Silvia So-rana was looking straight at him, thoughtful, even cool.
“Are you telling me the truth, Hy Lowe?”
“The gospel. I'm not even the proletariat. I'm the unemployed.”
“Well,” said she—“well!” And she thought it deliberately out. “Well—I guess you can't be blamed for that!”
Which impressed Hy later when he thought it over, as a curious remark. They parted shortly after this.
But first she said, “Hy, dear, I don't like to seem to be leaving you on account of this. It must be dreadfully hard for you.” So they had a soda, sitting in the drug store window. Hy almost smiled, thinking of the madness of it—he and an unmistakable actress, in working hours, here actually in the shadow of grim old Scripture House! And it was nobody's business! It could hurt nobody! He had not known that freedom would be like this. There was a thrill about it; so deep a thrill that after he had put the sympathetic but plainly hurrying Silvia on an up-town car and had paid for her as she entered, he could not bring himself to return to the office. Even with the Worm up there, wondering what had become of him. Even with all his personal belongings waiting to be cleared from the desk and packed.
He wandered over to Washington Square, his spirit reveling in the lazy June sunshine. He stopped and listened to the untiring hurdy gurdy; threw coins to the little Italian girls dancing on the pavement. He thought of stopping in at the Parisian, ordering a “sirop” and reading or trying to read, those delightfully naughty French weeklies. He knew definitely now that he was out for a good time.
There was a difficulty. It is easier to have a good time when there is a girl about. Really it was rather inopportune that Hilda Hansen had flitted back to Wisconsin. She needed a guardian; still she had been an appealing young thing up there at the Grand Central. But she had gone! And Silvia—well, that little affair had taken an odd and not over-pleasant turn. The pagan person had, plainly, her sophisticated moments. He was glad that he had seen through her. For that matter, you couldn't ever trust her sort.
Then creeping back into his mind like a pet dog after a beating, hesitant, all fears and doubts of a welcome, came the thought of Betty Deane.
WHERE was Betty, anyway! And why hadn't she called up the office. It began to seem to him that she might have done that after her little effort of the morning. Hitherto, before that ridiculous marriage of hers, she had always put up with Sue Wilde, over in Tenth Street. Perhaps she was there now. Mental pictures began to form of Betty's luxuriant blonde beauty. And it was something for a peach like that to leave home and rich husband, come hurrying down to New York and call you up at an ungodly hour in the morning. He remembered suddenly, warmly, the time he had first kissed Betty—over in New Jersey, on a green hillside, of a glowing afternoon. His laziness fell away. Briskly he walked around into Tenth Street and rang Sue's bell.
Betty answered—prettier than ever, a rounded but swaying young creature who said little and that slowly.
“Hello!” she said, “Sue's out.”
“I don't want Sue. Came to see you, Betty. I'm fired—out of a job—and while it lasts, hilariously happy. How about a bite at the Parisian?”
So they had humorously early tea at the old French restaurant near the Square. Then Betty went up-town on the bus for a little shopping, and Hy walked, at last, back to the office. They had decided to meet again for dinner.
Scripture House loomed before him—long, dingy, grim in the gay sunshine. He stood motionless on the farther curb, staring at it. Had three years of his life been spent, miserably spent, on a treadmill, in that haunt of hypocrisy? Had he been selling his presumably immortal soul on the instalment plan, at forty-five a week? Or was it a hideous dream? Was he dreaming now?
He shuddered. Then, slowly, he walked across the street, deriding to pack up and get out for good just as swiftly as the thing could be done. He was glad, downright glad, that it was his character that had been so crudely assailed. That let him out. He needn't be decent—needn't wait a month to break in a new man—nothing like that! He wondered mildly what the Worm would say, and Peter? It might be necessary to borrow a bit until he could get going again. Though perhaps they would take him back on the old paper until he could find something regular.
The sense of being haunted by a dream grew as he went up in the elevator and walked along the hall. He saw with new eyes the old building he had so long taken for granted—saw the worn hollows in the oak floors, the patched cracks in the plaster; he smelt the old musty odor with new' repugnance; noted the legends on office doors he passed with a wry smile, the Reverend This and the Reverend That, the Society for the Suppression of Such and Such, the commercially religious Somebody & Company.
He had to will his hand to open the door lettered, “My Brother's Keeper; Hubbell Harkness Wilde, D. D.” He had to will his feet to carry him within. But once within, he stood motionless and the queerness seized on him, widened his eyes, caught at his breath. For the place was absolutely still. Not a typewriter sounded. Not an argumentative voice floated out over the seven-foot partitions. It was like a dead place—uncanny, awful. For an instant he considered running; wondered fantastically whether his feet would turn to lead and hold him back as feet do in dreams.
But he stood his ground and looked cautiously about. There within the rail, in the corner, the pretty little telephone girl sat motionless at her switchboard, watching him with eyes that stared stupidly out of a white face.
He stepped to her side—tiptoeing in spite of himself—tried to smile, cleared his throat, started at the sound; then whispered, “For Heaven's sake, what's the matter?” and patted the girl's cheek.
Ordinarily she would have dodged away and looked anxiously about in fear of being seen. Now she did nothing of the sort. After a moment she said, also whispering and quite incoherently—“Is Miss Hardwick going to have your room?”
At the sound of her voice and out of sheer nervousness, he gulped. She was alive, at least. He pinched her cheek; and shook his head, rather meaninglessly. Then he braced himself and went on in, wholly unaware that he was still tiptoeing.
Two girl stenographers sat in a coiner, whispering. At sight of him they hushed. He passed on. The other girls were not at their desks, though he thought that most of their hats and coats hung in the farther corner as usual. The office boy was not to be seen. The copy editor and proof-reader was not in her cubby-hole at the end of the corridor. Miss Hardwick's door was shut; but as he passed he thought he heard a rustle within, and he was certain that he saw the tip of a hat feather over the partition.
He came to his own door. It was ajar. He felt sure he had closed it when he left. It was his regular practise to close it. He stopped short, considering this as if it was a matter of genuine importance. Then it occurred to him that the boy might have been in there with proofs.
Doctor Wilde's door at the end of the corridor stood open. The seven-foot square mahogany desk, heaped with papers and books, looked natural enough, but the chair behind it was empty.
He tiptoed forward, threw his door open. Then he literally gasped. For there, between the desk and the window, stood the Walrus. He held the nicked editorial shears in his hand—he must have picked them up from the floor—and was in the act of looking from them to the cut ends of the wires by the buzzer.
Hy's overcharged nervous system leaped for the nearest outlet. “I cut the damn things myself,” he said, “this morning.”
The Walrus turned toward him an ashen face.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “I didn't know they were objectionable to you.”
“I've hated them for three years,” said Hy.
“You should have spoken. It is better to speak of things.”
“Speak nothing!” Hy sputtered. “I stood a fine chance.”
“You know,” observed Doctor Wilde, as if he had not heard—his voice was husky and curiously weak—“we were interrupted this morning. You were wrong in imagining that a resignation was necessary. You jumped at that conclusion. I should say that you were unnecessarily touchy.”
“But my character—”
“I repeat, it seems to me that you were unnecessarily touchy. A man must not be too sensitive. He should be strong to take as well as give blows. Your actions, it seemed to me, perhaps wrongly, were a blow to me, to the prestige of this establishment. You must understand, Mr. Lowe, that in this life that we all must live”—absently he looked about to see if Miss Hardwick's pencil was poised to render imperishable the thought that he was about to put into words, caught himself, brushed a limp hand (with the shears in them) across his eyes, then went on with an effort—“I will say further that when we spoke this morning I had not seen the dummy for the issue of July tenth. Now I don't mind telling you that I regard that as a good dummy. You have there caught my ideas of sound make-up better than ever before. And I have—”
“But my character—”
“—and I have just written instructions to Mr. Hennessy to make a change in your salary beginning with next Saturday's envelope. You are now doing the work of a full managing editor. Your income should be sufficient to enable you to support the position with reasonable dignity. Hereafter you will draw sixty dollars a week.”
He moved toward the door. He seemed suddenly a really old man, grayer of hair and skin, more bent, less certain of his footing.
“Here!” cried Hy, sputtering in uncontrollable excitement, “those are my shears.”
“Ah, so they are. I did not notice.” And the Walrus came back, laid them carefully on the desk: then walked out, entered his own room, closed the dour.
Hy shut his door, stood for a moment by the desk, sank, an inert figure, into his chair. His eyes focused on the old alpaca coat, stuffed into the waste basket. He took it out; spread it on the desk and stared at the ink stains. “I can have it cleaned,” he thought. Suddenly he pressed two shaking hands to his throbbing head.
“My God!” he muttered, aloud. “What did I say to him. What didn't I say to him? I'm a loon! I'm a nut! This is the asylum!”
He stiffened up; sat there for a moment, wildeyed. He reached down and pinched his thigh, hard. He sprang up and paced the room. He wheeled suddenly, craftily, on the silent buzzer, there on the partition. So far all right—the wires were cut!
He saw the shears lying on the desk; pounced on them and feverishly examined the blades. One was nicked.
So far, so good. But the supreme test remained. He plunged out into the silent corridor, hesitated, stood wrestling with the devils within him, conquered them and white as all the ghosts tapped at Doctor Wilde's door, opened it a crack, stuck in his head, and said:
“How much did you say it was to be, Doctor?”
The Walrus compressed his lips, and then drew a deep breath that was not unlike a sigh. “The figure I mentioned,” he replied, “was sixty dollars a week. If that is satisfactory to you.”
Hy considered this. “On the whole,” he said finally, “considering everything, I will agree to that.”
At ten minutes past midnight Hy let himself into the rooms. One gas jet was burning dimly in the studio. As he stood on the threshold he could just make out the long figure of the Worm half reclining in the Morris chair by a wide-open window, attired in the striped pajamas of the morning. From one elevated foot dangled a slipper of Chinese straw. He was smoking his old brier.
“Hello!” said Hy cheerfully.
Silence. Then, “Hello!” replied the Worm.
Hy tossed his hat on the couch-bed of the absent Peter, then came and stood by the open window, thrust hands deep into trousers packets, sniffed the mild evening air, gazed benevolently on the trees, lights and little moving figures of the Square. Then he lit a cigarette.
“Great night, my son!” said he.
The Worm lowered his pipe, looked up with sudden sharp interest, studied the gay young person standing so buoyantly there before him; then replaced the pipe and smoked on in silence.
“Oh, come!” cried Hy, after a bit. “Buck up! Be a live young newspaper man!”
“I'm not a newspaper man,'” replied the Worm.
“You're not a—-you were this afternoon.”
“True.”
“Say, my son, what were you around for today?”
The pipe came down again. “You mean to say you don't know?”
“Not a thing. Except that the place went absolutely on the fritz. I thought I had 'em.”
“I don't wonder,” muttered Henry Bates.
“And the Walrus raised me fifteen bucks per. Just like that!”
“He raised you?”
“Yes, my child.” Hy came around, sat on the desk, dangled his legs.
“Then,” observed the Worm, “he certainly thinks you know.”
“Elucidate! Elucidate!”
The Worm knocked the ashes from his pipe; turned the warm bowl around and around in his hand. “Our paper—I should sayThe Courier—. has a story on Doctor Wilde—a charge that he has misappropriated missionary funds. They sent me up to-day to ask if he would consent to an accounting.”
Hy whistled.
“The amount is put roughly at a million dollars. I didn't care much about the assignment.”
“I should think not.”
“I'm fond of Sue. But it was my job. When I told him what I was there for, he ran me out of his office, locked the door and shouted through the transom that he had a bottle of poison in his desk and would take it if I wouldn't agree to suppress the story. As if he'd planned exactly that scene for years.”
“Aha,” cried Hy—“melodrama.”
“Precisely. Melodrama. It was unpleasant.”
“You accepted the gentleman's proposition, I take it.”
“I dislike murders.”
Hy, considering this, stiffened up. “Say,” he cried, “what's the paper going to do about it?”
“I saw the assistant city editor this evening at the Parisian bar. He tells me they have decided to drop the story. But they dropped me first.” He looked shrewdly at Hy. “So don't worry. You can count on your raise.”
Hy's cigarette had gone out. He looked at it, tossed it out the window, lit a fresh one.
“Of course,” said he, “a fellow likes to know where he gets off.”
“Or at least that he is off,” said the Worm, and went to bed.
Hy let him go. A dreamy expression came into his eyes. As he threw off coat and waistcoat and started unbuttoning his collar, he hummed softly:
“I want si-imp-athee,
Si-imp-athee, justsymp-ah-thee.”
He embraced an imaginary young woman—a blonde who was slow of speech and luxurious in movements—and danced slowly, rather gracefully across the room.
All was right with the world!
THOUGH there is no known specific for heartache, there are palliatives. One such Peter Ericson Mann found in the head barber's chair at the strictly sanitary shop of Manus. The necessity, during all the spring months, of avoiding this shop had irked Peter; for he was given to worry in the matter of bacteria. And he could not himself shave his thin and tender skin without irritating it to the point of eruption.
The shop of Marius was in the basement of that most interesting of New York restaurants, the Parisian. The place is wholly French, from the large trees out front and in their shade the sleepy victorias always waiting at the curb to the Looeys and Sharlses and Gastongs that serve you within. It is there a distinction to be known of the maître d'hôtel, an achievement to nod to the proprietor.
Greenwich Village, when in funds, dines, lunches, breakfasts at the Parisian. Upper West Side, when seeking the quaintly foreign dissociated from squalor, dines there. Upper West Side always goes up the wide front steps and through the busy little office into the airy eating rooms with full length hinged windows. There is music here; a switchboard youth who giftedly blends slang with argot; even, it has been reported, an interior fountain. Greenwich Village now and again ascends those wide front steps; but more often frequents the basement where is neither fountain nor music, merely chairs, tables and ineffable food; these latter in three or four small rooms which you may enter from the Avenue, directly under the steps, or from the side street through the bar. The corner room, nearest the bar, is a haunt of such newspaper men as live in the neighborhood. Also in the basement is a rather obscure and crooked passage extending from the bar past the small rooms and the barber shop of Marius to the equally obscure and crooked stairway that leads by way of telephone booths and a passage to the little office hallway and the upper restaurant. The whole, apparently, was arranged with the mechanics of French farce uppermost in the mind of the architect.
Peter's large horn-rimmed eye-glasses hung by their heavy black ribbon from the frame of the mirror; his long person lay, relaxed, in the chair. His right foot rested on a bent-wire stand; and kneeling respectfully before it, polishing the shoe, was the boy called Theophile. His left hand lay on the soft palm of Miss Maria Tonifetti who was working soothingly, head bowed, on the thumb nail. Miss Tonifetti was pretty. She happens to be the reason why Peter had kept away from the shop of Marius all spring. These Italian girls, from below Washington Square, were known to be of an impetuous temper. Hy Lowe had on several occasions advised Peter to let them alone. Hy believed that they, carried knives. Now, however, finding Maria so subdued, if gloomily emotional, of eye, experiencing again the old soft thrill as her deft smooth fingers touched and pressed his own, he was seriously considering asking her out to dinner. He had first thought of this while Marius (himself) was plying the razor. (What a hand had Marius!) The notion grew during the drowsily comfortable shampoo that came next. With the face massage, and the steaming towels that followed it—one of these now covered his face, with a minute breathing hole above the nose—came a gentle glow of tenderness toward all the world and particularly toward Miss Tonifetti. After all, he had never intended neglecting her. Life is so complex!
I had hoped to slip through this narrative with no more than an occasional and casual allusion to Maria. But this, it appears, is not possible. She matters. And even at the risk of a descent into unromantic actuality, into what you might call “realism,” she enters at this point.
Peter himself, like most of us, disliked actuality. His plays were all of duty and self-sacrifice and brooding tenderness and that curious structure that is known throughout the theatrical district as Honor. Honor with a very large H—accompanied, usually, with a declamatory gesture and a protruding chest. Sue, at her first meeting with Peter, when she talked out so impulsively, really said the last word about his plays. Peter's thoughts of himself (and these never flagged) often took the form of recollecting occasions when he had been kind to newsboys or when he had lent a helping hand to needy young women without exacting a quid pro quo. The occasions when he had not been kind took the memory-shape of proper indignation aroused by bitter injustice to himself. He had suffered greatly from injustice as from misunderstanding. Few, indeed, understood him; which fact added incalculably to the difficulties of life.
Now just a word of recent history and we shall get on with our story. When Sue broke her engagement to Peter he took his broken heart away to Atlantic City, where he had before now found diversion and the impulse to work. He had suffered deeply, these nearly two weeks. His food had not set well. The thought of solitary outdoor exercise, even ocean swimming, had been repellent. And until the last two or three nights, his sleeplessness had been so marked as really to worry him. Night after night he had caught himself sitting straight up in bed saying, aloud, harsh things to the penitent weeping Sue of his dreams. Usually after these experiences his thoughts and nerves had proved to be in such a tangle that his only recourse had been to switch on the lights and, with a trembling hand and an ache at the back of his head, plunge into his work. The work, therefore (it was a new play), had gone rather well—so well that when the expensiveness of the life began to appear really alarming he was ready to come back to the old haunts and make the effort to hold up his head. He had got into New York at four-ten and come down to the shop of Marius by taxi. His suit-case and grip were over in the corner by the coat rack.
It was now nearly five-thirty. The face massage was over with; his thick dark hair had been brushed into place by the one barber in New York who did not ask “Wet or dry?” And he was comfortably seated, across the shop, at Miss Tonifetti's little wire-legged table, for the finishing strokes of the buffer and the final soap-and-water rinsing in the glass bowl. He looked at the bent head and slightly drooping shoulders of the girl. The head was nicely poised. The hair was abundant and exceptionally fine. It massed well. As at certain other moments in the dim past his nature reacted pleasantly to some esthetically pleasing quality in hair, head, shoulders and curve of dark cheek. Just then she glanced up, flushed perceptibly, then dropped her eyes and went on with her work—which consisted at the moment in giving a final polish by-brushing the nails lightly with the palm of her hand.
The glow in Peter's heart leaped up into something near real warmth. He leaned forward, glanced swiftly about, then said, low: “It has been hard, Maria—not seeing you.”
The dark head bent lower.
“It did seem best. You know.”
The head nodded a very little—doubtfully. “There's no sense in being too hard on ourselves, Maria. Suppose—oh, come on and have dinner with me.”
Again the head was inclined in assent. And he heard her whisper, “Where?”
Peter thought swiftly. This was not a matter for his acquaintances of the Square and Greenwich Village. Then, too, a gentleman always “protected the girl.” Suddenly he remembered:
“Meet me at the old place—corner of Tenth. We can take the bus up-town. You can't get off early?” She shook her head.
“All right. Say twenty after to half-past seven. I'll leave my bags here for the present.”
This, after all, was living! It was best. You had to keep on. And it would be nice to give Maria a good time. She had been exacting in the past, given to unexpected outbursts, a girl of secretive ways, but of violent impulses, that she seemed always struggling to suppress. He had noted before now a passionate sort of gloom in the girl. To-day, though, she was charming, gentle enough for anybody. Yes, for old times' sake—in memory of certain intense little episodes they two had shared, he would give her a nice evening.... With such thoughts he complacently lighted a cigarette, smiled covertly at the girl, who was following him furtively, with her big dark eyes and went back through the crooked corridor to the bar.
Here we find Hy Lowe engaged in buying a drink for Sumner Smith, one of the best-known reporters on that most audaciously unscrupulously brilliant of newspapers,The Evening Earth. Sumner Smith was fat, sleepy-eyed, close-mouthed. He was a man for whom Peter felt profound if cautious respect.
But his thoughts were not now concerned with the locally famous reporter, were not concerned, for the moment, even with himself. He was impressed by the spectacle of Hy Lowe standing treat, casually tossing out a five-dollar bank note; so much so that he promptly and with a grin accepted Hy's nod as an invitation and settled, after a moment's thoughtful consideration, on an old-fashioned whisky cocktail.
It was not that Hy was stingy; simply that the task of dressing well, taking in all the new shows and entertaining an apparently inexhaustible army of extraordinarily pretty girls with taxis and even occasional wine was at times too much for the forty-five a week that Hy earned.
Now, as it happened, while Peter thought about Hy, Hy was thinking about Peter. Not six times in the more than three years of his life with Peter and the Worm had Hy seen so jovial an expression on the long face of the well-known playwright.
The man was self-conscious to the point of morbidity. This at all times, dating far, far back of his painful relationship with Sue Wilde, back of his tempestuous affair with Grace Derring, back of the curious little mix-up with that Tonifetti girl. Lately he had been growing worse. Why, it was not yet a fortnight since he had fought Zanin, over at the Muscovy. Then Sue had broken their engagement, and Peter had left town a crushed and desperate man. Hy had gone to the trouble of worrying about him; an exertion which he was now inclined to resent a bit. He had even mentioned his fears to the Worm; which sage young man had smiled and observed dryly and enigmatically, “Peter will never really love anybody else.”... And now, of all times, Peter was grinning!
The journalist left them to readLe Sourireand nibble toast in the corner room. Peter cheerfully regarded Hy's new homespun suit, his real Panama hat with a colored stripe in the white fluffy band, his flaming new tie and the silk shirt of exclusive pattern beneath it. Hy caught this scrutiny, and returned the grin.
“I'm in soft, Pete,” he murmured. “Got a raise.”
“Not out of old Wilde?”
Hy nodded. “Considerable story, my son. First the old boy fired me. That was at nine-thirty A. m. I went out and made a day of it. Then, of all things, the Worm comes into the office—”
“The Worm! Henry Bates?”
“Yep. He was onThe Courier, you know.”
“Was?”
“Was—and isn't. They sent him up with a stiff story about the missionary funds we've collected through the paper. And what does the old boy do but lock him out and holler through the transom that he'll eat poison, just like that, unless the Worm goes back and kills the story.”
“And what does the Worm?”
“As per instructions.”
“Kills the story?”
“And his job with it. He's writing a novel now—like everybody else. Have another,” Hy added cheerfully, “on the old Walrus' partner in crime.” Peter had another.
“The rest of it is”—this from Hy—“I come in at four-thirty that afternoon to pack up my things, and the Reverend Doctor Wilde hands me a raise. I get sixty now. I am on that famous road to wealth.”
“But what on earth—”
Hy chuckled. “Worm says the old boy thought I knew.”
“Ah!” breathed Peter. “Ah!”
“Can't say I wonder at Sue's leaving home, hitting out for the self-expression thing.” Hy grew more expansive as the liquor spread its glowing warmth within his person. Otherwise he would hardly have spoken of Sue, even on the strength of that genial grin of Peter's.
Peter leaned an elbow on the mahogany bar and slowly sipped. “I wonder if Sue suspects this.” It was not easy for him to speak her name. But he did speak it, with an apparent casualness worthy of Waters Coryell.
“Probably not. I've worked at his elbow for years and never dreamed.” He sighed. “It's hard to see where a girl of any spirit gets off these days. From my experience with 'em, I'm convinced that home is the safest place for 'em, and yet it's only the dead ones that'll give up and stay there.”
Peter did not reply. His brows were knit, but not, apparently, in concentration, for his eyes wandered. He said something about getting his bags over to the rooms; started irresolutely down the passage toward the barber shop; stopped; pressed his fingers to his mouth; came back, passing Hy as if he didn't see him and went on out to the side street. Here he stopped again.
The side street was narrow. A cross-town car shut off most of his view of the Avenue, a few yards away. Then it passed, and he saw a young couple strolling across toward the restaurant. The man—large, heavy of hand and foot, a peasant-like, face curiously lighted by burning eyes, better dressed than usual—was Jacob Zanin. The girl—slim, astonishingly fresh and pretty, not wearing the old tarn o' shanter and haphazard costume he associated with her, but a simple light suit—was Sue Wilde; the girl who by her hardness and selfishness had hurt Peter irreparably. There they were, chatting casually, quite at ease—Zanin, who didn't believe in marriage, who had pursued Sue with amazing patience for nearly two years, who had wrecked Peter's pocket; Sue, who had broken his heart.
THE spectacle stopped Peter's brain. Among all the wild pictures that had rushed helter skelter through his overwrought mind of late there had been nothing like this. Why, it was only a matter of days since he and Zanin had pummeled each other to an accompaniment of broken chairs, overturned tables, wrecked china, torn clothing, actual blood. He had pictured Sue, a confused disillusioned girl, rushing back to her home; Zanin a marked man, even in the Village, cowering away from his fellows. But this!
They passed the corner. With a great gulp of sheer emotion Peter followed, almost running. They turned into the Parisian—-but not into the familiar basement. Instead they mounted the wide front steps, as matter-of-fact as any two Upper West Siders out of a limousine. Peter pressed his hands to his eyes. He looked again. They had vanished within the building.
Peter walked back and forth. He told himself that he must think. But the fact clear even to his overwhelmed consciousness was that he was not thinking and that there was no immediate prospect of his being able to think. He went a whole block up the side street, stemming the thick tide of Jewish working girls from University Place and the lower Broadway district and men in overalls—muttering aloud, catching himself, compressing his lips, then muttering again. “She played with me!” So ran the muttering. “She is utterly lacking in responsibility, in any sense of obligation. She lacks spirituality. That is it, she lacks spirituality. She has no fineness. She is hard—hard! She is drifting like a leaf on these crazy Village currents of irrepressible self-indulgence. I tried to save her—God knows I tried! I did my best! I can't be blamed if she goes to pieces now! I can do no more—I must let her go!” But even while he spoke he gulped again; his face, nearly gray now, twisting painfully. He suddenly turned and rushed back to the Parisian.
He paused at the side doorway and peered in. Hy was not in evidence. A later glance, from within the barroom, disclosed that slightly illuminated young man in the corner room of the restaurant hanging over the table at which the taciturn Sumner Smith was still trying to readLe Sourire.
Peter went on into the crooked passage, passed the open doors of two eating rooms where only the first early diners had as yet drifted in, found himself at the door of the barber shop, stopped short, then seeing the familiar figure of Maria Tonifetti approaching her table in the corner, dodged back and into the washroom. Here the boy named Anatole said, “Good evening, Meester Mann,” and filled a basin for him. Peter dipped his hands into the warm water and washed them. He was surprised to find his forehead dripping with sweat. He dried his hands, removed his glasses and scrubbed his face. He turned on the cold water, wet a towel and pressed it to his temples and the back of his head, taking care not to wet his collar. His hands were trembling. And that impulse to talk aloud was rising uncontrollably. He went back to the corridor; stood motionless, breathing deeply; recalled with the force of an inspiration that Napoleon had feared nothing, not even the ladies with whose lives his own had become so painfully entangled and walked deliberately, staring straight before him, past that barber shop door.
At the foot of the crooked stairway he paused again. And again his face was twisting. “I've got to make the one more effort,” he said. “It isn't for myself, God knows! I gave her my love—I pledged her my life—I have suffered for her—I would have saved her if she had played fair! I've got to make this last effort!”
He mounted the stairs, crowded past the telephone booths, staging at them as he went. They conveyed a suggestion to his mind. He stepped cautiously to the restaurant door, nodded to the maître d'hôtel and glanced in. The nearer room was empty; but beyond the second doorway, Zanin's shoulder and profile were visible. Sue he could not see, but she must be sitting there. Yes, Zanin was leaning forward, was speaking, even smiling, in that offhand way of his!
Peter, flushing now, turned away; confronted the boy called Raoul; pressed a silver quarter into his palm. “Page, Miss Wilde,” he breathed huskily. “Tell her she is wanted on the phone.”
The boy named Raoul obeyed. At the Parisian it is not regarded as surprising that a gentleman should wish to speak to a lady.
Peter rushed around the turn and Waited at the farther end of the row of booths.
Finally he heard her step.
When she saw him she stopped. “Oh,” she said, “Peter!” And she frowned a very little.
“It was a deception,” he broke out, “but I had to see you, Sue! I know you are with Zanin. I saw you come in. I don't see how you can do it, but we'll let that pass. I—”
“What is it, Peter? What do you want with me?”
“Oh, Sue! Are you as hard as that? What do I want of you! Good God! When I see you, after all I have suffered for your sake, plunging back into this life—taking up with that crock Zanin as if nothing had happened, as if—Why, he—”
Sue grew a little white about the mouth and temples. She glanced back at the empty passage.
“Peter,” she said, curiously quiet, “if you think it fair to follow me into a public place, if you really mean to make another hideous scene, you will have to come into the dining-room to do it.”
He reached out, caught her arm. She wrenched away and left him there. For a long moment he stared out the window at the rush of early evening traffic on the Avenue, his hands clenched at his sides. Then he hurried past the office and down to the street.
He stood on the curb and addressed a rattling autobus. “It is unbearable—unbelievable. The girl has lost all sense of the fitness of things. She is beside herself. I must act—act! I must act at once—to-night!”
People were passing. He turned, suddenly aware of the bustlingly unsympathetic, world about him. Had any one heard his voice? Apparently none had. All were hurrying on, up-town, down-town. Standing there on the curb he could see in at the basement window. Sumner Smith was alone at last and deep inLe Sourire. Hy had drifted away—back to the bar, doubtless.
Peter, you recall, was a genius. As a genius he fed on his emotional reactions; they were his life. Therefore do not judge him too harshly for the wild thought that at this point rushed over his consciousness with a force that left him breathless. He was frightened and by himself. But there was a barbarous exaltation in his fear. “It'll bring her to her senses,” he thought. “I've got to do it. Then she'll listen to me. She'llhaveto listen to me then.”
Peter appeared in the corner room down-stairs, almost as curiously quiet as Sue had been in their brief talk. He, too, was rather pale. He came over to Sumner Smith's table, dropped down opposite the fat journalist, beckoned a waiter, ordered a light dinner, and, that done, proffered a cigarette.
“I've got a tip for you, Smith,” he said, “a real one. IfThe Evening Earthhasn't lost its vigor you can put it over big.”
The fat man merely lighted his cigarette and looked inscrutably over it at Peter's drawn face.
“I can't give you the details. You'll have to take my word for them. Did you ever hear a question raised regarding the Reverend Doctor Wilde?” Sumner Smith glanced out toward the bar and Hy. The corners of his mouth twitched. “His boss?”
“Right. Editor ofMy Brother's Keeper. Author of the famous missionary sermons.”
“There was a little talk last year. You mean the big mission funds he has raised?”
Peter nodded. His eyes were overbright now. “Nobody has the evidence, Mann. It isn't news as it stands.”
“Suppose you couldmakeit news—big news.”
“Oh, of course—” the journalist gestured with his cigarette.
“Well, you can. To-night. Go straight to his house—over in Stuyvesant Square, not five minutes in a taxi, not ten on the cars—and ask him point-blank to consent to an accounting. Just ask him.” Sumner Smith mused. “It might be worth trying,” he said.
“Take my word for it.”
The journalist paid his check, rose, nodded to an acquaintance across the room, said: “I'll think it over, Mann. Much obliged—” and sauntered out.
This was unsatisfactory. Peter, crestfallen, forgot that Sumner Smith was hardened to sensations. And peering gloomily after the great reporter, he only half saw the man pause at the small desk near the bar, then speak casually to the now somewhat wobbly Hy Lowe: he only half heard a taxi pull up outside, a door slamming, the sudden grinding of gears as the taxi darted away. There were so many noises outside: you hardly noticed one more.
The waiter brought his dinner. He bolted it with unsteady hands. “I must think this all out,” he told himself. “If Sumner Smith won't do it, one of the otherEarthmen will. Or some one onThe Morning Continental.”
He lit a cigar, sat bark and gazed out at the dim street where dimmer figures and vehicles moved forever by. It occurred to him that thus would a man sit and smoke and meditate who was moved by an overmastering love to enact a tremendous deed. But it was difficult to sustain the pose with his temples throbbing madly and a lump in his throat. His heart, too, was skipping beats, he thought. Surreptitiously he felt his left wrist.
He beckoned the waiter; ordered paper and ink. The lump in his throat was suddenly almost a pain. He wrote—
“It was wrong of me, of course, Sue, dear. But I really must see you. Even though your hostile attitude makes it difficult to be myself. There is trouble impending. It concerns you vitally. If you will only hear me; meet me for half an hour after dinner, I know I can help you more than you dream.
“I am not speaking for myself but for you. In all this dreadful trouble between us, there is little I can ask of you. Only this—give me half an hour. I will wait down-stairs for an answer. P. E. M.”
He sent this up-stairs. Then followed it as far as the telephones, called up his old acquaintance, Markham, ofThe Morning Continental, and whispered darkly to him over the wire.
As he ran down-stairs and dodged past the barber shop door, he became conscious that the dinner he had eaten felt now like a compact, insoluble ball in the region of his solar plexus. So he stopped at the bar and gulped a bicarbonate of soda while buying a highball for Hy Lowe whom he found confidentially informing the barkeeper of his raise from forty-five a week to sixty.
Then he resumed his seat by the window in the corner room; tried to find amusement in the pages ofLe Sourire; failed; watched the door with wild eyes, starting up whenever a waiter entered the room, only to sink back limply at each fresh disappointment.
He wondered suddenly about Sumner Smith. What if he had followed the trail! This thought brought something like a chill. If he, Peter, an old newspaper man, were to be caught in the act of passing on an “exclusive” tip to friends on competing papers—violating the sacred basis of newspaper ethics! You couldn't tell about Smith. He rarely showed interest, never emotion, seldom even smiled. He would receive the news that Emperor William had declared himself King of All the Americas with that same impassive front.
Peter looked at his watch. It was twenty-five minutes of seven. He had thought it at least eight.
One thing was certain—he must get his bags out of that awful barber shop before it closed. Accordingly he had a messenger called to take them, over to the rooms.