Chapter VIII: Part FOUR: I (1)

On the way to Thursday dinner with the Aunts, Wilfred went around by Sixth avenue in order to have a look at the news-stand. Yes, the Century was out! Good old Century in its plain yellow dress, and neat lettering! Wilfred’s heart set up a slightly accelerated beating. Before paying over his thirty-five cents, he took the precaution of consulting the table of contents. “Romance in Rivington Street. . . . Wilfred Pell.” A sigh of satisfaction relieved his breast.

Oblivious to the uproar at Sixth avenue and Eighth street, he leaned against a shop window to get the light over his shoulder, reading the sentences that he already knew by heart, with a delighted grin pressing into his cheeks. How human and funny it was! how offhand and graceful! He had _got_ it that time! At the same time an inner voice was saying dryly, in Hilgy’s manner: Oh, it’s not as good as all that! His delight was mixed with apprehension: Would he ever be able to get it again?

He gave his private ring at the Aunts’ door-bell, that the maid might not be brought up-stairs from her work. Aunt May opened the door. Wilfred had shoved the magazine in his overcoat pocket. He would not blurt out his news. Besides, his Aunts would be sure to say the wrong thing. Aunt May held up her cheek to be kissed, without looking at him. It was one of the most amusing characteristics of his people, the way they took each other for granted.

The reason for Aunt May’s abstraction was revealed. “I think a rat must have died under the floor. . . . Huh?” she said sniffing. “These old houses . . . !”

“How inconsiderate!” said Wilfred.

She was already on her way back to the drawing-room, and did not get it. Wilfred presently followed, carrying the magazine in his hand.

“I am just finishing a letter,” said Aunt May at her desk.

Wilfred looked around the room with a warm feeling about his heart. How pleasant the sight of something that was unchanged. The Brussels carpet with its all-over design; the skimmed-milk wall-paper with its neo-Gothic ornaments traced in gilt; the square piano with yellowed keys and absurd muscle-bound legs; the carved walnut furniture. Could he not do something in a story with that tranquillizing room, with the whole quaint little house which was of a piece with it—but no! He was still too close to it. At the thought of the room up-stairs which had been his, he shivered with old pains and ardors.

Wilfred commenced to read the delicious story all over again.

Having sealed her letter, Aunt May became aware of his smile. “What is amusing you?” she asked.

“Damn good story!” said Wilfred.

“Wilfred! This is not South Washington Square!”

“Oh, beg pardon, Aunt. They tell me that profanity is becoming fashionable.”

“Not in this house! . . . Who is the story by?”

Wilfred affected to turn back to the beginning. “Chap called Wilfred Pell.”

“Wilfred! Give me that magazine!”

Together they studied the illustration to Wilfred’s story.

“I don’t think much of that,” remarked Aunt May.

“Putrid!”

“Wilfred . . . !”

“One is prepared for it,” said Wilfred like a long-suffering author. “He’s made my young lad look like a race track tout. Twenty years out of date. Why can’t these fellows look about them when they go into the streets? . . . However, it’s a Dugan, you see. That lends importance to the story. They paid more for that one picture than they did for the story.”

“How unjust!”

The placid, rosy Aunt Fanny came into the room.

“Fanny!” cried her sister. “Wilfred’s story in the Century!”

Aunt Fanny seized the magazine, and while her eyes fastened upon it, she held up her cheek sideways to be kissed.

Said Aunt May with a thoughtful air: “Wilfred, how many of those could you . . . Huh? . . . About the same amount of writing as ten letters, I should say. And if you had nothing else to do. . . .”

“Oh, but I have not your facility, Aunt May.”

“Don’t try to be funny! . . . Say, two a month anyway. . . .”

“It’s not how many you can write, but how many you can sell, my dear.”

“Oh, but the cheaper magazines will all be after you . . . Huh? now that the Century. . . .”

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say that. The cheaper magazines have a grand conceit of themselves, you see. They affect to look upon the Century as a back number.”

“All the best people read the Century!”

“Unfortunately there are so many more people of the other kind!”

Later, at the table, Aunt May said with a casual air—but her hazy grey eyes were intent upon her thought: “Wilfred, now that you are becoming known . . . Huh? . . . you ought to . . . _Do_ sit up straight in your chair! . . . you ought to go about more . . . !”

“Why, I circulate like a dollar bill!” said Wilfred. “I am worn and greasy with handling.”

“I _wish_ you wouldn’t be vulgar!”

“Seriously, I have dozens of friends now.”

“Oh, South Washington Square!”

“I’m known as far North as Fifty-Ninth street. The Fifty-Ninth street crowd of artists and writers are _most_ respectable. They sell their work, too. I know Walter Sherman, and Louis Sala and Frances Mary Lore. Miss Lore is a special friend of mine.”

The two Aunts exchanged an anxious glance. “Lore?” said Aunt Fanny. “Who are her people . . . Huh? . . .”

“Let me see,” said Wilfred, “her father was a letter carrier in Memphis. Or else he was the garbage collector. I forget.”

“Wilfred!”

“Well, it doesn’t signify, does it? Frances Mary stands on her own bottom.”

“_Wilfred!_”

“Oh, Aunt! I didn’t mean what you mean!”

“Seriously, Wilfred,” said Aunt May, “you are twenty-six years old. . . .”

“We should hate to see you marry on South Washington Square,” put in Aunt Fanny.

Aunt May frowned at Aunt Fanny. This was too direct.

Wilfred grinned at them both. An outrageous retort trembled on his tongue, but he bit it back. After all, they were dear old dears. And he was his own man now. “Well, thank God! that’s not an issue,” he said. “I don’t want to marry and I couldn’t if I did!”

“You ought to know the people who _count_,” said Aunt May.

“So I do,” said Wilfred. “In my world.”

“But that’s a very small world, my dear. . . . Huh? . . . I mean the great world.”

“Society?” said Wilfred. “I can hardly see myself performing with that troupe of trained seals.”

“And why not, pray?” asked Aunt May, bridling. “That is where you belong, on both sides of the house. Your name alone. . . . Huh? . . . the sole representative of your branch. . . .”

“And you have become quite nice-looking,” added Aunt Fanny.

“Thanks, ladies, thanks,” said Wilfred bowing.

“Nor are we entirely forgotten,” said Aunt May with dignity, “notwithstanding the parvenues who crowd everywhere. . . .”

“And the girls of that world are so much prettier and more charming,” put in Aunt Fanny.

Aunt May frowned at her again. But it was the seeming injudicious remark of Aunt Fanny’s which arrested Wilfred’s attention, and sent his mind cavorting down the very avenue that they wished. It was true! The girls of _his_ world, writers and artists, good fellows as they were—well, that was just the trouble with them, they were such good fellows! When women descended into the arena to compete with men, they lost something of their allure. What cynic had he heard say that? He himself, would never have dared say it out loud amongst his friends; but was it not true? And sometimes, confound them! they beat a man at his own trade! How could you make love to a girl whose stories were in greater demand by the editors than your own? . . . Why not be honest with yourself, and confess that you were enough of a Turk at heart to be attracted by the idea of exquisite girls especially trained and groomed to please men. Very reprehensible, of course, but as long as there were such girls going, why not have one?

Wilfred was recalled to his surroundings by hearing Aunt May say, casually:

“Every time we see Cousin Emily Gore she asks after you.”

So that was the milk in the cocoanut! “Kind of her,” said Wilfred.

“She has several times given you an opening to call; but you never would.”

“That was when I was working for her husband,” said Wilfred. “No sucking up to the boss’s wife for me, thanks.”

“Wilfred! What an expression!”

“But I’m on my own now; the case is altered.”

“And Cousin Emily says,” added Aunt Fanny, “that there’s such a shortage of dancing men in society, they’re at a premium!”

Aunt May looked annoyed. Fanny _would_ say the word too much!

“Yes, so I’ve heard,” drawled Wilfred. “Low society is really more select.”

“Will you call on Cousin Emily Gore? . . . Huh?” asked Aunt May.

“Haven’t got a Prince Albert.”

“We are told it is no longer indispensable.”

“Oh, they’ll take us in anything now, eh?”

“_Do_ be sensible, Wilfred! . . . Will you go?”

“Oh well, I suppose an author’s got to know all sides of life—even the lowest.”

The two ladies exchanged a look of mutual congratulation.

“Wednesday is her day,” said Aunt May. “And Wilfred, dear, do allow yourself to be . . . Huh? . . . As you know so well how to be. . . . This mocking air may be . . . But not in Cousin Emily’s world, my dear. . . .”

It was then, Wilfred saw, Aunt Fanny’s turn to feel that May was risking all they had gained by saying too much. Their faces were so transparent! “Cousin Emily takes a special interest in the débutantes,” Aunt Fanny hastily put in. “They say that this year’s débutantes are the loveliest in years!”

“Well I may be a Turk,” said Wilfred, “but I’m not as much of a Turk as that—no débutantes!”

“A Turk. . . . Huh? . . .” said Aunt May. “I’ll let her know you’re coming.”

II

Wilfred knew the Gore house from cellar to garret, from having been required once in the old days, to take an inventory of its contents. It was rather piquant to be there now as a guest in a swallow-tail coat. It was not one of the greatest houses in New York; but ’twould serve. His hat and coat were taken from him in a horrible entrance hall in the “Moorish” style, all the rage about 1890. He passed through the library (which contained no books) all done in red velvet, and entered the drawing-room behind. The drawing-room, with its great bay-window giving on the side street, was rather fine he considered; evidently a pretty good decorator had been let loose in here. But there was far too much stuff in it. The prevailing tone was an agreeable blue.

In the bay stood a grand piano, with a great golden harp placed beside it. Wilfred smiled at the harp. It had not been moved in seven years. “Why in Hell a harp?” he asked himself. Against the wall facing the bay stood an immense upholstered settee; and over the settee in the place of honor, hung the famous portrait of Mrs. Gore by Madrazo. A superb figure. The rich blue brocade of her corsage seemed to be glued to her body like wall-paper.

It was a dinner for about twenty people. Mrs. Gore affected the Knickerbocker set, whose present day representatives showed a sad falling off from the picturesqueness of their ancestors. The ladies affected a rich and dowdy style of dress, still featuring the abdomen; and the gentlemen also, who ran to bottle shoulders, and a small, neat melon under their waist-bands, suggested the magazine illustrations of twenty years ago. Obviously gentlemen, who toiled not neither did they spin. In America, for some reason, they looked piteous. There were several more or less subdued young persons present. Wilfred was introduced to a few of the guests, and left to shift for himself. He was to take in a Mrs. Varick, an anæmic little woman who kept up a fire of virtuous platitudes. One could safely agree with everything she said, while one looked about.

A little late, when all the estimable guests were visibly becoming uneasy, a woman entered the room, who changed the whole complexion of the party. Like a wild bird lighting in the poultry yard, Wilfred thought. She was about his own age with miscellaneous American features, not in the least beautiful. But she had the divine carriage of Diana, and Diana’s arrowy glance. Never had Wilfred beheld that proud, free glance in living woman. What a glorious spirit it betokened! So defiant and desirable it rendered him helpless. She was wearing a dress of tomato red, partly misted with smoke-colored net. Nothing of yesteryear about _her_! Though she and all her works must have been anathema to the drab ones, Wilfred observed that they were inclined to fawn upon her. Obviously, that girl could get away with anything, anywhere, Wilfred thought.

At the table he was terrified and delighted to discover that she was to be on the other side of him. She sat down, talking busily to her companion. Wilfred stole a glance at her place card. “Miss Elaine Sturges.” It had the effect of striking a gong. Elaine Sturges! Wilfred had not been above reading of the doings of the butterflies he despised; the Sturgeses of North Washington Square; elect of the elect! For several seasons she had been chief amongst the unmarried girls. It appeared that no entertainment was complete without her. Merely from having her name so often printed, the lustre of fame was about her plainly-dressed brown head; and Wilfred’s imagination was dazzled afresh. While he sagely nodded his head in agreement with Mrs. Varick’s ambling comment, he sought in his mind to have ready some arresting thing to say, when his chance came. But his mind was a blank.

He happened not to be looking in that direction when a contralto voice said near his ear: “I say, who are you? Your place card is covered up.”

Wilfred jumped. “Wilfred Pell,” he said, smiling.

“I thought I knew all the Pells.”

“I’m only an offshoot. A scribbling Pell.”

“Didn’t think such a thing was possible!”

They laughed, knowing the Pell characteristics.

Wilfred thought: She has not read my stories. . . . But why should she? I must say something at once, or she’ll turn back to the other man. . . .

When it came, it sounded feeble. “I hate to be asked my name. I dislike it so much!”

“What, Wilfred?” she asked carelessly. “Yes, it is rather in the Percy and Harold class.”

“One’s mouth takes such a foolish shape in saying it.”

Her cool, strong glance sought his eyes appraisingly. There was a thought in her eyes that she did not utter; but he read it.

“You think Wilfred suits me?” he said smiling, and sore at heart.

“I wasn’t thinking,” she said coolly. “. . . You have nice eyes.”

Nice eyes! At that moment it was like an insult. And so good-humored about it! He struggled with a crushing sense of inferiority.

“Well, at any rate, you are well-named,” he said.

“Am I? I thought the original Elaine was a pale, die-away maiden who floated down the river with flowers in her hair, and her toes turned to the sky!—But maybe I’m thinking of somebody else. My literary associations are hazy.”

“The Lady of Shalott?” suggested Wilfred. “I was thinking of the mere sound of the name. Elaine! So forthright!”

“So you think I’m a forthright sort of person?”

“Rather!”

“That requires consideration.”

“How do you seem to yourself?” asked Wilfred.

“Oh, I don’t know. . . . We are all over-civilized, over-complicated nowadays. . . .”

“You are neither civilized nor complicated,” said Wilfred boldly.

“Well upon my word!” she said, half-affronted.

“Diana,” murmured Wilfred. “You know that picture at the Metropolitan; a rotten picture, but a glorious woman!”

She continued to stare, really amused, as with a baby’s prattle. Wilfred, as if Mrs. Varick had spoken to him, turned away. I _did_ make an impression then, he thought; better leave her with it!

They talked again at intervals during dinner; the usual sort of thing. Wilfred had no other daring inspiration. However, when the divinely brave eyes turned on him, he perceived a speculative look in them. At least I exist for her, he thought hopefully.

After dinner there was music in the drawing-room (but not on the harp) and all the guests had to stay put—or so Wilfred supposed. Not having been sufficiently ready-witted to maneuver himself into a position beside her, he watched her from down the room. He was sitting beside the door into the hall. There was a sleek fellow behind her, leaning forward with his lips close to her ear. He appeared to be able to amuse her. He was not in the least afraid of her, Wilfred observed with a pang.

Taking advantage of a little movement among the guests between numbers, the red girl with characteristic nonchalance came sauntering down the long room, attended by her companion. Wilfred’s skin began to burn and prickle. She was headed directly for him. He suffered acutely. He did not see how he was going to keep his head up if she passed so close. She had laid a dreadful spell on him.

She did not pass him by. She stopped, and he jumped up. Careless of who might hear, she said:

“Come and sit on the stairs with me.”

Wilfred followed her like a man in a dream.

“Thanks, Ted,” she said over her shoulder to the other man, and he remained within the room.

Wilfred tingled. Came to me in the face of the whole room! Sent the other man away! But he was deeply perturbed, too. It should have been me to go to her, and carry her off. . . . What will Mrs. Gore say to my walking out on her concert like this?

Elaine seemed to read his thoughts. “They won’t blame you,” she said smiling. “They know me! . . . Oh well, poor dears! I like to give them something to talk about. They lead such dull lives!”

In the hall, the stairs started off at right angles, and after pausing on a sort of Moorish balcony, turned and went up in the proper direction without further divagations. Above the balcony it was rather secluded, and not too light. Here they sat, Wilfred with a tumultuously beating heart. There was already a meek youth and maiden higher up. Elaine permitted Wilfred to light a cigarette for her. Wilfred was astounded at his situation. Smoking companionably on the stairs with Elaine Sturges! He had supposed that these girls were so circumspect. However, there was nothing equivocal in the clear glance.

“After a season or two, what an experience of stairs you must acquire!” said Wilfred.

“Eh?” she said, not getting it—or not choosing to get it.

“You ought to write a monograph on the subject,” he blundered on; “The stairs of New York.”

She smiled inattentively, and Wilfred felt like a perfect ass.

“I never meet any artists or writers,” she said, “except old and famous ones. It seems so odd for a young man to go in for it. And a Pell!”

She means that she thinks its unmanly, thought Wilfred with a wry smile. “Oh, it’s an easy job,” he said flippantly.

“You only say that because you think I’m not capable of understanding,” she said.

“Not at all!” said Wilfred quickly. “It’s because I can’t appear to take myself seriously, without feeling like a fool!”

“Oh!” she said, looking at him as if he had given her new food for reflection.

Wilfred felt like a specimen impaled on a pin.

“Tell me more about myself,” she said presently. “It’s refreshing!”

“I have so little to go on!” protested Wilfred.

“That didn’t seem to hamper you a while ago. Make it up as you go along.”

“You always do exactly what you please.”

She smiled inscrutably. “That isn’t very clever!”

Wilfred felt flattened out. “Well . . . you have entirely false notions about life,” he said, making a desperate fresh start.

“That’s better,” she said serenely. “In what way do you mean?”

III

It was after the lawful hours of business. Casting a glance up and down to assure himself no policeman was watching, Wilfred descended three steps, and knocked on the shuttered door of the little Hungarian café in East Fourth street. He was admitted as a matter of course. A haze of tobacco smoke filled the interior. The cymbaline player had gone home; and the place seemed oddly quiet. There were only four or five figures crouching over the tables; habitués of the place.

Relief filled Wilfred’s breast at the sight of Stanny in his usual place, over against the wall, his back to the door. Impossible to tell if he were drunk. It required more than a casual glance to discover that in Stanny. Opposite him sat Mitzi of course, with her seraphic, unchanging smile. The wide-eyed, soulless, pretty creature!—Not soulless, really; one must be fair; soulless only to them. Stanny, brooding upon her face, was giving everything away in his eyes. Andreas, the proprietor, passing to and fro with the drinks, scarcely troubled to hide his contempt. Wilfred became hot with angry compassion.

Big Andreas greeted him with loud heartiness, the while his black eyes glittered remotely. They hated each other. Mitzi turned her smile on Wilfred, offering him an adorable, plump, cruel little paw with short tapering fingers. That is to say, the kind of hand which is called cruel, he thought. In reality there was no cruelty in Mitzi; she was merely docile. Stanny looked around at him without any expression whatever; and by that, Wilfred knew he was drunk. He dropped into the seat beside Stanny, and a glass of _tchai_ was put before him.

“’Ello, Vee’fred!” said the adorable Mitzi “’Ow you was to-night?”

Wilfred was fully sensible of her magical quality—the quality of a red rose beginning to unfold; but it left him unperturbed. For one thing she was too foreign. “Out o’ sight!” he replied. “I don’t need to ask how you are. You are prettier than ever to-night.”

“You lie!” said Mitzi, pouting good-humoredly. “You no t’ink I pretty girl. You t’ink I ogly girl.”

“Aw, shucks!” said Wilfred. “You know quite well you’re the prettiest girl East of Third avenue!”

Mitzi, having exhausted her English, relapsed into her smile. Occasionally she made a droll face at either Stanny or Wilfred and murmured: “Aw, shucks!” Mitzi could sit and smile at a man—any man, the whole evening through without betraying either tedium or self-consciousness. There was that in her smile Wilfred thought, which called into being fires she was incapable of comprehending.

Wilfred was aware that anger was smoking within Stanny. Finally it puffed out spitefully: “What do you want here?”

“A glass of _tchai_,” said Wilfred, smiling.

“By God! I’m sick of this Ten Nights in a Barroom stunt!” said Stanny passionately. “You’re not my keeper!”

“Keep your shirt on,” said Wilfred, smiling still for Mitzi’s benefit. “I don’t aim to be.”

“Then what brought you here?”

“I wanted company,” said Wilfred. It was true, but Stanny would not believe it.

“If I’m going to Hell, I prefer to go in my own way,” said Stanny.

“Sure!” agreed Wilfred. “But I can’t help thinking you’re getting damned little out of this lap.”

“That’s all right!” said Stanny with drunken obstinacy.

“What you say him?” asked Mitzi, without in the least caring what the answer might be.

“I’m telling him I wish you were my sweetheart,” said Wilfred grinning. (How sick he was of his own grin!) “That’s what makes him sore.”

“Aw, shucks!” said Mitzi.

“What do you expect to get out of it?” Wilfred went on to Stanny. “You know as well as I do, that the man only puts out his pretty little wife as a decoy. He never lets her out of his sight. I don’t see how you can fall for it. With him looking on and sneering!”

“I wish to God I could see you make a fool of yourself over a woman!” cried Stanny bitterly. “You wouldn’t be so damn superior then!”

Wilfred grinned until his nostrils hurt. He had spent the earlier part of the night walking up and down North Washington Square, gazing at the lighted windows of the Sturges sitting-room with sick eyes; picturing a man inside bolder than himself.

“But I never will! I never will!” said Stanny. “You’re too much up in the air!”

“You don’t know me,” murmured Wilfred.

“Yah! a hell of a romantic feller if the truth were known, eh?” sneered Stanny.

Wilfred went on grinning inanely; tracing a capital E on the table with his forefinger. It created a sort of diversion to have Stanny abusing him unjustly; it was a counterirritant. He was absolutely sure of Stanny’s affection. It comforted him a little to lean his breast against the thorn of misunderstanding. It was the nearest to obtaining sympathy that he could hope for, he thought.

After awhile Wilfred said: “Will you come now?”

“No!” said Stanny.

But Mitzi, though she could not understand their talk, perceived that there was something inimical in the atmosphere. Presently she yawned behind the sinister little manicured paw, and stood up.

“Well, goo’-ni’, boys. Come round to-morrow.”

Through sullen lashes Stanny watched the little thing go swaying down the room and through the curtain at the rear, an unfathomable pain in his eyes. Wilfred raged internally. A man like Stanny to be brought down by _that_! What am I raging at? he asked himself. Certainly not at Stanny; nor at the unconscious, infantile Mitzi. And he had no God to rage at.—At the same time Wilfred envied Stanny; his pain was so much simpler than his own.

Wilfred and Stanny went out on the sidewalk. At the Third avenue corner Stanny stopped.

“You had better leave me here,” he said bitterly, but without anger; “you can do me no good to-night.”

“How about your doing me a little good?” suggested Wilfred.

“Don’t make me laugh!” said Stanny. “You’re as transparent as window glass! . . . If you could only get rid of your evangelical streak!”

“I don’t want to save you,” said Wilfred. “I just want to be with somebody. Even you! . . . My God! you’re a selfish beggar!”

Stanny snorted, and started walking on with that extraordinarily doughty carriage of his, more pronounced when he was drunk.

Wilfred fell in beside him. “Oh hell,” he said, “you can say what you like. I’m not going to leave you. . . . You can come to my place if you want. Or I’ll go to yours if you’d rather.”

“I can’t sleep,” muttered Stanny.

“No more can I. Let’s walk then.”

When they had gone a block, Stanny stopped short, and faced Wilfred. “I know I’m a bloody fool,” he said ill-temperedly. “Now are you satisfied?”

Wilfred slipped his arm through Stanny’s “I’m a bloodier fool than you, old fellow, and my heart’s just as heavy!”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” cried Stanny passionately. “You and your heart! Do you think I can’t see that you’re saying that just to make me feel better? Nothing can touch _you_! I wish to God you’d give over trying to manage me like a woman!”

Wilfred laughed.

When they got to the corner of Washington Square, Stanny kept straight on, and by that Wilfred knew that he was coming to his place. As they turned in at the old iron gate, rusting under its hundred coats of paint, in Stanny’s sullen eyes could be read as plainly as if it had been spoken, his intention of inveigling Wilfred into going to bed, and afterwards slipping out again.

As soon as they got inside Wilfred’s room, they started to quarrel viciously. Wilfred insisted on making up the fire, and Stanny said they shouldn’t need it. Then about the bed. Stanny all but knocked Wilfred into his own bed. Wilfred however, insisted on lying down on the moth-eaten bearskin before the fire. Stanny looked as if he would have liked to kick him there.

“You might as well take the bed,” said Wilfred.

“I’m damned if I will!” cried Stanny passionately.

“If I was alone, I should be lying here just the same. I can’t sleep, and I like to look at the fire.”

“Seeing pictures, eh?” sneered Stanny.

“Sure, seeing pictures. . . . What fools we are to scrap with each other, Stanny. . . .”

“Sure, what fools!” agreed Stanny, suddenly falling quiet and mournful.—But instantly, he lost his temper again. “You needn’t think I’m going to take your bed and leave you lying on the floor!”

“Well, you know what you can do with it,” snarled Wilfred.

Stanny flung himself into Wilfred’s big chair, and the bed remained without an occupant.

The firelight filled the room. The rows of books looked gravely down from the tall shelves. Bye and bye Wilfred had the satisfaction of seeing the bitter, down-drawn face in the chair begin to relax. Stanny took a more comfortable position, and his head dropped over against one of the wings. But he was not yet asleep. From the borderland he murmured:

“She has enslaved my senses. . . . I am besotted . . . !”

Wilfred murmured involuntarily: “You don’t know it, but you are lucky it is only your senses. If it was your imagination that was enslaved, there would be no satisfaction possible; no escape; ever!”

There was no reply, and Wilfred looked over apprehensively. To his relief he perceived that Stanny had not heard it; he was asleep.

Wilfred stretched himself out on the old rug, yielding to the luxury of pain. Real pain that bit like teeth. For an instant he beheld the truth with devastating clearness. There was no hope for him. Elaine’s instinct was sounder than his own. He and she could not possibly find happiness together. He was a better man than she would ever guess: but his worthier qualities were sealed to her, and must always be so. Impossible to reach an understanding. In another way, he was not man enough to be her mate. How that thought stabbed! But it was the truth. It must be faced out. Thank God! pain could be borne. He had his own kind of strength, not at all a showy kind, and Elaine would never perceive it; but he need not despise himself. Pain fortified him. He looked over towards Stanny with a feeling of gratitude. In some queer way it was due to the presence of that solid body in his chair, that he had been vouchsafed this moment of lucid pain, instead of being dragged as usual, helpless at the heels of the wild horses of Imagination.

IV

In the winter twilight Elaine and Wilfred were sunk in easy chairs side by side before the fire in the Sturges sitting-room, the smoke of their cigarettes mounting lazily. In that serene atmosphere Wilfred was least serene. Whenever he sat there his heart beat too fast; and the clamorous thoughts jostled confusedly in his brain. The smiling servants had softly brought the tea things, and later, had carried them away. A lovely, gracious life! Should he ever be able to take it as if it were his by right? The Sturges house was almost exactly opposite Bella Billings; distant about three hundred yards; but social deeps rolled between.

Elaine was sliding down in the deep chair on the small of her back, her long legs inelegantly thrust out, her feet crossed. Elaine could yield to any common impulse without losing the quality of distinction, he thought. The firelight was strong in her resolute face. It was not beautiful in the ordinary sense. He despised the insipidity of pretty women. There was something much greater here; character; passion; and that divine assurance of herself. Whence arose Elaine’s magnificent air? It was because she held herself one of the elect of earth. Ordinary people were so far beneath her, she could afford to exhibit them every kindness. All wrong! thought Wilfred. A preposterous assumption! Yet there it was! And it beat him down!

They were good enough friends to be silent together when they felt like silence. But those silences! At a certain point Wilfred’s heart would begin to rise slowly into his throat. There she sat a yard away, and so remote! He ached for her intolerably. Was this love? More like an insanity. Suppose she were to cast herself suddenly into his arms, would he know what to do with her? Would he not turn clammy? Did he ever know what he wanted? An insanity! Being denied her, he ached and burned. Burned, while he sat still and answered her cool remarks, coolly. Why was he forced to go on thinking and thinking about her in her presence? Making figments of her while the reality was at his side!

Elaine herself never thought, though she liked to suppose that she did: all her acts, words were struck out of her, instant and bright as fire. How natural for her to despise one like him! She _did_ despise him sub-consciously, though they were good friends; her speculative glance often confessed it. That high air of hers was a continual challenge to his masculinity, and he dared not take it up. Wilfred believed that she was just a little higher with him than with others. It suggested that she believed he was a coward in the presence of women. In other quarters he had not been considered so. What good was that to him here? By thinking him a coward she made him a coward in _her_ presence.

Yet she had singled him out, him, the insignificant scribbler, amongst a crowd of glittering young men who dangled after her. These hours that Wilfred spent alone with her had been specially contrived by her. Nothing happened by accident in Elaine’s busy life. In dealing with men, she enveloped herself in an atmosphere of high mystery. During Wilfred’s hour she never volunteered the least information as to how she had spent the other twenty-three. It tormented him unbearably. He knew that other men came to the house on other days. He had seen some of them springing eagerly up the steps. Well, and why not? He had nothing to reproach her with. She was always clear-eyed and candid. But she ordained how much of herself each was to have. An hour to Wilfred twice a week perhaps, leaving him to spend the others in torment. He suffered when he was with her; he suffered when he was away. His only moment of happiness came when _he_ went springing up the steps. Things had come to such a pass with him, he could no longer do his work.

Why had she singled him out for even these infrequent hours? That he might talk to her. There was no secret about it. “Nobody talks to me like you,” she had said once, while her eyes flickered with unconscious contempt for the young man who was a talker. And Wilfred accepted it, hating himself. They sat in front of the fire talking like disembodied intelligences while Wilfred eyed her.

After such a silence, Elaine said: “The trouble with me is, I don’t know anything.”

“Hear! Hear!” said Wilfred.

“Oh, you needn’t get funny,” she retorted. “It’s something to know that you don’t know anything. . . . I mean. . . . What do I mean? I mean I don’t know anything in my head. I know lots of things by intuition. I think I know more than you do, that way. . . .”

“Not a doubt of it,” said Wilfred.

“But the voice of intuition is dumb,” Elaine went on. “I act as I act without knowing why. There is no residue. Intuition prompts you how to act at the moment; but it doesn’t help you to lay out a course.”

How exactly, sometimes, unconscious people can convey what is in their minds! thought Wilfred enviously. “What about books?” he suggested.

“Books! Pshaw! Books are a kind of dope!” said Elaine.

“You read only novels—and those, not the best.”

“I _do_ read the best!” she said indignantly.

“I don’t mean the latest best,” said Wilfred.

“I read poetry, too. . . . But poetry just lifts you up—and lets you drop again. Oh, I suppose it’s my fault. Really serious books bore me.”

“There are good novels,” said Wilfred.

“They get on so slowly!” said Elaine with a sigh. “And when you do disentangle the meaning, it’s only what you know already.”

“What is it, exactly, that you are after?” asked Wilfred.

“Knowledge of life,” she said promptly. “Old people pretend that they have all the knowledge. I _feel_ that they are wrong.”

“In what, for instance?”

“Well, it’s a platitude amongst old people that love always dies.”

“I don’t know of any book that would assure you that it doesn’t,” said Wilfred, lowering his eyes.

“Never mind books. What do you think? Does love die?”

“What kind of love?” he asked with a sinking heart.

“What kind?” she repeated staring. “I mean love between a man and a woman, of course.”

“Passion burns itself out,” said Wilfred, “but I suppose something fine may come of it.”

“Oh, that’s just like an old person,” said Elaine. “The cooling-off process is hideous to me! I don’t want any left-overs!”

“Well, what are you going to do about it?” he asked.

“It doesn’t help to be cynical!”

“What does your own heart tell you?”

“My heart tells me that love dies,” murmured Elaine unexpectedly. She was staring into the fire. “I was hoping for some reassurance.”

“I hope it does,” said Wilfred flippantly. He observed that his teeth were clenched together.

She ignored this. “Even though love is transitory, should we not stake everything on it, anyway?” she murmured.

“Everybody must decide that for themselves,” he said composedly, feeling like a little waxy-faced oracle.

“But what do _you_ think?” she insisted.

“It’s too complicated!” he said with a burst of irritation. “I could not possibly give an answer to cover the whole question.”

Another silence.

“Do you believe in the devil?” asked Elaine.

“In my own individual devil, yes.”

“What’s he like?”

“He’s a wet blanket!”

Elaine laughed. “How original! Mine is a more conventional sort of devil.”

“Yes, I know.”

“How do you know?” she asked quickly.

“Can’t I have intuitions too?”

“Well, you’re entirely wrong about _me_,” she said vivaciously. “You have been from the first. You have a ridiculous notion that I am a sort of cavewoman. Why, if I were, would I be talking to you like this now?”

Wilfred smiled into the fire.

“Oh well, if it amuses you . . . !” said Elaine, shrugging.

“You know that big statue of Barnard’s,” she presently went on; “I Feel Two Natures Struggling Within Me”?

“All rot!” he said rousing himself. “I imagine that is just a little joke of Barnard’s on the dear public. What he is really portraying is the Triumph of Youth Over Age! It was a favorite subject during the renaissance. . . . Two natures! Life is not so simple! That is merely a theological distinction. Body and soul are _not_ at war with each other. We can’t get anywhere without Body. In the complete life you would find Body and Soul pulling in double harness.”

“But is there ever a complete life?” asked Elaine.

“Well . . . no! I suppose not!” murmured Wilfred, falling through space. “It is only an ideal. . . .”

Their eyes were suddenly drawn together. They exchanged a startled, questioning glance like prisoners beholding each other from separate towers. Forever solitary and wistful. They knew each other then. They hastily looked away, laughing in an embarrassed way; each terrified lest the other might speak of what he had surprised. But neither spoke, and they secretly softened towards each other.

After awhile Elaine got up, and switched on the lamps. She glanced at the clock. “There’s a man coming directly,” she said.

Wilfred stood up.

“Don’t be silly!” said Elaine. “Suppose I _was_ giving you a hint to go, why be in such haste to take it? It’s not very flattering.”

“I’ve had my hour,” he said, trying to speak lightly.

“You said that just like an actor! Oh, I wish I could teach you how to deal with women!”

“Well, if it comes to that, why is it always up to the man?” demanded Wilfred.

Elaine opened her eyes. “Well, women have to be won, don’t they?”

He spread out his hands. All wrong! All wrong! But he could not dispute her. She had stolen his strength.

“Sit down again,” she said. “You ought to know by this time that I never deal in hints. What I have not yet had a chance to say is, I want you to meet this man. An unusual specimen!”

Wilfred discovered that he still had reserves of pain. Was _that_ the rôle he was to be called upon to play?

Far-off in the great house Wilfred heard the buzz of the door-bell. After an interval the front door opened and closed again with its opulent thud. He entered quickly, thought Wilfred. There were rapid footsteps on the stairs. Coming up two steps at a time. Wilfred’s heart beat suffocatingly. That treacherous heart of his!

“It’s Joe Kaplan,” said Elaine, shielding her face from the fire.

“Oh, Joe Kaplan,” said Wilfred with an air of interest. His belly suddenly failed him. Rising, he caught sight of the grinning, white-faced manikin in the mirror over the fireplace, and quickly lowered his eyes in disgust.

“You have heard of him?” asked Elaine.

“Who hasn’t?” said Wilfred.

Joe swept in. “Hello, Elaine!”

She had risen, and was helping herself to a fresh cigarette from the mantelpiece. “Hello, Joe,” she said, without looking around.

Having caught sight of Wilfred, Joe stopped short in his eager progress.

“This is Mr. Pell,” drawled Elaine. “. . . Mr. Kaplan.”

Joe jerked into motion again. “I know him,” he said. “Hello, Pell! What the devil are you doing here?”

It was said with a good-humored grin, though Joe’s eyes were snapping. To Wilfred’s relief, he did not put out his hand. Perceiving enmity, Wilfred had not sufficient self-command to match the feigned good humor. Inside him there was howling, black confusion. Yet the necessity of good form was strong upon him, too. All he could do was to stand grinning in a sickly way. How craven he must appear, knuckling under to Joe at the first word!

Joe wasted no time on him. Elaine had reseated herself, and he plumped into the chair that Wilfred had lately occupied. “I say, Elaine,” he said; “I saw that blue chow to-day. He’s a sweet-tempered little beast; but my man says if you want to show him, he’s not good enough. So I thought we had better wait until something first-class turned up.”

“But I liked him,” said Elaine. “And he liked me!”

“Oh, in that case, Princess, he shall be here to-morrow!”

So Joe has become a sporting gentleman, thought Wilfred with curling lip. Wilfred was left standing like a clown with a witless grin daubed on his face. What he ought to have done was to leave, he knew; but he was incapable of making a good exit; and he would not slink out like a whipped dog. So he stayed. He sat down on a straight-backed chair a little to one side of the fireplace, facing the other two. The faces of Elaine and Joe were strongly revealed in the firelight. It was nothing to them if Wilfred watched them.

They rattled on. It appeared that they shared a hundred small interests. Joe had achieved the precise tone of Elaine’s world. The rattle was all a blind, Wilfred suspected. The fact that they never looked at each other, gave the game away. He imagined that he heard a rich quality in their laughter, having nothing to do with the trifles they discussed. Hidden things escaped in their laughter. Elaine’s superb nonchalance might very well be a sham. She could get away with anything. Such a woman recognized only one truth; the truth of her emotions. Color had stolen into her cheeks; it was an effort to keep her lips decorous. Secrets! secrets! between these two! Diana was only a woman of the flesh! What a handsome male Joe was, damn him! Wilfred felt as if he would die with the beating of his heart, and the pressure of blood against his temples.

Knowing himself, he strove desperately to make a stand against this madness. You are imagining it all! You cannot honestly say that Elaine has changed in the slightest degree. She treats Joe precisely the same as she treated you. . . .

Elaine sought to draw Wilfred into the talk. “Funny you two should be acquainted,” she said.

“Oh yes,” said Joe with a mocking laugh in Wilfred’s direction. “It’s ten years since we first laid eyes on each other. Remember that night, Pell?”

“I remember,” said Wilfred, seeking Joe’s eyes in wonder. Joe’s eyes skated laughingly away. Clever and daring as Satan! thought Wilfred.

Joe went on to give a humorous account of the psychical evening at the house of Wilfred’s Aunts long ago. Elaine was to infer that this was the occasion of their first meeting. In telling the story, Joe allowed his own soullessness to appear quite nakedly. He didn’t care; nor, apparently, did Elaine. It was a good joke.

Meanwhile Wilfred was working himself up to the point of going. He finally stood up with a jerk. “Well, I must trot along,” he said in a thin voice.

“So long, Wilfred,” said Elaine in her boyish way.

“Ta-ta, old man,” said Joe ironically.

You be damned! thought Wilfred, looking straight ahead of him.

He went out stiffly. Silence in the room behind him. Already! Already! What if he should go back? . . . Why go back? He knew without going back. And it wouldn’t shame _them_! . . . Elaine . . . and that soulless blackguard! All her brave colors hauled down! Abandoning herself . . . his practised embraces! Oh, Christ! . . .

He hurried out of the house with a shrieking in his ears.

V

After having resisted the temptation for many days, Wilfred pushed a button at the door of one of the little flats in the Manhanset Building on Fifty-Ninth street. He was ashamed to drag his dead and alive self there for succor; nevertheless a feeling of thankfulness sprang up in his breast like water in dusty earth. What a blessing it was to have a place where you could drop in without an appointment, and be sure of your welcome. Perhaps he could conceal from Frances Mary how far gone he was.

She opened the door. His eyes were gratified by the sight of her bland and dusky fairness; her calm. Frances Mary was always the same. “Hello!” she said with her ironical smile, while her eyes beamed with friendliness. She had a quality of voice that worked magic with refractory nerves. “Come in!”

She walked away from the door, leaving Wilfred to close it and follow. If she had read anything in his face she gave no sign of it.

“Hope I’m not interrupting your work,” he said, trying not to sound perfunctory. He knew he was interrupting.

“I was ripe for an interruption.”

At the end of a tiny hall was her general room, a mellow retreat highly characteristic of its owner. It had two windows looking northward over the flat roofs of dwellings below. The effect was of green and brown and gold. Wilfred looked around him thirstily; it provided just what he needed then.

“This room is as right as a natural thing,” he said grinning. “Nothing sticks out. It doesn’t ask to be admired, but to be flopped in. Demoralizing I call it. Makes me feel tearful.”

Frances Mary looked most ironical when she was flattered. “Want a hanky?” she asked.

There was a hard coal fire burning in the grate. She put a plump brass kettle on the trivet and swung it in.

“Don’t bother about tea,” said Wilfred; “at least not for me.”

“I want it,” she said. They always carried through this little fiction.

She moved about the room, bringing out the tea things. She had the gift of getting things done without any fuss. A tall woman, of an essentially feminine tenderness of flesh, her glance was not tender but level. The leaf-colored room was a fit setting for her. Wilfred’s frantic feeling passed away. How restful! How blessedly restful! Her unexpressed sympathy was like sleep stealing on.

He could always count on her sympathy, he reflected, though she rarely agreed with him. There was a wholesome astringent quality in her nature. She was not generally popular he had observed with surprise. People complained that she seemed to mock at everything. They would not see that her mockery was only a thin shield for her heavenly kindness of heart. He felt that he alone understood Frances Mary. She had a slightly invidious smile; and her gentle glance was generally veiled. In particular, stupid women hated her for her smile. Yet she was what is known as a woman’s woman; she had devoted friends amongst the best sort of women. On the other hand she seemed to know but few men, and they not the best sort of men; women’s men.

Frances Mary was predestined to die single, Wilfred supposed, watching her. And she so splendidly made; what a pity! Loved babies, too. But she lacked any disturbing quality for men. Well, she was one of the rare women who could do without a man. There would be no souring here. Not with that serene mind. The happiest person he knew. Noble. If one had only had the luck to fall in love with a woman like that instead of . . . well, it would be just the difference between life and death! But you couldn’t fall in love with Frances Mary. She was too intelligent. A hollow laugh sounded inside Wilfred. What would be said of a man who uttered such a sentiment in a story?—But it was true just the same. Nature disregarded intelligence in the business of mating. Perhaps intelligence was too modern for Nature. It was a truism that a man’s man and a woman’s woman were the best types of each sex. What a ghastly joke anyhow, the whole damned business of sex! The peach-like Frances Mary doomed to shrivel, ungathered; and he to his Hell of base jealousy!

She did not look at him while she moved about, nevertheless Wilfred felt that he was being explored with a faculty other than sight—that withdrawn glance of hers; that hint of a smile. In haste he said, still in the tone of one determined not to be perfunctory—he could hear it!

“How is your work going?”

At the tone, her smile deepened; but she answered simply: “I’ve been working at the ‘Æolian Harp.’ I’d like you to read part of it later.”

“I expect I shan’t like it,” he said. “A little bird tells me you have been niggling at it. I warned you to leave it alone. It was all right as it was.”

An adorable look of anxiety came into Frances Mary’s face. It gave Wilfred a pleasant sense of power. She came to a stop; looking at him; biting her lip. “I . . . I thought I had improved it,” she faltered.

“Your vice is, never knowing when to leave a thing alone,” he said severely. “You lose sight of the whole in the parts.”

“I expect I do,” she said with a disarming humility. “Your criticism is awfully good for me. . . . What are you doing?”

Wilfred relapsed into the depths. “Nothing,” he said. The blackness was real enough; but he equivocated respecting its cause. For days past he had not even tried to write. “I’m still stuck in the middle of my restaurant story.”

“What’s the matter with it?”

“Too damn sentimental!”

Frances Mary was silent.

Wilfred found he was not so deadened, but that he could still feel the pin-pricks of wounded self-love. “You don’t say anything,” he said bitterly. “You think it’s tripe, too.”

“Oh, not as bad as that!” she said. “The sentimentality was implicit in the original design. . . .”

“Why didn’t you tell me so then?”

“I tried to, but you wouldn’t have it so. . . . Why not finish it now, frankly in a sentimental vein; and go on to something else.”

“Why not advise me to tear it up?”

“But it has charm. It will sell readily.”

“You think that’s all I’m good for!”