1
FELIX began the task of forgetting—a task for youth in its most
fantastically stern mood:—of trying to forget that unforgettable moment
on the station platform with Rose-Ann. Or at least, to behave as though
it had not occurred. For he was convinced that neither of them had
intended it to occur.
It was obviously an accident—the mere mood of parting. It had meant
nothing. It must be ignored.
But it was hard to ignore. It was a moment to which memory would recur.
It dramatized vividly for him the fact—to which he sought to adjust
himself—of Rose-Ann’s absence.
Rose-Ann’s absence made a great deal of difference, it seemed—and not
only to himself. What she had predicted in regard to her dramatic class
came true very quickly. Under Miss Clark’s fussy direction, all the fun
was taken out of the work for everybody. Mrs. Perk looked on the altered
face of things with an air of wry disapproval, and whispered to Felix,
“Oh, it’s not the same place at all any more!” The children were
listless. Paul froze into a silent rage at some unfortunate remark of
Miss Clark’s about his scenery and left Community House, and Felix began
to stay away from the rehearsals altogether.
He wrote these things to Rose-Ann, and received brief replies which
showed how remote all these matters had now become to her. He accepted
the probability that Springfield had captured her for good and all this
time. It was true that she always inquired in a friendly way about the
things in which they had both been interested; but these weekly
inquiries were tinged with a kind of faint retrospective glamour, as
though to her these interests were already invested with the pathos of
distance. She was evidently saying good-bye to her moment of freedom.
Felix did not tell her how much he missed her. He was rather ashamed of
the fact. There was something intellectually disgraceful about a state
of dependence upon one person for companionship....
It was true, he had Clive. But he had been neglecting Clive, and now
Clive had other concerns. Clive had several times urged him to come out
over the week-end to Woods Point, where he was undertaking to spend the
winter in his summer cottage, and Felix had always had some engagement
with Rose-Ann which prevented his going. Now, when he would be glad to
accept such an invitation, it was not renewed; Clive, it appeared, was
so much interested in some girl that he had no time to spare for Felix.
And Clive was the only person about the office that he cared for; at
Community House since Rose-Ann had gone, there was no one. He wished
that he had taken the trouble to make a few more friends. It made all
the difference in the world to have some one to talk to at the day’s
end, some one to share one’s thoughts with....
Suddenly he began to find Community House intolerable. He spent his
evenings looking for a place to live. Certainly he could not be less
lonely anywhere else! And one evening, on Canal Street, in a dingy
building which had apparently once been a residence and was now rented
out room by room, he found a tiny hall-room on the third floor which he
had not the excuse of not being able to afford. He made some explanation
for leaving Community House—which it seemed was not needed, for room
there was much in demand—and moved at once into his new home.
It was a room about eight by eleven feet, hardly holding the cot-bed,
table and chair, which constituted its furnishing. He improvised a shelf
above the tiny radiator in the corner for his half-dozen books.... And
for one evening he was happy, in being away from Community House, in
being in a place of his own, in having in some way established his
independence.
And then loneliness descended upon him in a black mist, obliterating the
clear outlines of the actual world. He managed to get through the day’s
work somehow, and then he wandered about hopelessly, unseeingly, the
victim of a longing that made the very act of breathing a pain; a
longing that he could not understand—for what was Rose-Ann to him?
2
He dined in various restaurants in the loop, in the vague hope of
finding some one to talk to.
One evening, as he stood in a restaurant looking about for an empty
table, he heard his name called. A young man, sitting alone, was
beckoning to him. It was Eddie Silver, a reporter of whom Felix had been
hearing much of late.
“Come over and congratulate me,” he said, grinning, “I’ve just been
fired!”
“Really? What for?” Felix asked.
“Coming down to the office crazy drunk,” said Eddie Silver proudly. “Sit
down.”
Felix had heard of Eddie Silver’s epic drunkennesses. Another thing he
had heard was that Eddie Silver wrote poetry.... This was not so rare a
thing among Chicago reporters as Felix would have supposed. Two in every
dozen young reporters, as Clive had said, were poets of a sort. But, as
Clive had added, it was always of a tame and colourless sort. Eddie
Silver was not tame and colourless, whatever his poetry might be. Or
rather there was nothing tame about the Eddie Silver legend—though its
hero had appeared to Felix, whenever they met, to be the gentlest soul
alive.
Eddie Silver was having a dinner which consisted mostly of cocktails;
but he showed no signs of any of the alcoholic belligerency for which he
was famed; he seemed, on the contrary, likely to burst into tears at any
moment. He was in a soft poetic mood. He talked about poetry. He tried
to recite it. But the lines kept getting mixed up.
“Come on over my place,” he said, “we’ll read some Swinburne.”
He took Felix to a large furnished room a little to the north of the
loop, and propping himself on a couch with pillows, read “Poems and
Ballads” in a sonorous and unintelligible manner until midnight. He
invited Felix to come back the next evening for more Swinburne, and
Felix went away feeling that the legend had rather over-emphasized the
belligerent side of Eddie Silver’s character.... He came the next
evening, which was spent in precisely the same manner, ending with an
invitation to come in tomorrow evening for still more Swinburne.
Felix wondered if Eddie Silver read Swinburne every night.
Coming the third time, he found Eddie Silver’s room occupied by half a
dozen young men all more or less drunk.
“C’m’ on in!” Eddie Silver called from the couch, where he sat propped
with pillows as before, with a book in one hand and a glass in the
other. “On’y two bo’l’s o’ Swinburne left!”
He rose, and poured a glassful of whiskey for Felix.
Felix looked at the huge drink with an involuntary gesture of dismay.
“’S all right,” said Eddie Silver. “Nas’y stuff, I know! But you take it
’n’ you’ll feel better right away!”
Felix had never been drunk. He had never wanted to be drunk. But it
occurred to him that now was the proper time to have that experience.
He looked about the room. All these half dozen people were in that
state, so eloquently described by the poets, of being “perplexed no more
with human and divine.”
One of them was telling an incoherent story, and two others were
laughing in the wrong place and being told indignantly that that wasn’t
the point at all. Another was singing to himself, and not doing it very
well. Poor devil! he probably wanted to sing and nobody would let him
except when he was drunk. And still another was arguing with Eddie
Silver, who paid no attention to him whatever, about somebody named
John. “John means well,” he explained, with the air of one who
understands all and forgives all. “John just don’t know how, that’s all!
But he means well.”
Felix considered. Did he really wish to join them in that state, so
merely ridiculous when viewed from the outside? Yet they were doubtless
happy, in some way which he, in his inexperience, knew nothing about.
Well, he would try it. He would get drunk.
And he might as well do it quickly.
He drank half the glassful down, choked, and was slapped on the back. He
waited.
He was surprised, and a little disappointed, to find that it had no
further effect than the same gentle exhilaration he had experienced from
an evening’s slow sipping of his friend Tom Alden’s Rhine wine. That was
not what he wanted. That was not enough. He braced himself, and drank
the rest of the glassful.
Some hours later he was awakened from a deep and peaceful sleep on the
floor of the bathroom by two of his companions, and walked out of the
house.... He felt refreshed by the night air, and remembered a
discussion about Chicago, and of slapping somebody’s face. He did not
remember being knocked down—several times, they said. By a man named
Smith. He did not remember Smith.
“And every time,” they told him gleefully, “you got up and solemnly
slapped his face again. You said you wouldn’t allow anybody to talk that
way about Chicago.... And you kept calling him ‘McFish.’”
His companions were taking him home. He thanked them extravagantly, and
tried to give them directions, but they explained that they lived in the
same building he did—a fact which at the time he found very puzzling.
Nevertheless they affirmed that it was so.
He got up two flights of stairs without assistance, and opened his door,
but immediately became overcome with sleep, and sank on the couch. They
pulled off his shoes and left him....
At seven o’clock in the morning he awoke, located himself after a
momentary wonderment and shook his head. No headache! That was strange!
Apparently he was not going to suffer the traditional aftermath.... He
went to take a cold bath, and returning found one of his companions of
the night before in the hall. “How do you feel?” He felt fine. He had
some breakfast at the nearest restaurant, and went to work.
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