1
COMING out on the street, swinging his stick, Felix was vividly
conscious of the outer world—it was as if the curtain had just risen
upon a stage scene. The shapes of the trees in the distance had all the
interest of a beautifully painted set—artificial, as scenery should be,
not aping nature, but symbolizing it. The houses that stood beside the
road were cardboard shapes that suggested great masses of brick and
stone. And the way the night sky bent down at the street-end to touch
the earth—that was marvelous.
The whole scene was refreshing. It had the beauty of something made to
be looked at. It was as if the outer-world were no longer the unnoted
background of a drama in which he was a baffled participant: he had
stepped out of the play now, he was a spectator—he could look on and
enjoy the spectacle.
There was a sense of vast release in his mind. The burden of emotion, of
pain, of grief, of anger, the intolerable burden of human illusion, was
lifted. His shoulders felt lighter, and he carried himself with a jaunty
air.
A man passed him—no spectator like himself of this play, but a
participant in it, a man to whom things really seemed to matter. With a
tired droop of the head and shoulders, putting one foot mechanically
before another, he was going home. Two girls passed, eagerly talking to
each other. None of them saw him, or the world through which they
moved—they were busy acting their parts, too busy thinking about
yesterday and tomorrow.
How good it was no longer to have a part to play—to be able to look on,
full of curiosity! He was like a disembodied spirit that wanders freely
upon the earth without a care. The world was beautiful. All the time
that he had been worrying about other things, it had been beautiful—and
he had been too passionately entangled in the coil of personal emotions
to notice.... The crooked branch of an elm, from which all but a few
leaves had fallen, drooping black against the luminous sky—the world had
been full of such things all along, and he had never paused to look
before.
It was pleasant to have a mind able to notice little things—like the
fantastic shadow that danced along the sidewalk, growing shorter and
longer and dodging about in front and behind—a mind that could dwell
upon light things, instead of revolving eternally in some cycle of hope
and fear. A leisurely, disinterested, curious mind!
As he walked, his thoughts touched lightly upon Rose-Ann—he had a
fleeting memory-picture, uncoloured by any painful emotion, of her
standing on the balcony of that house in Woods Point, about to jump off
into the snow-bank; he sensed her as a creature possessed by some wish
which she did not understand, driven on by it to delightful and absurd
actions.... And Clive, ironically officiating as host to a bridal pair
in the house which he had built to shelter his own happiness.... And
Phyllis, holding Clive perpetually at arm’s length, because he was not
utterly a god.... And himself, strangest shape of all, taking the
emotions of all these other characters seriously and trying to adjust
his life to them! They were like people in a play, strange and foolish,
beautiful and pitiful. He saw them all, he saw his own past self, with a
delicate and appreciating exactitude.
But they did not matter—he could stop thinking of them, and look at the
nimbus of light around the arc lamp on the corner. That was strange and
beautiful, too.
To be a spectator of the spectacle of existence! At first that was
enough. But presently he was aware of a vague desire for a
fellow-spectator. The desire was faint, but faint as it was it moved his
steps to the Illinois Central platform, and presently he emerged upon
Michigan Avenue.
2
That evening in the Artists’ Theatre there was a rehearsal of several
episodes from Schnitzler’s “Anatol,” which was to be the second bill of
the season. At midnight Elva Macklin saw Felix Fay stroll in and listen
to the jaded end of the rehearsal from the theatre’s one tiny and
inconvenient box.
Felix saw her, too, and realized by what instinctive wish he had been
led, without conscious thought, to the Artists’ Theatre. He wanted her
for his fellow-spectator of the spectacle of existence.
He saw her as if for the first time. He had never talked with her much;
and he had been drunk, on dreams if not on whiskey, the time he had
danced with her at the ball. She had been a sort of dream-figure to him,
an out-of-the-world creature. He saw her now clearly enough—an intense
young egotist in her every word and gesture; no dryad, but soulless
enough for all her human nature—a girl who still kept the hardness of a
child about her. She would never make a good actress, he reflected; she
was too much herself; she was acting abominably her part in this
Schnitzler play, but with her own special charm, the charm that made her
what she was. But she was not a person to pity. He liked her for that.
He would talk to her.
A few moments later, as Elva Macklin was putting on her coat to go home,
Felix Fay appeared at the door of the tiny women’s dressing room.
The others had gone, she was there alone.
“May I come in?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, “whoever you are ... and you may button my spats if you
want to, Felix Fay. I’m too tired, and I was going off without them.”
She continued, as he knelt at her feet and twisted the reluctant buttons
one by one into place, “I’ve done the circus girl for hours, over and
over again. Gregory doesn’t like the way I do it—and I don’t like the
way Jimmy Taylor does Anatol. Neither does Gregory, for that matter.
Everything’s gone wrong tonight.... Gregory gets more and more
Napoleonic. He says, ‘Stop! we’ll do that scene all over again!’ Nothing
about what’s the matter, or how it should be done—we just know that it
doesn’t suit him, and so we do it differently. And usually worse. Then
he frowns; he bites his lip; he even stamps his foot: but even that
doesn’t do much good!”
She put out her other foot. “Jimmie’s really impossible as Anatol. He
looks all right—but he hasn’t any spirit. You just can’t imagine
Jimmie’s having six mistresses. He treats me as though I were his
aunt.... Gregory wants me to do the circus girl ‘simply’—whatever that
means. I wish he would condescend to explain, instead of just looking
haughty.... I’m awfully tired.... Thanks. I don’t feel quite clothed
without my spats.”
Felix stood up. “Let’s go somewhere and get something to eat,” he said.
“I’d like to,” she said. “I don’t want to go home. I’m too tired to
sleep.” She buttoned her coat about her.
It was a boyish coat, and she wore it with a boyish air. There was
something Puck-like in her face, something impish, mischievous.
“Have you a nickname?” he asked curiously.
“Yes,” she said, startled. “Why?”
“What is it?”
“Bobby. Again, why?”
He laughed.
“Because I was going to give you one if you hadn’t. I was going to name
you Till Eulenspiegel. But Bobby will do very well. I shall call you
that, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind. But you may regret it.—Who was Till Eulenspiegel?” she
asked.
“A celebrated scamp.—Why should I regret it?”
“We’ll have to number our questions and answers—we’re getting all mixed
up. Bobby is a celebrated scamp, too. You haven’t heard of her? When I’m
Elva I’m on my very best behaviour.”
“Then come as Bobby, by all means!” he said.
“It’s only fair to warn you that you may not like her at all. Some
people don’t.”
“I’m sure _I_ shall. Come along!” he laughed.
“Wait a moment. How much money have you got? When I’m Bobby, I insist on
paying my own way. But I’ve only carfare home tonight. So you’ll have to
lend me some.”
He took out a roll of bills from his pocket, all that was left of the
two weeks’ salary after paying for his apartment, and solemnly divided
it.
She accepted the money, and then handed it back. “No, I feel like being
recklessly dependent tonight. I’ll let you buy my dinner.... One
moment—I have to turn the lights out. Go ahead, I can find my way out in
the dark.”
She joined him in the hall a moment later. “The elevator’s stopped
running,” she said, “we’ll have to walk down.”
Half way down she stopped. “Let’s rest and smoke a cigarette.”
She lighted her cigarette at his match, and then asked, “What brings you
here tonight?”
“Idle curiosity,” he said.
She puffed on her cigarette and scrutinized his face by the glow it made
in the dark.
“Something’s happened to you,” she said.
“Right,” he answered cheerfully.
“Want to tell me your troubles?” she asked indifferently.
“No,” he said. “I haven’t any troubles. I’ve ceased to have them. That’s
what’s happened to me.”
She laughed lightly. “So that’s it. Well, I’m glad you don’t want
sympathy. I was afraid you might.”
“You misjudged me,” he said. “Besides, if I had wanted sympathy, would I
have come to you?”
“No, I guess you do know me better than that.... Well, what _do_ you
want of me?”
“Nothing in particular of you,” he said. “I just want somebody to bum
around with tonight.”
She puffed on her cigarette again. “You don’t look at all
broken-hearted,” she said.
“Why should I look broken-hearted?”
“I hear all the theatre-gossip. I suppose it’s true?”
“Well, I don’t hear the theatre-gossip, so I don’t know whether it’s
true or not. Why should you care?”
“I don’t care. I’m just curious. You know, you’ve been looking worried
and unhappy ever since I first saw you—until now. At first I thought you
were worried about the play; but when it was a success you looked more
unhappy than ever. And now—well, the transformation is astonishing!”
“I can explain that.... You probably have in your rooms—”
“My room,” she corrected him. “A quite singular room, in every sense.”
“In your room, then, you probably have five or six copies of the
Rubaiyat, presented you by different youths....”
“Yes, all with a pencil mark beside the ‘Book of Verses’ verse. Go on.”
“Well, in that poem Omar boasts of ‘striking from the Calendar Unborn
Tomorrow and Dead Yesterday.’ I’ve just performed that same astronomical
feat.”
“I know just what you mean,” she said. “It’s—it’s like getting over a
headache, isn’t it?... I’m glad.... Well, let’s go on.”
She jumped up.
Out in the street he asked her, “How do you come to know so much about
it? When did you perform Omar’s astronomical feat?”
She laughed.
“I? Oh, fully twenty years ago—at the age of five!... You see, up to
that time I had been the only child—the reigning princess, in fact. And
then a little brother came along. People laugh about these things—but I
don’t think anything in later life can hurt worse than a childish
tragedy like that. To be considered the most wonderful being in all the
world, and then—pushed out of the way.... Well, I saw that my reign was
ended, that human beings were fickle, and that my heart would be broken
if I kept on caring. So I stopped—and I’ve never cared since. Not for a
single other living thing in all the world.”
“I see you are a person of great experience in—not caring. Twenty years
of it! Tell me, how does it work out?”
She stopped suddenly, pulling at his sleeve. “Look!” she said with
apparent irrelevance.
He looked in the direction of her upward glance, and saw outlined
against the sky a curious accidental roof-line made by the juxtaposition
of two buildings. It was nothing—and it had the pure beauty of a design
by Hiroshige.
“Yes,” he said, gazing at it. An accidental scrap of beauty, unseen by
millions of passing eyes, and only revealed, it seemed, to such people
as themselves! He gazed, and the knowledge that she too saw it, that her
world was full of such moments, and that they could share them together,
satisfied his need of companionship. He pressed her arm closer to his
side.
They resumed their walk. “You can’t see things like that if you care
about people,” she said. “And that’s how it works out.... But it’s nice
to know some one else like that. Only—I don’t think this will last, with
you....”
“Why?” he demanded.
“I don’t know.”
“So you believe I’ll go back to caring—to being human, as they call
it—to having remorse about the past and worries about the future, to
being all tangled up in unhappiness again!” he said incredulously.
She laughed, and sang, in a low voice, close to his ear, the lines of a
song that went to an old ballad measure:
“_Oh, the briary-bush,
That pricks my heart so sore!
If I ever get out of the briary-bush
I’ll never get in any more!_”
“You think you won’t, Felix, but you will! People do go back to the
briary-bush. You have to learn early, to stay out.... But I’m glad you
came to see me while you’re in this mood. You know, you may get over it
in an hour or two!”
“Wait and see!”
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