|THE Worm walked slowly and thoughtfully across to Washington Square and
the old brick apartment building.
Peter was there--a gloomy intense figure, bent over the desk at the
farther end of the nearly dark studio, his long face, the three little
pasteboard bank books before him, the pad on which he was figuring and
his thin hands illuminated in the yellow circle from the drop light on
the desk. Just behind him on the small table was his typewriter, and
there were sheets of paper scattered on the floor. He lifted his
face, peered at the Worm through his large glasses, then with nervous
quickness threw the bank books into a drawer which he locked. He tore
up the top sheet of the pad; noted pencil indentations on the sheet next
under it, and tore that up too.
“Hello!” he remarked listlessly.
“Hello!” replied the Worm. Adding with a touch of self-consciousness:
“Just had a cup of tea with Sue.”
“Over at her place?”
The Worm nodded.
“Any--any one else there?”
“Zanin came in.”
Peter winced and whitened a little about the mouth; then suddenly got
up and with an exaggerated air of casualness set about picking up the
papers on the floor. This done he strode to the window and stared out
over the Square where hundreds of electric lights twinkled. Suddenly he
swung around.
“It's a strain,” he said in a suppressed, clouded voice.
“Doubtless,” murmured the Worm, reaching for the evening paper.
“Zanin used to try to--to make love to her.”
Some effort must be made to stem this mounting current. “Oh, well,” said
the Worm, rather hurriedly, “you're free from worry, Pete.”
“God--if I were!” muttered the eminent modernist.
“But you are! Good lord, man, here I've just asked her to have dinner
with me, and she ducked. Wouldn't even eat with me.”
“But--”
“But nothing! It was flatly because she is engaged to you.”
Peter thought this over and brightened. “But see here!” he cried--“I'm
not a Turk. I'm not trying to lock her up.”
The Worm was silent.
Peter confronted him; spoke with vehemence. “Sue is free--absolutely.
I want her to be free. I wouldn't have it otherwise. Not for a
moment. It's absurd that she should hesitate about dining with you,
or--or”--this with less assurance--“with any man.”
Peter walked around the room, stopping again before the Worm who was now
sitting on the desk, looking over the evening paper.
“Oh, come now!” said Peter. “Put up that paper. Listen to me. Here you
are, one of my oldest friends, and you make me out a Victorian monster
with the woman I love. Damn it, man, you ought to know me better! And
you ought to know Sue better. If her ideas are modern and free, mine
are, if anything, freer. Yes, they are! In a sense--in a sense--I go
farther than she does. She is marrying me because it is the thing she
wants to do. That's the only possible basis on which I would accept her
love. If that love ever dies”.... Peter was suddenly all eloquence and
heroism. Self-convinced, all afire, he stood there with upraised arm.
And the Worm, rather fascinated, let his paper drop and watched the
man... “If that love ever dies,” the impressive voice rang on, “no
matter what the circumstances, engaged, married, it absolutely does not
matter, Sue is free. Good God! You should know better--you, of all
people! You know me--do you suppose I would fasten on Sue, on that
adorable, inspired girl, the shackles of an old-fashioned property
marriage! Do you suppose I would have the hardihood to impose trammels
on that free spirit!”
Carried away by his own climax Peter whirled, snatched up the desk
telephone, called Sue's number, waited tense as a statue for the first
sound of her voice, then said, instantly assuming the caressingly gentle
voice of the perfect lover: “Sue, dear, hello! How are you? Tired? Oh,
I'm sorry. Better get out somewhere. Wish I could come, but a job's a
job. I'll stick it out. Wait though! Here's Henry Bates with nothing to
do. I'm going to send him over to take you out--make you eat something
and then walk a bit. It's what you need, little girl. No, not a word!
I'm going to ring off now. He'll come right over. Good-by, dear.”
He put down the instrument, turned with an air of calm triumph. “All
right,” he said commandingly. “Run along. Take her to the Muscovy. I may
possibly join you later but don't wait for me. I'll tell you right now,
we're not going to have any more of this fool notion that Sue isn't
free.” With which he sat down at his typewriter and plunged into his
work.
The Worm, taken aback, stared at him. Then, slowly, he smiled. He
didn't care particularly about the Muscovy. It was too self-consciously
“interesting”--too much like all the semi-amateur, short-lived little
basement restaurants that succeed one another with some rapidity in
the Greenwich Village section. The Worm was thinking again of Jim's
exceedingly Anglo-Saxon chop house and of those salty deep-sea oysters,
arrived this day. At the Muscovy you had Russian table-cloths and
napkins. The tables were too small there, and set too close together.
You couldn't talk. You couldn't think. He wondered if Peter hadn't
chosen the place, thus arbitrarily, because Sue's friends would be there
and would see her enacting this freedom of his.
Peter was now pecking with a rather extraordinary show of energy at
the typewriter. The Worm, studying him, noted that his body was rigidly
erect and his forehead beaded with sweat, and began to realize that
the man was in a distinct state of nerves. It was no good talking to
him--not now. So, meekly but not unhumorously obeying orders, the Worm
set out.
Sue met him at her door with a demure smile.
“Where is it?” she asked--“Jim's?”
He shook his head. His face, the tone of his voice, were impenetrable.
There was not so much as a glimmer of mischief in his quietly expressive
eyes; though Sue, knowing Henry Bates, looked there for it. “No,” he
said, “we are to go to the Muscovy.”
Peter, meanwhile, continued his frenzy of work for a quarter-hour; then
slackened; finally stopped, sighed, ran his long fingers through his
hair, and gloomy again, turned wearily around to the desk, unlocked his
own particular drawer, brought out the three bank books and resumed
his figuring on the pad. If you could have looked over his shoulder
you would have seen that his pencil faltered; that he added one column,
slowly and laboriously, six or seven times, getting a different result
each time; and that then, instead of keeping at it or even throwing the
book back into the drawer, he fell to marking over the figures, shading
the down strokes, elaborating the dollar signs, enclosing the whole
column within a two-lined box and then placing carefully-rounded dots
in rows between the double lines. This done, he lowered his head and
sighted, to see if the rows were straight. They were not satisfactory.
He hunted through the top drawers and then on the bookcase for an
eraser....
There was a loud knock at the door.
He started, caught his breath, then sank back, limp and white, in his
chair. At the third knocking he managed to get up and go to the door. It
was a messenger boy with a note.
Peter held the envelope down in the little circle of yellow light on
the desk. It was addressed in Zarin's loose scrawl. The handwriting
definitely affected him. It seemed to touch a region of his nervous
system that had been worn quiveringly raw of late. He tore the envelope
open and unfolded the enclosure. There were two papers pinned together.
The top paper was a bill from the Interstellar people for eight hundred
and twenty dollars and fifty cents. The other was in Zanin's
hand--penciled; “It's getting beyond us, Mann. They offer to carry it
through for a sixty per cent, interest. It's a good offer. We've got to
take it. Come over to the Muscovy about eight, and I'll have copies of
the contract they offer. Don't delay, or the work will stop to-morrow.”
Peter carefully unpinned the two papers, laid them side by side on the
desk, smoothed them with his hands. Doing this, lie looked at his hands.
The right one he raised, held it out, watched it. It trembled. He then
experimented with the left. That trembled, too. He stood irresolute;
opened the three savings bank books--spread them beside the papers;
stared at the collection long and steadily until it began to exert a
hypnotic effect on his unresponsive mind. He finally stopped this; stood
up; stared at the Wall. “Still,” ran his thoughts, “I seem to be fairly
calm. Perhaps as a creative artist, I shall gain something from the
experience. I shall see how men act in utter catastrophe. Come to think
of it, very few artists ever see a business failure at short range.
This, of course, borders _on_ tragedy. I am done for. But from the way I
am taking this now I believe I shall continue to be calm. I must tell
Sue, of course... it may make a difference.... I think I shall take one
stiff drink. But no more. Trust the one. It will steady my nerves. And I
won't look at those things any longer. After the drink I think I shall
take a walk. And I shall be deliberate. I shall simply think it out,
make my decision and abide by it.”