|THE pleasant days of quiet reading and whimsical reflection were over
for the Worm, poor devil! Life caught him up without warning--that
complex fascinating life of which he had long been a spectator--and
swept him into swift deep currents. He was to be a mere spectator no
longer.
Washington Square glowed with June. The trees had not yet assumed the
faded, dispirited gray-green of midsummer. The bus tops were crowded
with pleasure riders, and a crowd of them pressed about the open-air
terminal station held in check by uniformed guards. On the wide curves
of asphalt hundreds of small Italians danced to the hurdy-gurdy or
played hopscotch or roller-skated. Perambulators lined the shady walks;
nurses, slim and uniformed, fat and unformed, lined the benches.
Students hurried west, south and north (for it was afternoon--Saturday
afternoon, as it happened). Beggars, pedlers, lovers in pairs, unkempt
tenement dwellers, a policeman or two, moved slowly about, but not so
slowly as they would move a few weeks later when the heat of July would
have sapped the vitality of every living thing in town.
But the Worm, standing near the marble arch where Fifth Avenue
splendidly begins, felt not June in his heart. He walked on through the
Square to the old red-brick building where for three years he and Hy Lowe
and Pcter Ericson Mann had dwelt in bachelor comfort. The dingy studio
apartment on the seventh floor had been his home. But it was a haunt of
discord now.
He found the usually effervescent Hy pacing the lower hall like a
leopard in a cage. Hy wore an immaculately pressed suit of creamy gray
flannel, new red tie, red silk hosiery visible above the glistening
low-cut tan shoes, a Panama hat with a fluffy striped band around it. In
his hand was a thin bamboo stick which he was swinging savagely against
his legs. His face worked with anger.
He pounced upon the Worm.
“Wanted to see you,” he said in a voice that was low but of quavering
intensity. “Before I go. Got to run.”
At this point the elevator came creaking down. A messenger boy stepped
out, carrying Hy's suit-case and light overcoat.
“Excuse me,” breathed Hy, “one minute.” He whispered to the boy, pressed
a folded dollar bill into his hand, hurried him off. “This thing has
become flatly impossible--”
“What thing?” The Worm was moodily surveying him.
“Pete. He's up there now. I'm through. I shan't go into those rooms
again if he--look here! I've found a place for you and me, over in the
Mews. Eight dollars less than this and more light. Tell Pete. I. can't
talk to him. My God, the man's a--”
“He's a what?” asked the Worm.
“Well, you know what he _did!_ As there's a God in the Heavens he killed
old Wilde.”
“Killed your aunt!” observed the Worm, and soberly considered his
friend. Hy's elaborate get-up suggested the ladies, a particular lady.
The Worm looked him over again from the fluff-bound Panama to the red
silk socks. A very particular lady! And he was speaking with wandering
eyes and an unreal sort of emphasis; as if his anger, though doubtless
genuine enough, were confused with some other emotion regarding which he
was not explicit.
“Where are you going now--over to the Mews?”
Hy started at the abrupt question, took the Worm's elbow, became
suddenly confidential.
“No,” he said, “not exactly. You see--everything's gone to smash.
The creditors of the paper won't keep me on. They'll put in a country
preacher with a string tie, and he'll bring his own staff. That's what
Pete's done to me! That's what he's done. I wouldn't go off this way,
right now, if it wasn't for the awful depression I feel. I didn't
sleep a wink last night. Honest, not a wink! A man's got to have _some_
sympathy in his life. Damn it, in a crisis like this--”
“Perhaps you can tell me with even greater lucidity when you are coming
back,” said the Worm dryly.
Hy gulped, stared blankly at his friend, uttered explosively the one
word, “Monday!” Then he glanced at his watch and hurried out of the
building.
The Worm slowly shook his head and took the elevator.
The long dim studio was quite as usual, with its soft-toned walls,
dilapidated but comfortable furniture, Hy's piano, the decrepit flat-top
desk, the two front windows from which you could see all of the Square
and the mile of roofs beyond it, and still beyond, the heights of
New Jersey. The coffee percolator stood on the bookcase--on the empty
bookcase where once had been the Worm's library. In this room he had
studied and written the hundreds of futile book reviews that nobody ever
heard of, that had got him precisely nowhere. In this room he had lived
in a state of soul near serenity until he met Sue Wilde. Now it brought
heartache. Merely to push open the door and step within was to stir
poignantly haunting memories of a day that was sharply gone. It was like
opening old letters. The scent of a thoughtlessly happy past was faintly
there.
Something else was there--a human object, sprawled abjectly in the
Morris chair, garbed in slippers and bathrobe, hair disheveled, but
black-rimmed eye-glasses still on his nose, the conspicuous black
ribbon still hanging from them down the long face. It was that
well-known playwright, Peter Ericson Mann, author of _The Buzzard, Odd
Change and Anchored_; and, more recently, of the scenario for Jacob
Zanin's Nature him. Author, too, of the new satirical comedy. _The
Triffler_, written at Sue Wilde and booked for production in September
at the Astoria Theater.
The Worm had not told Hy that he had just seen Sue. Now, standing
motionless, the thousand memory-threads that bound the old rooms to
his heart clinging there like leafless ivy, he looked down at the
white-faced man in the Morris chair and knew that he was even less
likely to mention the fact to Peter. He thought--“Why, we're not
friends! That's what it means!”
Peter's hollow eyes were on him.
“You, Worm!” he said huskily, and tried to smile. “I'm rather ill, I
think. It's shock. You know a shock can do it.”
“What shocked you?” asked Henry Bates rather shortly, turning to the
window.
“Hy. He's crazy, I think. It's the only possible explanation. He said I
was a”--Peter's expressive voice dropped, more huskily still, into the
tragic mood--“a murderer. It was a frightful experience. The boy
has gone batty. It's his fear of losing his job, of course. But the
experience has had a curious effect on me. My heart is palpitating.”
His right hand was feeling for the pulse in his left wrist. “And I have
some, difficulty in breathing.” Now he pressed both hands to his chest.
The Worm stared out the window. Peter would act until his dying day;
even then. One pose would follow another, prompted by the unstable
emotions of genius, guided only by an egotism so strong that it would
almost certainly weather every storm of brain or soul. In a very
indirect way Pete had murdered the old boy. No getting around that. An
odd sort of murder--sending Sumner Smith to ask that question. Peter
himself, away down under his egotism, knew it. Hence the play for
sympathy.
Peter was still talking. “It really came out of a clear sky. Until very
lately I should have said that Hy and I were friends. As you know, we
had many points of contact. Last fall, when--”
The Worm turned. “Passing lightly over the next eight months,” he
remarked, “what do you propose to do now?”
Peter shrank back a little. The Worm's manner was hardly ingratiating.
“Why--” he said, “why, I suppose I'll stay on here. You and I have
always got on, Henry. We've been comfortable here. And to tell the
truth, I've been getting tired of listening to the history in detail of
Hy's amours. He wants to look out, that fellow. He's had a few too many
of 'em. He's getting careless. Now you and I, we're both sober, quiet.
We were the backbone of the Seventh-Story Men. We can go on--”
The Worm, though given to dry and sometimes cryptic ways, was never
rude. That is he never had been. But at this point he walked out of
the apartment and closed the door behind him. He had come in with the
intention of using the telephone. Instead now he walked swiftly through
the Square and on across Sixth Avenue, under the elevated road into
Greenwich Village, where the streets twist curiously, and the hopeless
poor swarm in the little triangular parks, and writers and painters and
sculptors and agitators and idea-venders swarm in the quaint tumble-down
old houses and the less quaint apartment buildings.
He entered one of the latter, pressed one of a row of buttons under a
row of brass mouthpieces. The door clicked. He opened it; walked through
to the rear door on the right.
This door opened slowly, disclosing a tall young woman, very light in
coloring, of a softly curving outline, seeming to bend and sway even
as she stood quietly there; charming to the eye even in the half-light,
fresh of skin, slow, non-committal in speech and of quietly yielding
ways; a young woman with large, almost beautiful, inexpressive eyes. She
wore hat and gloves and carried a light coat.
“You just caught me,” she said.
On the floor by the wall was a hand-bag. Henry Bates eyed this. “Oh,” he
murmured, distrait, “going away!”
“Why--yes. You wanted me?”
“Yes. It's about Sue Wilde.”
She hesitated; then led him into the half-furnished living-room.
“Where is Sue, anyway?”
“When I left her she wras trying to make a fire in a kitchen range. Out
in Jersey.”
“But what on earth--”
“Trouble was she didn't understand about the damper in the pipe. I fixed
that.”
Betty glanced covertly at her wrist watch. “I don't want to appear
unsympathetic,” she said, “but I don't see why she undertakes to
shoulder that family. It's--it's quixotic. It's not her sort of thing.
She's got her own life to live.”
The Worm, very calm but a little white about the mouth, confronted her.
Betty moved restlessly.
“She wants you to pack up her things,” he said. “Sent me to ask.”
Betty knit her brows. “Oh,” she murmured, “isn't that too bad. I really
haven't a minute. You see--it's a matter of catching a train. I could
do it Monday. Or you might call up one of the other girls. I'm awfully
sorry. But it's something very important.” Her eyes avoided his. Her
color rose a little. She turned away. “Of course,” she was murmuring, “I
hate terribly to fail Sue at a time like this--”
She moved irresolutely toward the little hall, glanced again at her
watch; and suddenly in confusion picked up her bag and hurried out.
He could hear her light step in the outer corridor; then the street
door. All at sea, he started to follow. At the apartment door he paused.
Her key was in the lock; she had not even thought to take it. He removed
it, put it in his pocket; then wandered back into the living-room and
stood over the telephone, trying to think of some one he could call in.
But his rising resentment made clear thinking difficult. He sank into
the armchair, crossed his long legs, clasped his hands behind his head,
stared at the mantel. On it were Sue's books, in a haphazard row--a
few Russian novels (in English translations), Havelock Ellis's _Sex in
Relation to Society, Freud on Psychanalysis and Dreams_, two volumes of
Schnitzler's plays, Brieux's plays with the Shaw preface, a few others.
His gaze roved from the books to the bare walls. They _were_ bare; all
Sue's pictures were pinned up on the burlap screen that hid a corner of
the room--half a dozen feminist cartoons from _The Masses_, a futuristic
impression of her own head by one of the Village artists, two or three
strong rough sketches by Jacob Zanin of costumes for a playlet at the
Crossroads, an English lithograph of Mrs. Pankhurst.
Henry Bates slowly, thoughtfully, filled and lighted his pipe. His
brows were knit. The room, in its unfeminine bareness as well as in its
pictures and books, breathed of the modern unsubmissive girl. No one had
wasted a minute here on “housekeeping.” Here had lived the young woman
who, more, perhaps, than any other of the recent lights of the old
Village, had typified revolt. She had believed, like the Village about
her, not in patriotism but in internationalism, not in the home but
in the individual, not in duty and submission, but in experiment and
self-expression. Already, like all the older faiths of men, this new
religion had its cant, its intolerance of opposition, its orthodoxy. His
pipe went out while he sat there flunking about it; the beginnings of
the summer twilight softened the harsh room and dimmed the outlines of
back fences and rear walls without the not overclean windows.
Finally he got up, turned on the lights, took off his coat, found Sue's
trunk behind the burlap screen and dragged it to the middle of the room.
He began with the coverings of the couch-bed; then went into the bedroom
and folded blankets, coverlet, sheets and comforter. Sue did not own a
great variety of clothing; but what was hanging in the closet he brought
out, folded and packed away. He took down the few pictures and laid them
flat within the upper tray of the trunk. In an hour living-room, bedroom
and closet were bare. The books he piled by the door; first guessing at
the original cost of each and adding the figures in his head.
Nothing remained but the bureau in the bedroom. He stood before this
a long moment before he could bring himself to open the top drawer. To
Peter, to Zanin, to Hy Howe, the matter would have been simple. Years
back those deeply experienced young bachelors had become familiar with
all manner of little feminine mysteries; but to Henry Bates these were
mysteries still. The color came hotly to his mild countenance; his
pulses beat faster and faster. He recalled with painful vividness, the
last occasion on which Reason, normally his God, had deserted him. That
was the day, not so long ago by the calendar, he had turned against all
that had been his life--dropped his books in the North River, donned the
costly new suit that Peter's tailor had made for him and set forth to
propose marriage to Sue Wilde. And with chagrin that grew and burned his
face to a hotter red he recalled that he had never succeeded in making
himself clear to her. To this day she did not know that his reflective,
emotionally unsophisticated heart had been torn with love of her. Why,
blindly urging marriage, he had actually talked her into that foolish
engagement with Peter!... What was the quality that enabled men to
advance themselves--in work, in love? Whatever it might be, he felt he
had it not. Peter had it. Zanin had it. Hy had it. Sue herself! Each
was a person, something of a force, a positive quality in life. But he,
Henry Bates, was a negative thing. For years he had sat quietly among
his books, content to watch others forge past him and disappear up the
narrow lanes of progress. Until now, at thirty-two, he found himself a
hesitant unfruitful man without the gift of success.
“It is a gift,” he said aloud; and then sat on the springs of the
stripped bed and stared at his ineffectual face in the mirror. “The
trouble with me,” he continued, “is plain lack of character. Better Hy's
trifling conquests; better Zanin's driving instinct to get first; better
Peter's hideously ungoverned ego; than--nothing!”
His pipe usually helped. He felt for it. It was not in the right-hand
coat pocket where he always carried it. Which fact startled him. Then
he found it in the left-hand pocket. Not once in ten years before this
bitter hour had he misplaced his pipe. “My God,” he muttered, “haven't
I even got any _habits!_” He was unnerved. “Like Pete,” he thought, “but
without even Pete's excuse.”
He lighted his pipe, puffed a moment, stood erect, drew a few deep
breaths, then drove himself at the task of packing the things that were
in the bureau. And a task it was! Nothing but the strong if latent will
of the man held him to it. There were soft white garments the like of
which his hands had never touched before. Reverently, if grimly, he laid
them away in the upper trays of the trunk. In the bottom drawer were
Sue's dancing costumes--Russian and Greek. Each one of these brought a
vivid picture of the girl as she had appeared at the Crossroads; each
was a stab at Henry Bates' heart. At the bottom, in the corner, were a
pair of red leather boots, very light, with metal clicks in the heels.
He took them up, stood motionless holding them. His eyes filled. He
could see her again, in that difficult crouching Russian step--her
costume sparkling with color, her olive skin tinted rose with the
spirited exercise of it, her extraordinary green eyes dancing with the
exuberant life that was in her. Then, as if by a trick shift of scene,
he saw her in a bare kitchen, wearing a checked apron, kneeling by a
stove. The tears brimmed over. He lifted the little red boots, stared
wildly at them, kissed them over and over.
“My God!” he moaned softly, “oh, my God!”
There was a faint smell of burning. His pipe lay at his feet, sparks
had fallen out and were eating their way into the matting. He stepped on
them; then picked up the pipe and resolutely lighted it again. The boots
he carried into the living-room; found an old newspaper and wrapped them
up; laid the parcel by his hat and coat in the hall.
He found a strap in the kitchen closet and strapped the trunk. There was
a suit-case that he had filled; he closed this and laid it on the trunk.
Then he turned all the lights off and stood looking out the open window.
He had had no dinner--couldn't conceivably eat any. It was evening now;
somewhere between eight and nine o'clock, probably. He didn't care.
Nothing mattered, beyond getting trunk and suit-case off to Sue before
too late--so that she would surely have them in the morning. The sounds
of evening in the city floated to his ears; and he realized that he had
not before been hearing them. From an apartment across the area came the
song of a talking machine. Blowsy women leaned out of rear windows and
visited. There was a faint tinkle from a mechanical piano in the corner
saloon. He could hear a street-car going by on Tenth Street.
Then another sound--steps in the corridor; the turning of a knob;
fumbling at the apartment door.
He started like a guilty man. In the Village, it was nothing for a man
to be in a girl's rooms or a girl in a man's. The group was too
well emancipated for that--in theory, at least. In fact, of course,
difficulties often arose--and gossip. Greathearted phrases were
the common tender of Village talk; but not all the talkers were
great-hearted. And women suffered while they smiled. He would have
preferred not to be found there.
A key grated. The door opened.
With a shrinking at his heart, a sudden great selfconsciousness, he
stepped into the hall.
It was Sue--in her old street suit.
CHAPTER XXXII--CHAPTER ONE
|SUE stared at him, caught her breath, laughed a little.
“Why--Henry! You startled me. Where's Betty?”
The Worm, thinking quickly, bitterness in his heart against the selfish
lightness of the Village, bed. “Haven't seen her. Waited for her to come
in. Finally decided I'd better not wait any longer.” They were in the
dim living-room now. Sue's eyes took in the strapped trunk and closed
suit-case, the bare screen and couch.
“But who--Henry, you don't mean that you--” He nodded. His pipe was
out--he simply couldn't keep it going! Still, it gave him something to
do, lighting it again.
Sue stood watching him, studying his face by the light of a match
reflected from his hollowed hands. “Why so dark in here?” she observed.
Then, abruptly, she came to him, laid a hand on his arm, broke out with
feeling: “You're a dear, Henry, to go to all this trouble! As it was, I
felt I was imposing on you. So I ran in to look after things myself.”
“Going back to-night?” he asked, talking around his pipe-stem.
“Oh. yes. I must.” She moved to the window and gazed out at the crowded
familiar scene. Suddenly she turned.
“Henry--didn't you see Betty?”
“No,” he muttered.
“Then how on earth did you get in? There are only the two keys.”
He lowered his pipe, stared at her with open mouth. As soon as his mind
cleared a little he thought--“Good God! I don't even lie well! I'm no
good--for anything!”
He turned with a jerk; walked down the room; walked back again; striding
out savagely, turning with a jerk.
“What is it you aren't felling me?” she asked, following him with
troubled eyes.
He paced and paced. Finally he came to the other side of the window,
stared gloomily out. Still she watched him, waiting.
“Sue,” he said--she had never known this vehemence in him--“you're
wrong.”
“Wrong, Henry?”
He threw out his arm in a strong gesture; his fist was clenched..The
other hand held his pipe high. “Yes, wrong! You're not a cook! You're
not a nurse maid. You're a girl with a soul--with spirit--fire! What
are you to that family? They've always wanted to hold you down--yes. But
why? For fear you'd start talk and make them uncomfortable. Oh, I knew
the feeling that has gripped you now. It's a big reaction. The tragedy
of your father's death has brought your childhood back--the old tribal
teachings--duty--self-sacrifice! The rush of it has swept your reason
aside. But it will come back. It's got to, girl! Even if you have to
take a long time working through to it. You and your father were
not friends. Denying your own life won't help him. Your emotions
are stirred. I know. But even if they are, for God's sake don't stop
thinking! Keep your head! I tell you, you've got to go on. You can't
live some one else's life--got to live your own! It's all you've gut to
live--that life--your gifts--”
He stopped, at the point of choking. Sue was staring now.
“Henry, this is strange--sounds more like--”
“Well, like whom?”
“Like Zanin. That's the way he talked to me.”
“Perhaps it's the way a man talks when he--” He could not control his
voice and stopped.
Sue kept very still; but anally, softly, rather wearily, she said: “I'm
sorry, Henry! I've got to catch the ten-fifteen back.”
He looked at his watch; seeing nothing. “You'll be hurrying then, Sue.”
“No, there's nearly an hour.” She turned on the light, moved into the
bedroom and glanced into an open bureau drawer. She drew out the one
below, then thoughtful, half smiling, came to the door. “Henry---you
packed everything?”
“Everything, I'm sure. Though you might take a last look around.”
“But--Henry, you must have packed Betty's things, too.”
The color surged up over his collar. He was thinking of those soft
garments and the prayers that had rustled shyly upward from his torn
heart as he felt them in his hands. Wordless, he unstrapped the trunk
and lifted the lid. Sue repacked the trays.
She stood looking at the dancing clothes, fingering them.
“Henry,” she said, “I shall never wear these again.”
“That's silly, Sue.”
“No. It isn't silly. I've got a job now. That's what we need, all of
us--a job. You used to tell me that yourself. You were right.” She was
turning the costumes over with her slim hands. “Did you find a pair of
boots, Henry? Red leather with clicks in the heels? They should have
been with these Russian things.”
“No,” he replied, with a sudden huskiness, “I didn't see them.”
“That's odd. They were right with the others.” She turned away to give
rooms and closets a final scrutiny. She brought a rough parcel in from
the hall, feeling it with her hands.
“This yours or mine, Henry?” she asked. “I could swear it is those
boots, but--”
“It _is_ the boots!” he cried, like an angry man.
She stared. He waved them and her roughly aside.
“They belong to you, not to me. I lied to you! Take them! Pack them!”
Brows knit, puzzled, her sensitive mouth softening painfully, she opened
the parcel and looked at the red boots--looked more closely, held them
up to the light; for she saw on them small round stains of a paler red.
Slowly she raised her eyes until they met his.
His face was twisted with pain. Her own gaze grew misty.
“Take them!” he cried in the same angry way. And she laid them in the
trunk.
He was desperately fighting himself now. And with momentary success. He
said abruptly: “I'm going to buy your books myself, Sue. So just leave
them there for the present.”
“You, Henry!” She bit her lip. “You know I can't let you do that.”
“You've got to let me!” He stood right over her now.
“But you--with your library--”
“I have no library.” His voice dropped here--and he stirred, walking
over to the window; stared out; finally turned and said, more quietly:
“Am I talking like a crazy man, Sue?”
“Well, Henry--” She tried to smile. “I have always counted on your
steadiness. Perhaps I've leaned too much on it.”
He stood considering her and himself. Suddenly he confronted her again,
raised his long arms and gripped her shoulders.
“And now, Sue,” he said, and she could fed his hands trembling with the
passion that she heard in his voice, “I'm failing you.”
“Oh, no, Henry; I won't let you say that--”
“No! And you won't say it yourself. But we both know it is true. I see
it--the whole thing. You've had your girlish fling here in the Village.
You were honest and natural. And you were maddeningly beautiful. We
men have crowded about you, disturbed you, pressed you. Zanin was crazy
about you. So was Peter. So were a lot of the others. So was I.”
He felt her shoulders stir under his strong hands. Her eyelids were
drooping. But he could not stop. “Everybody let it out but me. Do you
know why I didn't? Because I was a coward. I haven't made love to women.
Why? because I wasn't attractive to them. And I was timid. I stayed with
my books and let life go by. Then I found myself drawn into the circle
about you. And I lost _my_ head, too. I gave up my books---my 'library.'
Do you know where that 'library' is now, Sue? At the bottom of the North
River. Every book! I carried them over there myself, in parcels, with a
weight in every parcel, and dropped 'em off the ferry boat. I tried to
go in for reality, for what is called life. I had Peter's tailor make
me some good clothes. I got a newspaper job. Held that about two weeks.
Tried to ask you to marry me. Oh, yes, I did. But couldn't get away
with it. Sue, I never managed even to ask you. I talked marriage--almost
talked you into it--but couldn't manage to talk about myself. Until now,
just when you're worn out with work, with the pressures of men, with
all the desperate confusions of life, when your soul is sick for
peace--that's it, isn't it?”.
Very slowly her head moved. “Yes, Henry, that's it.”
“Why, then, I come along. And I'm the last straw. Stirring up the old
turbulence just when you need my friendship most. I'm doing it now--this
minute. I'm hurting you. I'm making you feel that you've lost me.”
“Henry”--he saw the effort it cost her to speak and winced--“I can't
bear to seem unsympathetic with you. But it's so hard. I can't see any
way--except this of giving up self.”
He let go her shoulders, swung away, and said: “There's just one thing
to do. I'll call a taxi.” He moved to the telephone, rummaged through
the directory, still talking, the flood of feeling that had for months
been impounded within his emotionally inarticulate self rushing now past
all barriers, sweeping every last protesting reticence before it. “I do
understand, Sue. What you feel now is as deep an urge, almost, as this
old sex impulse that muddles life so for all Of us. It is what has
driven millions of women into nunneries--to get away from life. Just
as our Village freedom is a protest against, unhealthy suppression and
rigidity, so these fevers of self-abnegation are inevitable uprushings
of protest against animalism.” He had found the number now. He lifted
the receiver. “It's Puritan against Cavalier--both right and both wrong!
What number--Oh, I beg your pardon! Bryant six thousand. It's the Greeks
against the Greatest of Jews--both right--both wrong! Taxi, please!
Right away. Two-thousand-twenty-six Tenth Street. All right. Good-by.
Beauty against duty--the instinct to express against the instinct to
serve--both right, both wrong!”
He confronted her again; caught up her two hands and gripped them within
his own. “You've had your little fling at expression, Sue. You were
wonderful. You've set flowers growing in our hearts, and thank God for
flowers! But life has trapped, you. You've swung over to service. And
now you've got to go through, work your way out of it. God knows where
you'll land. But if you've counted on my steadiness, by God, you may
continue to count or it!”
He pressed her hands to his lips; kissed her knuckles, her fingers, her
palms; then dropped them.
Sue sank into the armchair, very white. The tears ran down her cheeks.
The Worm could not look at her; after a moment of aimless pacing, he
went out to the front steps of the building and, bareheaded, still
coatless, watched for the taxi. He helped carry out the big trunk. On
the ride to the ferry he spoke only trivialities, and Sue spoke not at
all. He did not cross the river with her; merely, there in the ferry
house, gripped her hand--smiling after a fashion, limp of spirit (for
the first great emotional uprush of his life seemed to have passed like
a wave) and said:
“Good night, Sue. You'll let me help?”
“Of course. Henry.”
“I'll sublet the place for you--to somebody. I'll take that on myself.”
She considered this, then soberly inclined her head. “This is the key,
Henry. Give it to Betty. And here's the key to the outer door.”
He took the two keys; dropped them into his pocket, where they jingled
against the other one.
“It's a lonely road you're taking, Sue. Good luck.”.
“Oh, I'll see you, Henry. It won't be so exacting as that.”
“But life is going to change--for me and for you. The kaleidoscope won't
fall again into the old combination. New crowds, new ideas, are coming
in--new enthusiasms.”
“The Village forgets pretty easily,” she murmured, rather wistful.
“Yes, it forgets.... Sue, you'll marry--perhaps.”
She shook her head, lips compressed. “No--not as I feel now.... Henry,
you're too tragic! We needn't say good-by like this. Good heavens, I'm
only going over to Jersey--eighteen miles! That's all.”
“There are statute miles,” said he, “and nautical miles, and--another
kind.”
“But I'll see you again.”
“Oh, yes! Of course, Sue!”
“You can run out--some day when--”
Her voice faltered. He _had_ been out of place in that kitchen. And she
had been put to the necessity of explaining him. It was another sort of
thing--hopelessly another sort of thing.
He was looking down at her, something of the old whimsical calm in his
gaze, though sober, very sober.
“Anyway,” said she, weakly, groping, “you three will go on having your
good times over there in the Square. I find I like to think of you
there. What was it they called you--the--”
“The Seventh-Story Men, Sue.”
“Yes, that was it. You've been together so long, you three. I've always
thought of your place as something stable in the Village. Everything
else was changing, all the time.”
“We've gone like the rest, Sue.”
“Oh, no, Henry! Not really?”
“All gone! Hy goes one way, I another. And Pete stays alone. No more
Seventh-Story Men. Good-by, Sue.”
He watched her through the gate; waited to catch her last glance, then
turned back into the city.
Slowly, very slowly, he approached the old brick building in the
Square--his home.
In the lower hall he hesitated, wondering if Peter was in. Finally
he asked the night man. No, Mr. Mann was not in. The Worm drew a long
breath of relief and went up to the rooms.
It did not take long to pack his possessions. Now that there were no
books to consider everything went into one old suit-case. And with this
he set forth into the night.
The experience had a gloomy thrill of its own. He had no notion where
he was going. He hardly cared. The one great thing was to be going
away--away from those rooms, from the trifling, irritating Hy, from
the impossible Peter. He walked over to the bus station, set down his
suit-case on the sidewalk, felt in his pockets to see if he had any
money. He was always getting caught without it. He had given that taxi
man an even bill.
Apparently he was without it again. But in one pocket he found three
keys that jingled together in his hand.
He caught his breath; threw back his head and stared straight up through
the trees at the stars.
“My God!” he whispered--“my God!”
He picked up the suit-case and marched off--a tall, thin, determined
young man with an odd trick of throwing his right leg out and around
as he walked and toeing in with the right foot--marched straight across
town, under the Sixth Avenue Elevated, on into Greenwich Village; let
himself into a rather dingy apartment building and then into a bare
little three-rooms-and-bath from which not two hours back he had helped
carry a big trunk, and dropped into the armchair in the living-room. And
his hands shook with excitement as he lighted his pipe.
“I'm a wild man!” he informed himself--“perfectly wild! It's not a bad
thing!”
He slept, the last few hours of the night, on a bare mattress. But then
a bachelor of a whimsical turn can make-shift now and then.
All this on the Saturday. On the Monday morning early, between eight and
nine, there was giggling and fumbling at the apartment door, followed by
a not over-resolute knock.
The Worm--pipe in mouth, wearing his old striped pajamas caught across
the chest with a safety-pin,--dropped his pen, snorted with impatience,
and strode, heedless of self to the door.
There stood an elated, abashed couple. Hy Lowe, still dapper, apparently
very happy; Betty, glancing at him with an expression near timidity.
“Of all things!” she murmured, taking in the somewhat unconventional
figure before her.
“You, Worm!” chuckled Hy blithely. “Why, you old devil!”
Henry Bates was looking impatiently from one to the other. “Well,” said
he--“what do you want?”
Hy looked at Betty; Betty looked at Hy. She colored very prettily; he
leaned against the wall and laughed softly there until his eyes filled,
laughed himself weak. Finally he managed to observe to the irate figure
on the sill, who held his pipe in a threatening attitude and awaited an
explanation--“My son, are you aware that the lady lives here? Also that
you could hardly be termed overdressed.” She spoke now, softly, with
hesitation--
“Where is Sue, Mr. Bates?”
He waved his pipe. “Gone--New Jersey.”
Betty seemed to recollect. “Oh, yes,” she murmured. “And wasn't there
something--the other day, when was it--”
She exchanged a helplessly emotional glance with the partly sobered Hy.
“--Saturday it must have been. Oh, of course, you wanted me to pack
Sue's things.”
“They're packed,” snapped the Worm. “And gone.”
“And what, pray, are you doing here?” This from Hy.
“Living here,” said the Worm.
Again the two sought each other's eyes.
“Well, really--” Hy began.
Betty rested her hand on his arm. “Perhaps, Mr. Bates--you see, some of
my things are here--some things I need--”
Suddenly the Worm remembered. He blushed; then seemed to grow more
angry.
“You'd better come in and get them,” said he.
“Well--if I might--”
They came in. Betty repacked her bog in the bedroom. Once she called to
Hy; they whispered; then he brought her his bag.
Next Hy stood by the window and softly whistled a new rag. Meanwhile the
Worm with a touch of self-consciousness, slipped on his coat. He had no
bathrobe.
Hy, still whistling, looked at the litter of closely written sheets on
the table.
“What's this,” said he--“writing your novel?”
“I was,” growled the Worm. He stared at the manuscript; then at Hy; then
at the busy, beautiful, embarrassed young woman in the bedroom.
Suddenly and savagely, he gathered up the papers, tore them down and
across, handful by handful and stuffed them into the fireplace.
Hy looked on in amazement.
Betty was ready, and called to him. The Worm, set of face, showed them
out. He did not know that he slammed the door behind them.
On the steps Betty said--softly, the coo of a mating bird in her
voice--“What a funny man! I'm glad you're not like that, dear.” And
slipped her fingers into his.
Hy returned her pressure; then withdrew his hand, glanced nervously up
and down the street, and hurried her into the taxi that waited at the
curb.
“One sure thing,” he muttered, “we can't eat breakfast _there!_”
Back in the rooms, the Worm--suddenly, feverishly, eager--laid out a
fresh block of paper, dipped his pen into the ink, and snatching up a
book for a ruler, drew a heavy line across near the top of the page.
Above this line he printed out carefully--
THE BOUNDARY
A NOVEL
By Henry Bates
Beneath the line he wrote, swiftly, all nervous energy, sudden red spots
on his haggard cheeks--“CHAPTER ONE.”
“They stood at the door...”
This, you recall, was the beginning of the strongest novel that has come
out of Greenwich Village in many a year.