Towards the close of the business day, Joe Kaplan dropped in at Harry
Bannerman’s little office on Nassau street. He had been there before. In
his sphere, Harry occupied much the same relation to Mr. Gore that Joe
did in his. It had been no part of Mr. Gore’s plans to make his two
favorites known to each other, but they had in a way of speaking smelled
each other out. No doubt it had occurred to Harry, as it certainly had
to Joe, that an alliance would be useful. How else could they keep tab
on each other? It had greatly amused Joe to watch Harry’s face when he
had unexpectedly come into Mr. Gore’s office one day to find Joe seated
by the millionaire’s desk. Joe could imagine Harry going to Dobereiner
for information; and Dobereiner getting off his innocent spiel about the
clever young man whom Mr. Gore was educating! How Harry must have been
tormented by the sums in cash he was forced to draw every week! Well,
now, unknown to Mr. Gore and Dobereiner, Harry and Joe had become
“intimate” friends. That was funny, too!
“’Lo, Harry!” said Joe. He allowed a shadow to appear on his brow, and
rolled his Eden perfecto moodily between his lips.
“This is out o’ sight!” cried Harry. “I’ll be through directly. We’ll go
out and have something.”
Behind this parade of heartiness, Joe perceived the glitter of hatred,
and exulted. He dropped on a chair, and extending his elegantly
trousered legs plucked at the creases. A sickly look appeared in Harry’s
eyes. Don’t he wish he was me! thought Joe.
Joe said, gloomily: “I need a drink!”
“What’s the matter, old fel’?” asked Harry.
Joe, observing the spring of eager malice in his eyes, thought: He’s a
smart fellow; but I’m smarter. I can play on him like the piano. I can
surround him all about, and be ready for him to move in any direction!
Joe said: “You’ve got me in a hole, that’s what!”
“I?” said Harry, opening his china blue eyes, candid for once in his
astonishment.
Joe chuckled inwardly; and looking Harry over, made him wait for the
explanation. Harry was a young man, but not so young as he looked. He
made a business of being a young man. He was slender; yet somehow he
gave the impression of being soft and plump. A dimple in one cheek
contributed to that effect. From the neck up he had a naked look, though
his head was furnished with a sufficient quantity of hair. It was one of
those heads of hair that suggest a wig. He even had a small, stiff
mustache, every hair of which was laid in order. Just the same his face
had a naked look.
“How could I get you in a hole?” he asked.
“I been talkin’ too much about you up at the flat,” said Joe. “About our
gettin’ to be friends, and goin’ around together, and all.”
“Has she told _him_?” asked Harry sharply.
“Nah! That kid is wise. She don’t tell the old man anything but what he
wants to hear.”
“What’s the trouble then?”
Joe scowled. “Aah! She wants me to bring you up there while the old
man’s out of town.”
Harry quickly lowered his lids—not so quickly, though, but that Joe
perceived what was under them. It was funny! Harry of course, was out of
his mind with curiosity concerning the flat on Fifty-Eighth street, and
it’s occupant. “Well . . . why not?” said Harry with a shrug.
“Good God! man!” cried Joe. “Suppose the old man got on to it?”
“Why should he get on to it, if the girl is on the level with us?”
“Suppose she was to get stuck on you?” said Joe. “Where would I be?”
Harry fiddled among the papers on his desk. “Oh, you can leave that to
me,” he said with a laugh. “I’m not going to let her . . . I might ask
you the same question. Where would _I_ be if she did?”
“I don’t see how you could help yourself,” said Joe. “If you attempted
to discourage her, it would only make her worse. I tell you frankly,
after a certain point _I_ can’t handle her.”
“What did she say?” Harry asked, keeping his face averted from Joe—but
Joe marked the deepening dimple.
“Said she was bored, seeing nobody but the old man and me.”
“Well . . . you’re not old,” suggested Harry.
“Oh, I’m like her brother,” said Joe. “We scrap all the time.”
“I mean, what did she say about me?”
“Said if I didn’t bring you up, she’d come down here.”
“So this has been going on some time?”
“Oh, a couple of weeks.”
“Well . . . it’s up to you,” said Harry. “You’re running that show.”
“Do you want to come?” asked Joe.
“Oh, I’m only human,” said Harry, shrugging. “I’m curious to see what
the old man’s taste is. . . . But it makes no real difference. I have
other interests as you know.”
Joe grinned inwardly. Does he think he’s taking me in, the jay-bird! He
said, grumblingly: “Well, I suppose I’ll have to take you. I’ll get no
peace until I do! . . . Look here, if there should be any trouble, can I
count on you to do the right thing by me? Suppose the old man should get
on to something, will you tell him it wasn’t my fault?”
“Why, sure!” said Harry, with a reproachful look. “You ought to know me
better than that, Joe! . . . Make your mind, easy. There isn’t going to
be any trouble. I’m the quietest little pot of tea that ever brewed on
the back of the stove!”
“All right,” said Joe. “We’ll go on up, after we’ve had a drink. We can
have dinner sent in from outside.”
* * * * *
Shortly after midnight Joe and Harry issued out of the house on
Fifty-Eighth street. Apparently there was nothing to choose between them
for mellowness; but Joe was not as mellow as he was making out to be. He
linked his arm affectionately within Harry’s.
“You’re a damn good fellow, Harry! I think the world of you! . . . Just
the same there’s going to be trouble as a result of this night’s work!”
“You’re foolish!” said Harry, dimpling. “She didn’t care. . . .”
“I know her!” said Joe significantly. “She wasn’t going to let anything
on to you, of course. And me being there, too. . . .”
“Well,” said Harry expansively, “even so! Need the heavens fall? . . .
Oh my God! what a skin! Like old white velvet. . . . What the old man
don’t know won’t hurt him!”
“Look at the position it puts me in!”
“You don’t need to know, either.”
“Aah . . . !” Joe grew vague. “Well, I can’t help it. . . . ’S too soon
to go home, old fellow.”
“My club is near here,” said Harry. “Come in for a nightcap.”
Nested in a deep leather chair, with a fresh cigar between his lips,
Joe’s gaze at the dying fire appeared to become slightly rapt. “Look
here, Harry, you’re the best friend I’ve got. I can talk to you. God!
the life we lead, we never get a chance to open up. You don’t dare to
let yourself go with any ordinary guy. . . . I want to tell you
something, Harry. I suppose to you I appear just a fly kid;
happy-go-lucky, and all that. But that ain’t the real me. I hate the
position I’m in. You’re a whole lot better off than me; still, it’s much
the same. I don’t see how you can stand it either!”
“Stand what?” asked Harry sharply.
“Sucking up to that —— —— ——!”
“Well, there are good pickings!” said Harry with a sickly smile.
“To hell with pickings! Are you going to be satisfied with his droppings
all your life? Not me! . . . We only have to look around us. Everybody
on the inside is making pots of money right now, pots! There’s never
been anything like it. Why shouldn’t we? Wouldn’t you like to have money
enough of your own to tell that old swell-front to go to hell, and close
the door as he went out?”
Harry twisted in his chair without answering.
“Well, I mean to,” said Joe. “I want a pile, and I’m going to grab it.”
“How?” asked Harry.
“Well, I been picking up quite a bit about the ways of the Street, one
place and another,” said Joe. “I make the old man talk about it, without
his getting on to how much he’s giving away. All the talk is of mergers
now. The air is full of it. That is how the money is made. Millions in a
stroke of the pen!”
“Everything is merged, now,” said Harry.
“Not quite everything. I’ll tell you about a cunning little merger that
I have in mind. These electric cabs that have increased so fast the last
two or three years. You see them everywhere now. There are five small
companies operating them. The damn things are so expensive, and they
break down so often, the companies are all bankrupt, and only keep going
by selling more stock all the time. You can always stick the public with
a new thing like that. How about merging all the New York cab
companies?”
“But if they’re all bankrupt . . . ?”
Joe wagged his hand. “What do I care about that? Think of the publicity!
Everybody is interested in cabs. Cabs are romantic. Cabs are always
associated with going on the loose. And horseless cabs have news value.
Look here! First you go round to the different companies and make an
agreement with each one. Oh, it ain’t much of an agreement. They simply
agree to come in if the others do, see? Anybody will agree to that. But
the five agreements make a good-looking bunch of documents to shake in a
sucker’s face, see? He won’t read ’em. Then you incorporate. There’s
regular men you can get for incorporators. I’m going to call it the
Consolidated Cab Co. Con. Cab ’ll look good on the ticker. . . .”
“It’s a con, all right,” said Harry.
“By God! that’s right!” said Joe pulled up short. “A cheap josh might
ruin us. Well, call it the Manhattan Cab Company, then. Man. Cab on the
ticker. . . . Soon as you’re incorporated, you let loose your publicity.
‘Big Corporation formed to take over all New York cabs!’ That’s news,
see? You don’t have to pay for it. It’s good for a front page spread.
Then you place an order for a thousand new cabs. That’s another news
story. Then you get an option on an abandoned car-barn, and announce a
super-garage, see? And so on. You tell how wonderful the new service is
going to be, and quote the reduced rates. The papers will eat it up.
“When you get the public appetite sharpened, you begin to put out your
stock on the curb in a small way. You must have real nice engraved
certificates; none of your filled-in stuff. Of course the wise guys know
there is nothing behind it but hot air, but some of them will take a
chance on it. They always do. Hundred dollar shares will sell for four
or five or six on the curb. That’s enough when you can issue all you
want. It’ll pay expenses. You hire a nice office—nothing showy; and
engage a polite old geezer with white hair to take in the visitors’
cards. And so on. Then I’ll have Amasa Gore approached. . . .”
“Do you think for a moment you’re going to sting _him_?” said Harry.
“Nothing like it! He’ll be invited to share in the profits! . . .
Suppose the stock is selling on the curb at six, see? He’ll be offered a
thousand shares out of the treasury, or as much as he wants, at three,
see? Then it will be announced that Amasa Gore is taking an active
interest in Manhattan Cab, and will be elected as vice-president at the
next directors’ meeting. The stock will jump to ten or twelve then, and
he’ll sell out on the q.t. You know he does that all the time. He told
me so himself.”
“And when it becomes known that he has sold?” said Harry.
“Oh, anybody that wants, can have Manhattan Cab then,” said Joe with a
grin. “I’ll be short on the stock, myself.”
“Where will you get yours?” asked Harry.
“After the company’s incorporated, I’ll have a set of directors of
course. I’ll have them vote me a thousand shares out of the treasury
stock for my services in promoting the company. Then I mean to put some
real money into it, too. When the stock is first put out on the curb,
I’ll be the buyer, see? To create a market. I’ll get it cheap. I’ll have
two or three thousand shares when the time comes to sell.”
“It listens good,” said Harry.
“Oh, I’ve only given you the rough outlines. I’ve got the details all
planned out.”
“But you’re not nineteen yet,” objected Harry. “Your face is too smooth.
You couldn’t command attention.”
“Lord! what do you think I am!” said Joe. “I’m not going to appear in
this personally. It would queer me, after. This isn’t going to be my
last deal on the street. I’ll get fellows to act for me. You don’t think
I’d undertake to sell Amasa Gore any stock, do you? He don’t look on me
in that light. And you know how sore it makes him when anybody
disarranges his ideas. . . . No, I want you to put me onto somebody who
will take on the promotion of the company, after I’ve got my thousand
shares. I want a young fellow with plenty of vim and go; enthusiastic,
but not _too_ smart. What they call idealistic, see? It’ll be my job to
fire up his steam. A fellow with a name that is known in the street, if
possible.”
“There is Silas Moore Bristed,” suggested Harry.
“That’s a good-sounding name. I’ve heard it before.”
“Sure, you have. He’s grandson to the first Silas Moore Bristed, the
famous inventor, whose name is borne by several big corporations. But
it’s all passed out of the family. Young Silas is as poor as a church
mouse. He’s a salesman in a bond house.”
“A good sort of fellow?” asked Joe, conveying a certain intimation.
“Innocent as a lamb,” said Harry.
“Well, I’ll look him over.”
“I’ll introduce you.”
“No you don’t! Just tell me where he’s to be found, and I’ll get next
him. He mustn’t know of any connection between you and me, because
later, he’ll have to come to you, when he wants to make his proposition
to Amasa Gore.”
“Oh, I see!” said Harry with a thin smile.
There was a silence.
“Well . . . I suppose I got to go,” said Joe, smothering a yawn.
“Look here,” said Harry in a voice that showed strain, “what is there in
this for me?”
Joe clapped him affectionately on the shoulder. “Why, you’ll be right in
on the ground floor, old fel’! I’ll tell you the exact right moment when
to buy and when to sell. You ought to clean up a nice little pile on
it!”
“How about a little treasury stock for me, too?”
“What for?” asked Joe with a cold stare.
“You really need me in this,” said Harry. “You’ve got ideas, I grant,
but I’ve got the experience. You and I ought to be working together
shoulder to shoulder in the background.”
“I certainly am grateful for any help you can give me,” said Joe, “but I
hadn’t counted on regularly taking anybody in with me. There isn’t
enough in it for two.”
“Oh hell!” said Harry, “what’s a few shares of treasury stock more or
less. Issue me a thousand shares, and I’ll guarantee to get Amasa Gore
into it. You know what influence I have there.”
“Is that a threat?” asked Joe calmly.
Harry appeared to be wounded to the quick. “What do you think I am!” he
cried. He looked around him as much as to say: In my own club, too!
“Because, if it is,” said Joe, coolly, “there’s nothing to it. Whether
you get any treasury stock or not, you have a chance to make thousands
buying and selling the stock on the curb. You’re not going to queer
that!”
“If you think that way about me, I can’t talk to you,” said Harry, with
dignity.
Joe looked at him quizzically. “Aah! climb down!” he said.
There was a silence. At length Harry said: “Well, do I get the thousand
shares?”
“You _do_ not!” said Joe promptly. “This is my scheme. You can’t expect
to come in on the same basis as me!”
“Well, five hundred, then,” said Harry.
“Oh hell!” said Joe, “I can’t Jew a friend down! I want you in with me,
Harry; that’s a fact! I look up to you, Harry. You’ve taught me a lot.
I’ll make it five hundred shares. . . .”
V
Wilfred could scarcely credit his own situation. There he lay, he the
solitary one, inside man of four lads stretched out on two cots placed
against the wall of Stanny’s studio in the assumption that they would
afford more room when they were shoved together. The other three were
asleep. Sleep was far from Wilfred’s eyes. His head hummed with wine. He
lay on his back, very still in his strait place for fear of disturbing
Stanny, who was alongside him. Jasper was on the other side of Stanny;
and Jasper’s young brother Fred had the perilous outside place.
It had started to rain fitfully on the tin roof overhead. Wilfred
remembered how the low-hanging clouds had rosily given back the glow of
the street lights. That delicate glow was coming through the skylight
now, pervading the room with a ghostly radiance. The front of the room
came down like a low forehead to two windows, set in only a foot above
the floor. You had to go down on your knees to look out. Below, all day,
was spread the panorama of the shoppers on the busy side of Fourteenth
street opposite, and the sidewalk vendors with their baskets. The
skylight was in the high part of the room at the back.
That room was dear to Wilfred beyond measure. Not for its beauty,
because it contrived at the same time to be both bare and littered—it
was a chaos now, after parties on two succeeding nights. It was the
first room where he had been free; a man’s room, smelling of tobacco,
where you could spread yourself. It didn’t have to be tidied up until
you felt like it; dirty clothes could be kicked into the corners. The
paraphernalia of Stanny’s trade lay about—Stanny, his friend, whose
thick shoulder lay warmly against Wilfred’s thin one now;
drawing-boards; sheets of bristol board; drawings stood up with their
faces turned to the wall; and everywhere, thumb-tacks and Higgins ink
bottles with their tops like black nipples. To the walls were pinned
several of Stanny’s best drawings; distant prospects of landscape that
stung Wilfred with their beauty. It was marvellous to him that such
effects could be created with a scratching pen. When Stanny drew people,
their faces all had a slightly tormented look. Funny!
It had been a lively thirty hours in the lives of the friends. Wilfred
went over it in his mind, smiling into the darkness. Jasper’s young
brother Fred had come down from Lockport to see the town; and they had
had a supper of canned lobster and Nebiola in his honor. That started
it. To their provender had been added a fruit cake, brought from home by
the guest—such a fruit cake as Wilfred had never tasted. Canned lobster
and fruit cake! Nobody had been sick but the guest.
At first they had been rather disconcerted by their guest. Jasper didn’t
know his brother very well, it appeared. Fred knew all about New York
from hearsay, and undertook to tell them. He didn’t say so; but it was
clear he was a little surprised at there being no ladies included in the
supper party. He drank largely of Nebiola; and unquestionably enjoyed
himself; but his air of implying that there was something naughty about
it all, rather dashed the others. Until Hilgy began to jolly him in his
quiet way. But after Fred had been sick, he returned to the table with a
pale and thoughtful cast, and they liked him better.
That soft-voiced, poker-faced mockery of Hilgy’s was rather terrible.
None of them was safe from it; not Hilgy himself: because when he
desired sympathy, the others supposed that he was still mocking. Then
Hilgy would get a little sore. He was a handsome fellow, with his silky
black beard, and the subdued manner that concealed such powerful
batteries. You never knew you had been hit, until a moment or two
afterwards. Wilfred was in awe of him, he was so much older; almost
thirty. It annoyed Hilgy that anybody should be in awe of him, so
Wilfred struggled to treat him as offhandedly as Stanny and Jasper did;
whereupon Hilgy, perceiving the struggle, with characteristic perversity
started mocking Wilfred subtly. So intercourse was a little difficult.
Yet Wilfred admired Hilgy without stint.
What a privilege it was to be associated with such fellows. Wilfred
doubted if there was a circle in all New York that could show the same
average of brilliancy. Unfortunately he couldn’t recall any of the
bright things that had been said; he hadn’t that kind of a memory; but
he had the scene of the party to a hair. There were only three chairs in
the room; and they had dragged up the cot to make two seats more, while
Wilfred sat on an up-ended suit-case. Stanny at the head of the
table—How Stanny blossomed under the influence of Nebiola, yet never
lost his plaintive air; Jasper at the foot, looking down his nose with
an expression of. . . .
What was the word to describe Jasper’s expression when he had had a
drink or two? Sly drollery? . . . no! Recondite glee! . . . no! Arch
solemnity? . . . well that was better, but not _the_ phrase. I shall
never be a writer! thought Wilfred sadly. Epithets do not explode in my
head like they do in Stanny’s.
. . . Hilgy and Binks sitting on the cot; and Fred alongside Wilfred.
Five keen, vital faces to watch, revealing their characteristics in the
wrinkles of merriment—well, say four faces, because Fred’s was rather a
pudding; united in good fellowship, yet betraying such fascinating
differences of nature, and suggesting such mysteries! Wilfred was unable
to imagine a greater pleasure.
When the laughter and gibes were suddenly turned against Wilfred
himself, he was ready to sink under his confusion; but he liked it
nevertheless. It assured him that he had an identity too.
After supper Binks had become delightfully silly. A special bond united
Wilfred and Binks; the kids of the crowd, exactly the same age. They had
to conceal their kiddishness from the older fellows, but might reveal it
to each other when alone. They were intensely jealous of each other.
Wilfred had to be content with second place, because Binks surpassed him
in everything. Binks at nineteen already had his drawings in the best
magazines. Wilfred was enslaved by his admiration of Binks’ elegant air
that was not dependent upon dress, his outrageous audacity; his faculty
for making friends. Binks was nonchalantly one with gangsters, and with
the Four Hundred. What a Godsend that would be to me, thought Wilfred;
if I had it.
Amazing fellow, Binks! He had said: “My boss asked me to lunch on
Wednesday. He runs what he calls the Simple Life Club. Not so damn
simple. Has in the fellows who write and draw for his magazine to amuse
the society dames he knows. I sat next to Mrs. Van Buren. . . .”
“Mrs. Peter Polk Van Buren?” asked Wilfred, amazed.
“Yes, that’s her.”
“The most beautiful woman in New York!” said Wilfred, “and the greatest
name!”
“That so”? Well, she was a peach all right. As we took our places she
kicked my foot under the table. She begged my pardon, and I said: ‘Oh,
go as far as you like!’ It sort of broke the ice. She said she was dying
to smoke; but she didn’t know how the other women would take it. I said:
‘Oh, go ahead. When they see you start they’ll all smoke themselves
black in the face!’ Across the table sat:” he named names that took
Wilfred’s breath away. “Some party! . . . I came home afterwards, and
carried down the washing from the roof for my mother.”
By degrees Wilfred had perceived that Binks’ affections were not warm
like Stanny’s and Jasper’s. With sharpest pain he thought: The fellows
he met last night for the first time are just the same to him as
us. . . . Oh well, that’s his nature. You have to take him as he is.
When Binks got drunk, and, no longer clever, made believe that the
studio was a skating rink, Wilfred felt like a father to him. At any
rate I can carry my liquor better than Binks, he told himself.
After supper there came a point when Jasper burst into flower like that
night-blooming plant whose name Wilfred couldn’t remember. He stood
behind a chair, haranguing them in the manner of a rabbit-toothed curate
with his spectacles slipping off his nose. A rag-tag parody of biblical
quotations, and pulpit jargon. The congregation rolled helplessly on the
floor. At such moments, Wilfred thought, Jasper under his unsure manner
revealed richer ore than any of them.
The supply of Nebiola had given out; and they went cascading down the
four flights of stairs for a fresh supply. They found Maria’s restaurant
empty; and in the back room Binks banged on the piano while the others
danced. Oh! the combination of Hilgy’s grave, sad head and skittish
legs. Hilgy never laughed; he only caused the others to. It seemed to
Wilfred that as his friends became wilder, he grew ever more sober. But
as they stopped to read a sign in the street, an enormous laugh was
suddenly directed against him when it was discovered that he was holding
one eye shut. I must have been drunk, too; thought Wilfred, surprised.
The rest was merely noise and wild laughter. Pictures leaped out of the
dark. The foolish Fred, dressed up like d’Artagnan and posed upon the
model stand for Stanny to sketch—he had no idea he was being joshed;
Stanny’s expression of indignant wistfulness when he tried to rise from
the floor, and discovered that he was sitting in the glue which somebody
had overturned. Oh, how good it was to laugh! It washed you out! Oh,
Nebiola, and the pink foam in the glasses! How these expansive rackety
nights drew fellows together! After two such nights on end, Wilfred felt
that he had a real hold upon them.
The next day was Sunday. They met at noon in a cheap restaurant on
Fourteenth street. There was renewed laughter at the sight of Jasper’s
morose expression as he pushed a piece of dry toast around his plate
with a fork. Fred was pitiful; all the Lockport doggy air had gone out
of him. It transpired that Jasper had invited Hilgy (who lived up-town)
to spend the night with him and his brother, and the bed had collapsed
under the triple load. There had been a high old row. The widow with
whom Jasper lodged had fired them on the spot; and it was only after
much persuasion that she had relented to the extent of letting them stay
out the night.
“She had a mash on Jasper,” said Hilgy, “and what really made her sore
was him seeing her in her nighty and curlpapers. She realized that she
could no longer hope.”
The situation was awkward since practically all their money had been
spent in Fred’s entertainment. However Stanny had said they could share
his studio until they scraped together enough to pay an advance on
another room.
The moving was the occasion of the second party. It was more restrained
than the first owing to a certain shortage of supplies, still . . . ! At
midnight between two showers they had issued out to conduct the hegira.
Returning, what a circus! A treat for the occasional passer-by. Hilgy
first with rolls and rolls of tracing paper under one arm; and in the
other hand the front end of Jasper’s trunk. Jasper next with the hinder
end of the trunk in one hand; and in the other the front end of a
folding cot. Binks had the stern end of the cot in one hand; and an end
of a drawing-table in the other; Wilfred the other end of the
drawing-table and one handle of a Gladstone bag; Stanny the remaining
handle of the bag, and more rolls of drawings and tracings. Fred brought
up the rear, walking alone, with a suit-case in each hand, and more
rolls caught under his arms.
Thus they made their way up the midnight Avenue, like one of those
wooden-jointed snakes that were sold on Fourteenth street. Whenever
anybody stopped to stare at them, the grave Hilgy capered like a goat.
In the middle of the street, Jasper’s suit-case (carried by Fred) burst
with a loud report, flinging soiled under-clothing, broken shoes and
lead pencils far and wide. Fred, dropping the suit-case, fled up the
street, and made out he wasn’t with them. The others as well as they
could for laughing, gathered up the debris. Hilgy held up a torn union
suit in an attitude of pensive regard. Oh, Gee!
At the Fourteenth street corner a suspicious cop had stopped Hilgy with
a question. This was nuts to Hilgy. Putting down his end of the trunk,
he walked down the line, introducing each fellow by name to the officer
with a childlike air. . . .
Wilfred lost in the scene he was picturing, snickered aloud. A low voice
at his ear recalled him to his surroundings; the bed; Stanny’s room;
Stanny himself alongside.
“Aren’t you asleep, Wilf?”
“No. I thought you were.”
“Hell! I can’t sleep.”
Stanny slipped his arm through Wilfred’s. It was the first time since
Wilfred could remember, that anybody had made such an overture in his
direction; he caught his breath and felt quite silly and confused. He
pressed Stanny’s arm hard against his ribs, and neither said anything.
Finally Stanny asked: “What were you laughing at?”
“At Hilgy and the cop,” said Wilfred. “I’ve been going over it in my
mind . . . trying to find words.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” said Stanny, “when you start dramatizing a thing
you spoil it!”
“I know,” said Wilfred eagerly, “I know just the point when analysing
things becomes barren. I stop short of that now. It’s all right to think
about things when you can keep yourself detached from them.”
“But you never can!”
“Oh yes, I can, now,” said Wilfred confidently. Suddenly his confidence
ran out of him. “Well, sometimes I can,” he amended.
Stanny chuckled derisively.
“I know, I’m foolish . . . But you like me . . . ?”
Stanny squeezed his arm.
“I . . . I can’t tell you what you are to me, Stanny. . . .”
“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t try!” said Stanny quickly.
“To have somebody I can talk to like this . . . I can’t believe it! I
had made up my mind that I was a freak. I expected to be laughed at, so
I intended to hold my tongue all my life. . . . Do you think I am
effeminate, Stanny?”
“Oh, for God’s sake . . . !”
He _does_ think so; thought Wilfred; but it doesn’t matter if he is my
friend.
“It isn’t important,” said Stanny, groping for expression; “all this
bunk about manliness . . . if you have mind . . . if you have
character. . . .”
“Yes, but have I?” demanded Wilfred.
“Don’t worry about it . . . ! You’re too self-conscious.”
“Sure! But how can I help that? You’re like my Aunts. When I was little
they were always telling me I was too thin-skinned. You might as well
blame a man for being blind.”
“Don’t think about yourself so much.”
“Everything comes back to yourself. Yourself is the only measure you
have for other things. . . . I’ve read hundreds of books, but I’ve never
had anybody to tell me things. I don’t even know how to pronounce the
words I have read, because I never heard anybody say them. . . . Only my
grandfather, and he died when I was eleven. He was a man! I read his
books. They are stored in a packing-room next to my room. Darwin,
Huxley, Spencer and Tyndall were his favorites. I can’t make much of
Huxley or Herbert Spencer, but Darwin! Oh, Gee! Darwin is my man!”
“Why Darwin in particular?”
“I dunno. Sort of mental hero. Always willing to face a new fact though
it destroyed all his work up to that moment. . . . My grandfather wasn’t
a one-sided man. He read the poets too; also Emerson and Carlyle. I’m
crazy about Carlyle. . . . . It was fine to discover that your nature
and mine were alike, Stanny!”
“You hop about so!” grumbled Stanny. “The hell they are!”
“I know. . . . It is you and the others, who have cured me, made me
healthy in my mind. I used to think I was going crazy. . . . But
especially you. There’s something between you and me . . . like this, we
can talk about things. . . .”
A start of laughter escaped Stanny, which had not altogether a merry
sound.
“Why do you laugh?” asked Wilfred.
“Well, when we talk . . . you do most of the talking.”
“I suppose I do. . . . But you must know that nothing would please me
better than to have you talk to me about yourself. How can I lead you on
to talk about yourself, except by going on about myself?”
“I know,” mumbled Stanny. . . . “It’s not from any lack of friendliness
that I don’t. It’s all inside,” he touched his breast; “but I can’t get
it out. It hurts. . . .”
“I know,” whispered Wilfred.
“You don’t know!” said Stanny irritably. “Things come out of you easy
enough. We’re different. You think over to-night and last night, and it
makes you chuckle. I don’t feel like chuckling. I drank too much wine.
It brings things up in me that I can keep under most times. I drink to
forget, and it only makes things clearer. I dread the end of the
evening, when I’ve got to lie here staring. . . .”
“What things?” asked Wilfred in concern.
“I don’t know. . . .” Wilfred heard his teeth click together in pain.
“I’ve got my head against a stone wall. Always have had.”
“You’ve got a stubborn kind of nature . . .” hazarded Wilfred.
“Oh, to hell with my nature!”
“Now my nature I suppose is light. . . .”
“Happy Wilf!” said Stanny.
Happy Wilf! Wilfred snatched at the phrase. It supplied the identity he
was in search of. The moment it was spoken he recognized its truth,
though up to that time he had regarded himself as among the unhappiest
of mortals. This would necessitate the recasting of his whole scheme. It
started a dozen rabbits in his mind. There was evidently an unhappiness
to which he was a stranger. Was it worse not to be able to explain one’s
unhappiness? And so on. These rabbits must be run down one by one later.
Happy Wilf! Stanny had given him a character!
“What’s the matter?” whispered Stanny, alarmed by his silence.
“Nothing. What you said made me think. . . .”
Stanny snorted.
Wilfred, recollecting that he had Stanny to console, pulled himself
together. “Things are buried way down in you,” he said. He heard the
heavy tone in his own voice, and was dissatisfied with it. “That’s why
it hurts when they struggle up. . . .”
“Oh, for God’s sake! I wish you wouldn’t always be trying to explain me
to myself!” interrupted Stanny. “It’s a most irritating way that you
have. . . . Things are not so easy explained. I’m like . . . I’m like a
man standing with his back to the shore, and the waves breaking over his
head!”
“I’m sorry,” whispered Wilfred. “I’ve got to be trying to explain
things. I can’t rest with them. But you mustn’t mind what I say. I’m
only . . . I’m only . . . what is the word? I’m only speculating. I
don’t insist on anything.”
“You’re too young. . . .”
“Oh, I don’t think age has got much to do with it. I knew the same
things when I was a child. Age only seems to bring you the words to put
them to.”
“Words! Huh! They don’t explain anything.”
“It’s the same with books,” Wilfred went on. “You don’t learn much from
books. In books you just seize on what has already been whispered to
you.”
“Oh, for God’s sake! You’re beany!”
Wilfred clung to his arm. “I know,” he murmured. “Let me be that way
with you. Let me let everything come out without having to watch myself,
or be sorry for it afterwards. You’re my only safety valve.”
Stanny returned the pressure of his arm. “Oh, blow off as much as you
want to,” he grumbled. “Don’t mind my cursing.” He struggled with what
he had next to say: “The truth is . . . the truth is . . . I need you
too. There is no curtain between us. . . . But I’ll never admit it
again.” Then very gruffly: “And don’t think you have me explained with
your literary phrases!”
“I don’t, really. All my life I’ll be speculating about you, without
ever being sure of anything.”
“Well, don’t let me know you’re doing it, that’s all.”
* * * * *
When he opened his eyes in the morning, Stanny looked at Wilfred in
horror. “My God! what a lot of rot we talked last night! We were drunk!
For God’s sake forget it, Wilf!”
“Sure,” said Wilfred, grinning.