The Trufflers: A Story

CHAPTER XXX—FIFTY MINUTES FROM BROADWAY CHAPTER XXX—FIFTY MINUTES FROM BROADWAY T HE Worm sat on a wooden chair, an expression of puzzled gravity on his usually whimsical face. The room was a small kitchen. The two screened windows gave a view of a suburban yard, bounded by an alley and beyond the alley other yards; beyond these a row of small frame houses. There were trees; and the scent of a honeysuckle vine. Sue Wilde, her slim person enveloped in a checked apron, knelt by the old-fashioned coal range. The lower door was open, the ash-pan drawn half out. There were ashes on the floor about her knees. Henry Bates absently drew out his old caked brier pipe; filled and lighted it. Meditatively he studied the girl—her apron, the flush on her face, the fascinating lights in her tousled hair—telling himself that the scene was real, that the young rebel soul he had known in the Village was this same Sue Wilde. The scent of the honeysuckle floated thickly to his nostrils. He stared out at the row of little wooden houses. He slowly shook his head; and his teeth closed hard on the pipe stem. “Henry,” she cried softly, throwing out her fine hands, “don't you understand! I had a conscience all the time. That's what was the matter!” “I think I understand well enough, Sue,” said he. “It's the”—he looked again about the kitchen and out the window—“it's the setting! I hadn't pictured you as swinging so far to this extreme Though, as you know, there in the Village, I have been rather conservative in my feelings about you.” “I know, Henry.” She settled back on her heels. He saw how subdued she was. The tears were not far from her eyes. “I've been all wrong.” “Wrong, Sue?” “Absolutely. In all I said and tried to do in the Village.” He was shaking his head; but she continued: “I was cutting at the roots of my own life. I disowned every spiritual obligation. I put my faith in Nietzsche and the Russian crowd, in egotism. Henry”'—her eyes unmistakably filled now'; her voice grew unsteady—“once my father came over into the Village after me. He tried to get me to come home. I was playing at the Crossroads then.” “Yes,” said he shortly, “I remember that time.” “I had on my boy costume. He came straight to the theater and I had to go out front and talk with him. We quarreled—” “I know,” said he quickly, “I was there.” He saw that she was in the grip of an emotional revulsion and wished he could stop her. But he couldn't. Suddenly she seemed like a little girl. “Don't you see, Henry!” She threw out her hands. “Do you think it would be any good—now—to tell me I'm not partly responsible. If I—if—” she caught herself, stiffened up; there was a touch of her old downrightness in the way she came out with, “Henry, he wouldn't have—killed himself!” Her voice was a whisper. “He wouldn't!” The Worm smoked and smoked. He couldn't tell her that he regarded her father as a hypocritical old crook, and that her early revolt against the home within which the man had always wished to confine her had, as he saw it, grown out of a sound instinct. You couldn't expect her, now, to get all that into any sort of perspective. Her revolt dated back to her girlish struggle to get away to school and later, to college. Sue was forgetting now how much of this old story she had let him see in their many talks. Why, old Wilde had tried to change the course of her college studies to head her away from modernism into the safer channels of pietistic tradition. The Worm couldn't forgive him for that. And then, the man's dreadful weekly, and his curious gift of using his great emotional power to draw immense sums of money from thousands of faithful readers in small towns and along country lanes, he hadn't killed himself on Sue's account. It was known, now, that the man had lived in an awful fear. It was known that he had the acid right at hand in both office and home, the acid he had finally drunk.... She was speaking. The Worm smoked on. “I wonder if you really know what happened.” “What happened?” he repeated, all at sea. “You must have seen the drift of it—of what I didn't tell you at one time or another.” He saw now that she was talking of her own experiences. He had to make a conscious struggle to bring his mind up out of those ugly depths and listen to her. She went on. “It has been fine, Henry, the way I could always talk to you. Our friendship—” She began in another way. “It's the one thing I owe to Jacob Zanin. He told me the blunt truth—about myself. It did hurt, Henry. But even then I knew it for the truth.... You know how he feels about marriage and the home”—she glanced up at the bare kitchen walls—“all that.” He nodded. “Well, he—Henry, he wanted to have an affair with me.” She said this rather hurriedly and low, not at all with the familiar frankness of the Village in discussing the old forbidden topics. “He knew I was all confused, that I had got into an impasse. He made me see that I'd been talking and thinking a kind of freedom that I hadn't the courage to go in for, really—in living.” “Courage, Sue?” “Yes, courage—or taste—-or something! Henry, you know as well as I that the freedom we talk in the Village leads straight to—well, to complete unmorality, to—to promiscuity, to anything.” “Perhaps,” said he, watching her and wondering with a little glow suddenly warming his heart, at her lack of guile. He thought of a phrase he had once formulated while hearing this girl talk—-“Whom among women the gods would destroy they first make honest.” “When I was put to the test—and I was put to the test, Henry; I found that I was caught in my own philosophy, was drifting down with it—if turned out that I simply didn't believe the things I'd been saying. I even”—she faltered here, but rushed on—“I very nearly rushed into a crazy marriage with Peter. Just to save myself. Oh, I see it now! It would have been as dishonest a marriage as the French-heeledest little suburbanite ever planned.” “You're severe with yourself,” he said. She, lips compressed, shook her head. “I suppose,” he mused aloud, “there's a lot of us radicals who'd be painfully put to it if we were suddenly called on to quit talking and begin really living it out. Lord, what would we do!” And mentally he added: “Damn few of us would make the honest effort to find ourselves that you're making right now.” Then, aloud: “What are you going to do?” She dropped her eyes. “I'm going to take these ashes down cellar.” “I'll do that,” said he. When the small task was accomplished, she said more gently: “Henry, please understand! I count on you. This thing is a tragedy. I'm deep in it. I don't even want to escape it. I'll try not to sink into those morbid thoughts—but he was my father, and he was buried yesterday. His wife, this one, is not my mother, but—but she was his wife. She is crushed, Henry. I have never before been close to a human being who was shattered as she is shattered. There are the children—two of them. And no money.” “No money?” “Father's creditors have seized the paper and the house in Stuyvesant Square. Everything is tied up. There is to be an investigation. My Aunt Matilda is here—this is her house—-but we can't ask her to support us. Henry, here is something you can do! Betty is staying at my old rooms. Try to see her to-day. Could you?” He nodded. “Surely.” “Have her get some one to come in with her—take the place off my hands. Every cent of the little I have is needed here. She'll be staying. That marriage of hers didn't work. She couldn't keep away from the Village, anyway. And please have her pack up my things and send them out. I only brought a hand-bag. Betty will pitch in and do that for me. She's got to. I haven't even paid this month's rent yet. Have her send everything except my books—perhaps she could sell those. It would help a little.” They heard a step on the uncarpeted back stairs. A door swung open. On the bottom step, framed in the shadowed doorway, stood a short round-shouldered woman. Lines drooped downward from her curving mouth. Her colorless eyes shifted questioningly from the girl to the man and back to the girl again. It was an unimaginative face, rather grim, telling its own story of fifty-odd years of devotion to petty household and neighborhood duties; the face of a woman all of whose girlhood impulses had been suppressed until they were converted into perverse resentments. The Worm, as he rose, hardly aware of the act, knocked the ashes from his pipe into the coal hod. Then he saw that her eyes were on those ashes and on his pipe. He thrust the pipe into his pocket. And glancing from the woman to the girl, he momentarily held his breath at the contrast and the thoughts it raised. It was youth and crabbed age. The gulf between them was unbridgeable, of course; but he wondered—it was a new thought—if age need be crabbed. Didn't the new sprit of freedom, after all, have as much to contribute to life, as the puritan tradition? Were the risks of letting yourself go any greater, after all, than the risks of suppression? Weren't the pseudo-Freudians at least partly right? “Aunt Matilda,” Sue was saying (on her feet now)—“this is an old friend, Mr. Bates.” The woman inclined her head. Henry Bales, his moment of speculation past, felt his spirit sinking. He said nothing, because he could think of nothing that could be said to a woman who looked like that. She brought with her the close air of the stricken chamber at the top of the stairs. By merely opening the door and appearing there she had thrust a powerful element of hostility into the simple little kitchen. Her uncompromising eyes drew Sue within the tragic atmosphere of the house as effectively and definitely as it thrust himself without it. Sue's next remark was even more illuminating than had been his own curious haste to conceal his pipe. “Oh,” murmured Sue, “have we disturbed”—she hesitated, fought with herself, came out with it—-“mother?” “Well, the smoke annoys her.” Aunt Matilda did not add the word “naturally,” but the tone and look conveyed it. “And she can hear your voices.” Henry Bates had to struggle with a rising anger. There were implications in that queerly hostile look that reflected on Sue as on himself. But they were and remained unspoken. They could not be met. The only possible course was to go; and to go with the miserable feeling that he was surrendering Sue to the enemy. He turned to her now, speaking with quiet dignity; little realizing that even this dignity aroused resentment and suspicion in the unreceptive mind behind those eyes on the stairs—that it looked brazen coming from a young man whose sandy hair straggled down over his ears and close to his suspiciously soft collar, whose clothes were old and wrinkled, whose mild studious countenance exhibited nothing of the vigor and the respect for conformity that are expected of young men in suburbs who must go in every morning on the seven-thirty-six and come out every evening on the five-fifty-two, and who, therefore, would naturally be classed with such queer folk as gipsies and actors. “If you like, Sue,” he said, “I'll get Betty to hurry so I can bring a suit-case out to-night.” She waited a brief moment before answering; and in that moment was swept finally within Aunt Matilda's lines. “Oh, no,” she said, speaking with sudden rapidity, “don't do that. To-morrow will do—just send them.” Then aware that she was dismissing him indefinitely, her eyes brimming again (for he had been a good friend), she extended her hand. The Worm gripped it, bowed to the forbidding figure on the stairs and left. CHAPTER XXXI—A PAIR OF RED BOOTS T HE 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 S UE 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—

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