III
It was after the lawful hours of business. Casting a glance up and down to assure himself no policeman was watching, Wilfred descended three steps, and knocked on the shuttered door of the little Hungarian café in East Fourth street. He was admitted as a matter of course. A haze of tobacco smoke filled the interior. The cymbaline player had gone home; and the place seemed oddly quiet. There were only four or five figures crouching over the tables; habitués of the place.
Relief filled Wilfred’s breast at the sight of Stanny in his usual place, over against the wall, his back to the door. Impossible to tell if he were drunk. It required more than a casual glance to discover that in Stanny. Opposite him sat Mitzi of course, with her seraphic, unchanging smile. The wide-eyed, soulless, pretty creature!—Not soulless, really; one must be fair; soulless only to them. Stanny, brooding upon her face, was giving everything away in his eyes. Andreas, the proprietor, passing to and fro with the drinks, scarcely troubled to hide his contempt. Wilfred became hot with angry compassion.
Big Andreas greeted him with loud heartiness, the while his black eyes glittered remotely. They hated each other. Mitzi turned her smile on Wilfred, offering him an adorable, plump, cruel little paw with short tapering fingers. That is to say, the kind of hand which is called cruel, he thought. In reality there was no cruelty in Mitzi; she was merely docile. Stanny looked around at him without any expression whatever; and by that, Wilfred knew he was drunk. He dropped into the seat beside Stanny, and a glass of tchai was put before him.
“ ’Ello, Vee’fred!” said the adorable Mitzi “ ’Ow you was to-night?”
Wilfred was fully sensible of her magical quality—the quality of a red rose beginning to unfold; but it left him unperturbed. For one thing she was too foreign. “Out o’ sight!” he replied. “I don’t need to ask how you are. You are prettier than ever to-night.”
“You lie!” said Mitzi, pouting good-humoredly. “You no t’ink I pretty girl. You t’ink I ogly girl.”
“Aw, shucks!” said Wilfred. “You know quite well you’re the prettiest girl East of Third avenue!”
Mitzi, having exhausted her English, relapsed into her smile. Occasionally she made a droll face at either Stanny or Wilfred and murmured: “Aw, shucks!” Mitzi could sit and smile at a man—any man, the whole evening through without betraying either tedium or self-consciousness. There was that in her smile Wilfred thought, which called into being fires she was incapable of comprehending.
Wilfred was aware that anger was smoking within Stanny. Finally it puffed out spitefully: “What do you want here?”
“A glass of tchai,” said Wilfred, smiling.
“By God! I’m sick of this Ten Nights in a Barroom stunt!” said Stanny passionately. “You’re not my keeper!”
“Keep your shirt on,” said Wilfred, smiling still for Mitzi’s benefit. “I don’t aim to be.”
“Then what brought you here?”
“I wanted company,” said Wilfred. It was true, but Stanny would not believe it.
“If I’m going to Hell, I prefer to go in my own way,” said Stanny.
“Sure!” agreed Wilfred. “But I can’t help thinking you’re getting damned little out of this lap.”
“That’s all right!” said Stanny with drunken obstinacy.
“What you say him?” asked Mitzi, without in the least caring what the answer might be.
“I’m telling him I wish you were my sweetheart,” said Wilfred grinning. (How sick he was of his own grin!) “That’s what makes him sore.”
“Aw, shucks!” said Mitzi.
“What do you expect to get out of it?” Wilfred went on to Stanny. “You know as well as I do, that the man only puts out his pretty little wife as a decoy. He never lets her out of his sight. I don’t see how you can fall for it. With him looking on and sneering!”
“I wish to God I could see you make a fool of yourself over a woman!” cried Stanny bitterly. “You wouldn’t be so damn superior then!”
Wilfred grinned until his nostrils hurt. He had spent the earlier part of the night walking up and down North Washington Square, gazing at the lighted windows of the Sturges sitting-room with sick eyes; picturing a man inside bolder than himself.
“But I never will! I never will!” said Stanny. “You’re too much up in the air!”
“You don’t know me,” murmured Wilfred.
“Yah! a hell of a romantic feller if the truth were known, eh?” sneered Stanny.
Wilfred went on grinning inanely; tracing a capital E on the table with his forefinger. It created a sort of diversion to have Stanny abusing him unjustly; it was a counterirritant. He was absolutely sure of Stanny’s affection. It comforted him a little to lean his breast against the thorn of misunderstanding. It was the nearest to obtaining sympathy that he could hope for, he thought.
After awhile Wilfred said: “Will you come now?”
“No!” said Stanny.
But Mitzi, though she could not understand their talk, perceived that there was something inimical in the atmosphere. Presently she yawned behind the sinister little manicured paw, and stood up.
“Well, goo’-ni’, boys. Come round to-morrow.”
Through sullen lashes Stanny watched the little thing go swaying down the room and through the curtain at the rear, an unfathomable pain in his eyes. Wilfred raged internally. A man like Stanny to be brought down by that! What am I raging at? he asked himself. Certainly not at Stanny; nor at the unconscious, infantile Mitzi. And he had no God to rage at.—At the same time Wilfred envied Stanny; his pain was so much simpler than his own.
Wilfred and Stanny went out on the sidewalk. At the Third avenue corner Stanny stopped.
“You had better leave me here,” he said bitterly, but without anger; “you can do me no good to-night.”
“How about your doing me a little good?” suggested Wilfred.
“Don’t make me laugh!” said Stanny. “You’re as transparent as window glass! . . . If you could only get rid of your evangelical streak!”
“I don’t want to save you,” said Wilfred. “I just want to be with somebody. Even you! . . . My God! you’re a selfish beggar!”
Stanny snorted, and started walking on with that extraordinarily doughty carriage of his, more pronounced when he was drunk.
Wilfred fell in beside him. “Oh hell,” he said, “you can say what you like. I’m not going to leave you. . . . You can come to my place if you want. Or I’ll go to yours if you’d rather.”
“I can’t sleep,” muttered Stanny.
“No more can I. Let’s walk then.”
When they had gone a block, Stanny stopped short, and faced Wilfred. “I know I’m a bloody fool,” he said ill-temperedly. “Now are you satisfied?”
Wilfred slipped his arm through Stanny’s “I’m a bloodier fool than you, old fellow, and my heart’s just as heavy!”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” cried Stanny passionately. “You and your heart! Do you think I can’t see that you’re saying that just to make me feel better? Nothing can touch you! I wish to God you’d give over trying to manage me like a woman!”
Wilfred laughed.
When they got to the corner of Washington Square, Stanny kept straight on, and by that Wilfred knew that he was coming to his place. As they turned in at the old iron gate, rusting under its hundred coats of paint, in Stanny’s sullen eyes could be read as plainly as if it had been spoken, his intention of inveigling Wilfred into going to bed, and afterwards slipping out again.
As soon as they got inside Wilfred’s room, they started to quarrel viciously. Wilfred insisted on making up the fire, and Stanny said they shouldn’t need it. Then about the bed. Stanny all but knocked Wilfred into his own bed. Wilfred however, insisted on lying down on the moth-eaten bearskin before the fire. Stanny looked as if he would have liked to kick him there.
“You might as well take the bed,” said Wilfred.
“I’m damned if I will!” cried Stanny passionately.
“If I was alone, I should be lying here just the same. I can’t sleep, and I like to look at the fire.”
“Seeing pictures, eh?” sneered Stanny.
“Sure, seeing pictures. . . . What fools we are to scrap with each other, Stanny. . . .”
“Sure, what fools!” agreed Stanny, suddenly falling quiet and mournful.—But instantly, he lost his temper again. “You needn’t think I’m going to take your bed and leave you lying on the floor!”
“Well, you know what you can do with it,” snarled Wilfred.
Stanny flung himself into Wilfred’s big chair, and the bed remained without an occupant.
The firelight filled the room. The rows of books looked gravely down from the tall shelves. Bye and bye Wilfred had the satisfaction of seeing the bitter, down-drawn face in the chair begin to relax. Stanny took a more comfortable position, and his head dropped over against one of the wings. But he was not yet asleep. From the borderland he murmured:
“She has enslaved my senses. . . . I am besotted . . . !”
Wilfred murmured involuntarily: “You don’t know it, but you are lucky it is only your senses. If it was your imagination that was enslaved, there would be no satisfaction possible; no escape; ever!”
There was no reply, and Wilfred looked over apprehensively. To his relief he perceived that Stanny had not heard it; he was asleep.
Wilfred stretched himself out on the old rug, yielding to the luxury of pain. Real pain that bit like teeth. For an instant he beheld the truth with devastating clearness. There was no hope for him. Elaine’s instinct was sounder than his own. He and she could not possibly find happiness together. He was a better man than she would ever guess: but his worthier qualities were sealed to her, and must always be so. Impossible to reach an understanding. In another way, he was not man enough to be her mate. How that thought stabbed! But it was the truth. It must be faced out. Thank God! pain could be borne. He had his own kind of strength, not at all a showy kind, and Elaine would never perceive it; but he need not despise himself. Pain fortified him. He looked over towards Stanny with a feeling of gratitude. In some queer way it was due to the presence of that solid body in his chair, that he had been vouchsafed this moment of lucid pain, instead of being dragged as usual, helpless at the heels of the wild horses of Imagination.