IV
The four friends drifted out into the street from Ceccina’s. Linking arms, they paraded towards Sixth avenue, singing. Binks had to be put in the middle because he wobbled at the knees. Stanny and Jasper each had a good edge on, too. Jasper was gloriously released. Wilfred observed them enviously. I can drink like a fish, he thought, and it has no effect whatever!
They made a round of their favorite resorts; the Grapevine; Maria’s; Mould’s over on University Place. Wilfred tossed down more fiery potations than the vino de pasto of Ceccina’s. It only intensified his self-consciousness. I’ll never be able to carry it through! . . . You shall go through with it! He was ceaselessly plotting how he could shake his friends without exciting ribald comment. As they became really drunk that offered no difficulty. But how dear they became to him! How he hated to leave them! . . . I really ought not to leave them now. I’ve got the only cool head in the party. They might get into serious trouble. Some other night I’ll start out alone and . . . Come off! You’ve got to go through with it!
In the end he found himself alone without knowing exactly how it had come about. I must be getting drunk! he thought hopefully. But no! the surroundings were still bitten into his consciousness as with acid. The trees of Union Square, misshapen like rickety children, and tragic in the bareness of November; the ugly statue of Lincoln on the corner that he had passed a thousand times without ever seeing it; the green electric cars creeping like worms around the double curve; and that endless, dingy press of people that shuffled back and forth on the south side of Fourteenth street every night in the year. Such dulled and flaccid faces! Why were they deader than the faces on other streets? Why did they crowd together on the one sidewalk, leaving the other empty?
Wilfred went east on Fourteenth street. That stretch of Fourth avenue between Union Square and Cooper Square was devoted after nightfall to the traffic in which he was resolved to share. He turned into Fourth avenue with a wildly beating heart. It was not crowded here; just a few figures furtively veering and hauling on their way. The shop windows were dark, except those of the dazzling saloons on every corner.
Wilfred’s tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. How can I choose when I’m so shaky? he thought. What do you say to them at first, anyway? What a pitiful fool I should appear if I tried to address one with a thick tongue! I’ll never be able to go through with it! . . . You shall go through with it! Wilfred perceived a young woman approaching, with her eyes fixed on him. In blind panic he stopped, and made believe to be attracted by something in a shop window. It was a cobbler’s window, quite dark, with nothing in it but a row of run-over shoes to be mended.
An arm was slipped through Wilfred’s arm, and a voice murmured in his ear: “Hello, sweetheart!” Wilfred turned a pair of terrified eyes. She was not bad-looking; a Greek girl perhaps; dark and opulent. Her face was not painted. Her glance was fairly open—at least she had not the leer that Wilfred so dreaded. He felt himself like putty in her experienced hands, and was relieved. This is not as bad as I expected; he thought. A price was named, and certain conditions laid down. This part seemed very unreal.
The next thing Wilfred knew, he was being shepherded up a steep straight flight of stairs over a saloon. There was a red carpet on the stairs, sooty on the edges, and worn threadbare in the middle. At the top of the steps stood a desk; a dog-eared hotel register lay upon it. A young waiter appeared from somewhere; and collecting a dollar from Wilfred, shoved the register towards him to be signed. Wilfred wondered about the waiter. A fellow his own age. Though his white suit was much soiled, he was not uncomely, with his stiff blond hair sticking up on his crown like a schoolboy’s.
The waiter whisked them into a bedroom close at hand, and shut the door. Wilfred drew a long breath to steady himself. There he was alone in a bedroom with a woman he had never seen until five minutes before, and who was already preparing to reveal herself. How amazing! One swift glance around, and the common room was photographed on his brain forever. The cheap yellow bureau just inside the door, where Wilfred stood frozen, one hand resting upon it. He could see himself from the outside as if the eyes of his soul were suspended under the ceiling. Stretched across under the window, the bed, because there was no other possible place for it; in the corner behind Wilfred, the washstand; two chairs—all of the same ugly yellow wood. The bed was covered with a soiled white spread which still bore a significant impress in the middle. Wilfred wondered if the impress was still warm.
Wishing to do the thing in good style, he had ordered drinks; and they were now brought; cocktails with a red cherry in the bottom of each glass. Wilfred looked at the young waiter again. He put the tray on the bureau, and departed without looking at Wilfred. He had an extraordinarily inscrutable air; he had taught himself to see nothing; to give nothing away. What a queer job for a lad, popping in and out of the bedrooms! Wilfred wondered if he had ever been out in the country. How many rooms were there in the place? All occupied no doubt. He listened.
He indicated one of the drinks to his companion. He would not carry it to her, for fear of betraying the trembling of his hand.
“Much obliged, fella,” she said politely, “but I don’t indulge. Drink ’em both yourself. You kin understand if I drank with every fella, I’d be paralyzed before morning.”
Good God! thought Wilfred. “How many?” he asked involuntarily.
“Aah, fergit it!” she said, perfectly good-tempered. “What do you look at me like that for?”
Wilfred, abashed, schooled his eyes, and started slowly to undress. He had no feeling of shame; but only of strangeness.
His companion chattered away. She was rather a likeable sort. “It’s the drink that does for girls. So I keep away from it. The rest don’t do you no harm, if you take care of yourself. You kin depend upon me, fella. My name’s Angela. I ain’t been at this long. I started it so’s I could help me mutter out, and keep me young sister in school. She’s smart. We’re gonna send her to college. You’re a nice lookin’ fella. Is this the first time?”
“No,” said Wilfred quickly.
“Bet it is, though I kin tell. None of them wants to admit it. Well, you might do worse than begin wit’ me. You look somepin like my fella. He’s blond, too. But he’s got twenty pounds on you.”
Wilfred had heard that these girls always had a lover. That seemed strange to him.
“He’s a deckhand on the steamboat Albertina. . . .”
I share with a deckhand! thought Wilfred.
“He gimme this ruby ring I wear. If you come to see me at my place I’ll show you his pitcher. Me and him’s gonna git married when I kin save enough to furnish wit’.”
Good God! thought Wilfred again. “Does he know?” he asked.
Angela’s big, good-humored face was momentarily disfigured by a scowl. “What the hell is it to you? . . . Aw, . . . fergit it! . . . What you look at me like that for? Come on.”
But Wilfred stood still. His feet were weighted down.
“What you waiting for? What’s the matter wit’ me, you look like that? Come on. . . .”
Wilfred went towards the bed like an automaton. He looked at her. After all there was nothing astounding in her unveiling. It was just a human body, the complement to his own; one was instinctively familiar with it. He recognized dispassionately that it was a generous, comely woman’s body, without blemish. He was reminded of fruitfulness; it was a body fit for Ceres, for Eve. What lovely, dimpling hollows! what a magical texture in woman’s skin!—But it didn’t seem to matter. What mattered terribly, and made him tremble, was the strangeness of the soul that inhabited this woman’s body, sending him such queer intimations through her eyes, all the while her tongue was so glib and matter-of-fact. Their bodies might press together as one, but their souls were sundered by an immensity of space. . . . How piteous!
“What you look at me like that for, fella?”
Once more Wilfred stood in front of the bureau with one hand upon it, his head lowered. Angela was busy in the corner behind him. He did not feel that anything of moment had happened to him. He was not changed. . . . Was that all? . . . But, no! He had failed; that’s what it meant. He was not human enough to take fire and burn in the beautiful human way. He was just a sort of figment of a man; an hallucination. He fulfilled himself only in imagination. Faced with reality, he dissolved. A dreadful fear gripped him. It was like falling through space. His hand tightened hard on the edge of the bureau, as if to convince himself that here was a real flesh and blood hand gripping palpable matter. . . . The edge of the bureau was blackened by many cigarette burns. The men who had laid those cigarettes down, their bodies had burned!
The girl came, and passed an arm around his shoulders. “You’re a wonderful fella!” she murmured. “I like you.”
Oh, yes! thought Wilfred. Flattery is a part of her business.
On the hand that lay on the bureau, Wilfred sported an antique ring of no great value. She turned it round on his finger. “Give it to me for a keepsake, fella,” she whispered cajolingly.
Wilfred thought: She knows that normal men have a moment of tenderness now. But not me. I feel nothing. He shook his head, and drew away from her.
“Don’t you like me?”
“You’re all right!” said Wilfred.
She tried to wheedle more money out of him. Wilfred shook his head.
“Well, will you come to see me again?”
“Sure!” said Wilfred.
She slipped a card into his hand. “That’s my home address. It’s nicer there than these Raines Law joints. If you come in the afternoon I can give you more time. . . .”
Wilfred walked home, musing. His brain was active and cool. From a point at a little distance outside himself, he surveyed the scene in the hotel bedroom, and grinned. The girl’s attitude had been absolutely right of course. Matter-of-fact was the only thing to be under those circumstances. It was he, who had played the mountebank. . . . What comical little insects human beings were! . . . Well, it had been a richly humorous experience, and it had taught him a lot. He was glad it had happened. . . . But never again! Might as well make up his mind to it, that he was different in that respect from other men.
Inside the door of his own room, another mood was lying in wait for him. He loved that room; everything in it had been chosen by himself. It was on the ground floor at the back of what had been a fine dwelling in its day. There was a noble fireplace with a mantel of black marble. The fire, burning low, filled the room with comfortable warm shadows. Desire struck into Wilfred’s breast like a dagger.
Ah! if there was a dear girl waiting here for me! he thought. One whose heart I knew, and who knew my heart! How sweet before the fire to take her in my arms and kiss her neck; to . . . .
Wilfred’s veins were full of molten fire then; his head whirled giddily. He burst out laughing. Here you are at your imaginings again . . . !