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.
PART THREE: YOUNG MEN