VII
Miss Gittings had asked Joe if he would come on such and such a night, and let a college professor question him about his “psychical” experiences. There would be a few other friends present, she said. When Joe had suggested that his clothes were hardly suitable for an evening party, he had been met with silence and pained looks. He had not really expected to get a new suit out of it; he had discovered before this that these people, though they lived nice, were poor in the sense that they had to look twice at every dollar. He had begun to ask himself if they were worth bothering about; he hadn’t got anything out of it; but now he decided that the chance of meeting their friends was worth one more night of his time.
Joe conceived the idea of bracing Isador Cohen for a new suit on the strength of his rise in society. Cohen kept the best-known secondhand store in town on lower Sixth avenue, and Joe had had various dealings with him. There were fine clothes in his store, too. So Joe had told his story to Cohen, offering to prove it by letting Izzy see him go into the Eleventh street house by the front door. Izzy took him up; and not only did he see Joe admitted to the house; but a moment later he received a greeting from Joe through the parlor window. Izzy subsequently allowed, that Joe was a smart feller, and advanced him a suit, and all the fixings. Joe picked out a neat blue cheviot of good quality, and was fitted and sewed up on the spot. At Izzy’s they specialized in providing a man with a quick change.
The party was for eight o’clock. Joe was the first to arrive. The ladies of the house were greatly pleased with his improved appearance; but the white-faced boy walked out of the room when Joe entered, and did not appear again, until the other guests had come, and his Aunt went up-stairs to fetch him. The college professor proved to be a young man, tall; elegantly-dressed; and having a sort of childlike, wild eye. The other guests were mostly elderly. They were all solemn. Joe had not the slightest anxiety on the score of fooling them; because they obviously wanted to be fooled; and expected it. He made out to be quiet and bashful among the strangers. The white-faced boy was watching everything he did with a sneering smile: he was on to Joe. What of it? Joe was on to him, too.
Joe was reminded of a Broadway play by the way all the people sat and stood around the drawing-room, talking in fancy voices with the idea of letting each other know what fine people they were. Like kids at a sidewalk game. It was funny to see full-grown men standing for it.
The last pair of guests drove up to the house in a handsome carriage with two dummies on the outside seat, wearing tall hats with ornaments at the sides, and dark green overcoats with silver buttons. Joe watched them from the window. One dummy jumped down from his seat before the carriage quite stopped, as if he was worked by clockwork, and ran around behind the carriage to be ready to open the door. That’s what I call style, thought Joe.
The entrance of this pair into the drawing-room changed the whole atmosphere of the party. It was clear to Joe from the silky quality that appeared in the attitude of everybody present, that these were not just ordinary rich people, but something exceptional. The professor was nowhere now. Seeing this, all Joe’s faculties sharpened. He recognized a great opportunity. His whole nature went out to the new arrivals. He became one great yearning; to get next! to get next! The other people in the room ceased to exist for him.
The gentleman was a handsome, middle-aged man, somewhat soft in face and body. He wore a fine dress suit; and sported a neat, pointed beard. His expression was inclined to be sulky; his eyes gave nothing away. The lady was a tall, spare, faded blonde; wearing an expensive, ugly green silk dress, and a good deal of jewelry. She had a proud, sour look; and took all the smiles and bows of the people present as her right; whereas the gentleman was indifferent to them. Joe hung around them, hoping to be taken notice of. He had not been brought to the attention of any of the guests yet. The lady put up her glasses, and looked at him as if he had been something in the menagerie; the gentleman took no notice of him whatever.
Joe soon gave the lady up. She was not in his line at all. He concentrated passionately on the gentleman. He surrendered himself, that, by entering into this other nature, he might command it. By degrees Joe became aware that the gentleman scorned spirits and spiritualists: that he had been brought there against his will: that rich though they might be, his wife had him tied fast to her strings: that behind his grand front lurked a timid soul. He was an intensely respectable party; his clothes; his expression; his whole bearing showed how conscious he was of being respectable: and yet! . . . and yet! . . . The sharpened Joe at certain moments perceived a pained roll to the man’s eyeballs, such as you see sometimes in a horse. He had a trick of wetting his lips with his tongue; and when he did so, Joe took note between mustache and beard of how fleshy and dark those lips were. Joe glanced at the sour-faced wife, and smiled inwardly. Hope dawned. With a man so respectable as that, you’d have to be damn careful what you said; but you could let him see things without saying them.
Oblivious to the clack of voices in the room, and the moving about, Joe, quietly, with all the force of which he was capable, desired the gentleman to look at him. Since the rich pair were the centers of attraction in the room; everybody trying to bespeak their notice by word or smile, his task was difficult. Joe was patient. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, he said to himself; he must look at me in the end . . . he must look, because I want him to.