“Aah! in the inside pocket o’ me coat.” Joe flung an arm over his eyes.
Jewel got up without haste.
III
From his place in the corner of the basement room Wilfred watched the other diners covertly. Had he but possessed a mantle of invisibility his happiness would have been complete. As it was, his pleasure in looking at people vanished when they looked at him. There were four places at a table, and he was most comfortable when all were taken. People sitting so close, never looked at you; and they made a sort of screen for you; moreover he was able to listen to their talk, and to build upon it.
He ate his dinner in this place on West Tenth street once or twice a week; or as often as he could scare up the necessary thirty-five cents. He told his Aunts he had to work late at the office. How scandalized they would have been could they have seen him sitting there with a bottle of wine before him. They would never realize that he was grown. The place had no license of course, and you had a pleasant feeling of lawlessness; at any moment the police might come banging at the door. But they never had. A plain and friendly place, it supplied something that Wilfred had apprehended in novels of foreign life. He had got in the first time by attaching himself to the tail of a party at the door. Now he was known there and hailed by name. The generous minestrone, ravioli, etc., made his stomach purr. When he sat back and lighted a cigarette, life ceased to appall.
It was run by a handsome Italian woman with a heavenly smile, named Ceccina. Her husband, Michele, held sway over the kitchen, which was revealed through an open door; and their three children Raymo, Alessandro and Enriqueta helped their mother to wait upon the tables. Simple people; Wilfred loved them from a distance, except the little girl, who was pert without being engaging. It was the fault of the fond patrons. Wilfred felt it his duty to discourage her. He had a specially warm spot for Alessandro the bullet-headed one, a blonde sport in that dark family. Alessandro, always watching for a chance to sneak out and play in the streets, was often in trouble with his father, who swore at him in English, without being aware of the comic effect of his aspersions on the boy’s parentage.
The round table in the middle of the room, which would hold six at a squeeze, was reserved for a little company of friends that included two known authors; a lady editor; an artist; and a long-legged young man of unknown affiliations, whom the others called the bambino. These people constituted the focus of interest in the place. Wilfred watching them, and listening, decided against them. Let the authors be known as well as they might, their circle was not the real thing; its brilliancy was self-conscious. One author looked like a walrus with his tusks drawn; the other like an elderly trained poodle. The artist had a voluminous cape to his overcoat; and rattled his stick against the door-frame when he entered. Somebody said he designed labels for tomato cans. The room was small enough for Wilfred to scoop in these bits of information, as they flew about.
These and others in the room were of the general show; there was one group that Wilfred had taken for his own; whom he regarded with an intensity of interest that hurt. Young fellows, no more than a year or two older than himself; lively young fellows; and good friends! Until he had come to Ceccina’s he had never seen any young men like these, but he immediately understood them; he seemed to have been waiting for such. The conventions upon which young men ordinarily formed themselves, had no force with them. Their eyes seemed to see what they were turned upon; they were interested in things; they could let themselves go; and how they talked!
Two of them came every night. These addressed each other as Stanny and Jasper. Stanny was short and sturdily built; with an expression of doughty wistfulness that arrested Wilfred. He had a tenor voice with rather plaintive modulations, that went with his eyes. A man every inch of him, from the set of his strong shoulders, and his courageous glance; but a man who felt things and wondered. Up to this time Wilfred had despairingly supposed that manliness was the capacity for not feeling things. Jasper, with his crisp, bronze, wavy hair, and warm color, was full of a slow, earthy zest. His face generally wore a sleepy half-smile; and he had a trick of squinting down his big nose. Wilfred inferred that he must have wit, from the surprised laughter which greeted his rare sallies.
These two were sometimes joined by an older man with a fine, reticent face and silky black beard, whom they called Hilgy. Hilgy had his features under such control, that it was impossible to decide whether he was speaking in jest or in earnest. Wilfred observed that sometimes his own friends did not know how to take him. Hilgy liked to string them. Sometimes a thin, handsome youth no older than Wilfred, made one of the party. They called him Binks; and so exuberant and audacious was his style, that all hung upon his words, though he was the youngest among them.