Business having been disposed of, the talk around the table slipped into undress. Joe, watchfully keeping all four of his auditors in play, made the running. He had diverse elements to deal with; for while Gillett and Dodge were frankly high livers, old Judge Keep was the pillar of some church or another; Eddie Shriver an easy-going young husband and father. Different as they were, they all yielded to Joe’s insinuating looseness. Joe had a smiling way of taking the worst for granted that the most prudish of men found difficult to withstand. He worked to bring a certain sly, sheepish grin into the faces of his hearers; and when that appeared, he knew they were his.
Secretly, Joe was weary of his present audience. They were too dull; too old; his power over them was too easy to exert; they made him feel like a second-rate performer. Glancing around the room to see who was looking at him, Joe perceived that a figure, vaguely familiar, had taken a seat at one of the small tables by the Twenty-Sixth street windows. It was that kid, Wilfred Pell, the white-faced kid; the kid with the funny look in his eyes.
Joe was immediately interested. That kid had always teased his interest; it was hard to say why, because it was a footless sort of kid; he cut no ice. But Joe had never been able to make him give in. There was a bad streak in him all right; it instantly responded to Joe’s suggestion; but the kid would not let himself go. Joe had never been able to make him look sheepish. Not that it mattered a damn; still . . . why hadn’t he been able to?
Now he looked as untidy as ever in his wrinkled, mouse-colored suit; it might almost have been the same suit he was wearing three years ago; and with much the same look in his eyes, but intensified by growing manliness; a sort of crazy, proud, hot look—what was that look? If he felt like that, why the hell didn’t he let himself go? Obviously a damn fool; one of these, morbid, solitary kids; rotten! But Joe couldn’t dismiss him; there was something there that he couldn’t get.
Joe saw that Wilfred had been watching him, though he quickly turned away his eyes when Joe looked. No greeting passed between the two. Wilfred’s look made Joe purr with gratification. Funny, that this insignificant kid had that effect, when Cooper Gillett’s ill-concealed admiration only bored him. What a contrast between the two of them. There was he, Joe, handsome, elegantly-dressed; sitting as an equal with some of the best-known men in New York, telling them things: and there was that other kid, just the same age, untidy and sallow-cheeked, sitting alone and unregarded, looking out of place in the swell joint. And Wilfred showed that he felt the contrast. You could almost see him grind his teeth when he looked at Joe. The kid hated him, yet he was crazy about him in a way; while his mouth was ugly with a sneer, his eyes had a certain slavish look in them, that Joe was familiar enough with. Joe looked in one of the mirrors and plumed himself, aware that this would make the kid feel worse.
Joe now experienced a renewed zest in entertaining his table companions. As a careless youth to youths he related the surprising adventures of his hours of ease, making out that they were not at all surprising. When he wished to make a good impression, Joe never allowed himself to boast, but let it be assumed that the other man was quite as bold, shameless, insatiable and lucky as himself. His middle-aged listeners fawned upon him in gratified vanity. Joe never looked again, but was always conscious of the hot-eyed spectator in the background. Let the kid see how I can make the famous Cooper Gillett eat out of my hand, he thought.
“. . . She was dining with her husband at the next table. I had Millie with me. Millie and the husband were sitting back to back, and that left the peach, facing me, see? All through the meal she kept looking at me in a certain way; you know how they do. They love to do it when they’re with their husbands. It’s a slap in the old man’s eye; and they feel safe when he’s there. Don’t expect to be taken up. But they don’t usually do it when you’ve already got such a pretty girl as Millie with you. That suggested to me that the peach must be damn sure of her charms, and I was interested. She was a peach!
“Usually, Millie is a good-natured little thing; and I suggested that she follow the peach into the ladies’ cloak-room, and make a date with her for me. But for some reason she got up on her ear—you know how it is with women; and refused. So I shook her. I timed it so’s I came out on the sidewalk right behind the peach and her hubby. I marched up to her and raised my hat. Gosh! she near died. Didn’t know which way to turn. But she was game. She recovered herself, and introduced me to the old man as Mr. Smithers. He was jealous as Hell. That made it twice as much fun, of course; you know! An old clothes-bag like that, hadn’t any right to have such a pretty wife, anyhow.
“The old man had called a hansom, and she invited me to ride up-town with them—since I lived just around the corner from them, as she said. The old man made out to sit in the middle, but that just suited me, because he had to sit forward a little, and the peach and I were able to talk sign language behind his back. And all the way up-town I need hardly say, she was real affectionate to him, pulling his ear, and rubbing her cheek against his shoulder. Isn’t that like a woman? By God! if I ever get a wife, I’ll recognize the danger signals! And she told him all about me, see? thus providing me with my cues. Oh! she was a clever little devil! When we got up to their flat, she sent him out to the delicatessen for bottled beer. . . .”
When the party at the round table broke up, they passed close beside Wilfred’s table on their way to the Twenty-Sixth street door. Joe did not look at Wilfred; but was pleasantly aware of the look that the other cast upon him as he went by.