Mrs. Felman, who had been knitting on the rear porch, rushed into the room.
“Boys, boys, stop it!” she cried, in anguish. “Are you out of your minds—fighting in the house! Don’t pay any attention to what Carl says, Al. You know he’s crazy and not responsible.”
“Well, after all, you’re right, I shouldn’t pay any attention to him,” said Levy with a sulky loftiness. “I only spoke to him for your sake, you know, but I’ll leave him alone after this.”
Carl grimaced with the aid of his eyebrows and suppressed the easy words with which he could have clubbed the man in front of him. After Levy departed Carl fled to the street to escape his mother’s enraged words concerning the possible loss of a valuable roomer.
CHAPTER VIII.
During the next two weeks Carl sat in his drably dark room, slowly copying his poems with a stiff, perfect handwriting and mailing them to magazines and newspapers, but rejection-slips, fresh from the printer, began to reach him with each return mail. Many of his uncertain, mystical poems were equal to the quality of verse maintained by certain American publications, but editors scarcely ever trouble themselves to read verse that is copied in pen and ink and bears the spirals of deceptively boyish handwriting. Under the blow of each returned poem Carl receded inch by inch to his old cell of faltering insignificance. He went back to the tame routines of physical labor, finding work as a plumber’s assistant, and still consoled himself by creeping, like a soiled and weeping child, to Lucy’s blind and half-motherly worship.
One evening, after he had stepped into the brightly dismal sitting-room of Lucy’s home, he noticed an uneasy politeness in the greeting of her parents—the usual well-smeared cordiality was absent. At first he felt that he might have made a mistake, but one glance at the nervous distress upon Lucy’s transparent little face indicated that some change had taken place in her family’s regard for him. Lucy was never successful in her efforts at evasion, and each one of the pitifully comical masks that she wore merely snugly revealed the outline of the emotion which they were attempting to conceal. With a strained gaiety she suggested a walk and after they had reached the street he questioned her.
“Well, what’s the trouble, Luce? The graceful, January note in your parent’s voices was not quite expected. Tell me what it’s all about.”
“Oh, it’s nothing, nothing, Carl dear.”
“I’m quite sure that it’s nothing in reality, since your parents are almost incapable of thought, but at any rate, you might explain the empty gesture to me.”