And along with all this, that sad, wan, reproachful, dying smile! And that mysterious something of manner which seemed to say: “My boy! My boy! The things you will never know!”
And yet after a time Dick condescended to receive me into his confidence and into his “studio,” a very picturesque affair, situated in the heart of the downtown district. Also he condescended to bestow upon me some of his dreams as well as his friendly presence; a thing which exalted me, being so new to this art world. I was permitted (note the word) to gather dimly, as neophyte from priest, the faintest outlines of these wondrous dreams of his, and to share with him the hope that they might be realized. I was so set up by this great favor that I felt certain great things must flow from it. Assuredly we three could do great things if only we would stick together. But was I worthy? There were already rumors of books, plays, stories, poems, to come from a certain mighty pen—as a matter of fact, it was already hard upon the task of writing them—which were to set the world aflame by-and-by. Certain editors in New York were already receiving (and sending back, alas!) certain preliminary masterpieces along with carefully worded suggestions in regard to slight but necessary changes which would perfect them and so inaugurate the new era. Certain writers, certain poets, certain playwrights were already better than any that had ever been—the best ever, in short. Dick knew, of course, and I was allowed to share this knowledge, to be thrilled by it.
CHAPTER XXII
Once the ice was broken in this way intimacy with these twain came fast enough, although I never became quite as intimate with Dick as I did with Peter, largely because I could not think him as important. Wood had some feminine characteristics; he could be very jealous of anybody’s interest in Peter as well as Peter’s interest in anybody else. He was big enough, at times, to see the pettiness of this and try to rise above it, but at other times it would show. Years later McCord confided to me in the most amused way how, when I first appeared on the scene, Dick at once began to belittle me and to resent my obvious desire to “break in,” as he phrased it, these two, according to Dick, having established some excluding secret union.
But the union was not exclusive, in so far as Peter was concerned. Shortly after my arrival young Hartung had begun running into the art room (so Peter told me) with amazing tales of the new man, his exploits in Chicago. I had been sent for to come to this paper—that was the great thing. I was vouched for by no less a person than John T. McEnnis, one of the famous newspaper men of St. Louis and a former city editor of this same paper; also by a Mr. Somebody (the Washington correspondent of the paper), for whom I had worked in Chicago on the World’s Fair. He had hurried to the art department with his tales of me, wishing, I fancy, to be on friendly and happy terms there. Dick, however, considered Hartung’s judgment as less than nothing, himself an upstart, a mere office rat; to have him endeavor to introduce anybody was too much. At first he received me very coldly, then finding me perhaps better than he thought, he hastened to make friends with me.
The halcyon hours with these two that followed. Not infrequently Peter and Dick would dine together at some downtown restaurant; or, if a rush of work were on and they were compelled to linger, they had a late supper in some German saloon. It was Peter who first invited me to one of these late séances, and later Wood did the same, but this last was based on another development in connection with myself which I should narrate here.
The office of the Globe proved a sprouting-bed for incipient literary talent. Hazard had, some fifteen or eighteen months before, in company with another newspaper man of whom later I heard amazing things, written a novel entitled Theo, which was plainly a bog-fire kindled by those blazing French suns, Zola and Balzac. The scene was laid in Paris (imagine two Western newspaper men who had never been out of America writing a novel of French life and laying it in Paris!) and had much of the atmosphere of Zola’s Nana, plus the delicious idealism of Balzac’s The Great Man from the Provinces. Never having read either of these authors at this time, I did not see the similarity, but later I saw it plainly. One or both of these men had fed up on the French realists to such an extent that they were able to create the illusion of France (for me at least) and at the same time to fire me with a desire to create something, perhaps a novel of this kind but preferably a play. It seemed intensely beautiful to me at the time, this book, with its frank pictures of raw, greedy, sensual human nature, and its open pictures of self-indulgence and vice.
The way this came about was interesting but I would not relate it save that it had such a marked effect on me. I was sitting in the city reportorial room later one gloomy December afternoon, having returned from a fruitless assignment, when a letter was handed me. It was postmarked Chicago and addressed in the handwriting of Alice. Up to then I had allowed matters to drift, having, as I have said, written but one letter in which I apologized rather indifferently for having come away without seeing her. But my conscience had been paining me so much that when I saw her writing I started. I tore the letter open and read with a sense of shame:
“Dear Theo: