Of course that a mere boy, fresh from college, with no practical experience of the stage whatever, should get a play produced at all was an unusual and highly gratifying thing. Harry became quite a lion that autumn, in a small way. He remained in New York till after the play was taken off, living with the James Wimbournes, and was the guest of honor at one or two of Aunt Cecilia's rather dull but eminently important dinners. He became the object of the attention of reporters, and also of that section of metropolitan literati who live in duplex apartments and wear strings of pearls in their hair and can always tell Schubert from Schumann. He was especially delighted with these, and determined some day to write a play or a novel portraying the inner side of their painstaking spirituality.
He saw a good deal of James during those weeks; more than he had seen of him since their college days. James had been rather sparing of his week-end visits to New Haven since moving to New York; Harry noticed that. He was sorry, for he now found James a great help and stimulus. He discovered that a walk or a motor ride with James between the hours of five and seven would obliterate the effects of the caviar-est of luncheons and the pinkest of teas and give him strength with which to face evenings in the company of people who appeared unable even to perspire anything less exalted than pure Pierian fluid.
"Well, it's nice to meet some one who doesn't smell of Russian cigarettes," he observed one day as he took his place in the long, low, slightly wicked-looking machine in which James whiled away most of his leisure moments. "Do you know, sometimes I actually rush into the nursery at Aunt Cecilia's and kiss the youngest and bread-and-butteryest child there, just to get the Parnassian odors out of my lungs. Next to a rather slobby child, though, I prefer the society of an ex-All-American quarter-back."
"Half," said James.
"Oh, were you? Well, you don't smell of anything æsthetic-er than the camphor balls you put that coat away for the summer in.... James, if you go round another corner at eighty miles an hour I shall leap out and telephone for a policeman!"
"Oh, that's all right. They all know me, anyway. They know I don't take risks."
"Hm.... Well, it's all over for me next week, thank Heaven. I'm going back to Aunt Selina and Sunday night suppers, and I shall be glad!"
"Well, I will say," said James slowly and carefully, with the air of one determined to do the most meticulous justice, "that you have kept your head through it all pretty well."
"Oh, it's not hard, when you come right to it," said Harry, laughing. "Of course there are moments when I wonder if I'm not really greater than Shakespeare. And it does seem funny to realize that the rising genius, the person people are all talking about, and poor little Me are the same. But then I remember what a failure my play was, and shrivel into the poor graduate student.... After I've written a successful play, though, I won't answer for myself. And after I've written 'Hamlet,' as I mean to some day, I shall be simply unbearable. You won't own me then."
"Watch-chain round your neck?" suggested James.