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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3d76a6b --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #66224 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66224) diff --git a/old/66224-0.txt b/old/66224-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index bb003ee..0000000 --- a/old/66224-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4868 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Blackguard, by Maxwell Bodenheim - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Blackguard - -Author: Maxwell Bodenheim - -Illustrator: Wallace Smith - -Release Date: September 5, 2021 [eBook #66224] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Tim Lindell, sf2001, and the Online Distributed Proofreading - Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from - images generously made available by The Internet - Archive/American Libraries.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKGUARD *** - - - - -[Illustration] - - - - - BLACKGUARD - - - by Maxwell Bodenheim - - [Illustration] - - drawing by Wallace Smith - - - CHICAGO - COVICI-McGEE · PUBLISHERS · - 1923 - - - - - Copyright 1923 - Covici-McGee - Chicago - - -_First Printing, March, 1923_ - - - - -CONTENTS - - - PART ONE - The Struggle Page 1 - CHAPTER I. - CHAPTER II. - CHAPTER III. - CHAPTER IV. - CHAPTER V. - CHAPTER VI. - CHAPTER VII. - CHAPTER VIII. - CHAPTER IX. - - PART TWO - The Knife Page 121 - CHAPTER X. - CHAPTER XI. - CHAPTER XII. - CHAPTER XIII. - CHAPTER XIV. - CHAPTER XV. - - PART THREE - Instigation Page 181 - CHAPTER XVI. - CHAPTER XVII. - CHAPTER XVIII. - - - - -PART I - -THE STRUGGLE - - - - -The Struggle - -CHAPTER I. - - -Carl Felman stepped from a train at the Union Station of a midwestern -American city. His young face, partly obscured by a blonde stubble of -beard, was a passive concealment, and his thin lips and long nose did -not hold that stalwart sleekness which one associates with earth. If -some joker had taken a Gothic effigy of Christ, trimmed its beard, -dressed it in grey and dirty clothes, and forced upon it an unwilling -animation, he would have produced an exact duplicate of Carl’s aspect -and gestures. - -In the emotional confusion of the railroad-station, with its reluctant -farewells and gushing greetings, Carl walked alone and abstracted, and -he treated the scene as though it were a feverishly unreal mixture -of drama and travesty. He strode with the careful haste of one who -seeks to escape from an irritating dream but knows at the same time -that his efforts are futile. He was without baggage, and his face -held the strain that comes from battling with open spaces and strange -faces--the hunted question of the hobo. His face showed two masks, one -transparent and passive and the other tense and protesting. He had -ridden for thirty-six hours in the chair of a day-coach, without food -or sleep, and he was walking to the home of his parents because he -lacked the necessary car-fare, but these circumstances were only partly -responsible for his air of spectral weariness. He knew the stunned -exhaustion of a man whose mind and heart had broken their questions -against unfriendly walls, and at intervals he became immersed in vain -efforts to understand the meaning of his wounds. - -During the twenty-one years of his life he had resembled an amateur -actor, forced to play the part of a troubled scullion in a first -act that bewildered and enraged him. At high-school he had been -known as “the poet-laureate of room sixteen,” a title invented by -snickering pupils, and his timidly mystic lyrics about sandpipers, -violets, and the embracing glee of the sun, had gained an unrestrained -admiration from his English teachers. Teachers of English in American -high-schools are not apt to insist upon originality and mental -alertness in expression, since their own lives are usually automatic -acceptances of a minor role, and Carl became convinced that writing -poetry was only a question of selecting some applauded poet of the past -and imitating his verse. “You must say the inspiring things that they -have said, but see that your words are a little different from theirs,” -he said to himself, and his words--“a little different”--became -slightly incongruous upon the thoughts and emotions of Tennyson and -Longfellow, the latter two having been selected because they seemed -easier to flatter than other poets such as Browning and Swinburne. -Another Carl Felman watched this proceeding from an inner dungeon but -lacked the courage to interrupt it, for to a boy the opinions of his -teachers, delivered with an air of weary authority, seem as inexorable -as the laws of the Talmud or the blazing sincerity of sunlight. Carl -was nearing seventeen at this time--a lonely, vaguely rebellious, -anaemic, dumbly sullen boy, who tried in his feeble way to caress the -life-chains which he did not dare to break. His parents, middle-aged -Jews with starved imaginations and an anger at the respectable poverty -of their lives, looked upon his poetic desires with mingled feelings of -elation and uneasiness. - -The phenomenon of an adolescent poet in the family is always liked -and distrusted by simple people--liked because it pleasantly teases -the monotone of their existence, and distrusted because they fear, -without quite knowing why, that it will develop into a being at -variance with the fundamental designs of their lives. Carl’s parents -clucked their tongues in puzzled admiration when he read them one of -his poems, and then, with a note of loquacious fear in their voices, -told him that he must look upon writing as a “side-line”--a pretty, -lightly smirking distraction that could snuggle into the hollows of a -business-man’s life. Carl, who liked the importance of carrying secret -plots within him, did not answer this suggestion, or gave it a sulky -monosyllable, and his reticence frightened his parents. The simple -person is reassured by garrulity, even when it attacks but can derive -nothing from silence save the feeling of an unseen dagger. The Felmans -wanted their son to attain the money that had seduced and eluded their -longings, but deeper than that, they yearned for him to place a colored -wreath over the brows of their tired imaginations--one that could -convince them that their lives had not been mere sterile and oppressed -bickerings. The father, a traveling-salesman for a whiskey-firm, -wanted Carl to be prosperous and yet daring over his cups while the -mother felt that he might become a celestial notary-public, placing his -seal upon the unnoticed documents of her virtues. - -Carl experienced the uncertain dreads of a dwarf futilely attempting -to squirm from a ring of perspiring golden giants known to the world, -and not even sure of whether he ought to escape, but knowing only -that a vicious and unformed ache within him found little taste for -the flat-footed routines of clerk or salesman. Upon another planet -this initial writhing is doubtless offered the consolation of better -compromises, but the treadmill uproars of this earth merely increased -Carl’s feelings of shrinking anger. - -“Oh, well, I’ll work in a store or sell something, and make money. -Life won’t let you do anything else,” he said to himself. “But inside -of me, m-m, there I’ll do as I please. I’ll make a country where poets -and other begging men live in little huts on the obscure hills and rear -their families of thoughts and emotions, with a haughty peacefulness.” - -He shunned the people around him as much as possible, studying his -lessons in a precisely weary manner and squatting on the grass of a -public park near his home where he wrote his dimly placid lyrics to -the sun and moon. He had no companions at school, for the children -around him were quick to jibe at any remark of his that contained a -searching wraith of thought, and he did not join in the school’s minor -activities because of his angry pride at the giggling accusations -of queerness which he received from the other boys and girls. They -regarded him for moments as an enticing target, reviling his exact -grammar and mild manners, but for the most part they paid little heed -to this grotesque atom lost in the swirl of their games and plans. -In a smaller school the strident inquisitiveness of average children -thrown upon each other might have overwhelmed him, but in the immense -city high-school he managed effortlessly to isolate himself, and the -children, once having dubbed him poet-laureate--sarcastically mimicking -the phraseology of their elders--proceeded to forget about him. - -When at length he was graduated, he begged his parents to send him -to college, desperately fighting for another long period in which he -could brush aside dry information and rhyme “earth” with “birth,” since -he preferred the frolic of misty promises to a world of prearranged -shouts and sweating dreads. But his parents felt that their period of -uneasy indulgence had inevitably ended, and words trooped from them in -righteously redundant regiments. - -“You’re a big boy now, yes, a big boy, and you know that we’ve -sacrificed everything to give you a good education,” said Mrs. -Felman. “Not that we regret it, no indeed, we only hope that it helps -you to get along in life, but this college stuff, now, is a lot of -foolishness. That’s only for people with rich parents, or them that -can afford to go a long time without working; and not only that, but -it fills your head, you know, with a lot of nonsense. It’s time now -that you go out and make money to help your parents. You know that -we’re just barely able to get along on what your father makes. Not that -we’re begging you for your help, you understand, but you should be only -too proud to give comfort to your parents. Uncle Emil can use a smart -boy like you in his clothing business and he told us only the other -night that he’d give you a good job the minute you come down. You’ve -got to give up those writing notions of yours! They don’t bring you in -anything, and a man must go out into the world and make his own living. -Writing is no business for a strong, sensible boy!” - -Carl listened with a feeling of impotent anger. Yes, they were probably -right in their commands and he would be a scoundrel if he refused to -obey them and rescue them from their poverty; but--well, he preferred -to be a scoundrel. “Beyond a doubt I’m a lazy, ungrateful wretch, and -all that I care for is to put words together--that seems to relieve me -somehow--but say, how about sticking to what I am?” he asked himself. -“I know perfectly well that I’ll never change, and if I make a liar -out of the rest of my life that won’t make me any the less guilty. -Besides, it’s funny, but I don’t know whether I want to change. -There’s something satisfactory about being a scoundrel--it lets you -do the things that you want to do; while being good, as far as I can -see, is just pretending that you like to do the things that you don’t -want to do. Well, I’m not going to stand for that! I’ve got to choose -between hurting my parents and hurting myself and they are going to be -the victims. This will be mighty selfish, I know, but I guess I’m a -naturally selfish person. Anyway, I don’t feel much love for them and -I don’t see that it will help them if I try to hide my feelings. They -would find out sooner or later what an inhuman person I am and they -might as well find out now.” - -Carl answered the verbose commands and advice of his parents with a -mechanical “yes” now and then--a small shield to protect the inner -unfolding of his thoughts--and walked into his bedroom, where he rested -his dull broodings upon a pillow. The lives of some men represent a -scale of gradually increasing compromises with, or victories against, -the forces surrounding them, while other men crowd their decision into -one early moment and walk swiftly down an unchanging road. The boy with -Carl died upon the bed in his room and the fumbling, stiffly vindictive -beginning of a man rose and walked into the street, with an evil -smile petrifying the softness of his face. In this emotional birth he -became to himself a huge black criminal staggering beneath the weight -of unreleased plots, and he derived an angry joy from this condition, -reveling in the first guilty importance that had invaded his meekly -repressed life. - -With the inquisitive grin of one who is quite convinced that he is an -embryonic monster, he arose at five o’clock on the next morning, stole -into the bedroom of his sleeping parents, pilfered fifteen dollars from -the trousers of his father, and took the train to a distant city, where -he enlisted in the United States Army. He had first intended to do this -at the nearest recruiting station, but with the triumphant shrewdness -of a budding knave he decided that if he joined the army in another -city he could more easily escape being arrested for his theft. He had -robbed his parents with an actually quivering delight, feeling that -it was the first gesture of his attack upon an unresponsive world. -In joining the army he had not been lured by the recruiting poster’s -gaudy lies concerning “adventure, travel, and recreation,” but his -reasons were more practical and involved. He longed for the stimulus -of a physical motion that would not be concerned with the capture of -pennies and he believed that he could be more alone with himself in a -new whirlpool than in the drably protected alcove from which he had -fled. He felt also that if he were going to prey upon the world he must -make haste to learn the tricks and signals of a rogue and pay for this -knowledge with physical pain and weariness. - -The details of his army life need not interfere with this quickly -sculptured hint of his birth. He emerged from the lustreless workshop -of the army with the patient bitterness of one whose dreams have become -the blundering slaves of a colorless reality. For some time he wandered -about the country, in a stumbling dance with various kinds of manual -labor--cotton picking, wood chopping, factory work. At intervals he -engaged in little thefts, such as the money from a drunken man’s -pockets, the purses of rooming-house landladies, and articles from the -counters of shops, and used them for a week or two of leisure in which -he wrote of nightingales inebriated with the fragrance of lilac bushes, -or dawn robbing the hills of their favorite shawl. - -His role of desultory sneak-thief failed to cause within him the -slightest shame or self-reproach and he felt that his longings were -using trivial weapons in a furtive manner merely to protect a secretly -delicate bravery within him. - -“I don’t care whether the world is filled with poets or not,” he -sometimes said to himself. “If it were, I might want to be a carpenter -or a clerk then and make that my form of rebellion. I don’t know. But -the world wants to be filled with carpenters and clerks, and it’s not -as fair as I am. The unfairness makes me angry and I strike against -it.... You must guard your only reason for living. All that I want to -do is to keep on writing, and since no one cares to pay me for this -kind of work I’ll have to arrange for the payment myself. When I do -hard work during the day I’m too tired to write at night, and the only -way in which I can get leisure time for writing is to steal. If this -is evil, it’s been forced upon me. Of course, I’d much rather steal -out in the open; but that would instantly bring me to jail. No, this -complicated game known as a world is unaware of my existence and I must -be equally absent-minded in my own attitude.” - -His youthful gesture of contorted cynicism, qualified a bit by the -remaining ghosts of a naively wounded idealism, made him resolve to -become a crafty underdog--a man who had become obsessed with the task -of finding his voice and was using every possible subterfuge and device -to protect this obsession, leering at the forces that were attempting -to intrude upon his religious concentration. Right and wrong to him -were unfair scarecrows that slipped from the huge indifference of his -surroundings and demanded an attention which they were unwilling to -give in return. Perhaps he was a minor knave, seeking to rationalize -his instincts for crime, and perhaps he merely held a naked -determination like that of a certain immoral slayer and plunderer known -as Nature. The question is a frayed one and derives little benefit from -the tensions of exhausted arguments. Carl was constantly harassed by a -feeling of inarticulate insignificance, and the poems which he twisted -from his heart, on park benches and in the long weeds of ditches -beside railroad tracks, were like bunches of forget-me-nots plucked by -a dirty, bewildered child and thrown as offerings against the stone -breast of an unheeding giant. He still believed that poetry was a -cloak of blurred embroidery that should be cast over the shoulders of -sentiments such as love, faith, charity, mercy, chivalry, courage and -honor, and he felt both consoled and amused at the thought that he was -using a rogue to guard within himself the better man that life had not -allowed him to become. His love for the sentiments which he tipped with -rhymes was partly caused, however, by the fear that without them he -might become too utterly inhuman for earthly survival. - -For a year he wrestled with different manual labors, and stole when -their perspiring monotones weakened and angered his desire to write -lyrics that were half trite and half thinly wistful, but he finally -decided to return to the midwestern city and brave the reactions of his -parents, whose wrathful letters had sometimes visited his journeys. -He determined to rest awhile amid the moderate comforts of his former -home and felt that he could disarm the anger of his parents with a -masterful, jesting attitude that would muzzle them. And so, penniless -and in dirty clothes, he was now walking through the heavily tawdry -business district of a midwestern city. - - - - -CHAPTER II. - - -On the streets martyred by crowds, electric lights pencilled the night -with their trivial appeals, and an ineffectual approach to daylight -spread its desperately dotted jest over the scene. Since Carl almost -never voiced his actual thoughts and emotions to people, he grasped, as -usual, the luxury of speaking to himself. - -“Electric light is only the molten fear of men,” he said, as he strode -through the unreal haste of the crowds. “Men are afraid to look at the -night and they have given it eyes as stiffly frightened as their own. -Underneath the comforting glare of this second blindness they protect -themselves. In a dim light men and women could not easily escape from -each other, for the darkness would tend to press them together, but -in this violent stare of light they are divided by a self-assured -indifference. Watch them as they stride along with an air of gigantic, -amusing importance. The crowd is really a single symbol of many -isolations joined to a huge one. It sees only those people who are -unpleasantly conscious of the electric glare, and who hurry through it -with gestures of alert dislike, or with a slow and morbid desire for -pain.” - -This fancy made him feel conspicuously disrobed, and the glances of -passing people became to him flitting symbols of derision directed at -his beard and dirty clothes. As he looked up at the tall, unlit office -buildings, grey and narrowly vertical, they reminded him of coffins -standing on end and patiently waiting for a civilization to crumble, -so that they might inter it and fall to the ground with their task -completed. He reached the apartment-house section in which his parents -lived--rows of three and four-story buildings almost exactly like each -other, and standing like factory boxes awaiting shipment, but never -called for. In front of each building was a little, square lawn hemmed -in between the sidewalk and the curbstone--tiny squares of dusty green -lost in a solved and colorless problem in material geometry. Carl -greeted them with a gesture of ironical brotherhood as he hurried along -the walk, while people, observing his downcast gaze and saluting hands, -sometimes paused to doubt his sanity. - -The glib suavity of a midsummer night sprinkled its sounds down the -street and the doorsteps and walks were heavy with men, women and -children, parading the uncomfortable drabness of their clothes and -unwinding their idle talk. In pairs and squads, youths and girls -strolled past Carl, laughing and playing to that exact degree of -animal abandon tolerated by the street lights of a civilization, and -sometimes crossing the forbidden boundary line, with little bursts of -guilty spontaneity. Amid the openness of the street they were forced -to become jauntily evasive of the old sensual madness brought by a -summer evening, and they sought the refuges of crudely taunting words, -snickering withdrawals, and tentative invitations. They were sauntering -toward the kittenish excitements of ice-cream sundaes, moving pictures, -and kisses traded upon the shaded benches in a nearby public park. -Thought had subsided in their heads to a kindly mist that clung to -the rhythm of their emotions, though in the main, their minds were -merely emotions that vainly strove to become discreet. Most people are -incapable of actual thought, and thinking to them is merely emotion -that calmly plots for more concrete rewards and visions. - -Carl looked upon the people on the sidewalks with the attitude of an -unscrupulous stranger, and in his fancy he measured them for material -gains and attacks, without a trace of warm emotion in his regard. To -him they were merely alien figures busily engaged in deifying the -five senses, and they mattered no more than shadowy animals blind -to his aims and presence. He had long since frozen his emotions -in self-defense and nothing could unloosen them save the timidly -mystical lyrics which he wrenched from the baffled surfaces of his -heart. During the four years of his life as a soldier and hobo he -had often looked upon some of the darker and more rawly naked shades -of sexual desire in the people around him, but after a first period -of mechanical curiosity he had drawn aloof from what he considered a -blind, shrieking, fantastic parade. “This wearisome game of advancing -and retreating flesh, always trying to lend importance to an essential -monotone, can go to hell,” he had muttered to himself. “I’ll yield to -my sexual desires at rare intervals, but I’ll do it in the brief and -matter-of-fact manner in which a man spits into a convenient cuspidor.” -Women to him were simply moulds of dull intrigue, irritating him with -their pretenses of animation and with the oneness of their appeal. - -As he walked between the incongruities of hard street surfaces and -soft noises, everything around him seemed to be vainly trying to -conceal a hollow monotone. Middle-aged and old people sat around the -doorsteps of the box-like apartment-houses, and the circumscribed and -hair’s-breadth shades of intelligence and defeat on their faces were -transparent over one color and shape. Each of these people strove -to convince himself that his relaxation on this summer evening was -a glittering honor conferred by hours of virtuous toil, though at -times discontent suddenly raised their voices high in the air. It was -as though they lifted musical instruments, gave them one helpless -blow, and retired to apathy, scarcely aware of what they had done. -Carl looked at them with a weary indifference that almost verged upon -hatred, and hurried down the cement walk. - -As he neared the apartment-house where his parents lived it suddenly -occurred to him that the entrance might be decorated by people who -would recognize him and comment upon his appearance and his abrupt -return. The thought of their amused and veiled contempt, or their -assumption of superior compassion, made him cringe a little and he -turned to a side-street that led to an alley which extended behind the -block in which his parents lived. He passed through the dismal rear -yard of beaten earth and ascended the wooden stairway. A negro janitor, -who had been working in this place for several years, gazed at him, at -first with suspicion and then with a slowly pitying grin of recognition. - -“’Lo, Mistah Felman. What brings you-all back here?” - -Carl affected an irritated aloofness. - -“I came back to enjoy a little shame,” he said. - -“What dat last word you said?” - -“Shame, shame,” repeated Carl, frowning at the man. - -“Guess you-all’s crazy,” said the negro, throwing up his hands and -stumping away. - -This was one of Carl’s favorite tricks. Whenever he desired to avoid -a forced exchange of commonplaces, or the threat of a humiliation, he -would speak in a cryptic fashion that aroused bewilderment or annoyance -in the person before him and helped him to end the conversation. He -found that the rear door of the apartment was locked and knew that -his parents were visiting an adjacent moving-picture theater or -sitting outside on the tiny lawn. Happily, he eyed the open window and -remembered how often in the past his mother had scolded his father -for that enormous crime. Ah, the windows in their minds were well -nailed and shaded. He felt relieved at the knowledge that he could -probably sit for an hour or two and rest before they returned. He -climbed through the window with the jocose satisfaction of a criminal -whose mock-hanging has been postponed, and sat on a weak-jointed -rocking-chair in the small dining-room. - -Not a fraction of change had come to the cluttered dullness of -the room. He saw the same rickety table of round oak, where an -inferior circle was displaying with mild pride an embroidered square -of white linen; the modest and orderly showing of cut-glass and -silverware--tinsel of an old defeat--; the plaster-of-paris bust of -an Indian, violently colored and bearing an artificial scowl; the -mantlepiece that held a little squatting Chinaman made of colored -lead and the bric-a-brac effigy of a doll-like courtier in washed -out pinks and blues. On the wall opposite him a brass clock, moulded -into crude cherubs intertwined with stiff blossoms, busily spoke of -itself, forgetful of the time that it was supposed to measure, and -little prints of uncertain landscapes hung in golden frames upon -the wall-paper that was stamped with heavy purple grapes against a -tan background. Carl shuddered as though he were in the midst of a -weak and disorganized nightmare, in which reality was indulging in a -hackneyed burlesque at its own expense, and he crashed his fist upon -the oak table. - -“Damn it, I’ll get out of this some day,” he shouted, craving the sharp -relief of sound, and then he grinned at the clumsy futility of his -explosion. - -“If you ever do manage to escape from this conspiracy of barren peace -and flat lies it won’t be with angry noise,” he said to himself. “A -vicious calmness will help you more.” - -He extracted a soiled roll of pencilled, smudged papers from an inside -pocket of his coat and stroked them as though they were a gathering -of living presences. The paper became smooth skin to him and he -questioned it with his fingers. This reaction was not a sensual one -but sprang from his longing for a reality that had so far eluded his -consciousness. His poems, peeping with eyes of fanciful promises above -the veils that redeemed their faces, were more concrete to him than -actual flesh and breath. - - - - -CHAPTER III. - - -He sat in the rocking-chair, tired and vaguely oppressed, clutching the -paper in the manner of one who clings to a tangible encouragement in -the midst of fantastic lies and fists. His parents came into the room -at last and turned on an electric light without at first noticing him -in the semi-gloom. Turning, his mother saw him in the chair. Her hands -flew to her breast, in two tight slants, as she impulsively pictured -the presence of a bearded burglar, and then she recognized him and -insulted her emotions with a cross between a gasp and a squawk. - -“It’s Carl! Carl! For God’s sake, when did you come in?” - -“About an hour ago, through the window that father always leaves open,” -said Carl, waiting with a poised and resigned smile for the inevitable -cannonade. - -His father came in from the kitchen, where he had gone for a drink of -water. Seeing Carl, he slowly challenged him with sleepily prominent -eyes. - -“S-o-o, s-o! You’re back here again,” he said. “I always said that you -would come back. I knew you would get tired of bumming around. I knew -it. Well, you loafer, what do you want from us now? Some more money out -of my pants-pockets, maybe? You’re a son that I should be proud of; oh, -yes!” - -“Yes, and a fine condition he comes back in,” said Mrs. Felman, who was -beginning to be angry at herself because she was not quite as wrathful -at Carl as she felt that she should have been. A louder voice might -supply this missing intensity. “A fine condition! Look, will you, at -his shoes, and his clothes, and the beard on his face. A nice specimen -to be trotting back to his parents after four years! When he needs us -he comes back, oh, sure, but we wasn’t good enough for him when he ran -away and stole our money. We should tell him to go right back where he -came from. Right back!” - -She sat down with an air of stifled indignation that strained in its -effort to capture an actual condition, and with many gasping words -she tried to piece together the image of an inexplicable reptile. -She was a woman whose emotions, garrulously bitter because of the -material strait-jackets in which they had writhed for years, were ever -determined to exalt their bondage, if only to win relief from pain. -Carl had always been an evil enigma to her, one that was at times half -guessed--the accusing finger of her youth, sometimes barely discerned -through the mist of lost desires. To escape these momentary exposures -she had often swung the blindness of an anger that was directed as much -at herself as at Carl. The father, however, had obliterated his past -self with a more jovial carelessness and had stolen the consoling fumes -of many taverns, so that he felt little need for the shrouds of loud -noise. - -“Well, at least you showed good sense in coming through the back way,” -he said, looking at his son with a mixture of wonder and humorous -contempt. “You would have made a fine sight for the neighbors on the -front steps! We would never have heard the last of it. Noo, noo, what -did you come back for? If it’s just to play your old tricks again, you -can walk right out of here, I tell you. I’ll stand for no more nonsense -from you. Turn over a new leaf and you’re welcome here, but no more of -your writing, and fancy talk, and high notions!” - -“Look at him,” said Mrs. Felman. “Sits there like a piece of wood! -Have you nothing to say for yourself? Why, you haven’t told us -how-do-you-do. Inhuman! I don’t see how I ever gave birth to such a -creature as you.” - -Carl had been sitting like a stone figure, dressed by the playful -passerby known as Life and yet absolutely void of life. His mute -indifference had seduced all suggestions of flesh from him and even his -blonde beard and hair seemed pasted upon an effigy. Finally the clever -semblance of emotion returned to his body and sent an experimental -tremble to see whether the flesh was prepared to receive another -animated disguise. His hands twitched as though they were striving to -overcome their paralysis in an effort to obey some powerful signal. As -he listened to the jerky tirades of his parents--sterility seeking to -regain a fertility by the use of a staccato voice--part of him wanted -to cringe and win the convulsive shield of tears, while another part -longed to bound from the insipid, brittle room and glide aimlessly into -the night. The cringing mountebank, unfairly aided by physical fatigue, -won this inner skirmish, and Carl decided to silence the anger of his -parents by speaking to them in a way that would make them bewildered, -since bewilderment is but a shade removed from frightened respect. It -was the only pitiful little stunt that could offer him a small respite -from the poverties of noise that were assailing him--the favorite -purchase of Indian medicine-men, Druid priests, circus barkers and -other childlike charlatans. - -“You see, the situation has been complicated,” he answered slowly, -with the voice of a loftily enervated teacher. “Complicated. I have -tried to save a possible poet from death--always a noble but redundant -proceeding--but it seems that his skin must burn. I’ve come back now to -make his coffin and stud it with gold. Gold would seem to be a favorite -metal of yours, my dear parents. Surely you will be satisfied now. And -it is also possible that you may help me with the funeral arrangements, -since this burial, unlike plebeian ones, may extend over several years. -And what else do you want me to say? I have so many acrobatic words and -they would love to perform for you, but I am tired to-night. True, I am -a rascal. Can you forget that embarrassing challenge for one evening?” - -He broke his stonelike repose into one forward motion as he leaned -toward his parents, turning upon them the prominently somnolent eyes -that had been the sole gift from his father’s face, and smiling like -an exhausted but lightly poised angel. His parents were stunned, for -their indignant assurance had suddenly recoiled from an unexpected, -blank wall. They could not quite understand his words and yet they felt -that he was mocking them. The gracious glibness of his voice dwarfed -them with the mystery of its meanings. This monster was not ashamed of -himself--what could it signify? But, after all, it was rather difficult -to be angry at a man when you were not quite sure whether his words -were flattering or sneers. Carl rose abruptly from the chair. Now he -controlled the situation for a time. He kissed his mother’s forehead -lightly and smiled at his father. - -“I’m tired and hungry,” he said. “A little food and sleep will fix me -up, though, and to-morrow I’ll look for work of some kind.” - -“Crazy, crazy, just like he always was,” said his father, turning away -with a partly appeased and patient manner. After all, one must give the -proper blend of pity and tolerance to one who is truly insane. - -The face of his mother held a virtuous impatience that made her large -nose go up and down like a see-saw, and on the see-saw a dash of -reluctant tenderness rode. - -“I’ll get you something from the ice-box,” she said. “You’re still so -young--twenty-two you’ll be next week--and we may yet live to be proud -of you. If you’ll only get rid of your funny writing notions and your -stealing ideas. My God, what a combination!” - -Afterwards, as Carl ate, they sat at the kitchen table with him. Mrs. -Felman was tall and strong, with a body on which plumpness and angles -met in a transfigured prizefight of lines. The long narrowness of her -face was captured by a steep nose slightly hooked at the top and her -thin lips were not unlike the relics of a triumphant sneer. Even when -they tried to be satisfied they never quite lost their expression -of tight gloating. Above her high cheek-bones her eyes were bitter -tensions of light, and a remnant of greyish-brown hair receded from -the moderate and indented rise of her forehead. Her skin, once pink, -was now roughly florid, like a petal on which many boots have been -scraped and cleaned. Mr. Felman was her violent refutation. Short -and hampered by plumpness, the large roundness of his face held the -smirking emphasis of a greyish-red moustache, huge and clipped at the -ends. His thick lips blossomed uncompromisingly over his fair double -chin, and his low forehead, madly scratched by a plowman, stood between -the abrupt curve of his small nose and a ruff of dark red hair pestered -by grey. An expression of carelessly earthly humor, banqueting on -shallowness, fitted snugly upon his face and only his eyes, bulging -with sleep, brought a metaphysical contradiction. He watched his son -with a lazy, half-curious pity. - -“Noo, what have you been doing all this time?” he asked. - -“I left the army a year ago. You know, I wrote to you then and found -out that you still lived here. That was very kind of me, I’m sure. -Since then I’ve knocked about in different towns. Sleep and work, work -and sleep--the twin brothers of man’s inadequacy.” - -“Ye-es, still using long words, the twin brothers of something or -other,” said Mrs. Felman, with a light disapproval. “Learn to talk -and act like other people and you’ll be better off. I used to think a -little different when I was young, but believe me, you can’t get along -by just dreaming and talking to yourself. The trouble with you is that -you got a lot of fancy words and no get-up.” - -“Philosophical discourse number sixty-two,” answered Carl, in the -drowsily chanting voice of a train announcer. “Or have I lost count of -them? Your life hasn’t made you very happy, mother, and perhaps that’s -why your arguments are lacking in the swagger of conviction. Or perhaps -you think that it’s best to be unhappy, and in that case I agree with -you.” - -“Well, I wouldn’t lower myself by trying to argue with you,” said Mrs. -Felman. “I’m perfectly right in everything I say, but I simply don’t -know how to fiddle with words like you do.” - -“Have you still got those poetry ideas in your head?” asked Mr. Felman. -“Poetry is no business for a strong, grownup man. It’s a lot of -foolishness good for women and children!” - -“If you could write things that make money now,” said Mrs. Felman. -“Why, only the other day Mrs. Benjamin was telling me she has a cousin -who writes love stories for the Daily Gazette. Nice stories that make -you laugh and cry. And this girl gets twenty dollars apiece for them, -too.” - -“Now, now, don’t be trying to encourage him again,” said Mr. Felman. -“Ain’t we had enough trouble over this writing of his? Let him go out -and get a regular job, like other men!” - -Carl laughed, and his laugh was like an emotion interviewed by carbolic -acid, and his parents eyed him with an offended surprise. - -“Still squabbling over the bones,” he said, with a sarcastic apathy. -“If you were more delicate you might realize that it is inappropriate -to argue at a funeral. I’m only a tongue-tied fool, but I seem very -elusively inarticulate to you because you’re even more tongue-tied. And -now, as usual, you haven’t understood a word of what I’ve said.” - -“Well, you don’t have to laugh at your parents,” said Mrs. Felman, with -an air of pin-pricked dignity. “You never did show any respect for us, -in spite of all that we’ve done for you. Never.” - -“Say, Carrie, you’ll have to get a suit for him. Something cheap, you -know, at Pearlman’s,” said the father. “He’ll never get a job in those -rags of his.” - -“Money, money,” said Mrs. Felman in a mechanically mournful voice. “All -I do is spend money. It’s terrible.” - -The sound of an opening door invaded the flat tom-tom of their talk. - -“It’s Al Levy,” said Mrs. Felman, with fear in her voice. “It would be -a shame now if he saw Carl in this condition. Hurry, hurry, Carl, to -the bathroom before he comes in here. Your father’s razor is on the -shelf and I’ll get you a clean shirt from the ones you left behind. -Maybe they still fit you, as I was always careful to buy them a size -too large.” - -Carl felt like an ignoble marionette who was being hastily mended -behind the curtain for fear that he might cast ridicule upon the -sleekly vacant play, and his emotions were evenly divided between -amusement and contempt. Driving his heart and mind into a fitting -blankness, he closed the bathroom door. Levy had a room in the Felman -apartment and they treated him with an unctuous respect that almost -verged upon an Oriental self-abasement. He was a man of twenty-six who -worked for a wealthy uncle, received a large salary, and polished and -scrubbed the limited essentials of a semi-professional man-about-town, -with minor chorus girls and gamblers helping him to flatter -microscopically the fatigue donated by his daily labors. - -“Be very friendly to Al, please,” said Mrs. Felman, as they all sat -around the dining-room table. “He’s a very smart man--works in the -mail-order business, selling cheap jewelry to country people, and makes -a pile of money. His seven dollars a week come in mighty handy to us, I -can tell you.” - -“Dammit, all business is going good except whiskey,” said Mr. Felman, -as though he were inviting an elusive conspiracy to share the firmness -of his tones. “These prohibition fanatics are ruining everything. The -saloon-keepers are all afraid they’re gonna be closed up, and they -won’t buy. I haven’t sold a barrel in two days. I don’t know what the -world’s coming to with all these here prohibitions. People are entirely -too busy telling each other what to do, and nobody minds his own -business any more.... Well, anyway, Carl, there’s still sample bottles -for you to swipe from my overcoat pockets.” - -He said the last words with a bearish joviality, and had the expression -of a bear who has paddled to within a mile of irony and is sniffing at -the singular realm. - -“Sol, don’t remind me of his old wildness,” said Mrs. Felman, with a -peevish dread. “I still remember the time when he staggered along the -sidewalk in front of all the neighbors. Is there anything bad that he -hasn’t done, I want to know?” - -One evening, just before running away from home, Carl had taken some -tiny bottles of whiskey from his father’s overcoat, without curiosity, -but longing for the feeling of sly self-assurance that had balanced his -blood from former sneaking sips. He had repaired with the bottles to -a neighboring public park and emptied them in swiftly nervous gulps, -enjoying the vastly kinglike sneer at the world which had brushed aside -his melancholy uncertainties. - -“I am a poet!” he had cried out to the murmuring patience of the -trees around him, “and fools will some day gape along my road, and the -open circles of their mouths will be like the rims of beggars’ cups. -My voice will rise above the dreamless clink of their coins and they -will stop and look at me, as though I were a pilgrim-problem. An angry -amazement will lend its little catastrophe to their faces. Yes, I will -drop beauty to them, in clearly abundant handfuls, and they will sit -quarreling over its value and tossing me an occasional penny. But I -will never stop to join their discourses. My feet will be lighter than -breezes and more direct. I am a poet, and the world is stagnation that -I must ever torment!” - -He had lurched back to the Felman apartment, “dropping beauty” with -an incisive exuberance to the astonished neighbors seated around the -doorstep, and commanding them to examine his gifts. As he sat at the -dining-room table now, he remembered this episode, and similar ones, -with a gust of half-rebellious shame. - -“This has been my only triumph so far--a whiskey bottle raised beneath -the stars, on a summer evening, and reigning over an idle riot of -words,” he said to himself with an exhausted self-hatred. “Am I going -to be contented with this thwarted joke? And yet----” - -Levy stepped into the room and provided a slightly unwelcome ending to -this secret sentence. Short and slender, his blue serge suit clinging -to him like an emblem of shrewd victory, he made an excellent period -to the labors of thought. Upon his small, light tan face a twirled-up -black moustache curved to a diminutive swagger and his bending nose -seemed to be vainly attempting to caress the moustache--an unnecessary -affirmation. His black eyes incessantly drove little bargains beneath -the shine of his black hair. - -“H’llo, folks,” he chirruped, smiling with an automatic ease at the -Felmans. Then he noticed Carl and looked at him with polite surprise. - -The father and mother regarded each other with a despondent indecision, -dreading the thought of introducing their drolly disreputable son to -this shining symbol of an outside world and hating the undeserved -appearance of inferiority which had been thrown upon them. This queer -son had cast his shadow upon their assured and humbly conservative -position in life--in a world of decently balanced regularities. -Their ability at loquacious pretense took up the burden with a weary -precision. - -“This is my son Carl,” said Mr. Felman, with a prodigiously uneasy -grin tickling the roundness of his face. “Carl, this is Al Levy. -You’ve heard us talking of him, Al. He’s just come back from the -army--surprised his old parents, you know.” - -“Glad to meet you, I’m sure,” said Levy, with an expert affability -beneath which he exercised his disdain for Carl’s patched-up appearance -and his inkling of the actual situation. - -He complimented a chair at the table briskly; or, in other words, he -sat down, employing a great condescension of limbs. He and Felman began -an uncouth debate concerning the respective selling merits of whiskey -and cheap jewelry, while Carl listened, bored and a little sick at the -stomach. Words to these men were crudely unveiled mistresses, selling -their favors for whatever hasty coin might be thrown on the table. Levy -turned to Carl. - -“How did you like the army?” he asked, with a lightly superior -kindliness. - -Carl nervously wondered what he should answer and bickered with -his desire to return a curt indifference to this vaguely garnished -mannikin. He decided to annoy the limited mind of the man in front -of him and take a comforting wraith of revenge from this result--his -customary device for such situations, always used to evade a language -which he did not care to simulate. The physical nearness of people -made him snarl, for then his imagination found it more difficult to -trifle with their outlines, and he would strive to drive them away with -insult. - -“The army is a colorless workshop, where men can forget their past and -avoid gambling with their future,” he said, in an aloofly professorial -voice. “All of the hurried and obedient movements of a day in the army, -like a little drove of dazed foxes, prevent a man from fully realizing -his own insignificance, and at night there is always a nearby city in -which the sorrowful illusion can be captured again. Oh, yes, the army -is an excellent prison for men to whom life holds a fixed horizon--men -whose hearts and minds have reduced curiosity to an ashen foothold.” - -Levy’s brows bent to an unfamiliar process and perplexity slowly -loosened his lips, but a feeling of irritated pride made him determined -not to show his confusion to one whom he looked upon as a demented and -windy subordinate. He knew that this “fancy fool” was attempting to -parade a superior knowledge of English, thus creating a counterfeit of -wisdom. - -“Oh, I don’t think that the army is as bad as all that,” he said, -in a glibly hurried voice, trying to assume an attitude of careless -disagreement. “I was a sergeant-major once in the National Guard, -down in Tennessee, and we had a pretty good time of it, I’ll tell you. -It gave us all a splendid muscle and fine appetite, and it taught us -to obey the commands of our superior officers without hesitating. You -know, in life you’ve got to follow the orders of someone who knows more -than you do, or you’ll never get anywhere. Besides, we had a lot of -intelligent men in our outfit. Why, my company commander was one of the -best lawyers in Nashville.” - -“My planet is somewhat distant from yours. I was barely able to hear -you,” said Carl, amusedly. “Still, that doesn’t mean that either of us -is better or worse than the other. Your eyes are contented with what -they see and mine are not. But it would not be very important to tell -you of things that you have never missed.” - -Levy became involved in his cigarette smoking while he futilely asked -his mind for an adequate and unconcerned retort. Mrs. Felman sensed his -annoyance and felt hugely angry at her son for “not getting in right” -with this splendid young business-man and for speaking in a manner that -was mysteriously and trivially vexing. - -“Ach, Carl always talks just like a hero in a story,” she said, in an -agitated effort at humorous masquerade and hoping to smooth over the -errors made by her freakish son. “Don’t pay no attention to him. I can -never understand him myself.” - -Levy, once more completely the successful man to his own vision, forgot -the bite of the beetle, and turned to the elder Felman. - -“How about a little game of rummy?” - -“Carrie, get the cards,” Felman answered, in quick tones of bright -relief. “Carl will play--he always was a rummy shark and he never -changes in anything. Such a stubborn boy! I bet you that forty years -from now he’ll be just as foolish as he ever was.” - -“Your optimism concerning the length of my life intrigues me,” said -Carl. - -Ten-cent pieces were placed on the table and the cards were shuffled. -To the other two men the card game would have lacked interest without -the money to be battled for, not because of the tiny gain involved, but -because their desires for relaxation were lacking in spontaneity and -needed the pettily deliberate strokes of a familiar whip to encourage -their birth. Whenever, on rare occasions, they romped upon some lawn, -tossing a ball to a child, or read the lurid clumsinesses of some -magazine, they showed a sheepish hesitation and hazily felt that they -were wasting time that belonged to the shrewd importance of barter -and exchange. The presence of a coin upon a table, however, held a -glint of the missing coquette. They swore elaborately and interminably -at lost hands--“that queen would have given it to me”--flung down the -paper oblongs with a tense elation when they were winning, and enjoyed -the presence of a milder but still keen market-place. The gambling -instinct is never anything more than the desire to seduce an artificial -uncertainty from a life that has grown mildewed and prearranged--the -monotone must be circumvented with little, straining devices. It -pleased Carl to imitate the motions of the other two men, outwitting -them at their own small game while still remaining a repulsed -bystander, and sneaking a morsel of enjoyment from their genuine dismay -at some defeat. After several games had been played the father yawned -mightily, creating a noise that sounded like a Mississippi River -steamboat whistle heard at a distance, poignant and full-throated. -Perhaps with this yawn his soul signaled a complaint against the -disgrace which this day had cast upon it--a nightly remonstrance -unheard by his mind and heart. Levy, subdued and impressed by Carl’s -card-playing abilities, pelted him with commonplaces which he tried -to make as genial as possible, and Carl, too sleepy to be belligerent -or aloof, gave him softly vague responses. Mrs. Felman, for the first -time, looked out with heavy peace from behind the crinkling newspaper -where she had been placidly nibbling at the perfumed logics of a latest -divorce scandal. Her son had finally redeemed the evening by exhibiting -a small but ordinary proficiency which drew him a little nearer to the -dully efficient level of mankind, and her reflections upon his material -future became a shade less hopeless. - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - - -At an early hour on the following morning she hurried Carl to the -business section of the city so that the neighboring women, who slept -late after getting breakfast for their men, would not see him from -their windows, and at a department store she purchased a cheap suit of -clothes for him. He dressed behind a small screen in the store, feeling -like a small, eccentric lamb who was being glossed for the market. She -left him at an elevated railroad station, extracting a dollar from her -pocketbook with an air of intensely solemn and reflective importance. - -“Don’t waste it now; I know your tricks,” she said. “Be sure and get -the afternoon paper and look through the want ads. Take anything at the -start--don’t be high-toned.” - -Carl gave her the necessary monosyllables of assent and walked down the -street, his mind busy with many insinuations. - -“Perhaps I’d better stop stealing for a while,” he said to himself. -“If I keep it up without an intermission it’s going to land me in jail -again and I’m not anxious for that circumscribed travesty to happen. -That term of three months in Texas gave me a great deal of time in -which to write, but the little animals in that place intruded with a -bite that was both wistful and inadequate. It’s a little difficult to -write about beauty and scratch your skin simultaneously--the proud -stare of the former does not like to sit in the prison of a small -irritation. It is an intricately adjusted equilibrium and the lunge of -a finger nail can desecrate this subtly balanced aloofness. There is -little difference between the bars of mind and actual iron rods, but -when you are still partly inarticulate, physical motion can become a -necessary recompense. No, for the time being I had better strain my -hands in prayer against the tiny implements with which men felicitate -their stupidity. Back and forth--but what else can I do?” - -It was his habit to think only in metaphors and similes, and in this -way he evaded the realities that would otherwise have crushed him. He -walked down the street, practicing an emotion of stolid submission, and -this surface humility played pranks with his blonde-topped head and -made his thin lips loosely unrelated to the rest of his face. As he -strode through the business district of the city, with its sun-steeped -frenzies of men and vehicles, the scene pressed upon him and yet was -remote at the same time. It was as though he were studying a feverishly -capering unreality and vainly striving to persuade himself that he -formed a significant part of it. - -The unrelenting roar of automobiles, wagons and cars became the -laughable and inarticulate attempt of a dream to convince him that it -held a power over his mind and body. Men and women darted past him -with a rapidity that made them appear to be the mere figments of a -magic trick. Here he caught the thick tension of lips, and there the -abstracted flash of eyes, but they were gone before he could believe -that they had interfered with his vision. He paused beside a dark -green news-stand squeezed under the iron slant of an elevated-railroad -stairway and strove to pin the scene to his mind and fix his relation -to the people who were jesting with his eyes. Young and old, dressed -in complications of timidly colored cloth, each seemed to be running -an exquisitely senseless race in the effort to gain a nonsensical foot -on the other person. The masked rush of their bodies deprived them of -a divided sexual appearance and lure--men and women, touching elbows -without emotion, were swept into one lustreless sex which darted in -pursuit of a treacherously invisible reward. The entire structure -around them--buildings, signs, and iron slabs--stood like a house of -cards carefully supported by an essence that rose from the rushing -people, and Carl felt that if these men and women were to become silent -and motionless, in unison, the house of cards would instantly lose its -meaning and tumble down. - -“What are they gliding and stumbling toward?” he asked himself--the -old, poignantly futile first question of youth. “Each man, with an -ingenious treason, is trying to forget his inability at self-expression -and soiling the void with an increasing burden that will prevent -him from complaining too much. At some time in their lives all of -these people felt, dimly or strongly, for a moment or for years, the -ludicrous ache of a desire to stand out clearly against their scene, -but the loaded momentum of past lives--the choked influence of past -futilities--pushed them along with a force which they could not -withstand. It is really a stream of adroitly dead men and women that -is fleeing down this street--surreptitiously dead people living in the -bodies of a present reality and perpetuating the defeated essence of -their past lives.” - -As he stood and watched the crowd he found it necessary to ask himself -the words: “What gave its slyly amused signal for this plaintive race -through the centuries?” - -He also found it necessary to answer: “A languid idiot, much in need of -consolation, refuses to abandon his dream.” - -Here and there, apart from the main lunge of the crowd, were men and -women, standing still, as though motion had betrayed them, or loitering -in a carelessly placid fashion. Vacancy and indecision tampered with -most of their faces. - -“How many minor poets have stood upon these street corners, making -arrangements for a gradual and unnoticed death?” he asked himself, with -the sentimental self-importance of youth. - -But the stage hands clamored that he was neglecting the play--a habit -falsely known as laziness--and that, with appropriate cunning, they had -erected this city scene so that he and hordes of others should find it -difficult to forget their tamely borrowed lines. With an uncomplaining -wrench he returned to his surface role of a youth sent out in weakly -gruesome clothes to look for some task that would begin to answer the -flatly strident requests of an average life. The humble stupor fell -back upon his shoulders and he walked to a bench in a public square, -seated himself, and read the “want-ad” section of a newspaper. He -spied, with a prostrate frown, the barren jest of: “Wanted--Young man -for clerical work; must be neat, industrious, wide-awake, sober, well -educated, reliable, good at details, ambitious, honest, painstaking; -salary twelve dollars a week.” He muttered certain useless words -to himself. “The illusion of a reluctant penny for fresh vigor. If -the applicant is morbidly patient and reasonably deft at following -orders he may after many years attain the virtue of writing the same -trivially unfair appeal to other men. And even that exquisite victory -is uncertain.” - -He saw that as usual his only choice rested between an office-boy’s -task, dignified by the title of junior clerk to make it more enticing, -and unskilled manual labor. - -“Now, how will you become tired--mentally or physically?” he asked -himself with great formality. - -Abruptly, and in that conscious and secret plot which men insist -upon calling subconscious, he peered at the picture of a black man -and a white man throwing a wilted rose back and forth to each other -and catching it without a trace of emotion. The little, ridiculous -rose lost a petal after each catch, but in spite of its smallness -the number of petals seemed to be inexhaustible. At a distance the -black and white man exactly resembled each other, but on approaching -closer it could be seen that the black man held the face of an -incredibly stolid ruffian, while the white man’s face was engraved -with the patience of a cowed child. Not being acquainted with -psychoanalysis--that blind exaggeration of sexual routines--Carl did -not believe, after he returned to the touch of the park bench, that -this picture had slyly veiled the direction of his physical desires. He -knew that a fantastic whim had slipped from his mind and induced him to -probe his choice between two equally drab kinds of labor, striving to -make this choice endurable for a moment. - -He selected three advertisements, all of them asking for manual -laborers, walked from the park, and boarded a street car. The first -place that he visited was a box factory--a slate-colored crate of a -building, bearing that flatly unexpectant tone that expresses the -year-long mating of smoke and dirt. As he ascended the gloomy stairway -an endless drone and clatter battled with his ears. It seemed a -senseless blasphemy directed at nothing in particular--the complaint -of a dull-witted, harnessed giant who was being driven on without -knowing why. Carl entered a huge room disheveled with sawdust and -shavings and cluttered with black belts and wheels. Men with swarthy, -motionless faces and feverish arms leaned over the wheels and saws. -As he stood near the doorway, feeling dwarfed and uncertain, a man -came toward him. Sturdy and short, the man looked like a magnified and -absent-minded gnome, too busy to realize that civilization had played -an obscene trick on him by stealing his fairy disguise and substituting -the colorless inanities of overalls and a black shirt. The large and -heavily twisted features on his face were partially hidden by a brown -stubble of beard, and like all men who work forever in factories, he -had an ageless air in which youth, middle age and old age were pounded -into one dull evasion. - -“What d’ya want?” he asked, the words jumbled to a bark. - -“I’m looking for work. Saw your ad in the paper.” - -He examined the region between Carl’s toes and cap, measuring the -unimportance of flesh. - -“We want good strong men to load boxes and carry lumber,” he said. “You -don’t look like a man for the job, bo. You’re dressed like a travelin’ -salesman an’ we want men who ain’t afraid to get dirt on their clothes. -Get me?” - -“Don’t mind this suit of mine,” said Carl. “I have a much dirtier one -at home and I’ll be only too glad to wear it here. You see, I always -feel more peaceful in dirty clothes, but someone played a joke on me -and made me wear this suit.” - -“Well, you ought to come ready for work, if you’re lookin’ for it”--the -man peered again at Carl. - -“Nope. Nope. You ain’t got the build for heavy work. We’re after big, -husky men. Sorry, Jack, but there’s nothin’ doin’.” - -“Say, be reasonable,” said Carl. “I’ve done hard work off and on for -the last four years and I’m much stronger than I look. Come on, give me -a chance.” - -The man shook his head as his eyes received Carl’s slender arms and -narrow shoulders, and he did not know that this weak aspect concealed -an inhuman amount of endurance. After another useless expostulation -Carl walked out, grinning forlornly as he strode down the street. -Cheated out of the phantom opiate of a beautiful box-piling job because -of a deceptive physical appearance and a twenty-dollar suit, reduced -to nineteen through the expert pleading of his mother! He looked -down with delicate aversion at the grey, neatly-pressed cloth which -concealed his material humility with lines of dreamless confidence, -and felt a sudden impulse to tear it off and go nakedly cavorting down -the street, taking the cries of onlookers as a suitable reward, but -that sleek caution born from rough faces and rougher hands chided him -back to sanity. After calling at another factory and receiving the same -refusal, he decided to wait until the morrow, when he could don his -old, dirty clothes and avert suspicion. - -The city turmoil was slackening, like a huge, human top beginning to -spin weakly. The warm hardness of a summer evening between city streets -tried a little laughter in an unpracticed voice, and revolving streams -of men and women hid the pavements--a satiated army returning from an -unsettled conflict. The scene was a mixed metaphor trying to straighten -itself out. Feeling forlornly alert and useless in the midst of all -this important exhaustion, Carl made his way home. - -A group of neighbors sat with a clean and well-brushed peace around the -doorstep. In the heat of the summer evening they seemed mere figures -of slightly animated flesh, with their thoughts and emotions reduced -to placidly contented wraiths. Three middle-aged Jewish women sat in -rocking chairs and knitted with an effortless incision, unaware of -the spiritual prominence that is usually discovered in their race. -Their bulky bodies censured the lightness of evening air and their -deeply-marked brown faces were those of self-assured, thoughtless -queens issuing orders to a tiny domain, with palmetto fans for scepters -and rhinestone combs for crowns. Incessantly they chatted about the -personal details of their daily lives, splitting these details into -even smaller atoms and fondling the minute particles with a lazy -relish. Children romped at their feet or brought some tiny request to -their laps--children that seemed to be dreams of cherubic hilarity, -released from the busy sleep of the middle-aged women and reproving -it. Behind them, sitting on the stone steps, a middle-aged Jewish man -glued his depressed weariness to a newspaper. The orderly sleekness of -his clothes had met with the familiarity of a summer day and the rim -of his once stiff collar, drenched with perspiration, made a pathetic -curve around his fat, brown neck. His eyes were like flat discs of -metal placed on each side of an enormous, confident nose. Noses express -the spirit of people far better than lips and eyes, for they cannot be -moved and changed to suit the fears and desires of a person, but stand -with an outline of uncompromising revealment. Their still silence is -often the only sincerity upon a human face, and the nose of this man -showed a strident green that was contradicted a bit by the drooping -little indentations just above the nostrils, indicating that the man -had his moments of self-doubt, but refused to yield to them. - -It seemed incredible to Carl that these people were housing hearts and -minds, for he could see them only as so many sterile lumps of flesh -that were using every desperate trick to minimize the crawling shadow -of their unimportant graves. Two of the women knew him and greeted him -with an insincere and inquisitive cordiality. - -“Wh-y-y, Mister Felman, when did you get back?” said Mrs. Rosenthal, -the fattest of the group. - -“I returned yesterday,” answered Carl, injecting a great solemnity into -his voice. - -“Yesterday? Well, well. And did you have a nice time in the army? I’ve -been told that it’s really marvelous for a man--makes him so strong -and healthy. And then all the traveling about, you know, must be so -interesting.” - -“Oh, ye-e-es, it’s a wonderful place,” said Carl, gravely mimicking -her drawling voice. “Bands, and uniforms, and parades. It’s really -quite fascinating.” - -“Well, I’m so glad you liked it,” said Mrs. Benjamin, another woman in -the group, who felt that it was time to advance a well-placed sentence. -“I want you to meet my husband. Mo, this is Mister Felman, who’s just -come back from the army.” - -“Glad t’ meet yuh,” said the man on the doorstep, blurring the words in -a swiftly mechanical fashion, but looking very closely at Carl. - -Carl returned the salutation in the same fashion, taking a shade of -amusement from his parrot-like impulse. These hollow creatures--what -else could one do save to imitate their mannerisms and ideas, for -self-protection, and rob and defraud them at every opportunity, thus -giving them a mild apology for existence? After another round of wary -commonplaces he managed to break away. His mother met him at the door -and he said “Hello” and was about to pass her when her sharp voice -halted him. - -“You haven’t got an ounce of affection in you! A nice way to greet your -mother! Hello, and he walks right by like I was some boy he met on the -street.” - -For a moment Carl stood without answering. This woman who had given -birth to him--an incomprehensible chuckle of an incident--was almost -non-existent to his emotions--a mere shadow that held an incongruously -raucous voice and guarded one of the gates of his surface prison. As -he stood in the hallway, doubting the reality of her shrill voice, he -asked himself: “Am I an inhuman monster, unfit to touch this woman’s -dress, or am I a poet standing with candid erectness in an alien -situation?” - -Suddenly the question became unimportant to him and he felt that he had -merely offered his inevitable self the choice between an imaginary halo -and an equally fantastic strait-jacket. If his mother actually longed -for an affection which he did not hold, it would be inexpensive to toss -her the counterfeit coins of gestures and words. When she finished her -staccato diatribe, he bowed deeply to her, with the palm of one hand -lightly interrogating the buttons of his coat, raised her hand to his -lips, and kissed it at great length. - -“Na-a, go away with your silliness,” she said. “I know you don’t mean -it.” - -Her narrow face loosened for a moment and a shimmer of compensation -found her eyes. This queer son of hers might be faintly realizing, -after all, the unselfish intensity of her efforts to give him a -position of honor and respectability in the world. Perhaps he was only -wild and young, and would finally press his shoulders against the -admired harness of material success. It could not be possible that one -who had struggled from her flesh would remain a remote idiot and ignore -the warm shrewdness within her that life had somehow swindled. - -The elder Felman was reading his paper in the dining-room. He greeted -Carl with a somnolent imitation of interest, but the heat, aided by a -day spent in pungent saloons, had cheated him of most of his mental -consciousness. He had become so thoroughly accustomed to drink that an -artificial buoyancy scarcely ever invaded the dull ending of his days. - -“We-e-ell, where did you go to-day?” he asked, feeling some slight -craving for sound and trying to rouse his material anticipations. - -He abandoned his seductive newspaper, with its melodrama that was -pleasant because it murdered at a distance, and questioned Carl with -his sleepy eyes. - -“Went to a couple of factories, but the foremen were disgusted with the -cut of my clothes,” said Carl. “They felt that the wearing of a new and -unwrinkled suit revealed an intelligence which should not be possessed -by an applicant for manual labor. I tried to convince them that the -semblance was false in my case, but they refused to be persuaded.” - -“Always trying to joke. That won’t get you anything. The main thing -is--did you get work, or didn’t you?” - -“No, I did not. I applied for manual labor, but I forgot to put on -overalls.” - -Mrs. Felman stood in the doorway and lifted a skillet in simple wrath. - -“Factories he goes to!” she cried, in a voice that was not unlike the -previous rattling of the skillet. “I bought him a new suit and shoes -this morning so he could look for common, dirty work! It’s terrible. -Here we sent him to high-school for four years and his only ambition is -to work as a common laborer.” - -The father smiled dubiously at her explosion. - -“Now, Carrie, don’t let all the neighbors know your business,” he said. -“Your holler is enough to drive anyone crazy. There’s no harm in honest -work, Carrie, and besides he’ll soon get tired of sweating in factories -and look for something decent. Don’t worry.” - -“I guess anything will be better than that silly scribbling that’s -ruined his life so far,” said Mrs. Felman, her anger dwindling to a -guttural sulkiness. Carl, who had been sitting with a suffering grin -on his face, gave them soothing words and once more held them at arm’s -length. - - - - -CHAPTER V. - - -In the dirty clothes that he had worn upon his arrival, qualified by -a clean shirt, he went forth on the next morning and found work as a -lineman’s helper for a telephone company. He was required to climb up -the wooden poles; hand tools to the lineman; unwind huge spools of -wire; make simple repairs under the lineman’s guidance. As he labored -from pole to pole, down a suburban street, taking the impersonal whip -of the sun and winning the pricks of insects on his sweat-dappled face, -he felt dully grateful toward the physical orders that were crudely -obliterating the confused demands of his heart and mind. As he toiled -on, this dull feeling gradually rose to a self-lacerating joy. He -revelled in the cheap vexations brought by his tasks--the unpleasant -scraping of shins against iron rungs and the sting of dust in his -eyes--and his self-hatred stood apart, delightedly watching the slavish -antics of the physical mannikin. - -Then, when this emotion paused to catch its breath it was replaced -by a calmer one, and his insignificance receded a bit, beneath the -substantial lure of arms and legs that were moving toward a fixed -purpose. “I am doing something definite now and that is at least a -shade better than the indefinite uselessness of my thoughts,” he -mumbled to himself as he lurched from pole to pole. The slowly mounting -ache of his muscles became a bitter hint of approaching peace and he -looked forward to the moment when he would quit his labors and enjoy -the returning independence of his body, as though it were a god’s -condescension. He worked quickly and breathlessly, as one who hurries -to a distant lover’s arms. Filled with a doggedly naive hatred for -his own deficiencies, he welcomed this chance to insult them with -disagreeable and infinitely humble postures, and he gladly punished -himself underneath the violence of the sun. It was, indeed, a spiritual -sadism deigning to make use of the flesh. - -“Hey, Jack, take it a little easier,” the lineman called down to him -once. “Don’t kill yourself at this job. It’s too damned hot to work -hard.” - -Carl gave him a beaten grin and moved his arms even faster while the -lineman bewilderedly meditated upon this imbecility. The lineman was a -burly young Swede with a broadly upturned nose and thickly wide lips. -His face suggested poorly carved wood. The blankness of his mind held -few skirmishes with thought on this rasping afternoon and his mental -images were confined to tools, stray glasses of beer, yielding pillows, -and feminine contours--the flitting promises that held him to his day -of toil. He possessed no human significance to Carl--he was a drably -accidental automaton who shouted down the blessed orders that gave Carl -little time for definite thoughts and emotions: an unconscious helper -in the flogging of mind and soul. - -As they walked down the street after the day’s work Carl looked -closely at him for the first time. Sweat and dirt were violating the -youthful outlines of his face, and his small blue eyes were contracted -and deeply sunk as though still directing the movements of his arms. -The blunt strength of his body sagged beneath the colorlessness of -clothes and his head was wearily bent forward--the grey frenzies of a -civilization had exacted their daily tribute and it is possible that he -was not aware of the glory and impressiveness which certain poets find -in his cringing role. For a time Carl looked at him with an exhausted -friendliness and felt tied to him by the intimate bonds of confessing -sweat and conquered toil, and this illusion did not vanish until he -spoke. - -“Me for beer and somethin’ to eat,” he said, with heavy anticipation. -“A day shust like this’ll take the guts outa any man. Come along, Jack, -I’ll stand treat for the suds.... An’ say, lemme give ya a tip--don’t -overwork yourself out on this job. It don’t pay. You won’t get a cent -more at the end of the week. Do whatcha gotta do but take it kinda -easy. Kinda easy. The boss is too busy most of the time to notice who’s -doin’ the most work an’ unless you loaf on the job you can get by -without killin’ yourself.” - -The complacent roughness of his voice, divided by the shallow wisdoms -of the underdog, destroyed the feeling of tired communion which Carl -had been sheltering, and his exhaustion began to creep apart from the -man, like a tottering aristocrat. He was once more a proudly baffled -creator, shuffling along after a day of useless movements, and his -hatred for human beings awoke from its short sleep and brandished a -sneer on his loose and dirt-streaked face. - -He walked into a corner saloon with Petersen and gulped down a glass -of beer. Its cool interior kiss aroused a bit of vigor within him -and he looked around at the men who were amiably fighting to place -their elbows on the imitation mahogany bar. Their faces were relaxed -and soiled, heavily betraying the aftermath of a day of toil, and -an expression of brief elation teased their faces as they swallowed -the beer and whiskey and licked their lips. After each drink they -stood with blustering indecision, like generals striving to forget a -menial dream and regain their command of an army, or quietly tried to -erase the blunders and supplications of a day, seeking nothing save -the solace of lazy conversation and weakly clownish arguments. The -strained, corrupt clamor of voices debating over women, prize-fighters, -and money swayed back and forth and was timidly disputed by the whir of -electric-fans and the clink of glasses. A wave of sleepy carelessness -stormed Carl as he watched these men. Inevitably thrown in with them, -as a sacrifice to a dubious reality, he felt inclined to copy their -actions and inanely insult his actual self, since at this moment all -words and gestures seemed equally futile to him. - -“What essential difference is there between a poet, boasting of his -reputation, and a workman bragging about the women who have allowed him -to molest their bodies?” he asked himself, forcing the question out of -the drained limpness of his mind. “The poet has taught better manners -to his vanity, with many an inquisitive artifice, while the other man -is more natural and clumsy.” - -Petersen’s voice interrupted the soliloquy. - -“Come on, have another.” - -“Make it whiskey this time,” said Carl to the bartender. “I’ll pay for -this one, Petersen.” - -“Keep your money, keep it,” answered Petersen, warmed by his beers to -an insistent generosity. “I got plenty of it. But say, I’ll be a little -shorter in kale tuhnight when Katie gets through with me. There’s no -way of spendin’ money that that dame don’t know, but I guess all women -are like that. They make you fly some to get ’em. Gonna meet her at -eight tonight.” - -“Who’s Katie?” asked Carl, drowsily amused after his whiskey. - -“She’s a little brunette I’m goin’ with. I’m blonde myself so I like -’em dark an’ well-built. Fine-lookin’ girl she is. Some curve! She -ain’t a fast dame by no means but I give her money so’s she can look -decent. You know the wages they pay at them damn department-stores! I -don’t wanna be ashamed of her when I take her out so I get her the best -of everythin’--silk stockings, nice hat, swell shoes.” - -“Don’t she feel kinda small about a man paying for her clothes?” asked -Carl, slipping into Petersen’s language. - -“Well, she said no at first but I told her that she didn’t have to give -me nothin’ except what she wanted to,” said Petersen. “I’m a straight -guy with women, I am.” - -“Do you love her?” asked Carl, wondering how Petersen would take the -question. - -He looked at Carl with a heavy disapproval. - -“Say, cut out the kiddin’,” he answered. “D’ya lo-o-ove her”--he -mimicked the words with astonished derision--“none of that soft stuff -for me. She’s a good-lookin’, wise girl, and if I don’t see anyone I -like better I’ll prob’ly marry her, but she ain’t got no ropes tied to -me. You bet not! There’s plenty of fish in the pond, Jack.” - -“Yes, if you’ve got the right kind of bait,” answered Carl, -deliberately falling into the other man’s verbal stride, “but be sure -that someone else isn’t fishing for you at the same time. Hooked from -above, while not watching, you know.” - -“You’re a regular kidder, ain’t ya,” said Petersen, who dimly felt that -Carl was masking the sly wisdom of sexual pursuits and respected him -for it. “But say, Katie’s got a nice friend--Lucy’s her name. She’s a -little thin, not much curve to her, but some men like ’em that way. -An’ she’s kinda quiet too, don’t talk much, but I don’t care for them -when they’re always laughin’ and cuttin’ up. Then they’re usually -tryin’ to get on your good side an’ work you for somethin.’ Would ya -like to meet this dame? I don’t know just how far she’ll go but she -might come across if you work her right.” - -“Sure, lead me to her,” said Carl, inaudibly laughing to himself. - -“Alright, I’ll make it for eight tuhmorrow night. The four of us’ll go -somewhere.... Well, one more an’ we’ll beat it, Jack.” - -Glancing swiftly ahead, Carl saw that this engagement would demand a -certain sum of money and he wondered how he could obtain it since he -would not be paid for his present work until the end of the week. While -he stood, grasping this little perplexity, he noticed that a man at his -left had placed a ten-dollar bill on the bar, in payment for a drink, -and that the man was immersed in a violent argument with a friend, with -his back turned to the bar. The bartender was at the other end of the -counter, and after a glance at Petersen, who stood dully peering into -his empty glass, Carl whisked the bill into one of his coat pockets. -Then he quickly prodded Petersen’s shoulder. - -“Come on, let’s go,” he said, and the two walked out of the saloon, -Carl taking care to stroll in a reluctant fashion and steeling himself -for the angry shout that might come. - -As Carl walked down the street he felt a twinge of regret at having -stolen the money of a stumbling, minor puppet. He told himself that -this petty gesture had been forced upon him by an innately vicious -contortion known as life, but his emotions cringed as they arranged an -appropriate explanation. - -“This man whom I have robbed will curse the treacherous unfairness of -life and his eyes, dilated with bitterness, will see more clearly his -relation to the things around him. In this way I have really befriended -him. The railroad-detective, who once struck me on the head with the -butt of a pistol, when I was offering no resistance, was trying to -obtain revenge--revenge upon the people who had made him their snarling -slave--and he blindly reached out for the object nearest to him, which -happened to be my head. But there was no desire for vengeance in my -own gesture. I steal from men in order to prevent life from stealing -an occasional refuge for my thoughts and emotions. A purely practical -device.” - -He left Petersen at the next street-corner and boarded a crowded -street-car, reflecting on his engagement to meet the “quiet an’ thin -Lucy” as he stood wearily clinging to the leather strap. Petersen’s -attitude toward women was a familiar joke. Dressed in its little array -of fixed and confident variations it had pursued Carl in the past -without repulsing or flattering him. To him it was an elaborately -pitiful delusion of dominance made by hosts of men, who felt the -craving to inject a dramatic variety and assurance into the frightened -monotones of their lives. In an aching effort to dignify their barren -days these men adopted the roles of hunters and masters among women. -They entered, with infinite coarseness and precision, a glamorous -realm of lies, jealousies, cruelties, and haloes, and in this wildly -fantastic land they managed to forget the flatly submissive attitudes -of another world. Carl was telling himself that he had been waiting -for a woman who could bring him something more than the crudely veiled -undulation of flesh but he fashioned the starving little romance with -great deliberateness. - -“Women have excited my flesh and it has often yielded to them, but that -is simply a necessary triviality,” he said to himself. “I, too, must -seek to evade the monotonies and restrictions of my life, lest I become -mad, but at least I am quite conscious of the joke. The cheap little -drug-store does not witness any hoodwinked swaggers on my part! So on -to quiet Lucy, with her stiff stupidities and elastic curves.” - -Once more he had to pass the garrulous sentries at the gate--the -neighbors around the doorstep. They eyed the dirt upon his clothes -and face with an amazed contempt--Carrie Felman’s son a common -laborer!--and lost in their scrutiny they gave him monosyllabic -greetings. - -“Well, judging from the dirt all over you you’ve found a job,” said his -mother in tones of blunt resignation. - -“Yes, I’m working as a lineman’s helper for the telephone company,” he -answered in an expressionless voice. - -After he had washed his parents pelted him with amiable questions--the -details of his work, wages, and companions--a dash of solicitude -swinging with their desire to entertain the dull aftermath of a hot -summer day. He answered their questions patiently and they were glad -that their son seemed ready to plunge his “wildness” into the soothing -currents of an average life. Their affection for him was only able -to dominate their hearts when he failed to challenge the peaceful -assumptions and bargains of their lives, for otherwise it verged into -hatred because it was confronted by a stabbing mystery which it could -not understand. - -After the evening meal he sat in an easy chair upholstered with violent -green plush and usually occupied at such times by his father, but -donated to him in honor of his first evening of submission. He sprawled -in the chair, trifling with the headlines of a newspaper and throwing -them aside. A warm and not unpleasant stupor began to descend upon his -thoughts and emotions and they fluttered spasmodically, like circles -of drugged butterflies. He closed his eyes. His legs and arms held a -heaviness which he enjoyed because he was not forced to raise it. - -“Will this be my end--a swinging of arms and legs during the daytime -and then different shades of sleep or sensual bravado at night?” he -asked himself drowsily--a well-remembered sentence that needed little -consciousness. - -Suddenly, an emotional revolt within him tore against his physical -lethargy, like lightnings from some unguessed depth of his soul, and he -was astonished to find himself sitting upright in the chair. He saluted -the victory joyously. - -“By God, I won’t give in as easily as this,” he whispered to the purple -grapes on the tan wall-paper, addressing them because their ugliness -was at least helplessly inert. “You’re concrete symbols, if nothing -else, and you don’t stumble amidst unconquered clouds. I’ll go to the -park and try to write a poem.” - -Agreeably amazed at the returning vestige of strength in his legs he -walked to the public-park and sat down upon a bench. Ignoring the -people who were strolling or romping around him he bent over his -paper-pad and tugged at the smooth insolence of rhyme and meter, but -the fight was an uneven one since his mind and emotions were still -brittle and dazed from their day of hurried subjection. After crumbling -sheets of paper for two hours he wrote: - - - TO A SAND-PIPER - - One blast--a mildly frightened little host - Of liquid sprites, each holding one high note, - Aroused from some repentance in the throat - Of this grey-yellow bird who skims the coast-- - And silence. Far off I can somehow feel - The drooping-winged sprites back to covert steal. - - -The poem did not satisfy him, and in a measure he felt like a -sleepwalker who was imitating gestures that had lost their meaning to -him, but he dared not substitute his actual thoughts and emotions in -place of the tenuous or stilted fancies which he believed were all that -poetry was allowed to achieve. All that he wanted to say, and all that -he did say in conversation with himself, muttered unhappily within him -as he sat on the bench and strained to capture the pretty suggestions -of a mystical rapture, but he was slave to the belief that poetry was a -thinly aristocratic experience in which thoughts and emotions, serene, -noble, and ludicrously artificial, disdained the lunges of thought and -the turmoils of an actual world--pale, washed-out princes contending -among themselves for trinket-devices known as rhymes and meters. - -He rose from the bench, impoverished by the effort that he had made to -counteract a day of toil, and trudged homeward. - - - - -CHAPTER VI. - - -After stumbling through another day of heaving muscles and bruised -shins, with his self-hatred gloating over the slavery of his body, he -met Petersen and the two girls at a down-town street-corner, grinning -at the thought of what this experience might hold, for he liked the -idea of pretending to be a sensual beggar while a sneer within him -played the part of a bystander. - -Petersen’s sweetheart, Katie Anderson, was a short, plump girl who -tried, with the incessant swiftness of her tongue, to apologize for -the excessive slowness of her thoughts. The coarse roundness of her -face was determinedly obscured by rouge and powder, and her large brown -eyes were continually shifting, as though they feared that stillness -might betray some secret which they held. Her face knew a species of -sly and mild cunning not unlike that of a rabbit frequently beaten by -life but clinging to its mask of courage while hopping through the -forest of sensual experience. Her friend, Lucy Melkin, was more subdued -and helplessly candid. Her small slender body stooped a little as -though some unseen hand were pressing too familiarly upon one of her -shoulders--a hand of exhausted fear--and the pale oval of her face had -the twist of a loosely pleading infant beneath its idiotic red and -white. Her blue eyes seemed to be endlessly waiting for something to -strike them and wondering why the blow failed to arrive on time. - -Petersen suggested that they should visit an adjacent vaudeville -theater and when Carl and the others agreed they walked through the -crowded streets. - -“Baby, but I’ve had some day,” said Katie. “Them shoppers sure get on -your nerves, I’m telling you. But you’re not gonna let me work all the -time, are you, Charlie dear?” - -“There’s no harm in workin’,” said Petersen, not wanting to be quite -placed in the position of disdaining an essential fact within his life. -“No harm. I gotta take a lot of sass myself from the foreman but it’s -all in the day’s game. You don’t get nothin’ easy in this world, ’less -you’re a crook, and if y’are you’ll soon wind up in a place where -ya don’t wanta be. But still, a good-lookin’ girl like you, Katie, -shouldn’t hafta stand on her feet all day. Don’t be afraid, I’ll make -it easier for ya pretty soon.” - -“Now Charle-e, the way you flatter is somethin’ terrible,” said Katie, -with a simper of nude delight. “I suppose Mister Felman would like to -get some nice girl too, wouldn’t you, Mister Felman? Or maybe you’ve -got two or three already. You men can never be trusted.” - -“No, I haven’t been lucky,” said Carl, secretly exploding with a -laughter that was partly directed at himself. - -He had been afraid that these girls would prove to be of the shallowly -sophisticated, carefully sulky type and he felt relieved at their -coarsely direct naivetes. An axe, with baby-blue ribbon tied around it, -was more entertaining than a pocket-knife steeped in cheap perfume. - -“No, I haven’t been lucky,” he went on, “but, you know, we’re always -waiting for the right one.” - -“Why, that’s just what Lucy always says,” said Katie, rolling her eyes -as she looked at the other girl in a ponderously insinuating manner. -“She’s always been rowmantic, like you, Mister Felman. Why if I was to -tell you of all the fellas she’s turned down you wouldn’t believe me.” - -“No, perhaps I wouldn’t,” answered Carl, keeping his face sober with a -massive effort. - -“Now, Katie, you keep quiet,” said Lucy, and Carl was surprised at -the actual anger that hardened her voice. “I’m perfectly able to talk -about my own business without your helpin’ an’ it’s not nice to be -sayin’ such things to a gen’lman who’s just met me. I’m sure he’s not -interested in my past an’ even if he is I’m the one to tell him an’ not -you. You make me tired!” - -“Well, of all things,” cried Katie. “I was only tryin’ to be nice an’ -here you go and get real angry about it. I’ve never had a girl frien’ -who was as touchy as you are. I didn’t really tell Mister Felman -anything about you ’cept that you was rowmantic, an’ that’s nothin’ to -be ashamed about.” - -“See here, stop all this quarrelin’,” said Petersen, to whom the -speech of women was always an ignorance that assailed the patience of -masculine wisdom. “You women can talk for ten hours about nothin’! I -didn’t bring my friend down to have him lissen to your squabblin’. Cut -it out, I tell ya.” - -This storm in an earthen jar was amusing to Carl. He marvelled at the -ability of these people to whip words into redundantly nondescript -droves in which thought gasped weakly as it strove to follow the -uproar of simple emotions. Continually, he felt the reactions of a -visitor from another planet, witnessing an incredible vaudeville-show. -All human beings to him were hollow and secretly despairing falsehoods -separated only by the cleverness or crudeness of their verbal -disguises, and he heard them with an emotion that was evenly divided -between amazement and a chuckle. - -“I’m sure that Miss Anderson meant no harm,” said Carl, with a whim -to become the glib peacemaker. “She was just feeling gay and frisky, -and I took her words in the right spirit. Miss Melkin was a little -angry because she thought that I didn’t understand Miss Anderson’s -intentions, but she needn’t be afraid. I never misinterpret. It was -just a little misunderstanding on both sides so let’s forget about it.” - -“Mister Felman, you’re such a perfect gen’lman,” said Katie, blithely. - -Carl looked at Lucy and saw that a wistfully surprised expression was -liking his words and trying to explain them to her mind. It was the -look of a baby flirting with an incongruous sophistication and striving -to create a fusion between ingenuousness and a certain sensual wisdom -learned in the alleys of life. - -“Ah, these starved dwarfs, how little it takes to please them,” Carl -sighed to himself. - -After the wiry, tawdry spectacle of the vaudeville show, with its -weary acrobats and falsetto singers, the four visited a grimly gaudy -Chinese restaurant, where the Orient becomes an awkward prostitute -for Occidental dollars, and while Petersen and Katie gossiped about -their friends Carl and Lucy traded hesitant sentences and threw little -sensual appeals from the steady gaze of their eyes. Lucy, with her look -of a stunned infant, made him feel vaguely troubled--the ghost of a -fatherly impulse. After the meal the group separated, since the girls -lived in different parts of the city, and as Carl and Lucy rode in the -trolley car they tried to make their anticipations more at ease, with -the veils of conversation. - -“Why do you live?” asked Carl, abruptly, to see whether one or two -words in her answer might be different from what he expected. - -“What a funny question!” cried Lucy. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because -I wanta be happy. I never am mosta the time, but then I’m always hopin’ -that things’ll change. Why’d you ask me that funny question?” - -The fumbling bewilderment of her words irritated and saddened Carl, -simultaneously, and in an effort to slay the reaction he simulated a -compassion. - -“Happiness doesn’t always speak the truth,” he said, struggling to -mould his words so that they could reach her understanding. “It’s -sometimes a beautiful lie. You understand? A beautiful, soft, desperate -lie. And we say the lie because we want to change ourselves and -somebody else to something that can make us forget our smallness. You -see, we are not very large, either in our bodies or in our thoughts, -and we try to make ourselves several feet taller, tall enough to put -our heads on a level with the trees, tall enough to imagine that the -wind respects us. Beautiful, desperate lies. Do you understand?” - -“I don’t quite understand you,” said Lucy. “You speak so different from -all the men I know, so different, and yet I like the way you speak. Do -you mean it’s not good for anyone to be happy?” - -“If your happiness doesn’t put you to sleep it’s good for you. When -people try to be happy for more than a little while it makes them -sleepy. And, you see, it’s much better to be very much alive, or very -dead.” - -“Honest, I’d like to get what you’re sayin’,” said Lucy, perplexed and -softly candid. “Maybe you mean that we oughta keep movin’ all the time, -hearin’ and seein’ different things, an’ maybe you’re right about that. -I get tired of goin’ down to work every mornin’ and coming back to the -same room every night. I’d like to travel around, an’ see different -people an’ places, an’ find out what everything’s like. But I guess I -never will.” - -“It’s much easier than you imagine,” said Carl. “Just pack up your grip -some morning and ride away to another city and see what happens there. -After you’ve done it you’ll wonder what held you back.” - -“Oh I just couldn’t do that. I’d make my mother so unhappy if I did, -an’ besides, I’d be afraid of goin’ somewhere all alone. I might not -find any work in the place where I went, an’ then I’d be up against it. -I’d like to travel around with plenty of money, an’ nothin’ to worry -me, an’----” - -Her words trailed off into a revealing silence, and Carl smiled sadly -at the little, pitifully obvious hint within her faltering. Perhaps it -might be best to marry this simple, mildly wistful, ignorant girl and -surrender himself to monotonous toil and sensual warmth, forgetting the -schemes that were torturing his heart and mind. The reaction captured -him for a time and then died. No, he was gripped by a snarling, nimble -blackguard who was determined to lead him to destruction or victory. -And in the meantime, here was sensual forgetfulness--an interlude with -a girl to whom happiness was merely physical desire captivated by filmy -and soothing disguises. - -They reached her home, a grey cottage in the suburbs, with a little -yard of dusty grass and a modest porch. It bore an aspect of abject -simplicity, and that meditative leer possessed by the fronts of all -cottages. They sat in a hammock on the porch, and Carl suddenly -kissed her with the theatrical intensity of one who is trying to -shake off a deliberate role. The gasping expostulations of her voice -were contradicted by the limpness of her body, and sighing at this -prearranged incongruity, Carl kissed her again, still feeling like a -skillful charlatan and still hoping to lure himself into a tumultuous -spontaneity. This time she was silent but gripped his shoulders with -both hands, while little shades of fright and desire gambled for her -face. Suddenly, a meek candor came to her eyes and the seriousness of a -child lost in an overwhelming forest moulded her lips. - -“Will you be good to me if I let you?” she whispered. - -The pathetic, cringing frankness of her words made a stabbing lunge at -his deliberateness and a feeling of troubled tenderness mastered his -heart. He wept inaudibly, as though he himself had become a begging -child, and the illusion of rare experience, cheated and twisted out of -his life, returned to betray him. His head struck her shoulder like the -death of regret. - - - - -CHAPTER VII. - - -From that night on his life fell into a regular stride--days of -wrenching labor and nights of rebellious weariness, broken by intervals -in which he crept, like a swindled, dirty child, to the arms of Lucy, -washed into a dreamless rest by the simple flow of her desire for him -and her sightless worship. To her he was an enigmatic, statuesque -prince delighting her with queer words which she could finger as though -they were new toys and bringing her an eager compression of grief and -joy which she had never known before. She realized, dimly, that he was -fundamentally alien to her, and she often said to herself: “Some day -he’ll meet a child who c’n understand all of his funny words and then -he’ll forget about me,” but this fear only increased the stubbornness -of her grasp. And so his life wavered between toil, and sensual peace, -and little mildly stunted poems until one morning in late autumn when, -at the main office of the telephone company, he was discharged with the -information that his job had been merely a temporary one. - -“Thanks, old boy,” he said loudly in the face of the astonished -cashier. “If you knew what a relief this is to me you’d take a drink -with me to celebrate the occasion.” - -“Now what in the devil’s the matter with you?”--the man voiced his -peevish perplexity as he fished for Carl’s pay envelope. - -“I was getting accustomed to the chains, but now that you’ve benignly -removed them I’ll make another effort to escape,” he answered, in the -grip of a gay and aimless relief. - -The clerk tapped his forehead, with a scowl, and contemptuously tossed -over the envelope. Carl carelessly stuffed the sixteen dollars into a -pocket and walked out upon the crowded down-town streets. The streets -were touched with the middle of forenoon, that hour when the business -section of an American city is most leisurely and nondescript in its -make-up. The wagons and trucks were not yet bombarding time with -the full climax of their inane roar and the flatly hideous elevated -railroad trains were firing at longer intervals. Noise had not yet -become the confused and staggering slave of an ill-tempered avarice. -The nomads and idlers of the city’s populace were flitting in and out -among housewives on an early shopping-tour and those sleekly bloated -men who stroll belatedly to their offices. A sleepy young vaudeville -actress, painted and satiated, hurried to some booking-agency; a -middle-aged pickpocket emphasized his grey and white checked suit with -sturdy limbs and examined passersby, with the face of a shaved fox; an -undertaker, tall and old, paced along with that air of worried dignity -which his calling affects; a fairly young housewife pounded the sedate -roundness of her body over the pavement and held the hand of a small, -oppressed boy; a stock-raiser from the west slid his bulky ruddiness -along the street, while beneath his broad-brimmed hat his face held -an expression of awe-stricken delight; a college-girl, slender and -carefully hidden by silk, strove with every mincing twist of her body -to remind you that she was pretty; a youth, trimly effeminate and -attended by an inexpensive perfume, trotted along, eyeing the scene -with an affected air of disapproval. - -The streets were cluttered with a ludicrous, artificial union of -people--people who were close together and yet essentially unaware -of each other’s presence, and the invisible, purposeless walls of -civilization crossed each other everywhere. If he swerved two inches -to the right the chained trance of this lonely farm-hand might strike -the shoulder of this dully wounded chambermaid from the Rialto Hotel, -and with this happening their lives might become an inch less burdened -and struggling. Their sidelong glances cross for a moment, like tensely -held spears, but they pass each other from cautious habit, striding -to more prearranged and empty contacts. Civilization has raised -wall-making to a fine art, striving to hide its dreamlessness beneath -an aspect of complex reticence, and keeping its human atoms feeble and -solitary, since pressed together they might break it into ruins. During -the rush-hours of a city you can see those streams of people who are -busily making and repairing the walls, but during the lulls in the -fever upon city streets you may observe the stragglers, wanderers, and -grown-up children who are not quite connected with this task and who -humbly or viciously hurdle the barriers that separate them. - -These thoughts and emotions formed themselves in Carl’s mood as he -strolled through the clattering, mercenary sounds of a midwestern -city. The joy of not being compelled to cope with undesired physical -movements brought its lightness to his legs, and he hurriedly fished -for secrets from the thousands of faces gliding past him. This shrouded -girl with a scowling face--was she meditating upon the possibility of -suicide, or wondering why her sweetheart had failed to purchase a more -expensive box of candy? Each face curved its flesh over a triviality or -an important affair and swiftly taunted his imagination, challenging it -to remove the masks that confronted it. - -“Life holds a measure of anticipation and mystery because people for -the most part pass each other in silence. If they stopped to talk to -each other they would become transparent and wearisome.” - -As Carl walked along hope began to sing its juvenile ballade within -his contorted heart. He planned to send his poems to the magazines -and he felt strengthened by the unexpected lull of this late autumn -morning. He hurried to his favorite bench in the public square, one -that he always occupied if it happened to be vacant when he passed. -He had a shyly whimsical fancy--a last remnant of youth asserting -itself within him--that his touch upon this bench stayed there while -he was absent and gave a sense of invisible, prodding communion to -other pilgrim-acrobats who occupied this seat at times--an abashed -bit of sentimentality evading itself with an image. Filled with the -alert meeting of hope and bitterness he wrote with a degree of fluid -ease that had never visited him before, and for the first time his -lyrics grazed a phrase or two that rumored recalcitrantly of a proud -story known as beauty. In one attempted poem he asserted that an old, -blind, Greek huckster on the side street of an American city had -suddenly towered above the barrenly angular buildings, in a massive -reincarnation of Homer, and he wrote in part: - - A purplish pallor stole - Over your antique face-- - The warning of a soul - Rising with tireless grace. - Rising above your cart - Of apples, figs, and plums, - And with its swelling art - Deriding the city’s drums. - -With a quivering immersion he bent over his paper, lost to the keen -realities of a city day. Sidling vagrants and transients from small -towns glanced at him with morose disfavor and sometimes stopped to -stare at this shabby young man whose head was never raised from his -writing. His abstraction was an insult to their sense of idle release. -He wrote for hours and only paused when hunger of a different kind -began irresistibly to whisper within him, for he had not eaten since -morning. It was six o’clock when he hastened from the park. He joined -the homeward bound masses, feeling satiated and apart, and dreading the -evening contact with his sagging, verbose parents. They were sitting -and standing in two of the few postures that life still absentmindedly -allowed them--bending over newspaper and frying-pan. - -“Well, I’ve lost my job,” he said to his father. - -His father dropped the newspaper and his mother shuffled in from the -kitchen. - -“Lost your job--what do you mean?” said his mother with slow -incredulity, as though she had just escaped being crushed by a falling -wall. - -“They told me this morning that it had only been a temporary one and -they paid me off. I thanked the clerk for his news but he didn’t seem -to take it in the right spirit.” - -“Ach, I knew it would happen, I knew it,” said Mrs. Felman. “Here’s -what you get from your ma-anooal labor! What kind of work is that for -an educated boy like you? With your brains, now, you could go out on -the road and sell goods. You should have more get-up about you. Mrs. -Feinsthal was telling me at my whist-club today that her son Harry -is making piles of money with Liebman and Company. Sells notions and -knick-knacks. You could easy do the same if you had any sense in your -head.” - -“Carrie’s right, this slavery is no work for a smart man,” said Mr. -Felman. “Any fool, you know, can work with his hands, but it takes real -intelligence to make a man buy something. I want you to be able to -laugh at people, and feel independent, and not be a poor schlemiel all -your life.” - -“Well, you’ve been a travelling salesman for twenty years,” said Carl, -with a weary smile, “and before that you tried a general merchandise -store, but it doesn’t seem to have brought you much money or happiness. -You recommend a treacherous wine. The thing that you’ve fought for has -always scarred and eluded you. What’s the reason?” - -Mr. Felman lowered his head while the round fatness of his face -revealed a huddled confusion of emotions in which shame and annoyance -predominated. He sat, tormenting his greyish red moustache, as though -it were a fraudulent badge, and gazing with still eyes at a newspaper -which he was not reading. - -“Perhaps I’ve inherited nothing from you save your curious inability -at making money,” said Carl, trying to feel a ghost of compassion for -this petrified, minor soldier lost in the uproar of a battle but still -worshipping his glittering general. “You’ve spent all of your life -in chasing a frigid will-o’-the-wisp, made out of the lining of your -heart, and you want me to stumble after the same mutilated futility. -You’re not unintelligent, as far as business ability goes, and yet, -you’ve always been doomed to a kind of respectable poverty. Something -else within you must have constantly fought with another delusion to -produce such a result. You can’t simply blame it on luck--that’s an -overworked excuse. Perhaps you failed to win your god because you’ve -never been able to teach efficiency and strength to the spirit of -cruelty within you. You have not been remorselessly shrewd, my father, -and now you are paying the penalty.” - -“Well, because I’ve been a fool that’s no sign that you should be -one, too,” answered Mr. Felman in a voice of reluctant and secretly -tortured self-reproach. “Yes, I’ve been too kind-hearted for my own -good, dammit, but I want that you should be different. It’s been too -easy for people to swindle me. Yes, I want you to show them something -that your poor old father couldn’t. Yes. And as for your talk about -chasing money, tell me, how can a man live decent without plenty of -money? How can he?” - -“We would have our nice store this very minute if your father had -listened to me,” said Mrs. Felman, mournfully. “He never would let me -handle the reins. I know how to be firm with people, believe me, but -your father would always give credit to every Tom-Dick-and-Harry that -walked into the store. And whenever he did have money he always gambled -it away. Gambling has been the ruination of his life! All of your -wildness, Carl, has come from your father’s side and not from mine!” - -Mr. Felman looked at his son with an embarrassed admission of secret -sins, while for a moment he became a faun lamenting his awkwardness, -and his uneasy smile quivered as it tried to say: “Alas, I am not so -much better than you are, my crazy, foolish son.” Carl grinned in -return and for the first time in his life was on the verge of feeling -a slight communion with his shamefaced father. As the mother went on -with her endless story of the father’s crimes and incapacities the -rubbing of her words produced a glimmer of ill-temper. - -“Noo, don’t you ever stop?” he cried. “Always nagging about the past! -I might be a rich man now if you hadn’t driven me crazy with your -endless complaints and hollering. Never a moment of peace from the day -I married you.” - -“I’ll have to give both of you something else to complain about,” said -Carl. “I’m going to stop working for a while and write poetry, and send -it away to magazines.” - -“Ach, I thought those writing notions were out of your head,” cried -Mrs. Felman. “Who will buy your good-for-nothing stuff? I can’t -understand a word of it myself! Writing again! Will my miseries never -end?” - -Mr. Felman glared at his son and the old hostility fell opaquely -between them. - -“Between you and your mother I’ll be in the grave soon!” he shouted. -“I’m done with you!” - -He arose and stalked out of the apartment, muttering and producing a -loud period of sound as he closed the door. - -Al Levy strolled into the dining-room, triumphantly tinkering with one -of the points of his small black moustache; lightly whistling a tune -from some latest musical comedy; and bearing upon his face the look of -bored patience which he assumed when in the presence of an inferior -being. After he and Carl had exchanged constrained “helloes” he sat -at the table and nervously interested himself in his cigar, as though -silently signaling for future words. - -“See here, Carl, I don’t want to butt in, and of course, it’s none of -my business, but I couldn’t help hearing some of the argument that -you’ve just had with your parents and I want to give you a little -advice, purely for your own good. You’re on the wrong track, old boy. -You’re living in a world that wasn’t made to order for you and you -can’t change it. If you don’t bow to the world the old steam-roller -will get you, and what satisfaction is that going to bring you? This -poetry of yours is all very well as a side-line, something to fill in -the time when you’re not working, and of course it’s very pretty stuff. -I like to read poetry myself sometimes. But really you shouldn’t take -it more seriously than that. I’m telling you all this because you’ve -really got a fairly good head on you and I hate to see you go wrong.” - -The sleekly loquacious man in front of him, offering his shop-worn -little adulterations of worldly wisdom, aroused Carl to a lightly -vicious mood. - -“You’ve wandered away from your natural field, Levy,” he said. “Talk -about the cheap jewelry that you sell, or the physical merits of a -woman, or the next candidate for mayor, or the latest prize-fight, but -don’t speak about something that’s simply an irritating mystery to you. -You know as much about poetry as I do about credits and discounts, -but you’re a swaggering, muddy fool who imagines that the wisdom of -the world has kissed his head. I’m not interested in you or your -words--you’re simply five crude senses dressed in a blue serge suit and -trying to scoop in as much drooling pleasure as they can before they -decay. Go out to your poolroom or down-town theater and leave me in -peace!” - -Levy gasped blankly for a moment and then frowned with an enormous -hatred. - -“Why, you stupid fool, this is the thanks I get for giving you a little -sensible advice!” he cried. “You think that you’re better than everyone -else with all the rot you write about roses and love, but let me tell -you something, a common bricklayer is more important than you are, any -day in the year! A man like that is helping the progress of the world -while you’re nothing but a puffed-up little idler! And even you have -got to do manual labor because you’re not fit for anything else. You’re -just a bag of easy words. If it wasn’t for your parents I’d punch you -in the face and teach you a lesson!” - -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.” - -“Carl, you’re talking so funny again. I adore you when you say things -that I can’t understand. But, oh Carl, I’ve forgotten, I mustn’t say -that to you any more. I mustn’t. You don’t know what’s happened.” - -“No, I don’t. What is it?” - -“Why, my father says that he’s convinced by now that your intentions -to me aren’t serious an’ he says that he doesn’t want me to go with -you any more. He says that you’re only triflin’ with my affections -else you’d have asked me to marry you long ago, an’ my mother says I -shouldn’t go with you ’cause you don’t seem to have any ambition to -rise in the world an’ ’cause you haven’t enough money to support a -wife.... Gee, if you knew the jawin’ they’ve been givin’ me for the -last two nights!” - -“Yes, but why has all this come so suddenly?” asked Carl. - -“I don’t want to tell you, Carl.” - -“You might as well, Luce. I can see part of it on your face now, -because you always talk best when you’re silent. Tell me.” - -“Well, you know my second cousin Fred has always been runnin’ after me, -only I’ve always been cool to him because I don’t love him, of course, -but a couple of nights ago he came to my father an’ said that he wanted -to marry me an’ that I wouldn’t have him. An’ ever since then they’ve -all been on top of me! He’s got a store on the north side, a gents’ -furnishing store, an’ he makes piles of money, an’ all my family are -just crazy for me to marry him. They say I’m just wastin’ my time with -you an’ they’ve forbidden me to see you after tonight.” - -Carl felt the incongruous embrace of amusement and compassion as he -listened to her simple, broken, troubled words. This thinly yearning, -stifled girl who had folded him in the arms of her puzzled adoration, -was life really on the verge of wounding the diminutive misty mendicant -that was her heart? He felt helpless, and a little guilty because he -was not as troubled as he should have been. - -“Do you want to give me up?” he asked. - -“Carl, you know I don’t! You know it. But, Carl, you wouldn’t ever -marry me, would you?” - -“No, I’m not the kind of a person that you ought to marry, Luce.” - -She was silent for a time and he watched her with a pitying question. -Had he been unfair to this poignantly cringing child? Yes, but -unfairness was inevitable when people from those different planets -contained within an earth yield to a surface emotional attraction. - -“Carl, I’ve always known that we’d hafta part sometime,” she said, -“only I tried to make believe that I didn’t know it. But I did. We’re -too different from each other, Carl, an’ you know so much more than -I do an’ you’re so much better than I am. I wanted to hold on to you -’cause I wanted to make you happy, but all the time I knew that we -wasn’t meant for each other. O I knew it so well!” - -“I’m not in any way better than you are,” said Carl. “It’s just that we -each want different things from the world. You want to settle down in a -home, and polish your kettles, and sing to your children, and blithely -wait for your tired husband every night, while I want to write foolish -words on slips of paper and escape from the world around me.” - -“But, Carl, it’ll be so hard for me to leave you,” she said, in the -mournful, dazed voice of one who turns away from a stone wall of whose -existence he is not quite certain. - -A tumult of frail inquiries found the corners of her face and lips. Her -breasts heaving beneath the blue muslin waist suggested the movements -of loosely despairing hands. She sat with Carl on the grass of a park -and wept in a barely audible manner as though she were intent upon -giving firmer outlines to a blurred and elusive grief. Carl felt a -softly potent disgust with himself and life. Human beings--what did -they ever bring each other except pain cunningly disguised or reaching -for a phantom ecstasy? Now he would be alone again; the slender thread -binding him to animated life would snap; while this child, who held a -cloud where a brain should have resided, would hide her glimpse of a -grotesquely forbidden heaven and plod back to the soothing subterfuges -of her world. Flitting lies seducing a black void into an attitude -of false friendship. A stumbling urge, mistaking its own drops of -perspiring ardor for permanent, actual jewels. - -As they stood upon the porch of her home she looked at the darkened -windows and then clutched the lapels of his coat. - -“They’re all in bed now,” she whispered. “Carl, I’ve got to have you -once more before you go. I’ve got to. Maybe I’m a bad girl, maybe, I -don’t know, but I want to hold you again.” - -“This will be the least thing that I can give you,” said Carl inaudibly -as they sat upon the hammock. With great care he tried to form within -himself the intensity of a despairing father, drawing the swift incense -of motion into a farewell to his child, in the hope that she might be -idiotic enough to preserve it afterwards as a tangible comfort. - -He closed his eyes as he kissed her, a little afraid to look into her -face. - - - - -CHAPTER IX. - - -One Sunday morning, Carl sat at home, lightly wandering through -a newspaper. On the previous night he had met Petersen and had -yielded to an invitation to accompany “two swell brunettes who don’t -object to a gay time,” and the recollection of his violent, drunken -contortions came to him like a weirdly teasing dream of no particular -significance but leaving the temptation of nausea behind it. He had -released a desecrating ghost of himself from the sneering recesses of -his self-despair. Yes, you could burn away the sensual rubbish, with -derisive gestures, but your emptiness and weariness always returned -for their slow revenge. He sought to put his thoughts to sleep with -the hasty versions of loves, catastrophes, and law-suits that winked -maliciously at him from the newspaper. - -In the middle of one page he came upon a rectangle of gossip concerning -a poetry magazine of whose existence he had never known, and darting -from his insensitive trance he lingered greedily over the news. Through -the efforts of an elderly poetess several society people had agreed -to endow a small magazine that would be entirely devoted to verse, and -the newspaper item was heralding the fact that one of these people -had contributed a sonnet to a recent issue of the magazine. “Mr. -Robert Endicott, the well-known clubman and member of fashionable -sets, appears with a delicate contribution in this month’s issue of -The Poetry Review, our aristocratic little magazine of the muse. This -will be a surprise to those who know Mr. Endicott only in his role of -business-man and society leader.” Carl strove to be properly impressed -by the surprise, decorating it with the Order of the Nasty Chuckle. - -He felt that it might be consoling to receive a rejection slip from -an upper-world magazine of this kind--a dab of caviar on the empty -plate--and so he sent them three poems. The paper oblong came, but -its blank side held the following note: “Dear Mr. Felman: Your -work interests me. Won’t you drop into the office some time? Clara -Messenger.” - -What men call triumph is a fanciful exaltation that may fall alike -upon atoms and temples--a grandiose child of hope, whose mother is -egoism and whose father is pain. Men, whose life is but a sensitive -or oblivious second--a fleeting stampede within mist--seek the absurd -consolation of believing that their work will become immortal, and this -phantom lie has induced many a soldier to writhe upon some trivial -battlefield and many a minor poet to fight with threats of the gutter. -Carl Felman, obscure, gasping struggler, communing with the marks left -by endless whips, felt foolishly thrilled at this first glimpse of -personal attention from a magazine and became like a swain to whom a -glove has been thrown from an enticingly high balcony. He stood peering -up with a timid excitement. - -On the following afternoon he managed to leave the plumbing shop, with -a plea of illness, and raced to the office of the magazine. A feathery -swirl of quickly purchased emotions--fragments of a youth that had -been shattered--revolved within his heart. As he closed the door of -the large office he saw two women seated at different desks and poised -over the rustle of papers. One was elderly and sedate, and her sober -clothes were reprimanding a substantial body. Beneath a survival of -greyish-brown hair, plainly gathered, the narrow oval of her face -looked at life with a politely questioning air. It was the mellowly -distorted expression of one who has arrived at final convictions -regarding the major parts of life, and is patiently and inflexibly -regarding the lesser perceptions surrounding her. Her slightly wrinkled -face was dominated by a long, thin nose and thin, tightly expectant -lips, and it seemed that her tired emotions had gone to sleep and were -staring out from a dream of suave wakefulness. The other woman was -hovering near the last climax of her youth, and her slender body rose -unobtrusively to the pale repressions of her face. Small and round, her -face carried a well-trimmed self-satisfaction--the reward of one whose -dreams have lived inwardly, with only an occasional sip of forbidden -cordials. Her loosely parted lips guarded a receding chin and her -barely curved nose ascended to large brown eyes and a high forehead. - -Carl walked to her desk and stood for a moment like a child in a -cumbersome robe who is waiting for some inevitable rebuke. The harshly -weary assurance which he was able to display to other people vanished -in this imagined shrine of an unattained art. The young woman looked up -with courteous blankness. - -“My name is Carl Felman. You wrote me a note last week,” said Carl, -delicately groping for the inconsequential words. - -“Oh, yes, I remember”--her face attained a careful smile, tempered by a -modest curiosity. “I’m so glad that you came down.” - -She turned to the other woman. - -“Mary, this is Mr. Felman, the gentleman that I spoke to you about. He -sent us a rather interesting group of poems, you know.” - -Carl winced at the word “rather”--it was associated to him with “more -or less,” “somewhat,” “somehow,” and “to some extent,” those words -and phrases with which cultured people manage to say nothing and yet -preserve the faint appearance of saying something. His breathless -attention disappeared and was replaced by the old morose aloofness. -If this woman had asserted that his poems were trivial or stifled, he -would have respected her, but now he spat contemptuously at the smooth -veil of her words. - -Mary Aldridge, editor of The Poetry Review, moved her lips into an -attitude that came within a hair’s breadth of being a smile--an -expression of slightly amused and restrained condescension. She lifted -a pencil as though it were an age-old scepter held by practiced -fingers. - -“How do you do, Mr. Felman,” she said. - -Some people are able to say “how do you do” in a way that makes it -sound like “why are you here?” and Carl inwardly complimented her on -this minor ability and said his repetition in a voice that made it -mean “slip down, fathead.” After this exchange of vocal inflections, -part of the general vacuity with which human beings greet each other -for the first or last time, he seated himself and clutched a roll of -manuscripts in the manner of a father who is frantically shielding his -child from some invisible danger. - -“I sent you some poems which were returned, but I have some others -here,” he said. “Perhaps you will do me the favor of reading them. I -am, of course, anxious to know what may be wrong with my work, and also -what faint virtues it may hold. Sometimes I feel sure that I am not a -poet and I allow myself the luxury of becoming angry at the persistent -longing that makes me run after futilities. Will you read some of these -poems and tell me whether I am a fool, or a faltering pilgrim, or -anything definite?” - -The abashed and yet softly incisive candor would have unloosened or -entertained the emotions of anyone except Mary Aldridge. She regarded -him with a coldly amused impatience. - -“We-ell, I’m very busy just now,” she said, “but I’ll glance through -some of your things. As I recall, your work had a rather promising line -here and there.” - -He handed her his roll and she scanned the poems, thrusting each one -aside with a quick frown. She lingered a bit over the last one, in -which he had extracted a sleeping Homer from the soiled and cowering -figure of a blind Greek peddler. - -“M-m, this one isn’t so bad,” she said, “though I think that the last -lines are a little forced.” - -“If I decide to alter them, will you take the poem?” asked Carl, -bluntly. - -“Oh, no, no, Mr. Felman; your work is by no means good enough for -publication,” she answered. “I merely meant that this poem in -particular had an element of interest.” - -Accustomed to blows of all kinds, Carl felt relieved that her frigid -shroud had been finally lifted, and with a smile he reached for his -cap. Conversation is merely a tenuous or sturdy protection given to -an instinctive like or dislike, and with their first words people -unconsciously reveal the attitude toward each other which they will -afterward try to excuse and defend with great deliberation. Carl hated -the woman in front of him, not because she had slighted his work, but -because she held to him an attenuated and brightly burnished hypocrisy -that was like a shriveled mask incessantly polished by her words. He -could have imagined her stamping upon a hyacinth as though she were -conferring a careful favor upon the petals and calyx. Mary Aldridge, on -her part, disliked the straight lines of intent which she could sense -beneath his terse questions and missed the bland insincerities of those -smoothly adjusted postures known as good manners. Life to her was a -series of stiffly draped and modulated curves, violated only by rare -moments of guarded exasperation and anger. - -“Would you advise me to stop writing?” asked Carl. - -“No, indeed,” she answered, with her first small smile. “Your work is -rather promising and you seem to be quite young. Some of it reminds me -of Arthur Symons. Of course, I don’t think that you will ever become -a great poet, but we need lesser voices as well as greater ones, you -know.” - -“Would you mind if I asked you to stop using that word ra-ather and try -a little spontaneous directness?” asked Carl, blithely. - -She rose suddenly and addressed the other woman, ignoring his words as -though they had been a trivial insult. - -“I’ve just remembered that I must meet Mr. Seeman at three,” she -said. “I’m afraid that I shall have to leave you with this impulsive -gentleman.” - -Carl stood up, but the other woman revealed with an unrestrained smile -that she was actually aware of his presence. - -“Won’t you stay awhile?” she asked. “We can talk a bit over your work, -if you care.” - -Carl looked at her with suspicion and interest--a trace of gracious -attention in this place. He resolved to explore the seeming phenomenon -and settled back in his chair, while Mary Aldridge, with a barely -audible farewell, walked out of the office. - -“Don’t you think you were a little crudely sarcastic in your last -remark to Miss Aldridge?” asked Clara Messenger. - -“I like an axe sometimes,” said Carl, “although I don’t worship it -monotonously. For certain purposes it works far better than the swifter -exuberance of a stiletto. Unless a person is unassumingly frank to me I -don’t feel that he has earned a delicate retort.” - -“Why, it’s impossible to live in the world with a code like that. One -would have to become a hermit.” - -“No, even hermits are never absolutely isolated. Living on another -planet would be the only remedy, I guess.” - -“What a curious, lunging person you are! But you shouldn’t have -minded Miss Aldridge so much. She’s always afraid that if she openly -encourages a young poet he’ll imagine that he’s a genius.” - -“That’s a harmless trick of imagination and it doesn’t need any -encouragement or censure. It’s a shade better, perhaps, than imagining -that you are a fool.” - -“What an old-young person you are. When you talk I feel that I’m -listening to an insolent essay. I’m not so sure that a poet doesn’t -need praise. It’s part of his task to change the polite praise around -him to an understanding appreciation, and that can be very necessary -and exciting.” - -“To a poet the appreciation of other people must be like a glass of -lukewarm wine taken after work,” said Carl. - -“Well, I know that it means a great deal to me,” said Clara Messenger. -“It reassures me that I’m speaking to the hearts and minds of the -people around me and I’d feel very unimportant if at least a few people -didn’t like my work. One can’t live in a vacuum, after all.” - -“No? I’ve done it for five years or so. I think that all of us secretly -live in vacuums, but we use our imaginations to conceal that fact. -Words were really invented to hide this essential emptiness.” - -“You’re a massive pessimist! The strangest man of twenty-three that -I’ve ever seen! If things are so utterly hollow to you, why do you -live?” - -“In order to persuade myself that I have a reason for living--a defiant -entertainment in the presence of an empty theater.... But it’s always -futile to defend your reason for living. Tell me, instead, what do you -think of your associate, Miss Aldridge?” - -“I really think that she treated you a little heartlessly, but at the -same time I don’t think that she meant to,” said Clara. “Mary is a -woman who grew into the habit of hiding herself from people because -so many of those who looked at her youth, at one time, failed to -understand it.” - -“I can understand that process, though I don’t believe that it -applies in her case. It’s a slow and sullen withdrawing from the -jibing strangers around you--a wounded desire to meet their walls of -misunderstanding with even harder walls of your own. As you grow older, -I suppose, the sullenness may change to a well-mannered and hopeless -aloofness. Age softens the attitude and, still self-immersed, it seeks -the distraction of words.” - -“What has happened to make you say this?” asked Clara, with a mistily -maternal impulse. - -“Just now I’m working in a plumber’s shop, helping the sewers with -their sluggish germs of future turbulence,” said Carl, “and that, of -course, can play its part in the making of a pessimist.... But tell me -what you think of my work?” - -“Plumbing or poetry?” - -“Both of them are interwoven.” - -“Your poems are stiff and dimly tinted, like a row of plaster-of-paris -dolls standing on a dusty and venerated shelf. Don’t you see? You -talk about twenty times better than you write, and I can’t understand -this peculiar incongruity. Perhaps you’ve been taught that poetry is -something that must be ethereal and noble at all costs, and perhaps -you’ve been inarticulate because the rest of you has been at war with -this one illusion. I don’t feel that you’ve looked upon poetry as a -place where you could express your actual thoughts and feelings.” - -When a man has been intangibly blind for a long time, he usually -stumbles at last, accidentally, upon an incident or challenge that -makes him totter on the edge of vision, and in that moment it is -revealed whether this blindness has been innate or not. If he wavers, -then his lack of sight has been an artificial ailment, and if his -first reaction after the stumble is one of stubborn irritation his -tightly-shut eyes are not apt to open. Carl felt, without quite being -able to shape the picture, that he was walking out of a sublime -bric-a-brac shop, and yet the contact of him, left behind in the -shop, continued to speak with his words. As he discussed poetry with -Clara he began slowly to feel that he had been a minute and prisoned -fool, although his words writhed in an effort to escape an absolute -admission. She gave him practical scoldings, also, concerning the -exact way in which manuscripts should be submitted to editors, and he -listened with the amusement that a man feels when he suddenly sees -that he has been walking along a street with his shoes unlaced. She -gave him, again and again, her hazily maternal smile in which sensual -desires selfishly clothed themselves in an ancient and soothing dress -known as kindness. - -“I do hope that I’ve helped you,” she said. “I’d like to feel that I’ve -aided someone to discover his real self.” - -When he returned to his room he applied a match to everything that he -had ever written and watched the flaming pile of papers with an emotion -in which dread, tenderness, and elation were oddly contending against -each other. These bits of paper, with their symbols of shimmering -confusion, had been decorated by the sweat of his body, the brittle -despair of his heart, and the anger of his soul, and their death -brought him a helpless and jumbled sadness; but gradually another -reaction began to possess him. The naked quivers of a fighter, crouched -in the plan of his first blow, centered around his heart, and all of -the thoughts within his mind gave one shout in unison--a meaningless -hurrah just before the first leap of a creative battle. During the next -two months he wrote with an insane speed, and all of his thoughts and -emotions rushed out in an irresistible, nondescript mob scene--a French -Revolution swinging its torches and howls against every repression -and constraint within him. Good, bad, and mediocre, they rain in the -circles of a celebrated revenge, and his main purpose was expressed in -these first four lines of one of his poems: - - You have escaped the comedy - Of swift, pretentious praise and blame, - And smashed a tavern where they sell - The harlot’s wine that men call fame. - - - - -PART II - -THE KNIFE - - - - -The Knife - -CHAPTER X. - - -With Clara Messenger as his guide, Carl began to discover that another -world nestled between the dull apartment houses, raucous markets, and -underworld saloons which had confined his body--a world of smoother -parlors and studios, in which stood “poets,” painters, sculptors, -novelists, critics, Little Theater actors, art patrons, students of the -arts, all leading their little squads of camp followers or plodding -methodically in the ranks. This world was swaggering and overheated, -and within it hosts of minor people were raising their faltering or -blissfully insincere prayers to a god with a thousand faces, whom they -called Artistic Expression--a god of astigmatic egoism dressed in -cautious shades of emotion and thought, and obsessed with a fear of -irony and originality. - -Carl felt like an emancipated hermit suddenly thrown as a sacrifice -to an uproar of contending philosophies and artistic creeds. His -mind, accustomed to solitary decisions, became bewildered amidst the -bloodless, tin-sword battle around him and he wondered how he could -possibly make his own voice heard in the egoistic din. Each man assured -him that the other man was a fool or a charlatan, and he listened to -their conflicting assumptions of wisdom with a naive dismay. - -“What has lured these people into their attitudes of isolated and weary -superiority?” he asked himself, “and if the attitudes are genuine, why -do these people make a garrulous religion of attacking each other? If -they actually believed that their convictions were mountain ranges, -with some snow of immortality soft beneath their feet, they would dwell -with a more pensive calmness upon these substantial protests, instead -of assiduously pelting each other with flecks of mud in the valleys.” - -With the melancholy idealism of his youth Carl had made an emotional -sketch in which artists and writers were a band of profoundly -misunderstood martyrs, clinging to each other as they accepted the -indifference and ridicule of a practical world, and he was amazed to -find that almost all of them were far too easy to understand, and -thronged with shudders of words at the idea of clinging to one another. -Like an array of famished and animated housewives, they traded gaiety -and friendly argument while in each other’s presence, while in secret -they carved each other with gossiping exaggerations, three-penny -sneers, and every hair’s-breadth edge of derision. Even among their -different “schools” and cliques he found little fusion--the members -of each group were plotting to unseat their leader because they had -commenced to fear that he was merely using them as a step-ladder. - -This trivial drama, with malice performing menial duties in the service -of the old, egoistic dream of immortal expression and emotional -tallness, was a new reality to Carl and he surveyed it with an alert -contempt. - -“Why all of this clownish, papier-mache melodrama, with words playing -the part of overworked murderers?” he asked himself. “Is it possible -that faint voices whisper within these people that they are not as -important and all-seeing as they would like to be? Most ludicrous -tragedy! The noise, alas, must ever continue, since their doubts and -fears require a constant pounding. Poor, astounding people! ... The -critic, stroking his suave patter above a tea-table: ‘Oh, yes, Mr. X. -is a very sound man, very sound.’ ‘Mr. C. is indeed a great poet, for -there’s a certain simplicity and sincerity in everything he does.’ -‘Mr. E. is amazingly clever and erudite--a most important man.’ ‘Mr. -B.? I’m afraid that he’s only a minor Baudelaire, you know, the old -morbid straining after originality’--this critic is merely allowing -his thoughts and emotions to perform their private functions upon the -publicity of a fanciful pedestal, to retch, relieve themselves of -fluids and rubbishes, and scratch their smarts. It is, in truth, a -weird, prolonged indecency.” - -He meditated upon his own relation to this explanation of the -belligerent waste of energy around him. - -“I am a better egoist than the people around me,” he said. “I will -not be forced to display my private organs as often as they. Only an -absolute egoist can afford to be calm and more obscurely naked. If I -indulge, at rare intervals, a secret grin will gain its reward.” - -His thoughts had mounted these conclusions as he sat one night in -Clara’s studio, with his legs tucked in above a scarlet cushion. She -looked at him with a petulant question on her face. - -“Carl, why are you forever arousing the enmity of people?” she asked. - -“Because I detest most of them; because I like straight lines and -angles in conduct while they prefer curves and circles; and for a -variety of reasons.” - -“But, Carl, you don’t need to be so deliberate about antagonizing -people.” - -“I’m not. I’m simply myself most of the time--a difficult task, but it -can be achieved.” - -“Well, everybody is sneering at your latest stunt. Why, oh why, did -you have to parade down Scott street smoking that long Chinese pipe of -yours, with a red ribbon tied to the stem? Carl, sometimes I almost -believe that you love to pose!” - -“I ain’t guilty, I swear it. When that group of my poems came out in -the big eastern magazine I simply felt that the event demanded an -unashamed celebration. It was like the christening of a healthy child -and I wanted something stronger than whiskey or wine. An odd longing -that comes to me sometimes. I decided to commit the inexplicable -crime of becoming immersed in a new toy of motion. I fitted a rubber -mouthpiece over the tip of the pipe and used it half of the time as a -cane. I’ve been told that a crowd followed me but I didn’t turn my head -to investigate.” - -“Well, everyone has heard about it and they’re all calling you a cheap -little poseur. And, really, I don’t know that they’re wrong. I never -felt so angry in my life. You love to attract the attention of other -people and you’ll make every kind of excuse rather than admit this -fact!” - -He showed an outburst of surface anger. - -“You can act more impulsively in a camp of lumber-jacks than before a -crowd of so-called artists and writers,” he said. “The lumber-jacks -might regard you with a simple amazement, or an unrestrained laughter, -but at least they’d grant you the sincerity of insanity! Since I must -choose between stupid people I prefer the more roughly natural ones.” - -“I’m tired of hearing you call everybody a hypocrite,” said Clara. -“It’s just a nice way that you have of defending your own actions!” - -He arose and reached for his cap. - -“I’ll leave you to this weariness,” he said angrily. “It may be -possible that, as I walk down the street, no one will believe that I’m -striding along in a highly deliberate manner. The thought is pleasant.” - -“Carl, don’t be foolish,” she said, half-repentantly, but without -answering he walked out of the studio. - -This had not been his first quarrel with Clara, and the frequency -of their collisions, always followed by a skirmish of nervous -laughter, made him believe that they were both stupidly postponing -a sure separation. Clara was, in her entire essence, a deft Puritan -industriously beating the back of a frightened Pagan. At certain -intervals the Pagan arose and knocked the Puritan unconscious but the -latter always gradually revived and resumed its dulcet mastership, -and Clara liked or disliked Carl whenever her inner situation shifted -in these ways. Carl had grown weary of being alternately punched and -caressed by her moods. He had long since realized that his relations -with her were merely the playthings of a fluctuating emotional response -and that neither he nor she had the slightest respect for each other’s -habits and minds, and on this evening, as he walked down the street -after leaving her studio he knew that the uncertain pretence of drama -had ended. - -He had slowly discovered that almost all of the people around him, with -their different versions of culture and art--those two realities hidden -by mincing courtezans of egoism--were distrustful of bluntness and -gay impulse in conduct and had made a word known as “unconventional,” -in order to defend the ordinary fright that governed their actions. A -venerable contradiction among these minor people but one that had held -new outlines for him. He had also learned that most of these people -were so accustomed to masquerades that they could not believe in the -reality of a carelessly naked attitude and usually mistook it for a -dazzling and ingenious pose. - - - - -CHAPTER XI. - - -Filled with these gloomy realities he walked down a roughly bright -street where the underworld tiptoed furtively between the ranks of -semi-respectable working-people--a street of gaping, sleekly sinister -saloons, cabarets, small, thickly tawdry shops, and cheap, coffin-like -hotels and apartment houses. The hour was early--nine p.m.--and he -walked slowly, engaged in his favorite pastime of watching the shrouded -haste of crowds. As he passed a moving-picture theater, dotted with -greasy electric lights and plastered with inanely gaudy posters, he -felt a light hand on his shoulder. He turned and saw Lucy standing -before him. The sight gave him a friendly shock, for on this evening he -was tired of clever hypocrisies and longed for anything that would be -crude and unassuming. - -“Lucy, have you fallen down from some sky?” he asked. - -“No, I just came out of the theater here an’ saw you walkin’ by. Gee, -but I’m glad I did! It’s been a year now since we’ve seen each other, -hasn’t it? An’ I never, never thought I’d meet you again.” - -“Well, what has happened to you, Luce?” he asked as they walked down -the street together. - -“I’m married to Fred now. I didn’t see anything else to do after you -left, and all of my folks just pushed me into it. ’Nen besides I was -tired of workin’ in that darn store. Tired.” - -“Are you less tired now? Happy?” - -“Mm, Fred’s an awful nice man in his way an’ I s’pose I oughta be -happy. He really loves me, Fred does, an’ he don’t seem to lose his -temper the way some men do. ’Course, he’s a little stingy with money -but then I s’pose he’s tryin’ to look out for the future.” - -“Do you love him now, Luce?” - -Her head drooped a little and she was silent for a time. - -“I guess it’s terrible of me not to love him, after all he’s done for -me, but I just don’t. I always keep rememberin’ all of your funny ways -an’ all the time we was together an’ I feel ashamed of it too ’cause -it’s kinda like not bein’ true to Fred, but I can’t help it. There’s -been times when I’ve managed to forget about you but they don’t last -long enough.” - -He tried to make himself feel like a helpless knave as he listened to -this simple child of earth who longed for the palely inexplicable god -before whom she had once grovelled in rhythmic speechlessness. He had -taken all of her eager silences, pardoned by the damp understanding -of flesh, and bestowed upon her in return nothing save the blurred -vision of thoughts and emotions which it would have been useless for -her to understand, and the tantalizing fantasy of his embraces. If -he had stayed with her he would have mutilated, kicked, and evaded -every longing and purpose of his life while she would have revelled in -happiness. Walking down this street were thousands of people, trying -to embalm a softly sensual hour with the fluids and devices of bravely -stupid lies, and inventing words--“honor,” “respectability”--to conceal -the grotesquely snickering effect of their lives. Life was, indeed, an -insipid mountebank! - -“Luce, I ought to feel like a selfish dog, for if I did, then at least -I could give you a belated shoulder to cry upon,” he said. “We’re -different persons, that doesn’t need to be said, but still I’m sorry at -times that we parted. I need your stupidity.” - -“Do you still care for me, Carl?” - -“There are times when I want you again. You brought me a delicate -dumbness which I could change into any kind of speech, with my fingers -and words. Your simplicity doesn’t swagger, or point admiringly to -itself, and I like that. Just now I am surrounded by people who are -not different from you except that they have memorized three or four -thousand words more, and use them with a moderate degree of cunning. -Your silences are much better.” - -“I’m not always silent ’cause I don’t understand what you say. -Sometimes I do understand, but I keep quiet ’cause I don’t know how to -tell you about it.” - -They turned down a side-street and he looked questioningly at her. - -“Aren’t you afraid that Fred may see us together?” he asked. - -“I forgot to tell you. He left this afternoon for Pittsburg, to see his -mother, an’ he’ll be gone for two weeks. I’m all alone now.” - -That conversing silence, in which a suggestion is so strongly felt that -it need not be heard, was released from both of them and remained until -they reached the apartment building in which she lived, and stood in -the dark hallway. - -“I don’t want to leave you now”--her whisper was frightened but -stubbornly tender. “I don’t want to. For all I know I may never see -you again and if I don’t I’ve got to have somethin’ that I can hold -on to. Somethin’ that’s not as foolish as just talkin’ words.... I’m -a dreadful girl, I s’pose. I must be very wicked. I must be.... But I -don’t care. Please don’t go away.” - -They stood in the hallway like two dizzy, burdened children feeling -the advancing shadow of an irresistible action and yet waiting for the -exact moment when all deliberate words would vanish. Until their minds -were quite free of words their limbs could not move. Suddenly they -both mounted the stairway, hand in hand, as though a kindly demon had -decided to make playthings of their legs. - -When Carl left the apartment building early on the following morning -and hurried to the suburban cigar-store where he now worked half of -the day as a clerk, his old self-disgust was absent and a cleanly wild -lightness took his limbs, as if he had slept upon the plain sturdiness -of a hillside and was pacing away with the borrowed vigor. - -“The only time that I dislike earth is when it is dressed in urgent -mud, adulterated perfumes, strained lies, and repentant fears,” he -told himself as he walked through the bustling shallowness of each city -street. - -Before leaving Lucy he had promised to return on the following night, -and when she had wept and begged him “not to think that she was a -terribly bad girl,” he had laughed softly and dropped his lips upon her -tears. - -“You have been yourself, Luce, and since the world is always conspiring -against such an arbitrary occurrence, you can give yourself a -bewildered congratulation,” he told her, gayly. - -Without understanding his words she had felt the presence of defiant -sounds which had cheered her. During the next two weeks, as he remained -with her each night, he reflected upon the possible melodrama that -lurked just outside of his visits. - -“If her husband suddenly returns and finds me with her he’ll want to -kill me,” he said to himself once, as though he welcomed the idea. -“He’ll feel that only my death could heal his injured vanity--vermilion -medicine!--but, of course, instead of admitting that to himself -he’ll find an accommodating phrase to hide the actual motive, such -as ‘avenging his honor,’ ‘killing a treacherous hound,’ ‘defending -the family,’ etc. The newspapers are full of such charming episodes, -well fortified by words, for without words to obliterate his motives -man would perish in a day. Melodrama is the only real sincerity that -life holds--the one surprising directness in a world of false and -prearranged contortions. Perhaps I could ravish my fears and welcome -it. I don’t know, and no one can until it actually arrives.” - -But the two weeks died without the blundering interruption of drama, -and Lucy and Carl parted on the last morning with a chuckling -stoicism--tears and the syllables of laughter are always similar--the -madcap protest of a last kiss--lips and tongues intent upon a future -compensation--and a final flitting of hands. They had slapped in the -face a violent shadow known as life and now it would take a fancifully -piercing revenge. They had attained a quality known as bravery--a -quality that is only fear rising to a moment and effectively sneering -at itself. - - - - -CHAPTER XII. - - -Carl returned to the minor, suavely gesturing groups of hypocrites -in the city in which he lived, and in going back to this “art and -literary world” he had the feeling of one who had deserted a strong -valley of desire to enter a stilted room filled with imitation orchids, -valiantly empty words, and malice dressed in clumsy, velvet costumes. -This reaction was still dominating him as he sat, one afternoon, in the -office of a magazine called “Art and Life,” perched upon a window-sill -and looking down at the black and dwarfed confusion of a street. - -This office was a gathering place for several young writers, each of -whom fondled his pet rebellion against conservative standards, and -they clustered around the anxiously seraphic face of Martha Apperson, -the young editor, and seriously fought for the treason of her smiles. -She was a tall, sturdily slender woman with a blithely symmetrical -swerve to her body, and the natural pinkness of her face parted into -the curves of a lightly distressed and virginal doll. Her blue-gray -eyes were looking at life with a startled incredulity--the gaze of -one who has been tempted to regard a sometimes merry, but more often -vaguely sorrowful picture-puzzle. Life to her was a rapidly taunting -mixture of glints, hints, undertones, surface blooms, fleeting tints, -portentous shadows with little shape to them, broken images, and misty -heights, and she was forever trying to lure them all into a cohesive -whole by striding from one philosophy and creed to another, adding -another stride every three or four months. At such times she would -appear at her office and enthusiastically assure her audience that she -had finally accomplished the almost obscene miracle of penetrating -the depths of human existence. She had started her magazine as a -strident protest against “the people who live conventionally, steeped -in a vicious comfort that binds their imaginations and ruins their -legs and arms,” and its pages made an awkwardly weird combination of -sophomoric revolts, longings for “beauty and splendor”--those easily -bought thrones for the importance of youth--and enraged yelps against -traditions and conventions, with here and there a more satirically -detached note from Carl and two other men. Carl knew that he wanted her -body because it was the only mystery that she seemed to possess and -because he wondered whether it might not be able to make her thoughts -less obvious. Her mind was a stumbling jest to him and her jerkily -volatile pretences of emotion failed to cleave him. - -He began to turn his eyes impatiently toward the office door. Martha -had left him in charge, promising to return in an hour, but he knew -that her hours were frequently afternoons as she cavorted around the -city, throwing out miniature whirlwinds of appeals for money and -attention. In a corner of the office stood a huge photograph of her -latest god--a middle-aged, hawk-faced lecturer from England--that -fertile land from whence all lecturers flow--a man who had recently -startled the city by speaking on Oscar Wilde, dressed in a black robe -and standing in a chamber dimly disgraced by candles, incense, and -muslin poppies. The theatrically savage features of this man rested -beneath a framed letter from a prominent writer--one of those abortions -in which the great man tells a small magazine that he earnestly hopes -that it will amount to something and believes that it can accomplish -a great purpose if it pursues the ideals which have illuminated his -work. Carl’s eyes sought this framed joke for the hundredth time, -since his mood needed such artificial humor to make it less aware of -itself, and at this moment Martha came with the rapid gait of one who -is returning to vast and uncompleted tasks, although her day’s labors -were at an end. This was not a pose but merely a bouncing overabundance -of energy. With her was Helen Wilber, a young disciple who scarcely -ever left her side. Helen had fled from a wealthy family in another -city and traded her debutante’s excuse for the more fanciful robe of an -ecstatic pilgrim starting to ascend from the base of veiled mountains -of expression. She darted about on errands and interviews and felt the -humble fervors of a novice--a tall, heavy girl with a long, soberly -undeveloped face and abruptly turned features that were garlanded with -freckles. She had made a fine art of her determination to persuade -herself that she was masculine, giving it the intense paraphernalia of -stolen words and gestures, but beneath her dubiously mannish attire and -desperately swinging limbs the desires of an average woman were feebly -questioning the validity of her days. She greeted Carl with her usual -ringing assumption of boyishness. - -“Hello, old top! Been waiting long?” - -“Not as long as I expected to wait, considering Martha’s superb -indifference to the impudence of time. Well, Martha, how have you been -insulting actualities--with your usual crescendoes of insanity?” - -Martha reached for the device of quickly sliding the tip of her tongue -over her upper lip, a movement that always gave its opiate to her -embarrassment or dismay, and then smiled with a softly tragic aloofness. - -“Oh, people weary me so!” she said. “They’re so impossible most of the -time and so sublimely unaware of that fact! I’ve just come from seeing -an elderly woman who said that she might be interested in helping us. -She was fat and expensively gowned and she wanted to know whether we -wouldn’t print a story about the historical old families of this city -and how they had founded a great, commercial and romantic fabric. I -told her that we were concerned with the restless and flaming present, -with the artists and thinkers of our own time, and not with respectable -tradespeople of the past. Of course I put it as nicely as I could but -she flew into a temper and said I was insulting the people who had -built up a great and mighty city.... O people are so impossible!” - -Carl envied the excited flow of her words and wished that he could also -feverishly felicitate his emptiness at that particular moment. - -“I felt like telling her that men who’ve made money and put up ugly -buildings aren’t necessarily important enough to talk about,” said -Helen, with a hollow seriousness, “but of course I didn’t for fear of -hurting Mart’s chances.” - -“I get so tired of wasting words on people who lead monotonous lives -and can’t see the variety and beauty within life,” said Martha. -“When you talk to them they treat you as though you were a little, -misbehaving girl who would soon be spanked and put to bed. ‘O you’ll -soon get over all of this artistic nonsense,’ they say.” - -“Ah, they can’t see that a defiance like yours, Mart, is a fire that -only grows stronger when someone tries to put it out,” said Helen with -a spontaneously rhetorical worship. - -Carl grinned at the dramatic sincerity with which these two women -lunged at colossal targets. - -“What’s all of this endless stuff about beauty?” he asked. “Beauty, -beauty, I’m tired of the label. No specific description but just -a nice, sonorous word. You might exalt your loves and punish your -aversions with a little more clarity.” - -“O you can’t diagram it as though it were a problem in mathematics!” -cried Martha. “It’s too big and mysterious for that. You simply know -it when you see it. It quickens your breath and drops like music upon -your soul. It’s the thing that makes you know that you have a soul--the -radiant weariness that springs from everything that is strong, and -lonely, and delicate, and elusive, and tortured.” - -“The adjectives are stirring and the fact that they happen to be -meaningless is of little importance,” said Carl. “I like the way in -which you make love to your emotions.” - -Martha gave a grimace of exasperation. - -“You’re the most insincere man I know,” she said. “Some day I’ll fall -in love with a man who can be sincerely brilliant and beautiful and -who doesn’t put his words together carefully, as though they were -unimportant toys.” - -“Such a fate may be exactly what you deserve,” said Carl, still -grinning. - -“Here we’ve been tramping around all day, seeing stupid people, and you -waste Mart’s time with your old arguments about beauty and words,” said -Helen with a jocose disgust. “I’m getting famished. Let’s go home.” - -“I forgot to tell you, Carl--I’m having a party at the apartment this -evening,” said Martha. “That strange, interesting Russian you met -yesterday is coming--Alfred Kone. And Jarvin who runs the literary page -on the Dispatch. You’ll come with us now, won’t you?” - -“Yes, I’m interested in Kone. He carries a certain revolving -electricity around with him. His words and gestures are abruptly -flashing like showers of sparks. I’m almost tempted to find out where -the sparks come from.” - -“He’s a natural pagan,” said Martha with an admiring sigh. “Don’t you -love that European air about him! It’s something that you wouldn’t like -if you could put your finger on it--something elusive and graceful, and -sophisticated.” - -“Is it possible that you mean that Kone is intricately redundant?” said -Carl, carelessly. - -“Carl, you always talk in such a careful, unearthly way,” said Helen, -with a combat of irritation and wonder in her voice. - -“With most people talk is a weak, thin wine,” said Carl. “They drink -endless cups of it and at last they become mildly intoxicated. I prefer -to achieve drunkenness with less effort.” - -The incongruous love-song of the conversation continued as they -departed for the Apperson apartment. Carl became morbidly jovial as -though striving to goad himself into a mood, but underneath his words -he was sad as he side-stepped Helen’s heavy lunges. “I have never -actually had youth--that glistening mixture of blunders, sighs, cruel -laughters, and a pleasant sadness that does not cut too deeply,” he -said to himself as he listened to the obviously proud youth of the two -women. - - - - -CHAPTER XIII. - - -Kone had already arrived at the apartment and was waiting on the front -porch. His heavy body, of medium height, held the arrogant bulge of -muscles beneath his light grey suit and his pale brown face cradled a -wraith of bitter alertness--a sneer attempting to break through the -concealing flesh. He had a short flattened nose, thick lips, and the -eyes of a forced and sprightly demon, and the dark abundance of his -eyebrows receded into a low forehead, which in turn ended in a mass -of black hair brushed backward. He had come to America some six years -before this late Autumn evening; had first worked as a porter in a -department store; had mastered English with a miraculous speed; and -was now studying at a neighboring university and earning a living by -teaching Russian to classes of children. In place of that violently -disguised boredom commonly known as a heart he seemed to have an -over-perfect dynamo that made him a mechanical wild-man--there was a -sharp, strained persistency in all of his movements and the fact that -he never deigned to falter in his words and gestures gave him an -aspect of well-maintained artificiality. He threw his vivid grin to -Carl. - -“Hah, poet who seems to sleep but is always awake--greetings,” he -called out, in the crisply dramatic way in which he usually spoke. -“‘Demons lurk in your dimples’--you should have written that line about -yourself.” - -“Portraits are merely pretexts--secret portraits of oneself tortuously -extracted from the blankness of other people,” said Carl. - -“You would like to believe that. The involved egoism of youth!” - -“It might be proving your case to answer you,” said Carl, laughing. - -Kone was one of the few men who could make him laugh, since he had the -odd habit of laughing only in praise and scarcely ever in derision--a -custom born in the loneliness of his former years. Kone greeted -Martha, who came in later, with words in which an adroitly raised -respect and daring sensuality were carefully mixed, but, although -her surface was flattered by his obeisance, his attentions failed to -penetrate her radiant self-immersion. That would have been a feat -worthy of century-old preservation. She listened, like a convinced -and mysterious referee, while Kone and Carl indulged in the precise -uselessness of argument--a discussion on whether Dostoevsky was an -insane mystic, drunk with the details of reality, or an emotional -search-light stopping at the edge of the world. The talk led to a -question of the exact value of originality. - -“So, you are looking for originality,” said Kone with a metallic -mockery in his voice. “A man may stand on his head without in any way -disturbing the universe. Has it not occurred to you that life is only a -series of reiterations beneath the transparent gowns of egoism?” - -“I prefer the gowns when they are a little less transparent. I might -also have to know why a man was standing on his head before I could -make any conjecture concerning the agitation of the universe”--an -amused respect was in Carl’s voice. He liked the stilted lunges of Kone. - -Helen appeared in the doorway. - -“Put your daggers aside for a while and come to dinner,” she said, with -the most benign of tolerances. - -After the meal Arthur Jarvin, the critic, arrived with a woman named -Edith Colson. Jarvin was almost tall--one of many “almosts” composing -his entirety--and the plump old rose oval of his face showed its -immense self-satisfaction beneath a fluffy mat of dark brown hair. He -wore spectacles and his features bore the petulant satisfaction of -one who has eaten too much for breakfast and has not quite decided -whether to regret that fact or not. Since he held a contempt for the -mad limitations of time he always fondly lengthened the utterance of -his many “howevers” and “notwithstandings.” His friend, Edith Colson, -was a tall, slender woman who freed a satirical vivacity with each -of her words, thus making one regret the fact that she had nothing -to say. One felt that to herself she was intrenched upon modest but -well-guarded hill-tops of emotion; that, being thinly perverse, she -had purchased her castles in Norway and scorned the more treacherous -animations of a warmer climate. Her icy effervescences--whirls of -powdered snows--sometimes subsided to a softer note which told you -that the dab of warmth left within her was reserved for a select two -or three beings, and that her conversation was an elaborate form of -repentance. Outwardly she offered the effect of a carefully ornamented -self-protection. The greenish brown length of her face accepted the -problems of a long straight nose, loosely thin lips, and large black -eyes, and was topped by a disciplined wealth of brownish black hair. - -They sat in a circle on the porch and the conversation skipped with -too much ease between recent books, plays, and local celebrities among -writers and artists. Jarvin, full of the books that had come to him -for reviewing purposes, compared and dissected them with the air of a -professor who boredly but genially lectures to his special class. “This -book was passable: of course it couldn’t come up to so-and-so’s book. -This other one--well, not quite as good as his last novel. A little too -much of one style, you know. That new Frenchman? Yes, they’re raising -quite a fuss over him. Grim, cruel stuff, but well done. Those books -lose a lot in the translations, though. That new poet? Mm, he’s lyrical -enough but he just misses inspiration. The new crop will have to go a -long way before they can approach Shelley or Wordsworth. Have you seen -the new Shaw play at the Olympic? After all, Shaw is one of the few men -who can make you laugh without being vulgar or obvious,” etc. - -Carl sat in silence and rearranged, in his head, the difficult line -of a new poem, and to his immersion the conversation had become a -slightly irritating and well-memorized murmur. Endlessly he muttered to -himself: “your face is stencilled with a pensiveness ... pensiveness -... but I need another adjective.” - -Kone ruffled the dulcet informations of the others now and then with -a polite but ironical jest that was never too obviously at their -expense; Martha preserved her eagerly listening silence; and Helen sat -like a dazed woman at a verbal banquet, scarcely daring to touch the -glittering food in front of her. Finally Jarvin found Carl’s direction -with a question that jerked him back to the gathering although the -exact words eluded him. - -“What were you saying? I haven’t been listening,” said Carl. - -“That’s an insulting confession”--Edith Colson’s voice snapped like a -succession of breaking wires. “Aren’t you interested in books?” - -“Well, not in the broad and detailed way in which they seem to interest -the rest of you,” said Carl, with the sleepily candid smile which -usually made another person long to investigate the resiliency of his -throat. “Once every five months I read one that should be spoken of -with great vehemence and then gradually forgotten, but that’s a rare -occurrence.” - -“O come, that’s an easy, superior attitude,” said Jarvin. “Come down to -the valley and join us, Mr. Poet!” - -“All right, I’m down. I’ve passed your hills of judicial comment and -reached the moonlight on the street pavement outside. It suggests a -contest. Suppose we all make up a line describing the moonlight on the -street--the moonlight that falls like a quiet silver derision on all -philosophies--and we’ll see which of us is best acquainted with the -penitent promise of words. I’ll begin. ‘The moonlight repressed the -grey street, like a phantom virtue.’ Only original lines--nothing from -books.” - -“Here I am in the midst of a talk on Bergson, and this young poet asks -me to make up some pretty lines about the moon,” said Jarvin, in a -voice of poised scorn. “I read enough about the moon in the flood of -mushy poetry that pours into my office.” - -“You might try to describe it yourself,” said Carl. “In that way you -could provide an excellent antidote for your disgust. It is, I assure -you, an important task to rescue the moon from the rape of trite words.” - -“No, I’ll leave that to minor poets,” said Jarvin. - -Carl gave him the malicious grin of one who is enjoying a sham battle. - -“If the moon doesn’t satisfy you, Mr. Jarvin, let’s try that whispering -prison of trees just outside of this window, or the people who place -their unsearching feet upon streets every day. Anything except voluble -shop-talk about the latest mediocrities with now and then a philosopher -or scientist thrown in for purposes of repentance and caution.” - -“Well, our young iconoclast even scorns philosophy,” said Jarvin. -“Perhaps it speaks with too much thought and authority to suit your -fancy. It’s much easier to let your emotions juggle words.” - -“Philosophy is a bottle-faced dwarf drowning with imposing howls in -an ocean that does not see him,” said Carl, with a languid lack of -interest. “But philosophy should be read, if only with a careful -indifference.” - -Jarvin threw another rock, with haste, and Carl gave him another -epigram. Kone, always a restive audience, interposed. - -“The anarchist, Pearlman, has just come to town,” he said. “Perhaps all -of you know that he served twenty years in prison for attempting to -kill a millionaire. A cruel penance!” - -“I become rather tired of these anarchists who are forever trying -and plotting to blow up the city-hall,” said Edith. “They’re neither -artists nor dull, useful citizens and they serve no purpose that I can -see. If they imagine that they can change the present system of things -by shrieking and murdering people they ought to be sent to a school for -the feeble-minded.” - -“I’m not so sure that I’d want to see things radically changed,” -said Jarvin. “Of course I know that there’s a great deal of graft -and injustice everywhere but I’m not sure that I’d care to live in a -Utopia--wickedness and cruelty are far more interesting.” - -“The trouble with these anarchists and socialists is that they miss -all the beauty in life,” said Martha. “If you show them a painting or -a poem they think that you’re trying to waste their time, unless it -contains a social message.” - -“I think that it’s cruel and useless to try to take another man’s -life,” said Helen, earnestly. “I hate this fellow, Pearlman!” - -Kone listened to this stagnant symposium of viewpoints, with a patient -sneer. - -“In Russia we are more accustomed to murder,” he said. “We have not -attained the--what shall I say?--the genial and practical compromises -of your American democracy. In our country, alas, oppression takes -off its mask and swings a red sword! If you will realize that death -does not hold for us the mysterious terror that it holds for you -it may help you to understand Pearlman. He came to this country--a -young Russian--sentimental, idealistic, crowded with naive longings -for martyrdom. He wanted to die for the people--that grand, massive, -mysterious, and yet near and real people! When he tried to kill a -millionaire, who was stubbornly refusing to arbitrate with his striking -men, Pearlman was choked with a poem of liberation that could not be -denied. Then the icy reality of his next twenty years--condemned by -both society and the strikers whom he had tried to help, surrounded by -the rigid leer of iron bars; and squeezed into a niche of futility.... -This crucified Russian does not need your sarcasm, my friends.” - -The conversation staggered and scampered for another hour, with -everyone save Carl animatedly endeavoring to conceal the fact that he -was in no way interested in anyone’s opinions except his own, and at -last the party packed away its comedies, irritations, and convictions, -and arose from the chairs. There were farewells, with just the right -compound of gaiety and caution, and the gathering separated. - -Carl and Alfred Kone went to the latter’s room in a dormitory at the -university and sat until an early hour of the morning, arguing with -an intensity that made their tobacco smoke seem a cloud of gunpowder. -Kone was that tense incongruity--an ironical sentimentalist. Within -him, emotion cajoled thought to a softer brutality and thought intruded -its staccato, exploring note upon the limpid abandon of emotion. A -deliberate friendship rose between these men, like a translucent wall -through which men can see each other without touching, for each one -knew that the other held a baffling insincerity of imagination and was -afraid that he might be deftly ridiculed if he failed to measure his -words. Kone admired the nimble restlessness of Carl, a quality which he -was compelled mechanically to imitate, while Carl liked the explosive -way in which Kone evaded himself. Kone was now almost thirty years old -but his machine-like capering made him seem much younger and he bounded -through life like a sophisticated street-urchin, swindling himself with -fiercely endurable makeshifts in place of dead dreams. His tragedy -rested in the fact that he was not a creator and the knowledge of this -was to him a secret poison from which he had to escape with many a gale -of make-believe laughter. - - - - -CHAPTER XIV. - - -One afternoon, four months after the Apperson party, Carl, Kone, and -Jenesco, a Roumanian painter, sat in the latter’s little blending -of studio and bedroom and looked at a landscape which he had just -finished. Jenesco’s eyes lazily flirted with triumph and his small, -ruddy face displayed the expression of a child throwing a few last, -unnecessary grains upon a sand-hill. - -“Boys, what do you think of it?” he asked in a tone of confident -fatherhood. - -Kone and Carl scanned the painting. It was a mother-goose -transfiguration, too quick in its acceptance of violent colors and -bearing a blandly forced simplicity. Red, indigo, and orange trees -were lining both sides of a road, and the trees were painted in such a -manner that they seemed to be kneeling at the roadside. In the distance -white mountains, resembling the suggestion of upturned cups, refused -the blue wine of sky, and in front of them were fields that looked like -wrinkled, green tablecloths spread out to dry. In the sky one large -pink cloud forlornly squandered its innocence. - -“Pleasant--pleasant,” said Kone. “Not realistic, and not fantastic. It -deceives both of its mistresses.” - -“You don’t see what I’m trying to get at,” answered Jenesco. “I’m -trying to make reality turn an amiable somersault, as Carl would say. I -want to avoid the two extremes of painting the usual photograph on the -one hand and making something that no one can understand on the other.” - -Carl listened to the seething argument that followed, with the -feelings of one who hears an exquisitely worthless routine of sound. -He was always amazed at the fact that people could argue about art--a -word pilfered from that last desperate undulation with which an ego -decorates the slavery of mud. Arguments on art to him were like the -antics of a sign-painter defending the precious label which he has -painted upon certain of the more indiscreet and impossible longings -within him--a piece of inflexible nonsense. He felt that works of art -so-called could be described and admired with a novel and independently -creative bow of words, but never defended and explained. Books on art -were to him a futile and microscopical attempt to inject logic into -a decorative curiosity. As he listened to the wrestling sounds of the -present argument, words within him began to flatter his indifference. - -“While Kone is talking, Jenesco sits, trying to frame his reply and -paying little heed to Kone’s words,” he said to himself. “If Jenesco -hears a point that he has not previously considered he will make -a hasty attempt to shift his answer--a quick sword-thrust at the -new opponent--and then proceed to forget about the matter. Serious -arguments might be of value if they were not windy and elaborate. If -men could decide to condense their views into neat typewritten sheets, -carried in a coat pocket and distributed among people, they could save -a great deal of cheated energy.” - -“The poet has been sitting here like an amused statue,” said Kone, -after the argument had collapsed to the usual stand still. “Come, we -are waiting for you to flay us.” - -“Splendid. Another tense battle. Haven’t you had enough?” said Carl. “I -would suggest that we hold a debate on whether that spider on the wall -will crawl into the sunlight near the window, or whether it will remain -in the shade. In this way we can speculate upon how much the laws of -chance may alter the spider’s conception of the universe.” - -“Get away with that satirical pose!” cried Jenesco. - -Carl smiled without answering, while the others derided his -self-immersion. Jenesco knew no other weapon save an emotional club. He -was a machinist who had taken up painting two years before this late -winter afternoon and he still kept a little shop where he occasionally -sold and repaired machines. This combination of rough mechanic and -art-desiring man had given its surface lure to Carl’s imagination and -he had commenced to spend most of his time at Jenesco’s home. Short, -and with the body of a subdued, light-weight prize-fighter, Jenesco was -a small hurricane of physical elations. He had the face of a corrupted -cherub that had sold its innocence to mental inanities, and his mind -was a conceited confusion of naive ideas. He had been attracted to -painting because it brought his hands into motion, thus encouraging -the habit which they could not forget after their working hours, and -because it taught color and flexibility to the hard greys, browns, and -blacks of his daily toil. He belonged to that band of men who spend a -lifetime in stubbornly walking down a road of artistic effort which -does not lead them to any distinct surrender. Their imaginations are -not weak enough to kneel before the drab regularities of life and -not strong enough to escape from the instinctive push of dead men’s -realities. - -From that afternoon on, Carl began to see more of Jenesco and less -of Kone. Kone was not a creator but merely transposed, with a hungry -fire, the sentences of other men, and after you solved the snapping -tricks with which he did this, his ironies became thin and lamely -transparent. Carl preferred the wolfish wit with which Jenesco, an -ogling Proletarian, tore silk and satin from the shrinking flesh of -obvious hypocrisies in life. It was at least a lurching circus of -words--a pulsating buffoonery. He scarcely ever saw Martha now, since -their self-immersions tended to create a sterile restraint between -them, with words and hands playing the part of irrelevant intruders. -Each of them secretly despised life and its people, while giving a -pretended attention, but they used different methods. Martha fluttered -her emotional veils, with a breathless coercion, while Carl dodged -beneath a carnival of grotesquely mated words. - -To amuse the secret loneliness which often became a boring acid he -formed, with Jenesco, that hollow melee known as a debating club; -called it “The Questioners”--prodded by a ghost of humor--and exhibited -his words in the formal vaudeville-show. The performances occurred at -the studio of a man named Fyodor Murovitch, a young Polish sculptor -with a softly melodramatic abundance of dark brown hair and the -face of a strangely waspish saint--a saint who was tempting himself -with malices in order to conquer them. One evening Carl sat in this -place, drained by the empty ritual of responding to noisy and firmly -convinced people and ogling his nerves with the rhythm of pipe smoke. -He looked up and saw a woman--Olga Ramely--standing beside him. -His eyes experimented with the eyes of this stranger and suddenly -contracted. Her eyes seemed to be two drops of quivering sweat left -behind by an emotional crucifixion. They were sensitive with essences. -Greyish-green, larger than a dwindled sky, lost in a perilous dream of -wakefulness, holding the phantom glow of incredible tortures, friendly -to mental recklessness, they were like a ludicrously clever imitation -of his own eyes and he trembled in the presence of an inexplicable -deception. His imagination was becoming a detached devil much in need -of correction. Olga Ramely spoke to him. - -“I’ve been watching you all evening. The light from the candles over -your head fell upon your yellow hair and put shadows on your face. The -shadows gave your face a soft excuse and you looked half like a sprite -and half like a martyr. There was an indelicately impish weariness on -your face. Your hair was like light, and in one glistening attempt it -tried to reach the weariness, but couldn’t. I told myself that you were -not the man that people say you are.” - -He made his peace with her eyes, moved by a profound embarrassment, -and discovered the rest of her face, with an abject and yet faintly -skeptical desire. The surface flattery of her words had been almost -without meaning to him, but her voice had given him a problem--deep -with an alto scheme, like a trailing memory of pain, and quivering -rebelliously under the disciplines of thought. He examined her face for -an affirmation of the voice. Short, dark brown curls encumbered her -head, like a wig of lost thoughts undulating in an effort to capture -reality, and her skin was the smoothly troubled fusion of white and -brown. Her nose was of moderate length and curved slightly outward, -in a subdued question of flesh; her lips were small and thin--pliant -devices of doubt--and a tight survival of plumpness upon her face told -of a lucidly cherubic effect that had existed before life dropped its -hands heavily upon her. Her body, verging on tallness, was immersed in -a last skirmish with youth. - -“What have you heard them say about me?” he asked, craving the evasion -of words that would conceal a unique tumult within him. - -“I’ve heard people say that you were a thief, and a rascal, and a -disagreeable idiot, and a poseur, and a liar, and an overwhelming -egoist.” - -“What did you think of this dime-novel version of iniquity?” - -“I have been, at times, partial to crude monsters, but your work was a -curious contradiction. Why do they hate you?” - -“Hatred is, of course, fear--fear wildly attempting to justify its -presence. With most people this fear skulks within a harmless parade of -adjectives, while others are compelled to fall back upon their hands. -And so people commit actual murders while others slay their opponents -in conversation. The former is apt to be a little more convincing than -the latter, though.” - -Carl spoke slowly, still correcting the turbulence of his mind with -a plausible display of words, and almost unconscious of what he was -saying. - -“You’ve left out a hatred for hypocrisy,” said Olga, with the same -abstracted indifference to words and the same instinctive cunning -at piecing them together. “Some of the people who have been flaying -you alive walked up to you to-night with outstretched hands and -congratulations. And I felt the emotion of one too tired to have more -than a twinge of disgust.” - -“It requires no effort to be stoical to this joke,” said Carl. “The -masks are too exquisitely futile to become interesting unless, indeed, -they attain a moment of dextrous humor.” - -Jenesco and Murovitch, who had been disputing in a corner of the -studio, walked over and offered a belated introduction. - -“Sorry to interrupt love scene, but maybe you do not know names of each -other,” said Murovitch in his deliberate, shattered English. “Names -tell people how much like nothing they are. But maybe both of you want -to be somebody, in which case it is wise to pity you.” - -“You have a crudely spontaneous imagination--it spies love scenes and -vacuums with a truly lumbering swiftness,” said Carl, annoyed at the -interruption. - -Murovitch laughed--he had made a religion of giving and receiving heavy -blows and it made an excellent screen for his inner timidities. - -“I like your frankness. It reminds me of a heavy negro. It’s black and -excited,” said Olga. - -“Felman’s complexion is a little dirty itself,” said Murovitch, -defiling his saint-like face with a prearranged grin. - -As Carl and Olga walked to the studio where she was living with a woman -friend, she told him some of the immediate facts of her life, as though -clearing away an opaquely intruding rubbish. - -“I’m working now as a waitress in a little cafeteria on Winthrop -street. Eight in the morning to three in the afternoon. Two afternoons -a week off. These burns on my hands come from the hot coffee. On the -two afternoons I write poetry. My body, you see, passes into a less -visible conduct, and thoughts rattle more effectively than china cups. -Then, on the next morning, I am forced to recollect that life is in a -continual conspiracy to prevent this transformation of manners. The -plates are once more held up. Beans and roast beef refuse to betray the -secret.” - -They had reached the studio and were seated opposite to each other. - -“And I work every morning in a tobacco shop,” said Carl. “Since -life works with ravishing incongruities, everything there should be -burned except the cigars. Meditating on this, I am able to wait more -peacefully on the customers. Cringing sounds slip from my lips. ‘Yes, -MacLane will win the next fight and the weather is terrible.’ Strange, -twisted little payments of sound. Life clinks them in his empty purse.” - -“Be romantic--make it the brave bow to an indelicate dream,” said Olga. - -“A background of colored compensations? They, too, are endurable if you -don’t turn your head too often.” - -The adventure of stealing from a cautious world to an alcove of -unguarded expression changed their physical desires into brightly -unheeded guests lurking just outside of their longing to talk to each -other. When their hands touched at last, they laughed at the minute -surprise tendered by their flesh. They became two secret isolations -examining a velvet hallucination of fusion. Their bodies touched while -investigating this enticing dream. - - - - -CHAPTER XV. - - -The winter bickered with spring; days gave their imaginary separation -of time; Olga and Carl stooped to the task of conjuring myriads of -fancifully plausible tongues from their dream of perished identities -lost in one search. Then Olga left with a theater company that was -about to tour the middle west, having managed to secure the small part -of a garrulous chambermaid, and Carl glided into a riot of writing, -waiting for the telegram that would send him to join her in a far -western city where her company would stage its last performances. In -the meantime, he resolved to visit a wealthy uncle who lived in the -south and wanted to see this “queer nephew of mine, who scribbles -poetry and doesn’t care about making money.” - -As he sat one morning in an elevated railroad coach, with valises at -his side, commencing the journey to the city in which his uncle lived, -his mood was glittering and aimless. He danced with outlines of Olga’s -words; hummed briskly saccharine tunes; and trifled with the contours -of people seated near him. Across the aisle a fatly rosy man was -reading a newspaper and Carl’s gaze idly struck the front page and -absorbed the headlines. In a corner of the page he came to the words: -“Actress Dies in M----.” - -His intuition, springing from that complaint vaguely known as -metaphysical, changed his skin to a subtle frost and laid its squeezing -pressure upon his eyes. The quick and heavy beat of his heart became -frantically audible to his ears, like a gauntly terrifying horseman -riding over him, and his mind changed to a loud confusion. He jumped -across the aisle, tore the paper from the gaping man, and read that -the woman whom he loved had instantly died after an accident. Assailed -by an oblique rain of black claws, he tottered from the car, leaving -his valises in the aisle. The black claws vanished; his heart and mind -became extinct; and nothing remained save a body turned to ice and -guided by instinct. Slowly, and with a brittle indecision in each step, -he walked through the bickering brightness of one street after another, -hearing and seeing nothing. He reached the bold flatness of the stone -apartment building; read the delayed telegram held out by his mother, -with the barest shiver of returning life, and dropped upon his bed. - -Sunlight stood within the small room, like an emaciated patriarch -entering through grey shades. Sunlight ignored the glossy chastities -of furniture and dull yellow walls, and looked intently at the bed -standing in one corner of the room. A long human collapse in black -clothes stuck to the white bedspread. A blotch of blonde hair rested -stilly in the weak light and hinted of a face. The body shook now and -then as though an inquisitively alien hand were investigating its -lifelessness. Then sobs pushed their way from the hidden face--an -irregular orgy of distorted lyricism. It was as though a martyr were -licking up the blood on his wounds and spitting it out in long gurgles -of lunatic delight. The sobs were separated by rattling pauses that -reminded one of a still living skeleton endlessly wrestling with death. -The skeleton and the martyr sometimes felicitated each other upon their -endurance, and short silences, like uneasy lies, glided from the hidden -face. Then the bleeding turmoil once more streamed upon the air of the -room, almost extinguishing the dim sunlight. - -A peculiar species of happiness lurked beneath the weeping. Grief, -hating itself, found a revengeful pleasure in attempting to tear and -exhaust itself into death. Sometimes the turmoil subsided to a light -and sibilant fight for breath. The animal noise departed then and a -small soul, much lighter than a phantom sin, plucked unavailingly at -the mysterious spear that had suddenly coerced its breast.... The -dark words of twilight finally entered the room, making an opera of -the marred lyricism that escaped from the hidden face on the bed. -Then night pardoned the deficiencies of the room and corrected them -with moonlight, creating a tragic and chaste boudoir. Carl Felman -felt emptied of all sound, and a mad craving for motion stabbed his -limbs. He wanted to rush endlessly into space, barely supported by the -breathless consolation of running after something that could never be -caught. This would also be of great value to his heart, which was a -stiffly smirking acrobat who has broken his legs but still strives to -continue the act. - -He leaped from the bed and seized his cap. His mother, who had been -entering his room at intervals and vainly questioning him, stopped him -at the outer doorway. - -“Carl, where are you going?” she cried, in a sharply fearful voice. - -With a hugely mechanical effort he managed to twist low sounds from his -useless lips. - -“Just--for a--walk--back--soon.” - -Without heeding her protests and questions, he fled down to the -street. Human beings had disappeared, but he could see faces indented -on the fronts of houses. One had a look of mangled suffering; another -was studiously wicked, like a learned burglar; and a third bore the -pathetic leer of a venturesome housemaid. He picked up these details, -glanced at them a moment, and then threw them aside as though they were -scandals from another planet. He passed into a region of three-story -rooming-houses--flat wretches holding an air of patient cowardice. -People surreptitiously filtered from the houses and walked down the -street with Carl--chorus girls with plump, sneaky faces, underworld -hoodlums with an air of wanly etched bravado, ponderously rollicking -servant girls, clerks with the faces of genial mice, and meekly dazed -old men stumping to their dish-washing jobs. To Carl they were also -hurrying after something that had vanished and cajoling their mingled -emptiness and pain with swift motion. Now and then he waved an arm to -them in greeting, while an unearthly smile dug into his face. His -gesture, when observed, was taken for an intended blow and he left -attitudes of fear and pugnacity behind him. - -He crossed a bridge above a narrowly turbid river. The oily lights and -toiling tug-boats were to him an inexplicable affront. Their stillness -and slow motion insulted his passion for speed and with the spite of a -child he looked down at his feet for a stone to throw at them. Finding -a pavement block, he cast it into the river and rushed along, feeling -for a second an exquisite relief. He passed into a crowded theater -and business section. The strained melee of lights and noises became -an intensely sympathetic audience, urging on his race, and the faces -and forms of human beings met in an applauding confusion. With the -cunning of a blind animal, he darted through their ranks and avoided -collisions. Finally he reached another apartment-house region--large -brick boxes without a vestige of expression. “The faces are gone!” he -cried, with a gasping incredulity, as though inanimate things had alone -become real to him. Moonlight, unable to fathom their petty baldness, -clung to them with an attitude of limpid disgust. Thickly contented -families, mild and tightly garnished, issued from the doorways, -trundling to some moving-picture show or ice-cream palace. An aspect of -well-washed and hollow serenity protested against Carl’s direct flight. -Wrapped by this time in a warmly merciful daze, he did not detect the -drably swaying counterfeit of happiness that would have awakened within -him a maniacal response. - -He sped down street after street like an inhuman hunter, and came -to rows of wooden houses separated by large fields and blackguarded -by the smoke of nearby factories and mills. An attitude of mildewed -supplication--a beggar rising from ferns and mud--lifted itself over -the scene. Rushing along, he plunged into the open country, where wild -flowers, ditches, and fields of corn pungently conversed with moonlight -in a language too simple and formless for human ears to catch. But -Carl’s ears had become inhuman, and he started a loud talk with the -growing objects around him, revelling in their sympathy and advice. By -this time his long, half-running walk had weakened him and he began -to lurch over the soft earth of the road like a crushed and fantastic -drunkard. - - * * * * * - -The ingenuous brilliance of a cloudless morning stood hugely over the -green fields and yellowish brown roads and an air of alert innocence -went exploring between the flowers and ditches. Harriet Radler walked -slowly down the country road on her way to the schoolhouse where she -ruled a little band of demons, drudges, minor poets, and clowns. She -lingered along the roadside, sometimes stooping to tear a tiger lily -from the shallow ditch. Slender and short, a pliant virginity twined -itself around her body. Her young face, pink and barely whipped, had -been marked by a tentative sorrow and was hungering for the actual -battle. Her black and white clothes lazily flirted with imps of morning -air and were encouraged by her eyes. - -Looking down at the ditch, she saw the half-concealed form of a man -lying in the water, with his head and arms resting upon the bank. A -tragedy of dry mud stamped its grey mosaic over his face. His blonde -hair drooped with dirt like a trampled sunflower. The Pierrot-like -hesitation of his features peeped beneath the dirt--a still and -frightened ritual. With the horror of one who believes that she is -beholding a dead man, Harriet knelt beside the figure and shook its -head, her face turned away and her eyes tightly closed. Then she heard -a mingled rustle and splash and saw that the man was rising to his -feet. He stood with bent knees over the mud of the ditch, his black -clothes garlanded with slime, his face twitching into life beneath its -stiff mask of earth. With a squeal of fright she scrambled to her feet -and ran down the road. The man in the ditch, Carl Felman, felt that -something was still evading him and once more experienced the hunter’s -frenzy that had tumbled him over the night. Gripped by a superhuman -agility, he transcended his stiff joints and pursued her down the road. -He caught her, his hands dropping upon her shoulders and whirling her -around. She faced him with uplifted arms, a turbulence of fright and -curiosity swiftly toying with her eyes and mouth. He lowered his hands -and stood limply before her. - -“Do you know what grief is?” he asked, in an almost indistinct voice. - -She stared and did not answer. - -“Do you know what grief is?” he asked, in a softly clear voice. - -A look of loose wonder came to her face. - -“Do you know what grief is?” he asked, in an almost loud voice. - -A darkly smiling contemplation revised the lines of her face. - -“Yes,” she whispered. - -Without another word they both walked down the country road together. - - - - -PART III - -INSTIGATION - - - - -Instigation - -CHAPTER XVI. - - -The train in which Carl was riding rolled slowly through the outskirts -of a southern city and he looked out at the rows of negro cottages -and hovels that plaintively cringed underneath the wide foliage of -willow and magnolia trees. Most of the cottages were unpainted and -grey with the impersonally chaste kiss of time, while the hovels were -mere flimsy boxes covered with black tar paper. Sunflowers and morning -glories stood amid the weeds and twined about the slanting fences -like gaudy virgins dismayed at their sight of a lewdly disordered -room and appealing to the sunlight for protection. Negro women in -faded sunbonnets and wrappers could sometimes be seen shuffling down -the thickly dusty roads and negro children, in weird incoherences of -tattered clothes, tumbled around the humble doorsteps. The children -were little black madmen unconsciously dodging a huge fist that was -concealed beneath the scene. The dust of a late August morning had -dropped upon all things, sifting its listless sadness into every -crevice and crack, and even the fierce sun could not dispel this -invasion. - -Every shade of this scene was an accurately friendly answer to Carl’s -mood and he squandered the brooding light of his eyes upon all of -the visual details outside of the train window. The mask of careless -bitterness upon his face said its hello to the cowering and sinister -apathy of the houses and people, and viciously he longed to leap out -of the window and join the unashamed animal rites which these hovels -and human beings were parading. Here an alien race was standing amid -clouds of evil-smelling squalor and staring at its broken longings and -dreams--staring with a wild hopelessness. This race had lost its own -civilization and was clumsily imitating that of the white man, not -because of any innate desire, but because it had been forced to blend -into its surroundings or perish, and Carl felt that all of his life -had also been an animated lie of flesh and speech, devised to aid him -in escaping from the contemptuous eyes that vastly hemmed him in. -And now, with the feelings of a man who had neatly murdered himself, -he was planning to turn the knives of his thoughts and emotions upon -other people, not for revenge, but because the marred ghost of himself -harshly desired to convince itself that it was still alive. If this -ghost had yielded to the subterfuges of kindness and gentleness it -would have become too much aware of its own thin remoteness from life, -and cruelty alone could induce it to believe that it was still welded -to the actualities of existence. - -As Carl sat at the window he could often hear the grotesquely -quavering, boldly mellow laughter of negro men trudging to their work, -but these sounds did not express humor to him. They held the strong -effort of men to flee from tormenting longings and the numbly vicious -rebuke of poverty, and the sounds which these men released merely -symbolized the long strides of their fancied escape. Laughter can be -merely the explosive sound with which human beings seek to demolish -each other--the indirect weapon of self-hatred. Carl laughed with a -strained loudness, throwing a magnified echo to the negroes on the -dusty roads outside, and a drowsily plump, middle-aged woman in an -opposite seat opened her mouth widely and huddled into a corner, -fearing that she might be attacked by a maniac. He gave her a glance -and feasted upon her fear, for her shrinking attitude was falsely -and deliciously persuading the ghost of himself that it still held a -potency over other people. - -Sometimes a song crazily drifted to Carl’s ears from one of the negro -cottages--a song that was weighted with loosely undulating sadness--and -he listened with a stern greediness. Music is a huge, treacherous -sound made by thoughts and emotions to console them for their feeling -of minute mortality, and after it has given them its dream of -permanent size it disappears, slaying the illusion with silence. Now -it brought a delusion of substantiality to the ghost within the mould -of Carl’s flesh and he listened in a trance of gratitude. Lost in the -obliterations of his grief, he felt infinitely nearer to these abject, -musical negroes outside than to the artificially silent, stiffly -satisfied white people with whom he was riding. Grief, which is an -insane tyrant among emotions, has an effortless way of crossing all -boundaries and walls, but it does not reveal any hidden oneness between -human beings. Grief places men and women in a vacuum of renunciation, -or shows them that they have little connection with the people around -them and that they have been enduring an alien camp. Ruled by this -latter discovery, Carl looked with an undisguised hatred at the formal, -complacent white people in the railway coach and felt that he was -deeply related to the negroes outside. - -Almost three months had passed since the invisible knife had swung -into the middle of his being, and since he had staggered across the -agitated sincerity of night to the peaceful compassion of the young -school teacher. Now and then he remembered their silent walk down the -sturdy brightness of the country road--a silence which had been a soft -wreath ironically thrown upon the weakness of words--and the troubled -way in which she had helped him brush his clothes and wash his face, -and the stumbling simplicity of the words with which she had tried to -comfort him. Although he had been a stranger to her, she had thrown -aside that distrust which is born of sensual pride and a cheaply -purchased worldly wisdom, influenced by the helpless directness of -his demeanor and by the supple humility which a grief of her own had -once left within her. The force of her fearlessness had fallen upon -him like the sweeping touch of another world, and in his daze he had -actually believed that she had been sent by the woman whom he had lost -as an alert messenger striving to teach him how to hold his ghostlike -shoulders up beneath a future burden. If she had held a human aspect -to him he would have hated and reviled her, for then she would have -been merely an atom in the vast, turbid reality that had slowly lured -him to an imbecilic torture. He accepted the curves of her body as -an unearthly visitation and possessed them as one who passes through -a fragile ritual. But after his departure from her, as he once more -walked down the shaggy, solid country road, she had tiptoed away from -him with a spectral quickness, and the clamor of a world had once more -attacked him, like the scattered falsehoods of an idiot. The rustle of -trees had become an insignificant whisper of defeat; the songs of birds -had changed to the shrill vacuities with which a monster entertained -himself; the colored groups of flowers had become the pitiful remains -of a violated carnival; the earth beneath his feet had altered to the -stolid aloofness of a giant moron; and the sunlight had seemed to be a -theatrical accident. - -When he had reached the city, with its orderly ranks of houses and -factories and its dully precise pavements, the scene had been to him -a cunning mirage made by dying people to suppress their realization -of the advancing destruction. The people on the streets had held the -complicated glee and perplexity of an insane slave trying to extract an -imaginary importance from his bondage. He had longed to jump at their -throats and silence the feverish lie that was reviling the truthful -stare of his eyes and only his physical exhaustion had prevented him -from doing this. Grief is a spontaneous welcome sent to the insanity -that lurks within all human beings, and its invitation greets a -responsive strength or a frightened weakness of imagination, according -to the man or woman who receives it. - -And so he had plodded back to his home, carrying within him a numb -confusion that was sometimes disrupted by vicious impulses, and forcing -the ghost of himself into a motion which it could not understand. He -had tried to answer the angry and uneasy questions of his parents -with plausible lies at his own expense. Yes, he had met someone who -had given him bad news and in a fit of temper he had rushed from the -railroad station and deserted his valises. What was in the telegram? -Oh, just a message from a friend. Where had he been for the past two -days? Why, he had gone on a spree and had slept off his drunkenness -at the house of a friend. Shouldn’t he be locked in an insane asylum? -Yes, but life had already granted him that favor. With a glib tongue -he tried to serenade the barren comedy of improbabilities to which he -had returned, but he scarcely heard the words that he was uttering, and -as he wrung them from the empty ghost that was within him he longed -to strike his parents in the face and feed greedily upon their rage -and astonishment, in an effort to convince himself that he was still -substantially powerful, still able to assert his reality by injuring -the people around him. With an act of this kind he could destroy the -indifferent fantasy of life and change it to a tangible and active -opponent. The man standing before him--his father--was merely an -irritating puppet whose lack of understanding moved jerkily, governed -by the hands of an ignorant dream. - -With a cry of hatred, Carl struck his father in the face and watched -him reel back against the wall of the dining-room with a feeling of -warm triumph. He struck him again and revelled in the blood that -decorated the man’s lips. His mother shrieked with fear; his father -returned the blows; and the two men fought around the room, overturning -chairs and vases. Several neighbors, brought by the cries of his -mother, rushed in and overpowered him. Together with his father, -they held him down while someone summoned a patrol wagon, and he was -taken to a cell in a police station. As he sat in the flatly smelling -semi-gloom of the cell he caressed, with an overpowering fondness, -the blood that had stiffened upon parts of his face, for it mutely -testified that he had conquered the remote lie around him and altered -it to a satisfying enemy. He had persuaded himself that he was still -alive, and the blows which he had given his father had been the first -proof of this illusory emancipation. Throughout the night, as he -shifted upon the iron shelf that was his bed, he muttered to himself at -regular intervals, “I am alive, I am still alive,” as though he were -trying to preserve a triumphant dream that would soon disappear, and -the grief within him rocked to and fro upon the words, using them as a -cradle. - -But when the morning dodged shamefacedly into his cell, bringing with -it a faint retinue of city sounds, the annoying fantasy returned with -full vigor, and the ghost within him stealthily assumed possession -of his flesh. Once more he was a thinly wounded spectator, filled -with an impotent hatred at the melee about him and longing for the -lusty release of physical motion. Two small boys, lying upon their -stomachs, peered through the grating of his cell window, which stood -on a level with the sidewalk outside, and jibed at him. He cursed -them incessantly, with an anger that was not directed at them, but at -the meaningless tensions of their voices, and with the tumult of his -own voice he vainly strove to shake the wraith within him to firmer -outlines. - -As he stood before the magistrate a few hours later, an incredulous -sneer was on his face, as though the man at the desk above him were a -pompous, talkative scarecrow, and with a stubborn silence he confronted -the questions that were thrown at him. In a low, hesitating voice his -father declared that he feared that his son had become insane, and the -judge ordered an examination by one of the city physicians. Carl was -returned to his cell, after his parents had pelted him with half-angry -and half-bewildered sentences in an ante-room of the court, and as he -sat again in his cell, surveying the rigid jeer of the iron bars, his -hatred began to listen to the advice of cunning--a cunning pilfered -from the wilted depths of his despair. He began to see that physical -blows and silence were crude and ineffective weapons in his attack upon -the insulting commotion of life and that, if he desired to injure human -beings so that both he and they might become real for a moment, he must -use more indirect and ingenious methods. - -When the city physician, a tall, briskly-balanced man with no -imagination, questioned him in his cell, he became a blandly appealing -and submissive actor. - -“Yes, doctor, I had a nervous breakdown from overstudy, you know, -and for a time I’m afraid that I lost my reason. They tell me that I -struck my father and this has horrified me, as I haven’t the slightest -recollection of what I did. But I’ve gathered myself together now and -I can promise you that I’ll never lose control of myself again--never! -And I’m awfully sorry for what I did. I can assure you of the sincerity -of my repentance.” - -The physician was putty in Carl’s adroit hands--this composed young man -with an intelligent, contrite speech must, of course, be quite sane. -Carl, as he spoke to this man, slowly formed an evil grin beneath the -cool mask of his face, and he relished the task of showering upon this -man earnest platitudes, smooth imitations of that limited sleep known -as “common sense,” and words of self-reproach, because this trickery -brought back to him his old sense of power over his surroundings and -offered a subtle outlet for his hatred of life. The physician ended by -shaking his hand with a genial respect and when evening came he was -given his freedom. - -He returned to his home, repeating the soft treachery of his words -while his fists still longed to lunge out at the faces in front of -him, but the shrewdness of a ghost determined to regain a semblance of -life by cleverly deceiving and punishing the people around it came to -his rescue and controlled his body. His parents had felt wrathful at -the presence of something which they could only dimly see and which he -made no effort to clarify, but life had taught them to make a god of -submission, and a heavy tenderness mingled with an alert fear crept -into their posture toward him. He trudged back to the loquacious, -coarse emptiness of his clerkship at the tobacco shop and shunned the -world that he had previously inhabited, for he feared that if he met -anyone whom he knew he would feel again the irresistible inclination to -interrogate their throats, and he knew that these impulses would only -lead to his own destruction. When he accidentally met some acquaintance -on the street, he would hurry on like a nervous criminal, ignoring the -other’s greetings. - -He prowled about the city, still in search of a violent dream that -could offer its delusion of reckless strength to the mutilated spirit -whose complaints drove him on. He ran to the soiled raptures of -prostitutes and sensually oppressed, adventurous girls who could be -picked up on the streets, and gave them a twisted symphony of blows, -curses, whispered insinuations, lies, while he revelled in the illusion -of cruelty that was lending a false reality to the thin futilities -of his mind and flesh. With a mixture of brutality and delicately -simulated caresses, he overawed these women and they felt themselves -in the presence of a charming, abstracted fiend, whose kaleidoscopic -insincerity only made them long to change it to a gesture of actual -love. He sought the company of thieves and hoodlums, and at first they -distrusted him because his restrained manners and gently removed look -were not proper credentials, but when they saw how eager he was for the -impact of fists, and how he could take a blow and rise with a grin of -stunned delight, they accepted him as an eccentric brother. They did -not know that these actions were not born of courage, but were caused -by a gigantic longing for physical pain--pain that could shock his numb -spirit into a feeling of sharply hideous communion with an actual world. - -But finally this life began to weary him because it could not reach -the flimsy loneliness that stood within him. He carried within him -at all times an audience of ghostly thoughts and emotions, and they -were at last becoming bored with the stolen melodrama. He determined -to practice an economy in movements and words, and he walked alone -at night and on streets where the possibility of meeting someone who -knew him would be distant. He watched the syncopated gliding of people -with the irritation of a stranger. The men and women who drifted or -bobbed along were cardboard mannikins to him and he vainly tried to -give life to their flatness and lack of color. Sometimes he would -pause and touch his arm and face, wondering at the odd inadequateness -of their presence. Olga had become a living but invisible being who -was constantly groping for him, with eyes unused to the outlines of -earth, and sometimes finding his shoulder in a fleeting and accidental -way. When this happened, he would turn around abruptly and berate his -inability to extract her form from the concealing air. At such times -he would often speak to her. “Olga ... Olga ... what is this unsought -blindness that has come to both of us?” he would cry into the night -air of a street. “A cruel chicanery ... a blurred and simple pause ... -a little fantasy within a huge one? Am I a coward rolling in the mud -that stretches before a vast gate? Life seems a fantastic conspiracy, -panting and rattling in its efforts to hide the emptiness beneath -it.... Olga ... take me to your burnished hermitage ... I am tired.” - -He would walk on, trying to imagine what her answer had been, and -winning an elusive and deliberately wrought consolation that stayed -for an hour and then gradually departed. His life had settled into the -recurrence of these reactions, when a second invitation arrived from -his wealthy uncle in the southern city, and he had accepted merely -because he wanted a new arena for his struggle with a discredited -reality--fresher targets and a change in the illusion’s surface. - -And now he was seated in the train that slowly rolled through the -outskirts of a southern city and giving his eyes to the squalid negro -section that unfurled before him.... - - - - -CHAPTER XVII. - - -He turned from the window and strove to place an expression of -close-lipped serenity on his face, for the train had almost reached -the station. He had not seen his uncle for years and he played with -dim memories of the man’s appearance. When he walked down the station -platform he found that his uncle, Doctor Max Edleman, was waiting just -outside of the iron gates. Doctor Edleman was a man of sixty years, -sturdily rotund, with a tall body that was beginning to be disgraced by -its expanding paunch. His head was unusually large and ruled by small -blue eyes and the sharply turned breadth of a nose. His great, thick -lips were tightly withdrawn to an outline of benign patience and his -florid face ridiculed the trace of wrinkles that had flicked it. His -greyish blonde hair was still fairly abundant, and all of him suggested -a man who was uniquely intact because he had scarcely ever allowed life -to clutch him familiarly. Since he was an Alsatian Jew, he kissed Carl -carefully on both cheeks, and this annoyed Carl, not from the usual -masculine reasons, but because he felt that this was a jocose insult -from a fantasy that despised him, but he submitted with a flitting -grimace. - -He took Carl to an automobile and after they had been driven away he -smothered him with questions. - -“Your dear mother tells me that you have been acting queerly of late,” -he said, in the heavily-measured way of speaking he had. “You have been -refusing to speak to anyone and staying away from home--bringing worry -to your dear mother. It seems to me that you have given enough care and -trouble to your parents, and that it’s about time that you acted like a -normal man. I understand that you have been dissipating and going with -dissolute people. You are twenty-five now and there is no longer any -excuse for this wildness. What have you to say for yourself?” - -“Don’t ask me to explain things that you couldn’t understand,” said -Carl, returning to act in the falsely unpleasant play. “I have had a -great grief and I’m trying in my own way to make it a friend of mine. -If I tell you that your questions bring back wounds, I am sure that you -will not desire to hurt me.” - -He gave his uncle words that would appease and disarm him, while at -the same time evading his queries, and this game gave him a smooth -semblance of life. - -“So-o, so-o, I have no desire to penetrate your secrets,” said Dr. -Edleman, in a kindly voice that feebly strove to comprehend. “I am -simply advising you to pull yourself together. Show some consideration -for the people around you.” - -He continued to offer the benevolent adulterations of his advice, and -as Carl listened he suddenly thought of a high-school teacher who had -once rebuked him for bringing to class a theme entitled “Women Who Walk -the Streets,” and with a vaporously swinging amusement in his heart he -almost felt human again. This fantasy could hold a blustering smirk -now and then--its only extenuation. But the nearness vanished as his -uncle’s voice became a swindling monotone, angering him with its formal -pretense of life. Carefully, and with a ghostlike insincerity that -bribed his voice with lightness, he gave words that could hold this man -at arm’s length. The strain of adapting his words to the intelligence -of the man beside him brought him a closer relation to the bickering -phantasmagoria of men and their motives without in any way summoning -his own thoughts and emotions. Dr. Edleman felt that his nephew was -skillfully attempting to defend a selfish past and bringing into the -service of this motive a graceful keenness of mind, but beyond this -point Carl’s words were unable to affect him. - -“I have always admired your brilliancy,” he said, “and I only wish that -you would use it in the right way. A young man must pay some attention -to the desires and opinions of older people. It will be a glad day for -me when I see that you are using your talents to bring happiness to -other people. A glad day.” - -Carl gave a sigh to the grave dullness that marched forth in his -uncle’s voice and meditated upon the curious differences in sound -with which people petted their limitations and discretions. These -differences were known as words, and when they pleased a great number -of people they were hailed as symbols of genius or power, but Carl -could see no distinction between any of them. Like a horde of tired -servants, they pranced to the prides and hatreds of men and then -returned to their common grave, and only their exact arrangement gave -them a flitting assumption of life. “What is the difference between -this old man and myself? Several keys to false doors of thought and -emotion, misplaced or lost in his youth and found in mine.” Through -reiterating these plausibilities he tried to give bulk and texture to -the fantasy of existence. - -The automobile stopped before the Edleman home, which was a large -two-story structure--a partial reproduction of the Colonial period -modified to conform to the more exuberant inclinations of an Alsatian -Jew. Four broad, high wooden pillars, painted white, rose over a wide -veranda and ended in a slanting roof of black slate, and the walls were -of red brick courted by an abundance of vines. A large garden, with -tons of fruit trees and brilliant episodes of flowers, surrounded the -house and was enclosed by a level hedge of shrubs and a low iron fence. -An impression of dreamlessly cluttered luxury, verging in spots upon -bland somnolence, proclaimed the empty heart of the place, but it was -almost a distinct flattery to Carl, who had grown tired of aggressive -angles and plain surfaces. Here, at least, the mirage held a sleek -flirtation with bunches of color and burdened curves. - -His aunt Bertha, a short, stout woman in a gown of brown taffeta and -white lace, welcomed him in a babbling and languid fashion and showed -him to his room. She was a softly shallow woman whose major interests -were card parties and the lingering intricacies of gossip. The flabby -roundness of her face was in the last grip of middle age and her mind -was as scanty and precisely glistening as the greyish-brown hair that -slanted back from her low forehead. After the dinner, she hurried off -to the mildly mercenary rites of a bridge whist party and Carl was -left to wander idly around the garden. He sat on the grass beneath a -persimmon tree and played with lazy, cruel thoughts in which he slapped -a man’s face or tortured a woman’s cheek, still moved by his old mania -to profane the empty dream which life had become to him, forcing it -into a vigorous duplicate of reality. - -The bright afternoon, with its myriads of shrilly clear and hissing -sounds, was like a troubled falsetto rapture and he weakly fought to -bring it nearer to his senses. As he sat beneath the tree he resolved -to give his mind some labor with which it could transform the vision to -a more solid picture, and he thought of the people who would soon be -embarrassing him with their mouths and eyes. They were Jews of a kind -that had rapidly spread over the south. The older people among them had -migrated to the south some forty years previously and had gradually won -large or comfortable fortunes by means of their thriftiness and trading -abilities. They were now contented grand-and great-grand-parents, -surrounded by two generations of their offspring, and all of them were -strangely indifferent to the austere mysticism for which the Jewish -race is so verbosely noted. Dreamless, voluble, self-assured, they -angled with their religion in a half-hearted way and blackmailed, with -money, the occasional flutters of mental curiosity. They had picked up -several mannerisms of the south--softly drawling voices and unhurried -movements--and the only things that distinguished them as Jews were -the curved gusto of their faces and the fact that they mingled only -with each other--a last, lukewarm trace of loyalty left by the surge of -centuries of past incidents. - -Carl went into the house and returned, with paper and pencil, to his -station beneath the persimmon tree. He strove to write a poem to the -woman whom he had lost. It was a torture that, like a starved monster, -devoured the softer spaces within his heart. It was as though he were -endeavoring to compress the ruins of an entire world, making them -narrower and narrower, more and more alive, until at last they formed -the body of a woman. The effort brought him an actual physical pain; -drops of sweat were born on his forehead, and his spirit reeled like a -mesmerized, beaten drunkard. “All of life is a lie unless I make her -appear on this paper,” he cried aloud to the persimmon-tree leaves, -for the lack of better gods. He detested his own futility and sought -to avenge himself upon it. When the poem was finished he fell into -a troubled, plundered sleep in which his consciousness busily made -reports that were unheeded. He could still see the trees and flowers, -but they were like the edge of the universe miraculously brought near -to his eyes. Finally, with an effort like a straight line thrusting -aside several worlds, he roused himself and read the poem. It failed -to satisfy him; it was a tangle of treacherous promises and pleading -fragments--the line of one of her arms, with an ashen delicateness; -the nervously boyish rebuke of her eyes; the tenuous defiance of her -heart; the curled merriments of her hair--fragments fastened to a slip -of white paper and lacking the great surge of breath that could have -whirled them into a speaking whole. He had written other poems to her -and they had produced the same result; but still, huddled under the -tree, he continued to write, much like a dying man who has no choice -save to gasp for breath, only in his case it was a ghost that struggled -to avoid a second death. The ghost was seeking to escape a final -extinction. He wrote until the lengthened shadow of the tree told him -that he must return to the house; but it took him at least ten minutes -before he could censure his face and control his breath. At last, with -the thinly passive mask once more adjusted and held by the slenderest -of threads, he walked from the garden. - -At supper he met his cousin, Dr. Joseph Rosenstein, who was living at -the Edleman home and who treated him with a suspecting affability. The -presence of a poet is always a vague challenge to those people who feel -that he is somehow at variance with the complacent finalities of their -lives, but who cannot draw the difference into a clearer antagonism. -For this reason they try to cover their distrust with a nervous and -questioning amiability. After jovially advising Carl to write a sonnet -to a doctor, protesting to a great admiration for the prettiness -of poetry, and asking Carl whether he didn’t think that practical -people were also of some use in the world, Rosenstein deserted the -farce and began to discuss the technical details of an operation with -Dr. Edleman. Bertha Edleman uttered some placid remarks concerning -the possibility of Carl’s writing short stories that would bring -him a great deal of money; inquired after his parents in a detailed -but listless way; and then, with more vigor, commenced to speak of -engagements, marriages and divorces within her immediate circle. Dr. -Edleman, by turns waggish and blunt, presided over the groups of -corrupted words. Since Carl was anxious not to provoke these people, he -stooped to the task of uttering pleasantly obvious remarks in a timid -and deliberate fashion, and since they secretly felt that his work gave -him a rank lower than theirs, they liked the subdued and abashed manner -in which he spoke. - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII. - - -After that evening he managed to protect his loneliness with clever -words. He told the Edlemans that he was looking for material for short -stories and that he intended to roam about the city; and, elated at -his purpose, they did not object. Since most of his relatives were -still displaying their dignity, jewelry, and card-playing abilities at -northern summer resorts, he found it easy to be alone. - -In the midst of his restless, empty wanderings he often sat for a -while in a little park that rustled and nodded upon the top of a bluff -overlooking a broad river. There he would stare out at the wide, -yellowish-brown flat of water, and the dull green convolutions of the -distant shore, and the water would become an ethereal canvas where -he painted fugitive salutes to the woman who had fled from life’s -semblances. Under the spell of a melting daze he would sit for hours, -almost unconscious of the fact that he held a body of slowly breathing -flesh. At one end of the park the line of benches turned sharply in -toward the city, and this shaded place, guarded by bushes and trees, -was known as “Rounder’s Corner.” It was frequented by thieves, drug -peddlers, sly, lacquered women and an occasional vagrant, and they -gathered there from twilight on and drained the fierce insincerities -of conversation and whiskey, with sometimes the lucid edge of cocaine. -Since Carl came to this spot only during the afternoons, he did not see -these people until, one evening, he managed to absent himself from the -Edleman home on the pretense of desiring a trip on a river steamboat, -and strolled into the park. - -He sat on a bench and looked around him, trying to become interested -in the immediate contortions of the fantasy. One glance told him the -identity of the social circle into which he had dropped and he felt -a jerk of attention, for the more openly rough and cruel people in -life were to him reflections of his ghostly self, spied in a coarsely -exaggerated mirror but none the less valid. Fresh from the lazy -inanities of the Edleman house, he felt a little baffled vigor--the -ghost lamenting its lack of exercise--and he longed to roll once -more in that plastic phenomenon which men insist on calling mud. It -was only through plastering himself with the concentrated moistness -of earth that he could force himself to believe, for a time, in the -reality of life, and he welcomed his chance to repeat this process. He -scanned the whispering, laughing, loose-faced people around him and -turned over in his mind different ways of approaching them, since he -knew how easy it was to heap fuel upon their suspicions. - -A woman dropped down beside him on the bench. She was young in actual -years--not more than twenty-three--but her body had been slashed -by a premature herald of middle age and her rounded face was too -softly plump and wrinkled a little under the eyes and below the chin. -Youth and age were stiffly twined about her in lines that protested -against each other. Her body was short and held a slenderness that -was unnaturally puffed a bit here and there, giving an impression of -incongruous inflation rather than of solid flesh. Her black hair was -a plentiful mass of artificial curls and pressed against a wide straw -hat, festooned with tulips made of gaudy cloth, and she was clad in -loosely white muslin with a crimson sash around her waist. The effect -was that of a school girl playing the part of a street walker in -an amateur theatrical and, if you looked at her clothes alone, the -illusion remained. It was only destroyed by a glance at her face, for -the outward costumes of reality are often unconsciously amateurish, as -though they were striving to obliterate the professional aspect held -by the faces of human beings--a psychic confession. Men and women can -never quite memorize their parts in life and their clothes sometimes -express this absent-mindedness. - -As he looked at this woman Carl noticed that her eyes were not those -of the usual flesh trader--shifting and infantile--but were filled -with a tense distraction. The mere sullen aftermath of whiskey, or -the departure of a man? No, it almost seemed that she was actually -brooding over emotions that had removed her leagues from the bench -against which her body was pressed. Eyes are often unwitting traitors -and they tell the truth more readily than the rest of the face, or -words, since human beings are not so conscious of what their eyes are -announcing. The two holes in the mask of the face are often transparent -or careless admissions, while the remainder of the face is immersed -in a more successful deception. Carl was interested by the fact that -this woman seemed to ignore his presence and was staring straight ahead -of her. He began to believe that her indifference was genuine and he -watched her more closely. Finally she tossed her head, with a gesture -that expressed the defiant return of consciousness, and glanced at -him. Then she threw him the usual “Hello, honey,” and with a disgusted -grimace he dismissed a certain ghostly audience within him, telling it -that the play would not begin. For a while he spoke to her, throwing -slang pebbles at her with an oppressed exactitude and brushing aside -her lustreless insinuations, a little weary of the unconvincing comedy. -Suddenly the stunt nauseated him and he fled back to his own metaphoric -tongue. - -“Do you see that woman passing by?” he asked. “She has a face half like -a twitching mouse and half like a poised cat. I have known such women. -They are continually robbing certain men of emotions in order meekly to -hand back their thefts to other men. With a mixture of cruelty and weak -submission they entertain their own emptiness.” - -He looked away from her, expecting a silence or the affront of cracked -laughter and preparing to leave. Her answer swung his head toward her. - -“You may be speaking to such a woman. Life has undressed me to all -people except myself, and I don’t know what I am. I think that I was -born to be a nun, but something kicked me down a dirty hallway and when -I woke up there were many hands reaching for me and it didn’t seem -important to me whether they took me or not. But I think that I was -born to be a nun.... Does that interest you?” - -He stared at her with his mouth almost describing a perfect O and his -eyes opened to a wild uncertainty. For a moment he felt that they were -both quite dead and that her spirit had been ravished by waiting words. - -“In God’s name, what have you been doing?” he cried. - -“Playing a part, with the assistance of your indifferent slang,” she -said. - -“Why?” - -“I started out by talking to you as I do to most men. You broke into -a rough speech and I parried as usual. The evening was commencing in -its usual convincing manner. Then I began to see that you were acting. -There was a strain on your face, and sometimes you stopped in the -middle of a delicate simile.... I knew that I might be wrong, so I kept -on talking as you expected me to talk.” - -On her face was the smile of a beggar whose tinselled metaphors have -been pummeled and disheveled by surface realities. The plump curves of -her face seemed to fit less snugly beneath the flat deceit of rouge. - -“I am a fool,” he said. “Your eyes told me something, but I spat upon -it. I think that you had better leave me.” - -“I have no intention of leaving you,” she said. - -They sat and stared at each other. - -“Do you give yourself to different men every night?” he asked, as -though his sophistication, in an instant curve, had retreated to an -anxious child long concealed within him. - -“I give them what they are able to take, and that is little. They want -to clutch me for a time, but I don’t feel them unless they stop my -breathing. A man walks into a house, wipes his feet on the mat, spits -into one of the cuspidors, and leaves with a vacant smile on his face.” - -“Why do you want them to come in?” - -“They give me money for whiskey and leisure time in which I can read. -I’ve never been able to find a simpler way of getting these things.” - -The explanation was clear and delicate to him. - -“Of course, the whiskey makes you sneer like a queen, and the books -bring you affairs with better men,” he said. - -“All that I want to do is to pray to my thoughts with appropriate -words, and every night until two in the morning I pay for the granting -of this wish.... But I think that I was born to be a nun.” - -“I think that I was born to be a monk, covering the walls of his cell -with little images, all of them contorting his bright hatred for a -world,” he said. “I think that something also kicked me into a mob of -prattling marionettes, leaving me exposed to the shower of unintended -blows. I have often looked behind me and vainly tried to see who this -first enemy was, but I am afraid that he does not return until you die.” - -With their silence they continued the dialogue for a time. - -“Have you a man who takes your money and kicks you?” he asked. - -“No. Every now and then some dope peddler pays me a visit, but I have a -gun and I know how to use it. I sent one of them to a hospital once. -They call me Crazy Georgie May and they’re always afraid of something -that they can’t understand.” - -“I have a proposition to make to you,” he said. “We’ll live together -without touching each other and each of us will be the monk and nun -that he should have been. I am a ghost who wants to return to life -and you are a living person who wants to go back to the ghost that -was kicked into an insincere ritual of flesh. We’ll erect a unique -monastery of thought and emotion, and pay for it with the slavery of -your hands or mine.... Will you live with me in this fashion?” - -“Yes, if only to see whether it can be done,” she answered instantly. - -They rose from the bench and walked away together--a noble rascal and -an ascetic prostitute. - - - - - _Typography and Printing by Printing Service Company, Chicago._ - - _Electrotyped by Simpson-Bevans Company, Chicago._ - - - - - Transcriber’s Notes - - - A number of typographical errors were corrected silently. - - Cover image is in the public domain. - - Table of contents was augmented with chapter references. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKGUARD *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Blackguard</p> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Maxwell Bodenheim</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Illustrator: Wallace Smith</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: September 5, 2021 [eBook #66224]</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Tim Lindell, sf2001, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)</div> - -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKGUARD ***</div> - - <div class="figcenter illowp100" style="max-width: 20em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/cover.jpg" alt="Cover" /> - </div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<div class="figcenter illowp100" style="max-width: 28em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/i_frontispiece.jpg" alt="" /> - -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<div class="chapter"> - - <div class="figcenter illowp100" style="max-width: 20em;"> - <img class="w100" src="images/i_title.jpg" alt="Title" /> - </div> - -<h1><span class="smcap">Blackguard</span></h1> - -<p class="center">by -Maxwell -Bodenheim</p> - -<p class="center">drawing by -Wallace Smith</p> - -<p class="center">CHICAGO<br /> -COVICI-M<sup>c</sup>GEE · PUBLISHERS ·<br /> -1923 -</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p class="center">Copyright 1923<br /> -Covici-McGee<br /> -Chicago</p> - -<p class="center"><i>First Printing, March, 1923</i> -</p> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS</h2> -</div> - -<hr class="r5" /> - -<table summary="Table of Contents"> -<tr><td class="center" colspan="2"><a href="#PART_I">PART ONE</a></td></tr> -<tr><td><a href="#The_Struggle">The Struggle</a></td> <td>Page 1 </td></tr> -<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</a></td></tr> -<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a></td></tr> -<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</a></td></tr> -<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</a></td></tr> -<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</a></td></tr> -<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</a></td></tr> -<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</a></td></tr> -<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</a></td></tr> -<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.</a></td></tr> -<tr><td></td></tr> -<tr><td class="center" colspan="2"><a href="#PART_II">PART TWO</a></td></tr> -<tr><td><a href="#The_Knife">The Knife</a></td> <td>Page 121 </td></tr> -<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.</a></td></tr> -<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</a></td></tr> -<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</a></td></tr> -<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</a></td></tr> -<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</a></td></tr> -<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.</a></td></tr> -<tr><td></td></tr> -<tr><td class="center" colspan="2"><a href="#PART_III">PART THREE</a></td></tr> -<tr><td><a href="#Instigation">Instigation</a></td> <td>Page 181</td></tr> -<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.</a></td></tr> -<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.</a></td></tr> -<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII.</a></td></tr> -</table> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_I">PART I<br /> -THE STRUGGLE</h2> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="The_Struggle">The Struggle</h2> - -<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</h3> -</div> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-c.jpg" width="80" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="upper-case"> -Carl</span> Felman stepped from a train -at the Union Station of a midwestern -American city. His -young face, partly obscured by a -blonde stubble of beard, was a -passive concealment, and his thin -lips and long nose did not hold that stalwart sleekness -which one associates with earth. If some -joker had taken a Gothic effigy of Christ, trimmed -its beard, dressed it in grey and dirty clothes, and -forced upon it an unwilling animation, he would -have produced an exact duplicate of Carl’s aspect -and gestures.</p> - -<p>In the emotional confusion of the railroad-station, -with its reluctant farewells and gushing -greetings, Carl walked alone and abstracted, -and he treated the scene as though it were a -feverishly unreal mixture of drama and travesty. -He strode with the careful haste of one who seeks -to escape from an irritating dream but knows at -the same time that his efforts are futile. He was -without baggage, and his face held the strain -that comes from battling with open spaces and -strange faces—the hunted question of the hobo. -His face showed two masks, one transparent and -passive and the other tense and protesting. He -had ridden for thirty-six hours in the chair of a -day-coach, without food or sleep, and he was -walking to the home of his parents because he -lacked the necessary car-fare, but these circumstances -were only partly responsible for his air -of spectral weariness. He knew the stunned -exhaustion of a man whose mind and heart had -broken their questions against unfriendly walls, -and at intervals he became immersed in vain -efforts to understand the meaning of his wounds.</p> - -<p>During the twenty-one years of his life he had -resembled an amateur actor, forced to play the -part of a troubled scullion in a first act that bewildered -and enraged him. At high-school he had -been known as “the poet-laureate of room sixteen,” -a title invented by snickering pupils, and -his timidly mystic lyrics about sandpipers, violets, -and the embracing glee of the sun, had gained an -unrestrained admiration from his English teachers. -Teachers of English in American high-schools -are not apt to insist upon originality and mental -alertness in expression, since their own lives are -usually automatic acceptances of a minor role, and -Carl became convinced that writing poetry was -only a question of selecting some applauded poet -of the past and imitating his verse. “You must -say the inspiring things that they have said, but -see that your words are a little different from -theirs,” he said to himself, and his words—“a little -different”—became slightly incongruous upon the -thoughts and emotions of Tennyson and Longfellow, -the latter two having been selected because -they seemed easier to flatter than other poets such -as Browning and Swinburne. Another Carl Felman -watched this proceeding from an inner dungeon -but lacked the courage to interrupt it, for to -a boy the opinions of his teachers, delivered with -an air of weary authority, seem as inexorable as -the laws of the Talmud or the blazing sincerity -of sunlight. Carl was nearing seventeen at this -time—a lonely, vaguely rebellious, anaemic, dumbly -sullen boy, who tried in his feeble way to caress -the life-chains which he did not dare to break. -His parents, middle-aged Jews with starved imaginations -and an anger at the respectable poverty -of their lives, looked upon his poetic desires with -mingled feelings of elation and uneasiness.</p> - -<p>The phenomenon of an adolescent poet in the -family is always liked and distrusted by simple -people—liked because it pleasantly teases the -monotone of their existence, and distrusted because -they fear, without quite knowing why, that -it will develop into a being at variance with the -fundamental designs of their lives. Carl’s parents -clucked their tongues in puzzled admiration -when he read them one of his poems, and then, -with a note of loquacious fear in their voices, told -him that he must look upon writing as a “side-line”—a -pretty, lightly smirking distraction that -could snuggle into the hollows of a business-man’s -life. Carl, who liked the importance of carrying -secret plots within him, did not answer this suggestion, -or gave it a sulky monosyllable, and his -reticence frightened his parents. The simple person -is reassured by garrulity, even when it attacks -but can derive nothing from silence save the feeling -of an unseen dagger. The Felmans wanted -their son to attain the money that had seduced -and eluded their longings, but deeper than that, -they yearned for him to place a colored wreath -over the brows of their tired imaginations—one -that could convince them that their lives had not -been mere sterile and oppressed bickerings. The -father, a traveling-salesman for a whiskey-firm, -wanted Carl to be prosperous and yet daring over -his cups while the mother felt that he might -become a celestial notary-public, placing his seal -upon the unnoticed documents of her virtues.</p> - -<p>Carl experienced the uncertain dreads of a -dwarf futilely attempting to squirm from a ring -of perspiring golden giants known to the world, -and not even sure of whether he ought to escape, -but knowing only that a vicious and unformed -ache within him found little taste for the flat-footed -routines of clerk or salesman. Upon -another planet this initial writhing is doubtless -offered the consolation of better compromises, -but the treadmill uproars of this earth merely -increased Carl’s feelings of shrinking anger.</p> - -<p>“Oh, well, I’ll work in a store or sell something, -and make money. Life won’t let you do anything -else,” he said to himself. “But inside of me, m-m, -there I’ll do as I please. I’ll make a country where -poets and other begging men live in little huts -on the obscure hills and rear their families of -thoughts and emotions, with a haughty peacefulness.”</p> - -<p>He shunned the people around him as much as -possible, studying his lessons in a precisely weary -manner and squatting on the grass of a public -park near his home where he wrote his dimly -placid lyrics to the sun and moon. He had no -companions at school, for the children around him -were quick to jibe at any remark of his that contained -a searching wraith of thought, and he did -not join in the school’s minor activities because -of his angry pride at the giggling accusations of -queerness which he received from the other boys -and girls. They regarded him for moments as an -enticing target, reviling his exact grammar and -mild manners, but for the most part they paid -little heed to this grotesque atom lost in the swirl -of their games and plans. In a smaller school -the strident inquisitiveness of average children -thrown upon each other might have overwhelmed -him, but in the immense city high-school he -managed effortlessly to isolate himself, and the -children, once having dubbed him poet-laureate—sarcastically -mimicking the phraseology of their -elders—proceeded to forget about him.</p> - -<p>When at length he was graduated, he begged -his parents to send him to college, desperately -fighting for another long period in which he could -brush aside dry information and rhyme “earth” -with “birth,” since he preferred the frolic of -misty promises to a world of prearranged shouts -and sweating dreads. But his parents felt that -their period of uneasy indulgence had inevitably -ended, and words trooped from them in righteously -redundant regiments.</p> - -<p>“You’re a big boy now, yes, a big boy, and you -know that we’ve sacrificed everything to give you -a good education,” said Mrs. Felman. “Not that -we regret it, no indeed, we only hope that it helps -you to get along in life, but this college stuff, -now, is a lot of foolishness. That’s only for people -with rich parents, or them that can afford to go -a long time without working; and not only that, -but it fills your head, you know, with a lot of -nonsense. It’s time now that you go out and make -money to help your parents. You know that we’re -just barely able to get along on what your father -makes. Not that we’re begging you for your help, -you understand, but you should be only too proud -to give comfort to your parents. Uncle Emil can -use a smart boy like you in his clothing business -and he told us only the other night that he’d give -you a good job the minute you come down. You’ve -got to give up those writing notions of yours! -They don’t bring you in anything, and a man -must go out into the world and make his own -living. Writing is no business for a strong, sensible -boy!”</p> - -<p>Carl listened with a feeling of impotent anger. -Yes, they were probably right in their commands -and he would be a scoundrel if he refused to obey -them and rescue them from their poverty; but—well, -he preferred to be a scoundrel. “Beyond a -doubt I’m a lazy, ungrateful wretch, and all that -I care for is to put words together—that seems -to relieve me somehow—but say, how about sticking -to what I am?” he asked himself. “I know -perfectly well that I’ll never change, and if I make -a liar out of the rest of my life that won’t make -me any the less guilty. Besides, it’s funny, but I -don’t know whether I want to change. There’s -something satisfactory about being a scoundrel—it -lets you do the things that you want to do; -while being good, as far as I can see, is just pretending -that you like to do the things that you -don’t want to do. Well, I’m not going to stand for -that! I’ve got to choose between hurting my -parents and hurting myself and they are going -to be the victims. This will be mighty selfish, I -know, but I guess I’m a naturally selfish person. -Anyway, I don’t feel much love for them and I -don’t see that it will help them if I try to hide -my feelings. They would find out sooner or later -what an inhuman person I am and they might as -well find out now.”</p> - -<p>Carl answered the verbose commands and advice -of his parents with a mechanical “yes” now and -then—a small shield to protect the inner unfolding -of his thoughts—and walked into his bedroom, -where he rested his dull broodings upon a pillow. -The lives of some men represent a scale of gradually -increasing compromises with, or victories -against, the forces surrounding them, while other -men crowd their decision into one early moment -and walk swiftly down an unchanging road. The -boy with Carl died upon the bed in his room and -the fumbling, stiffly vindictive beginning of a man -rose and walked into the street, with an evil smile -petrifying the softness of his face. In this emotional -birth he became to himself a huge black -criminal staggering beneath the weight of unreleased -plots, and he derived an angry joy -from this condition, reveling in the first guilty -importance that had invaded his meekly repressed -life.</p> - -<p>With the inquisitive grin of one who is quite -convinced that he is an embryonic monster, he -arose at five o’clock on the next morning, stole -into the bedroom of his sleeping parents, pilfered -fifteen dollars from the trousers of his father, and -took the train to a distant city, where he enlisted -in the United States Army. He had first intended -to do this at the nearest recruiting station, but -with the triumphant shrewdness of a budding -knave he decided that if he joined the army in -another city he could more easily escape being -arrested for his theft. He had robbed his parents -with an actually quivering delight, feeling that -it was the first gesture of his attack upon an -unresponsive world. In joining the army he had -not been lured by the recruiting poster’s gaudy -lies concerning “adventure, travel, and recreation,” -but his reasons were more practical and involved. -He longed for the stimulus of a physical motion -that would not be concerned with the capture of -pennies and he believed that he could be more -alone with himself in a new whirlpool than in the -drably protected alcove from which he had fled. -He felt also that if he were going to prey upon -the world he must make haste to learn the tricks -and signals of a rogue and pay for this knowledge -with physical pain and weariness.</p> - -<p>The details of his army life need not interfere -with this quickly sculptured hint of his birth. He -emerged from the lustreless workshop of the army -with the patient bitterness of one whose dreams -have become the blundering slaves of a colorless -reality. For some time he wandered about the -country, in a stumbling dance with various kinds -of manual labor—cotton picking, wood chopping, -factory work. At intervals he engaged in little -thefts, such as the money from a drunken man’s -pockets, the purses of rooming-house landladies, -and articles from the counters of shops, and used -them for a week or two of leisure in which he -wrote of nightingales inebriated with the fragrance -of lilac bushes, or dawn robbing the hills -of their favorite shawl.</p> - -<p>His role of desultory sneak-thief failed to cause -within him the slightest shame or self-reproach -and he felt that his longings were using trivial -weapons in a furtive manner merely to protect a -secretly delicate bravery within him.</p> - -<p>“I don’t care whether the world is filled with -poets or not,” he sometimes said to himself. “If -it were, I might want to be a carpenter or a clerk -then and make that my form of rebellion. I don’t -know. But the world wants to be filled with carpenters -and clerks, and it’s not as fair as I am. -The unfairness makes me angry and I strike -against it.... You must guard your only reason -for living. All that I want to do is to keep on -writing, and since no one cares to pay me for this -kind of work I’ll have to arrange for the payment -myself. When I do hard work during the day -I’m too tired to write at night, and the only way -in which I can get leisure time for writing is to -steal. If this is evil, it’s been forced upon me. -Of course, I’d much rather steal out in the open; -but that would instantly bring me to jail. No, this -complicated game known as a world is unaware -of my existence and I must be equally absent-minded -in my own attitude.”</p> - -<p>His youthful gesture of contorted cynicism, -qualified a bit by the remaining ghosts of a naively -wounded idealism, made him resolve to become -a crafty underdog—a man who had become -obsessed with the task of finding his voice and -was using every possible subterfuge and device -to protect this obsession, leering at the forces -that were attempting to intrude upon his religious -concentration. Right and wrong to him were -unfair scarecrows that slipped from the huge -indifference of his surroundings and demanded -an attention which they were unwilling to give -in return. Perhaps he was a minor knave, seeking -to rationalize his instincts for crime, and -perhaps he merely held a naked determination -like that of a certain immoral slayer and plunderer -known as Nature. The question is a frayed -one and derives little benefit from the tensions -of exhausted arguments. Carl was constantly -harassed by a feeling of inarticulate insignificance, -and the poems which he twisted from his heart, -on park benches and in the long weeds of ditches -beside railroad tracks, were like bunches of -forget-me-nots plucked by a dirty, bewildered -child and thrown as offerings against the stone -breast of an unheeding giant. He still believed -that poetry was a cloak of blurred embroidery -that should be cast over the shoulders of sentiments -such as love, faith, charity, mercy, chivalry, -courage and honor, and he felt both consoled -and amused at the thought that he was using a -rogue to guard within himself the better man -that life had not allowed him to become. His -love for the sentiments which he tipped with -rhymes was partly caused, however, by the fear -that without them he might become too utterly -inhuman for earthly survival.</p> - -<p>For a year he wrestled with different manual -labors, and stole when their perspiring monotones -weakened and angered his desire to write lyrics -that were half trite and half thinly wistful, but -he finally decided to return to the midwestern -city and brave the reactions of his parents, whose -wrathful letters had sometimes visited his journeys. -He determined to rest awhile amid the -moderate comforts of his former home and felt -that he could disarm the anger of his parents -with a masterful, jesting attitude that would -muzzle them. And so, penniless and in dirty -clothes, he was now walking through the heavily -tawdry business district of a midwestern city.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h3 id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</h3> -</div> - -<p>On the streets martyred by crowds, electric -lights pencilled the night with their trivial -appeals, and an ineffectual approach to daylight -spread its desperately dotted jest over the scene. -Since Carl almost never voiced his actual thoughts -and emotions to people, he grasped, as usual, the -luxury of speaking to himself.</p> - -<p>“Electric light is only the molten fear of men,” -he said, as he strode through the unreal haste -of the crowds. “Men are afraid to look at the -night and they have given it eyes as stiffly frightened -as their own. Underneath the comforting -glare of this second blindness they protect themselves. -In a dim light men and women could not -easily escape from each other, for the darkness -would tend to press them together, but in this -violent stare of light they are divided by a self-assured -indifference. Watch them as they stride -along with an air of gigantic, amusing importance. -The crowd is really a single symbol of many -isolations joined to a huge one. It sees only -those people who are unpleasantly conscious of -the electric glare, and who hurry through it with -gestures of alert dislike, or with a slow and morbid -desire for pain.”</p> - -<p>This fancy made him feel conspicuously disrobed, -and the glances of passing people became -to him flitting symbols of derision directed at -his beard and dirty clothes. As he looked up at -the tall, unlit office buildings, grey and narrowly -vertical, they reminded him of coffins standing -on end and patiently waiting for a civilization -to crumble, so that they might inter it and fall -to the ground with their task completed. He -reached the apartment-house section in which his -parents lived—rows of three and four-story buildings -almost exactly like each other, and standing -like factory boxes awaiting shipment, but never -called for. In front of each building was a little, -square lawn hemmed in between the sidewalk and -the curbstone—tiny squares of dusty green lost -in a solved and colorless problem in material -geometry. Carl greeted them with a gesture of -ironical brotherhood as he hurried along the walk, -while people, observing his downcast gaze and -saluting hands, sometimes paused to doubt his -sanity.</p> - -<p>The glib suavity of a midsummer night sprinkled -its sounds down the street and the doorsteps -and walks were heavy with men, women and -children, parading the uncomfortable drabness of -their clothes and unwinding their idle talk. In -pairs and squads, youths and girls strolled past -Carl, laughing and playing to that exact degree -of animal abandon tolerated by the street lights -of a civilization, and sometimes crossing the forbidden -boundary line, with little bursts of guilty -spontaneity. Amid the openness of the street they -were forced to become jauntily evasive of the old -sensual madness brought by a summer evening, -and they sought the refuges of crudely taunting -words, snickering withdrawals, and tentative -invitations. They were sauntering toward the -kittenish excitements of ice-cream sundaes, moving -pictures, and kisses traded upon the shaded -benches in a nearby public park. Thought had -subsided in their heads to a kindly mist that -clung to the rhythm of their emotions, though in -the main, their minds were merely emotions that -vainly strove to become discreet. Most people -are incapable of actual thought, and thinking to -them is merely emotion that calmly plots for more -concrete rewards and visions.</p> - -<p>Carl looked upon the people on the sidewalks -with the attitude of an unscrupulous stranger, -and in his fancy he measured them for material -gains and attacks, without a trace of warm emotion -in his regard. To him they were merely -alien figures busily engaged in deifying the five -senses, and they mattered no more than shadowy -animals blind to his aims and presence. He had -long since frozen his emotions in self-defense and -nothing could unloosen them save the timidly -mystical lyrics which he wrenched from the -baffled surfaces of his heart. During the four -years of his life as a soldier and hobo he had -often looked upon some of the darker and more -rawly naked shades of sexual desire in the people -around him, but after a first period of mechanical -curiosity he had drawn aloof from what he considered -a blind, shrieking, fantastic parade. “This -wearisome game of advancing and retreating flesh, -always trying to lend importance to an essential -monotone, can go to hell,” he had muttered to -himself. “I’ll yield to my sexual desires at rare -intervals, but I’ll do it in the brief and matter-of-fact -manner in which a man spits into a -convenient cuspidor.” Women to him were simply -moulds of dull intrigue, irritating him with their -pretenses of animation and with the oneness of -their appeal.</p> - -<p>As he walked between the incongruities of hard -street surfaces and soft noises, everything around -him seemed to be vainly trying to conceal a hollow -monotone. Middle-aged and old people sat -around the doorsteps of the box-like apartment-houses, -and the circumscribed and hair’s-breadth -shades of intelligence and defeat on their faces -were transparent over one color and shape. Each -of these people strove to convince himself that his -relaxation on this summer evening was a glittering -honor conferred by hours of virtuous toil, -though at times discontent suddenly raised their -voices high in the air. It was as though they -lifted musical instruments, gave them one helpless -blow, and retired to apathy, scarcely aware of -what they had done. Carl looked at them with -a weary indifference that almost verged upon -hatred, and hurried down the cement walk.</p> - -<p>As he neared the apartment-house where his -parents lived it suddenly occurred to him that the -entrance might be decorated by people who would -recognize him and comment upon his appearance -and his abrupt return. The thought of their -amused and veiled contempt, or their assumption -of superior compassion, made him cringe a little -and he turned to a side-street that led to an alley -which extended behind the block in which his -parents lived. He passed through the dismal rear -yard of beaten earth and ascended the wooden -stairway. A negro janitor, who had been working -in this place for several years, gazed at him, at -first with suspicion and then with a slowly pitying -grin of recognition.</p> - -<p>“’Lo, Mistah Felman. What brings you-all -back here?”</p> - -<p>Carl affected an irritated aloofness.</p> - -<p>“I came back to enjoy a little shame,” he said.</p> - -<p>“What dat last word you said?”</p> - -<p>“Shame, shame,” repeated Carl, frowning at -the man.</p> - -<p>“Guess you-all’s crazy,” said the negro, throwing -up his hands and stumping away.</p> - -<p>This was one of Carl’s favorite tricks. Whenever -he desired to avoid a forced exchange of -commonplaces, or the threat of a humiliation, he -would speak in a cryptic fashion that aroused -bewilderment or annoyance in the person before -him and helped him to end the conversation. He -found that the rear door of the apartment was -locked and knew that his parents were visiting an -adjacent moving-picture theater or sitting outside -on the tiny lawn. Happily, he eyed the open window -and remembered how often in the past his -mother had scolded his father for that enormous -crime. Ah, the windows in their minds were well -nailed and shaded. He felt relieved at the knowledge -that he could probably sit for an hour or two -and rest before they returned. He climbed -through the window with the jocose satisfaction -of a criminal whose mock-hanging has been postponed, -and sat on a weak-jointed rocking-chair in -the small dining-room.</p> - -<p>Not a fraction of change had come to the cluttered -dullness of the room. He saw the same -rickety table of round oak, where an inferior circle -was displaying with mild pride an embroidered -square of white linen; the modest and orderly -showing of cut-glass and silverware—tinsel of an -old defeat—; the plaster-of-paris bust of an -Indian, violently colored and bearing an artificial -scowl; the mantlepiece that held a little squatting -Chinaman made of colored lead and the bric-a-brac -effigy of a doll-like courtier in washed out -pinks and blues. On the wall opposite him a brass -clock, moulded into crude cherubs intertwined with -stiff blossoms, busily spoke of itself, forgetful of -the time that it was supposed to measure, and little -prints of uncertain landscapes hung in golden -frames upon the wall-paper that was stamped with -heavy purple grapes against a tan background. -Carl shuddered as though he were in the midst of -a weak and disorganized nightmare, in which reality -was indulging in a hackneyed burlesque at its -own expense, and he crashed his fist upon the oak -table.</p> - -<p>“Damn it, I’ll get out of this some day,” he -shouted, craving the sharp relief of sound, and -then he grinned at the clumsy futility of his explosion.</p> - -<p>“If you ever do manage to escape from this conspiracy -of barren peace and flat lies it won’t be -with angry noise,” he said to himself. “A vicious -calmness will help you more.”</p> - -<p>He extracted a soiled roll of pencilled, smudged -papers from an inside pocket of his coat and -stroked them as though they were a gathering of -living presences. The paper became smooth skin -to him and he questioned it with his fingers. This -reaction was not a sensual one but sprang from his -longing for a reality that had so far eluded his -consciousness. His poems, peeping with eyes of -fanciful promises above the veils that redeemed -their faces, were more concrete to him than actual -flesh and breath.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h3 id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</h3> -</div> - -<p>He sat in the rocking-chair, tired and vaguely -oppressed, clutching the paper in the manner of -one who clings to a tangible encouragement in -the midst of fantastic lies and fists. His parents -came into the room at last and turned on an electric -light without at first noticing him in the semi-gloom. -Turning, his mother saw him in the chair. -Her hands flew to her breast, in two tight slants, -as she impulsively pictured the presence of a -bearded burglar, and then she recognized him and -insulted her emotions with a cross between a gasp -and a squawk.</p> - -<p>“It’s Carl! Carl! For God’s sake, when did -you come in?”</p> - -<p>“About an hour ago, through the window that -father always leaves open,” said Carl, waiting -with a poised and resigned smile for the inevitable -cannonade.</p> - -<p>His father came in from the kitchen, where he -had gone for a drink of water. Seeing Carl, he -slowly challenged him with sleepily prominent -eyes.</p> - -<p>“S-o-o, s-o! You’re back here again,” he said. -“I always said that you would come back. I knew -you would get tired of bumming around. I knew -it. Well, you loafer, what do you want from us -now? Some more money out of my pants-pockets, -maybe? You’re a son that I should be proud of; -oh, yes!”</p> - -<p>“Yes, and a fine condition he comes back in,” -said Mrs. Felman, who was beginning to be angry -at herself because she was not quite as wrathful -at Carl as she felt that she should have been. A -louder voice might supply this missing intensity. -“A fine condition! Look, will you, at his shoes, -and his clothes, and the beard on his face. A nice -specimen to be trotting back to his parents after -four years! When he needs us he comes back, -oh, sure, but we wasn’t good enough for him -when he ran away and stole our money. We -should tell him to go right back where he came -from. Right back!”</p> - -<p>She sat down with an air of stifled indignation -that strained in its effort to capture an actual -condition, and with many gasping words she tried -to piece together the image of an inexplicable -reptile. She was a woman whose emotions, -garrulously bitter because of the material strait-jackets -in which they had writhed for years, were -ever determined to exalt their bondage, if only -to win relief from pain. Carl had always been -an evil enigma to her, one that was at times half -guessed—the accusing finger of her youth, sometimes -barely discerned through the mist of lost -desires. To escape these momentary exposures -she had often swung the blindness of an anger -that was directed as much at herself as at Carl. -The father, however, had obliterated his past self -with a more jovial carelessness and had stolen -the consoling fumes of many taverns, so that he -felt little need for the shrouds of loud noise.</p> - -<p>“Well, at least you showed good sense in coming -through the back way,” he said, looking at his -son with a mixture of wonder and humorous contempt. -“You would have made a fine sight for -the neighbors on the front steps! We would never -have heard the last of it. Noo, noo, what did you -come back for? If it’s just to play your old tricks -again, you can walk right out of here, I tell you. -I’ll stand for no more nonsense from you. Turn -over a new leaf and you’re welcome here, but no -more of your writing, and fancy talk, and high -notions!”</p> - -<p>“Look at him,” said Mrs. Felman. “Sits there -like a piece of wood! Have you nothing to say -for yourself? Why, you haven’t told us how-do-you-do. -Inhuman! I don’t see how I ever gave -birth to such a creature as you.”</p> - -<p>Carl had been sitting like a stone figure, dressed -by the playful passerby known as Life and yet -absolutely void of life. His mute indifference had -seduced all suggestions of flesh from him and -even his blonde beard and hair seemed pasted -upon an effigy. Finally the clever semblance of -emotion returned to his body and sent an experimental -tremble to see whether the flesh was -prepared to receive another animated disguise. -His hands twitched as though they were striving -to overcome their paralysis in an effort to obey -some powerful signal. As he listened to the jerky -tirades of his parents—sterility seeking to regain -a fertility by the use of a staccato voice—part -of him wanted to cringe and win the convulsive -shield of tears, while another part longed to bound -from the insipid, brittle room and glide aimlessly -into the night. The cringing mountebank, unfairly -aided by physical fatigue, won this inner skirmish, -and Carl decided to silence the anger of his parents -by speaking to them in a way that would make -them bewildered, since bewilderment is but a shade -removed from frightened respect. It was the only -pitiful little stunt that could offer him a small -respite from the poverties of noise that were -assailing him—the favorite purchase of Indian -medicine-men, Druid priests, circus barkers and -other childlike charlatans.</p> - -<p>“You see, the situation has been complicated,” -he answered slowly, with the voice of a loftily -enervated teacher. “Complicated. I have tried -to save a possible poet from death—always a -noble but redundant proceeding—but it seems -that his skin must burn. I’ve come back now -to make his coffin and stud it with gold. Gold -would seem to be a favorite metal of yours, my -dear parents. Surely you will be satisfied now. -And it is also possible that you may help me with -the funeral arrangements, since this burial, unlike -plebeian ones, may extend over several years. -And what else do you want me to say? I have -so many acrobatic words and they would love to -perform for you, but I am tired to-night. True, -I am a rascal. Can you forget that embarrassing -challenge for one evening?”</p> - -<p>He broke his stonelike repose into one forward -motion as he leaned toward his parents, turning -upon them the prominently somnolent eyes that -had been the sole gift from his father’s face, and -smiling like an exhausted but lightly poised angel. -His parents were stunned, for their indignant -assurance had suddenly recoiled from an unexpected, -blank wall. They could not quite understand -his words and yet they felt that he was -mocking them. The gracious glibness of his voice -dwarfed them with the mystery of its meanings. -This monster was not ashamed of himself—what -could it signify? But, after all, it was rather -difficult to be angry at a man when you were not -quite sure whether his words were flattering or -sneers. Carl rose abruptly from the chair. Now -he controlled the situation for a time. He kissed -his mother’s forehead lightly and smiled at his -father.</p> - -<p>“I’m tired and hungry,” he said. “A little food -and sleep will fix me up, though, and to-morrow -I’ll look for work of some kind.”</p> - -<p>“Crazy, crazy, just like he always was,” said -his father, turning away with a partly appeased -and patient manner. After all, one must give the -proper blend of pity and tolerance to one who is -truly insane.</p> - -<p>The face of his mother held a virtuous impatience -that made her large nose go up and down -like a see-saw, and on the see-saw a dash of -reluctant tenderness rode.</p> - -<p>“I’ll get you something from the ice-box,” she -said. “You’re still so young—twenty-two you’ll -be next week—and we may yet live to be proud -of you. If you’ll only get rid of your funny -writing notions and your stealing ideas. My God, -what a combination!”</p> - -<p>Afterwards, as Carl ate, they sat at the kitchen -table with him. Mrs. Felman was tall and strong, -with a body on which plumpness and angles met -in a transfigured prizefight of lines. The long -narrowness of her face was captured by a steep -nose slightly hooked at the top and her thin lips -were not unlike the relics of a triumphant sneer. -Even when they tried to be satisfied they never -quite lost their expression of tight gloating. -Above her high cheek-bones her eyes were bitter -tensions of light, and a remnant of greyish-brown -hair receded from the moderate and indented rise -of her forehead. Her skin, once pink, was now -roughly florid, like a petal on which many boots -have been scraped and cleaned. Mr. Felman was -her violent refutation. Short and hampered by -plumpness, the large roundness of his face held -the smirking emphasis of a greyish-red moustache, -huge and clipped at the ends. His thick -lips blossomed uncompromisingly over his fair -double chin, and his low forehead, madly scratched -by a plowman, stood between the abrupt curve -of his small nose and a ruff of dark red hair -pestered by grey. An expression of carelessly -earthly humor, banqueting on shallowness, fitted -snugly upon his face and only his eyes, bulging -with sleep, brought a metaphysical contradiction. -He watched his son with a lazy, half-curious pity.</p> - -<p>“Noo, what have you been doing all this time?” -he asked.</p> - -<p>“I left the army a year ago. You know, I wrote -to you then and found out that you still lived -here. That was very kind of me, I’m sure. Since -then I’ve knocked about in different towns. Sleep -and work, work and sleep—the twin brothers of -man’s inadequacy.”</p> - -<p>“Ye-es, still using long words, the twin brothers -of something or other,” said Mrs. Felman, with a -light disapproval. “Learn to talk and act like -other people and you’ll be better off. I used to -think a little different when I was young, but -believe me, you can’t get along by just dreaming -and talking to yourself. The trouble with you is -that you got a lot of fancy words and no get-up.”</p> - -<p>“Philosophical discourse number sixty-two,” -answered Carl, in the drowsily chanting voice of -a train announcer. “Or have I lost count of them? -Your life hasn’t made you very happy, mother, -and perhaps that’s why your arguments are lacking -in the swagger of conviction. Or perhaps you -think that it’s best to be unhappy, and in that -case I agree with you.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I wouldn’t lower myself by trying to -argue with you,” said Mrs. Felman. “I’m perfectly -right in everything I say, but I simply -don’t know how to fiddle with words like you do.”</p> - -<p>“Have you still got those poetry ideas in your -head?” asked Mr. Felman. “Poetry is no business -for a strong, grownup man. It’s a lot of foolishness -good for women and children!”</p> - -<p>“If you could write things that make money -now,” said Mrs. Felman. “Why, only the other -day Mrs. Benjamin was telling me she has a -cousin who writes love stories for the Daily -Gazette. Nice stories that make you laugh and -cry. And this girl gets twenty dollars apiece for -them, too.”</p> - -<p>“Now, now, don’t be trying to encourage him -again,” said Mr. Felman. “Ain’t we had enough -trouble over this writing of his? Let him go out -and get a regular job, like other men!”</p> - -<p>Carl laughed, and his laugh was like an emotion -interviewed by carbolic acid, and his parents eyed -him with an offended surprise.</p> - -<p>“Still squabbling over the bones,” he said, with -a sarcastic apathy. “If you were more delicate -you might realize that it is inappropriate to argue -at a funeral. I’m only a tongue-tied fool, but I -seem very elusively inarticulate to you because -you’re even more tongue-tied. And now, as usual, -you haven’t understood a word of what I’ve said.”</p> - -<p>“Well, you don’t have to laugh at your parents,” -said Mrs. Felman, with an air of pin-pricked -dignity. “You never did show any respect for us, -in spite of all that we’ve done for you. Never.”</p> - -<p>“Say, Carrie, you’ll have to get a suit for him. -Something cheap, you know, at Pearlman’s,” said -the father. “He’ll never get a job in those rags -of his.”</p> - -<p>“Money, money,” said Mrs. Felman in a mechanically -mournful voice. “All I do is spend money. -It’s terrible.”</p> - -<p>The sound of an opening door invaded the flat -tom-tom of their talk.</p> - -<p>“It’s Al Levy,” said Mrs. Felman, with fear in -her voice. “It would be a shame now if he saw -Carl in this condition. Hurry, hurry, Carl, to the -bathroom before he comes in here. Your father’s -razor is on the shelf and I’ll get you a clean shirt -from the ones you left behind. Maybe they still -fit you, as I was always careful to buy them a -size too large.”</p> - -<p>Carl felt like an ignoble marionette who was -being hastily mended behind the curtain for fear -that he might cast ridicule upon the sleekly -vacant play, and his emotions were evenly divided -between amusement and contempt. Driving his -heart and mind into a fitting blankness, he closed -the bathroom door. Levy had a room in the -Felman apartment and they treated him with -an unctuous respect that almost verged upon -an Oriental self-abasement. He was a man of -twenty-six who worked for a wealthy uncle, -received a large salary, and polished and scrubbed -the limited essentials of a semi-professional man-about-town, -with minor chorus girls and gamblers -helping him to flatter microscopically the fatigue -donated by his daily labors.</p> - -<p>“Be very friendly to Al, please,” said Mrs. Felman, -as they all sat around the dining-room table. -“He’s a very smart man—works in the mail-order -business, selling cheap jewelry to country people, -and makes a pile of money. His seven dollars a -week come in mighty handy to us, I can tell you.”</p> - -<p>“Dammit, all business is going good except -whiskey,” said Mr. Felman, as though he were -inviting an elusive conspiracy to share the firmness -of his tones. “These prohibition fanatics are -ruining everything. The saloon-keepers are all -afraid they’re gonna be closed up, and they won’t -buy. I haven’t sold a barrel in two days. I don’t -know what the world’s coming to with all these -here prohibitions. People are entirely too busy -telling each other what to do, and nobody minds -his own business any more.... Well, anyway, -Carl, there’s still sample bottles for you to swipe -from my overcoat pockets.”</p> - -<p>He said the last words with a bearish joviality, -and had the expression of a bear who has paddled -to within a mile of irony and is sniffing at the -singular realm.</p> - -<p>“Sol, don’t remind me of his old wildness,” said -Mrs. Felman, with a peevish dread. “I still -remember the time when he staggered along the -sidewalk in front of all the neighbors. Is there -anything bad that he hasn’t done, I want to -know?”</p> - -<p>One evening, just before running away from -home, Carl had taken some tiny bottles of whiskey -from his father’s overcoat, without curiosity, but -longing for the feeling of sly self-assurance that -had balanced his blood from former sneaking sips. -He had repaired with the bottles to a neighboring -public park and emptied them in swiftly nervous -gulps, enjoying the vastly kinglike sneer at the -world which had brushed aside his melancholy -uncertainties.</p> - -<p>“I am a poet!” he had cried out to the murmuring -patience of the trees around him, “and -fools will some day gape along my road, and the -open circles of their mouths will be like the rims -of beggars’ cups. My voice will rise above the -dreamless clink of their coins and they will stop -and look at me, as though I were a pilgrim-problem. -An angry amazement will lend its little -catastrophe to their faces. Yes, I will drop beauty -to them, in clearly abundant handfuls, and they -will sit quarreling over its value and tossing me -an occasional penny. But I will never stop to -join their discourses. My feet will be lighter than -breezes and more direct. I am a poet, and the -world is stagnation that I must ever torment!”</p> - -<p>He had lurched back to the Felman apartment, -“dropping beauty” with an incisive exuberance to -the astonished neighbors seated around the doorstep, -and commanding them to examine his gifts. -As he sat at the dining-room table now, he remembered -this episode, and similar ones, with a gust -of half-rebellious shame.</p> - -<p>“This has been my only triumph so far—a -whiskey bottle raised beneath the stars, on a -summer evening, and reigning over an idle riot -of words,” he said to himself with an exhausted -self-hatred. “Am I going to be contented with -this thwarted joke? And yet——”</p> - -<p>Levy stepped into the room and provided a -slightly unwelcome ending to this secret sentence. -Short and slender, his blue serge suit clinging to -him like an emblem of shrewd victory, he made -an excellent period to the labors of thought. Upon -his small, light tan face a twirled-up black moustache -curved to a diminutive swagger and his -bending nose seemed to be vainly attempting to -caress the moustache—an unnecessary affirmation. -His black eyes incessantly drove little bargains -beneath the shine of his black hair.</p> - -<p>“H’llo, folks,” he chirruped, smiling with an -automatic ease at the Felmans. Then he noticed -Carl and looked at him with polite surprise.</p> - -<p>The father and mother regarded each other -with a despondent indecision, dreading the -thought of introducing their drolly disreputable -son to this shining symbol of an outside world -and hating the undeserved appearance of inferiority -which had been thrown upon them. This queer -son had cast his shadow upon their assured and -humbly conservative position in life—in a world -of decently balanced regularities. Their ability at -loquacious pretense took up the burden with a -weary precision.</p> - -<p>“This is my son Carl,” said Mr. Felman, with -a prodigiously uneasy grin tickling the roundness -of his face. “Carl, this is Al Levy. You’ve heard -us talking of him, Al. He’s just come back from -the army—surprised his old parents, you know.”</p> - -<p>“Glad to meet you, I’m sure,” said Levy, with -an expert affability beneath which he exercised -his disdain for Carl’s patched-up appearance and -his inkling of the actual situation.</p> - -<p>He complimented a chair at the table briskly; -or, in other words, he sat down, employing a great -condescension of limbs. He and Felman began an -uncouth debate concerning the respective selling -merits of whiskey and cheap jewelry, while Carl -listened, bored and a little sick at the stomach. -Words to these men were crudely unveiled mistresses, -selling their favors for whatever hasty -coin might be thrown on the table. Levy turned -to Carl.</p> - -<p>“How did you like the army?” he asked, with -a lightly superior kindliness.</p> - -<p>Carl nervously wondered what he should answer -and bickered with his desire to return a curt -indifference to this vaguely garnished mannikin. -He decided to annoy the limited mind of the man -in front of him and take a comforting wraith of -revenge from this result—his customary device -for such situations, always used to evade a language -which he did not care to simulate. The -physical nearness of people made him snarl, for -then his imagination found it more difficult to -trifle with their outlines, and he would strive to -drive them away with insult.</p> - -<p>“The army is a colorless workshop, where men -can forget their past and avoid gambling with -their future,” he said, in an aloofly professorial -voice. “All of the hurried and obedient movements -of a day in the army, like a little drove of -dazed foxes, prevent a man from fully realizing -his own insignificance, and at night there is -always a nearby city in which the sorrowful -illusion can be captured again. Oh, yes, the army -is an excellent prison for men to whom life holds -a fixed horizon—men whose hearts and minds -have reduced curiosity to an ashen foothold.”</p> - -<p>Levy’s brows bent to an unfamiliar process and -perplexity slowly loosened his lips, but a feeling -of irritated pride made him determined not to -show his confusion to one whom he looked upon -as a demented and windy subordinate. He knew -that this “fancy fool” was attempting to parade -a superior knowledge of English, thus creating a -counterfeit of wisdom.</p> - -<p>“Oh, I don’t think that the army is as bad as -all that,” he said, in a glibly hurried voice, trying -to assume an attitude of careless disagreement. -“I was a sergeant-major once in the National -Guard, down in Tennessee, and we had a pretty -good time of it, I’ll tell you. It gave us all a -splendid muscle and fine appetite, and it taught -us to obey the commands of our superior officers -without hesitating. You know, in life you’ve got -to follow the orders of someone who knows -more than you do, or you’ll never get anywhere. -Besides, we had a lot of intelligent men in our -outfit. Why, my company commander was one -of the best lawyers in Nashville.”</p> - -<p>“My planet is somewhat distant from yours. I -was barely able to hear you,” said Carl, amusedly. -“Still, that doesn’t mean that either of us is -better or worse than the other. Your eyes are -contented with what they see and mine are not. -But it would not be very important to tell you -of things that you have never missed.”</p> - -<p>Levy became involved in his cigarette smoking -while he futilely asked his mind for an adequate -and unconcerned retort. Mrs. Felman sensed his -annoyance and felt hugely angry at her son for -“not getting in right” with this splendid young -business-man and for speaking in a manner that -was mysteriously and trivially vexing.</p> - -<p>“Ach, Carl always talks just like a hero in a -story,” she said, in an agitated effort at humorous -masquerade and hoping to smooth over the errors -made by her freakish son. “Don’t pay no attention -to him. I can never understand him myself.”</p> - -<p>Levy, once more completely the successful man -to his own vision, forgot the bite of the beetle, and -turned to the elder Felman.</p> - -<p>“How about a little game of rummy?”</p> - -<p>“Carrie, get the cards,” Felman answered, in -quick tones of bright relief. “Carl will play—he -always was a rummy shark and he never changes -in anything. Such a stubborn boy! I bet you -that forty years from now he’ll be just as foolish -as he ever was.”</p> - -<p>“Your optimism concerning the length of my -life intrigues me,” said Carl.</p> - -<p>Ten-cent pieces were placed on the table and -the cards were shuffled. To the other two men -the card game would have lacked interest without -the money to be battled for, not because of the -tiny gain involved, but because their desires for -relaxation were lacking in spontaneity and needed -the pettily deliberate strokes of a familiar whip -to encourage their birth. Whenever, on rare occasions, -they romped upon some lawn, tossing a ball -to a child, or read the lurid clumsinesses of some -magazine, they showed a sheepish hesitation and -hazily felt that they were wasting time that -belonged to the shrewd importance of barter and -exchange. The presence of a coin upon a table, -however, held a glint of the missing coquette. -They swore elaborately and interminably at lost -hands—“that queen would have given it to me”—flung -down the paper oblongs with a tense elation -when they were winning, and enjoyed the -presence of a milder but still keen market-place. -The gambling instinct is never anything more -than the desire to seduce an artificial uncertainty -from a life that has grown mildewed and prearranged—the -monotone must be circumvented -with little, straining devices. It pleased Carl to -imitate the motions of the other two men, outwitting -them at their own small game while still -remaining a repulsed bystander, and sneaking a -morsel of enjoyment from their genuine dismay -at some defeat. After several games had been -played the father yawned mightily, creating a -noise that sounded like a Mississippi River steamboat -whistle heard at a distance, poignant and -full-throated. Perhaps with this yawn his soul -signaled a complaint against the disgrace which -this day had cast upon it—a nightly remonstrance -unheard by his mind and heart. Levy, subdued -and impressed by Carl’s card-playing abilities, -pelted him with commonplaces which he tried to -make as genial as possible, and Carl, too sleepy -to be belligerent or aloof, gave him softly vague -responses. Mrs. Felman, for the first time, looked -out with heavy peace from behind the crinkling -newspaper where she had been placidly nibbling -at the perfumed logics of a latest divorce scandal. -Her son had finally redeemed the evening by -exhibiting a small but ordinary proficiency which -drew him a little nearer to the dully efficient level -of mankind, and her reflections upon his material -future became a shade less hopeless.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h3 id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</h3> -</div> - -<p>At an early hour on the following morning she -hurried Carl to the business section of the city -so that the neighboring women, who slept late -after getting breakfast for their men, would not -see him from their windows, and at a department -store she purchased a cheap suit of clothes for -him. He dressed behind a small screen in the -store, feeling like a small, eccentric lamb who was -being glossed for the market. She left him at an -elevated railroad station, extracting a dollar from -her pocketbook with an air of intensely solemn -and reflective importance.</p> - -<p>“Don’t waste it now; I know your tricks,” she -said. “Be sure and get the afternoon paper and -look through the want ads. Take anything at the -start—don’t be high-toned.”</p> - -<p>Carl gave her the necessary monosyllables of -assent and walked down the street, his mind busy -with many insinuations.</p> - -<p>“Perhaps I’d better stop stealing for a while,” -he said to himself. “If I keep it up without an -intermission it’s going to land me in jail again -and I’m not anxious for that circumscribed travesty -to happen. That term of three months in -Texas gave me a great deal of time in which to -write, but the little animals in that place intruded -with a bite that was both wistful and inadequate. -It’s a little difficult to write about beauty and -scratch your skin simultaneously—the proud stare -of the former does not like to sit in the prison -of a small irritation. It is an intricately adjusted -equilibrium and the lunge of a finger nail can -desecrate this subtly balanced aloofness. There -is little difference between the bars of mind and -actual iron rods, but when you are still partly -inarticulate, physical motion can become a necessary -recompense. No, for the time being I had -better strain my hands in prayer against the tiny -implements with which men felicitate their stupidity. -Back and forth—but what else can I do?”</p> - -<p>It was his habit to think only in metaphors and -similes, and in this way he evaded the realities -that would otherwise have crushed him. He -walked down the street, practicing an emotion of -stolid submission, and this surface humility -played pranks with his blonde-topped head and -made his thin lips loosely unrelated to the rest -of his face. As he strode through the business -district of the city, with its sun-steeped frenzies -of men and vehicles, the scene pressed upon him -and yet was remote at the same time. It was as -though he were studying a feverishly capering -unreality and vainly striving to persuade himself -that he formed a significant part of it.</p> - -<p>The unrelenting roar of automobiles, wagons -and cars became the laughable and inarticulate -attempt of a dream to convince him that it held -a power over his mind and body. Men and women -darted past him with a rapidity that made them -appear to be the mere figments of a magic trick. -Here he caught the thick tension of lips, and -there the abstracted flash of eyes, but they were -gone before he could believe that they had interfered -with his vision. He paused beside a dark -green news-stand squeezed under the iron slant -of an elevated-railroad stairway and strove to pin -the scene to his mind and fix his relation to the -people who were jesting with his eyes. Young and -old, dressed in complications of timidly colored -cloth, each seemed to be running an exquisitely -senseless race in the effort to gain a nonsensical -foot on the other person. The masked rush of -their bodies deprived them of a divided sexual -appearance and lure—men and women, touching -elbows without emotion, were swept into one -lustreless sex which darted in pursuit of a treacherously -invisible reward. The entire structure -around them—buildings, signs, and iron slabs—stood -like a house of cards carefully supported by -an essence that rose from the rushing people, and -Carl felt that if these men and women were to -become silent and motionless, in unison, the house -of cards would instantly lose its meaning and -tumble down.</p> - -<p>“What are they gliding and stumbling toward?” -he asked himself—the old, poignantly futile first -question of youth. “Each man, with an ingenious -treason, is trying to forget his inability at self-expression -and soiling the void with an increasing -burden that will prevent him from complaining too -much. At some time in their lives all of these -people felt, dimly or strongly, for a moment or -for years, the ludicrous ache of a desire to stand -out clearly against their scene, but the loaded -momentum of past lives—the choked influence of -past futilities—pushed them along with a force -which they could not withstand. It is really a -stream of adroitly dead men and women that is -fleeing down this street—surreptitiously dead -people living in the bodies of a present reality and -perpetuating the defeated essence of their past -lives.”</p> - -<p>As he stood and watched the crowd he found it -necessary to ask himself the words: “What gave -its slyly amused signal for this plaintive race -through the centuries?”</p> - -<p>He also found it necessary to answer: “A -languid idiot, much in need of consolation, -refuses to abandon his dream.”</p> - -<p>Here and there, apart from the main lunge of -the crowd, were men and women, standing still, -as though motion had betrayed them, or loitering -in a carelessly placid fashion. Vacancy and indecision -tampered with most of their faces.</p> - -<p>“How many minor poets have stood upon these -street corners, making arrangements for a gradual -and unnoticed death?” he asked himself, with the -sentimental self-importance of youth.</p> - -<p>But the stage hands clamored that he was neglecting -the play—a habit falsely known as laziness—and -that, with appropriate cunning, they had -erected this city scene so that he and hordes of -others should find it difficult to forget their tamely -borrowed lines. With an uncomplaining wrench -he returned to his surface role of a youth sent -out in weakly gruesome clothes to look for some -task that would begin to answer the flatly strident -requests of an average life. The humble stupor -fell back upon his shoulders and he walked to a -bench in a public square, seated himself, and read -the “want-ad” section of a newspaper. He spied, -with a prostrate frown, the barren jest of: -“Wanted—Young man for clerical work; must be -neat, industrious, wide-awake, sober, well educated, -reliable, good at details, ambitious, honest, -painstaking; salary twelve dollars a week.” He -muttered certain useless words to himself. “The -illusion of a reluctant penny for fresh vigor. If -the applicant is morbidly patient and reasonably -deft at following orders he may after many years -attain the virtue of writing the same trivially -unfair appeal to other men. And even that -exquisite victory is uncertain.”</p> - -<p>He saw that as usual his only choice rested -between an office-boy’s task, dignified by the title -of junior clerk to make it more enticing, and -unskilled manual labor.</p> - -<p>“Now, how will you become tired—mentally or -physically?” he asked himself with great formality.</p> - -<p>Abruptly, and in that conscious and secret plot -which men insist upon calling subconscious, he -peered at the picture of a black man and a white -man throwing a wilted rose back and forth to -each other and catching it without a trace of -emotion. The little, ridiculous rose lost a petal -after each catch, but in spite of its smallness -the number of petals seemed to be inexhaustible. -At a distance the black and white man exactly -resembled each other, but on approaching closer -it could be seen that the black man held the face -of an incredibly stolid ruffian, while the white -man’s face was engraved with the patience of a -cowed child. Not being acquainted with psychoanalysis—that -blind exaggeration of sexual -routines—Carl did not believe, after he returned -to the touch of the park bench, that this picture -had slyly veiled the direction of his physical -desires. He knew that a fantastic whim had -slipped from his mind and induced him to probe -his choice between two equally drab kinds of -labor, striving to make this choice endurable for -a moment.</p> - -<p>He selected three advertisements, all of them -asking for manual laborers, walked from the park, -and boarded a street car. The first place that he -visited was a box factory—a slate-colored crate -of a building, bearing that flatly unexpectant tone -that expresses the year-long mating of smoke and -dirt. As he ascended the gloomy stairway an -endless drone and clatter battled with his ears. -It seemed a senseless blasphemy directed at nothing -in particular—the complaint of a dull-witted, -harnessed giant who was being driven on without -knowing why. Carl entered a huge room disheveled -with sawdust and shavings and cluttered with -black belts and wheels. Men with swarthy, -motionless faces and feverish arms leaned over the -wheels and saws. As he stood near the doorway, -feeling dwarfed and uncertain, a man came toward -him. Sturdy and short, the man looked like a -magnified and absent-minded gnome, too busy to -realize that civilization had played an obscene -trick on him by stealing his fairy disguise and -substituting the colorless inanities of overalls and -a black shirt. The large and heavily twisted features -on his face were partially hidden by a brown -stubble of beard, and like all men who work forever -in factories, he had an ageless air in which -youth, middle age and old age were pounded into -one dull evasion.</p> - -<p>“What d’ya want?” he asked, the words jumbled -to a bark.</p> - -<p>“I’m looking for work. Saw your ad in the -paper.”</p> - -<p>He examined the region between Carl’s toes and -cap, measuring the unimportance of flesh.</p> - -<p>“We want good strong men to load boxes and -carry lumber,” he said. “You don’t look like a -man for the job, bo. You’re dressed like a travelin’ -salesman an’ we want men who ain’t afraid to -get dirt on their clothes. Get me?”</p> - -<p>“Don’t mind this suit of mine,” said Carl. “I -have a much dirtier one at home and I’ll be only -too glad to wear it here. You see, I always feel -more peaceful in dirty clothes, but someone played -a joke on me and made me wear this suit.”</p> - -<p>“Well, you ought to come ready for work, if -you’re lookin’ for it”—the man peered again at -Carl.</p> - -<p>“Nope. Nope. You ain’t got the build for -heavy work. We’re after big, husky men. Sorry, -Jack, but there’s nothin’ doin’.”</p> - -<p>“Say, be reasonable,” said Carl. “I’ve done hard -work off and on for the last four years and I’m -much stronger than I look. Come on, give me a -chance.”</p> - -<p>The man shook his head as his eyes received -Carl’s slender arms and narrow shoulders, and he -did not know that this weak aspect concealed an -inhuman amount of endurance. After another -useless expostulation Carl walked out, grinning -forlornly as he strode down the street. Cheated -out of the phantom opiate of a beautiful box-piling -job because of a deceptive physical appearance -and a twenty-dollar suit, reduced to nineteen -through the expert pleading of his mother! He -looked down with delicate aversion at the grey, -neatly-pressed cloth which concealed his material -humility with lines of dreamless confidence, and -felt a sudden impulse to tear it off and go nakedly -cavorting down the street, taking the cries of -onlookers as a suitable reward, but that sleek -caution born from rough faces and rougher -hands chided him back to sanity. After calling at -another factory and receiving the same refusal, -he decided to wait until the morrow, when he -could don his old, dirty clothes and avert suspicion.</p> - -<p>The city turmoil was slackening, like a huge, -human top beginning to spin weakly. The warm -hardness of a summer evening between city -streets tried a little laughter in an unpracticed -voice, and revolving streams of men and women -hid the pavements—a satiated army returning -from an unsettled conflict. The scene was a mixed -metaphor trying to straighten itself out. Feeling -forlornly alert and useless in the midst of all this -important exhaustion, Carl made his way home.</p> - -<p>A group of neighbors sat with a clean and -well-brushed peace around the doorstep. In the -heat of the summer evening they seemed mere -figures of slightly animated flesh, with their -thoughts and emotions reduced to placidly contented -wraiths. Three middle-aged Jewish women -sat in rocking chairs and knitted with an effortless -incision, unaware of the spiritual prominence that -is usually discovered in their race. Their bulky -bodies censured the lightness of evening air and -their deeply-marked brown faces were those of -self-assured, thoughtless queens issuing orders to -a tiny domain, with palmetto fans for scepters and -rhinestone combs for crowns. Incessantly they -chatted about the personal details of their daily -lives, splitting these details into even smaller -atoms and fondling the minute particles with a -lazy relish. Children romped at their feet or -brought some tiny request to their laps—children -that seemed to be dreams of cherubic hilarity, -released from the busy sleep of the middle-aged -women and reproving it. Behind them, sitting -on the stone steps, a middle-aged Jewish man -glued his depressed weariness to a newspaper. -The orderly sleekness of his clothes had met with -the familiarity of a summer day and the rim of -his once stiff collar, drenched with perspiration, -made a pathetic curve around his fat, brown neck. -His eyes were like flat discs of metal placed on -each side of an enormous, confident nose. Noses -express the spirit of people far better than lips -and eyes, for they cannot be moved and changed -to suit the fears and desires of a person, but -stand with an outline of uncompromising revealment. -Their still silence is often the only sincerity -upon a human face, and the nose of this man -showed a strident green that was contradicted a -bit by the drooping little indentations just above -the nostrils, indicating that the man had his -moments of self-doubt, but refused to yield to -them.</p> - -<p>It seemed incredible to Carl that these people -were housing hearts and minds, for he could see -them only as so many sterile lumps of flesh that -were using every desperate trick to minimize the -crawling shadow of their unimportant graves. -Two of the women knew him and greeted him -with an insincere and inquisitive cordiality.</p> - -<p>“Wh-y-y, Mister Felman, when did you get -back?” said Mrs. Rosenthal, the fattest of the -group.</p> - -<p>“I returned yesterday,” answered Carl, injecting -a great solemnity into his voice.</p> - -<p>“Yesterday? Well, well. And did you have a -nice time in the army? I’ve been told that it’s -really marvelous for a man—makes him so strong -and healthy. And then all the traveling about, -you know, must be so interesting.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, ye-e-es, it’s a wonderful place,” said Carl, -gravely mimicking her drawling voice. “Bands, -and uniforms, and parades. It’s really quite fascinating.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I’m so glad you liked it,” said Mrs. Benjamin, -another woman in the group, who felt that -it was time to advance a well-placed sentence. “I -want you to meet my husband. Mo, this is Mister -Felman, who’s just come back from the army.”</p> - -<p>“Glad t’ meet yuh,” said the man on the doorstep, -blurring the words in a swiftly mechanical -fashion, but looking very closely at Carl.</p> - -<p>Carl returned the salutation in the same fashion, -taking a shade of amusement from his parrot-like -impulse. These hollow creatures—what else -could one do save to imitate their mannerisms and -ideas, for self-protection, and rob and defraud -them at every opportunity, thus giving them a -mild apology for existence? After another round -of wary commonplaces he managed to break away. -His mother met him at the door and he said -“Hello” and was about to pass her when her sharp -voice halted him.</p> - -<p>“You haven’t got an ounce of affection in you! -A nice way to greet your mother! Hello, and he -walks right by like I was some boy he met on the -street.”</p> - -<p>For a moment Carl stood without answering. -This woman who had given birth to him—an -incomprehensible chuckle of an incident—was -almost non-existent to his emotions—a mere -shadow that held an incongruously raucous voice -and guarded one of the gates of his surface prison. -As he stood in the hallway, doubting the reality -of her shrill voice, he asked himself: “Am I an -inhuman monster, unfit to touch this woman’s -dress, or am I a poet standing with candid erectness -in an alien situation?”</p> - -<p>Suddenly the question became unimportant to -him and he felt that he had merely offered his -inevitable self the choice between an imaginary -halo and an equally fantastic strait-jacket. If his -mother actually longed for an affection which he -did not hold, it would be inexpensive to toss her -the counterfeit coins of gestures and words. When -she finished her staccato diatribe, he bowed deeply -to her, with the palm of one hand lightly interrogating -the buttons of his coat, raised her hand -to his lips, and kissed it at great length.</p> - -<p>“Na-a, go away with your silliness,” she said. -“I know you don’t mean it.”</p> - -<p>Her narrow face loosened for a moment and a -shimmer of compensation found her eyes. This -queer son of hers might be faintly realizing, after -all, the unselfish intensity of her efforts to give -him a position of honor and respectability in the -world. Perhaps he was only wild and young, and -would finally press his shoulders against the -admired harness of material success. It could not -be possible that one who had struggled from her -flesh would remain a remote idiot and ignore the -warm shrewdness within her that life had somehow -swindled.</p> - -<p>The elder Felman was reading his paper in the -dining-room. He greeted Carl with a somnolent -imitation of interest, but the heat, aided by a -day spent in pungent saloons, had cheated him -of most of his mental consciousness. He had -become so thoroughly accustomed to drink that -an artificial buoyancy scarcely ever invaded the -dull ending of his days.</p> - -<p>“We-e-ell, where did you go to-day?” he asked, -feeling some slight craving for sound and trying -to rouse his material anticipations.</p> - -<p>He abandoned his seductive newspaper, with its -melodrama that was pleasant because it murdered -at a distance, and questioned Carl with his sleepy -eyes.</p> - -<p>“Went to a couple of factories, but the foremen -were disgusted with the cut of my clothes,” said -Carl. “They felt that the wearing of a new and -unwrinkled suit revealed an intelligence which -should not be possessed by an applicant for manual -labor. I tried to convince them that the semblance -was false in my case, but they refused to be -persuaded.”</p> - -<p>“Always trying to joke. That won’t get you -anything. The main thing is—did you get work, -or didn’t you?”</p> - -<p>“No, I did not. I applied for manual labor, but -I forgot to put on overalls.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Felman stood in the doorway and lifted a -skillet in simple wrath.</p> - -<p>“Factories he goes to!” she cried, in a voice that -was not unlike the previous rattling of the skillet. -“I bought him a new suit and shoes this morning -so he could look for common, dirty work! It’s -terrible. Here we sent him to high-school for -four years and his only ambition is to work as a -common laborer.”</p> - -<p>The father smiled dubiously at her explosion.</p> - -<p>“Now, Carrie, don’t let all the neighbors know -your business,” he said. “Your holler is enough -to drive anyone crazy. There’s no harm in honest -work, Carrie, and besides he’ll soon get tired of -sweating in factories and look for something -decent. Don’t worry.”</p> - -<p>“I guess anything will be better than that silly -scribbling that’s ruined his life so far,” said Mrs. -Felman, her anger dwindling to a guttural sulkiness. -Carl, who had been sitting with a suffering -grin on his face, gave them soothing words and -once more held them at arm’s length.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h3 id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</h3> -</div> - -<p>In the dirty clothes that he had worn upon his -arrival, qualified by a clean shirt, he went forth -on the next morning and found work as a lineman’s -helper for a telephone company. He was -required to climb up the wooden poles; hand tools -to the lineman; unwind huge spools of wire; make -simple repairs under the lineman’s guidance. -As he labored from pole to pole, down a suburban -street, taking the impersonal whip of the sun and -winning the pricks of insects on his sweat-dappled -face, he felt dully grateful toward the physical -orders that were crudely obliterating the confused -demands of his heart and mind. As he -toiled on, this dull feeling gradually rose to a self-lacerating -joy. He revelled in the cheap vexations -brought by his tasks—the unpleasant scraping -of shins against iron rungs and the sting of -dust in his eyes—and his self-hatred stood apart, -delightedly watching the slavish antics of the -physical mannikin.</p> - -<p>Then, when this emotion paused to catch its -breath it was replaced by a calmer one, and his -insignificance receded a bit, beneath the substantial -lure of arms and legs that were moving -toward a fixed purpose. “I am doing something -definite now and that is at least a shade better -than the indefinite uselessness of my thoughts,” -he mumbled to himself as he lurched from pole -to pole. The slowly mounting ache of his muscles -became a bitter hint of approaching peace and -he looked forward to the moment when he would -quit his labors and enjoy the returning independence -of his body, as though it were a god’s -condescension. He worked quickly and breathlessly, -as one who hurries to a distant lover’s -arms. Filled with a doggedly naive hatred for -his own deficiencies, he welcomed this chance -to insult them with disagreeable and infinitely -humble postures, and he gladly punished himself -underneath the violence of the sun. It was, -indeed, a spiritual sadism deigning to make use -of the flesh.</p> - -<p>“Hey, Jack, take it a little easier,” the lineman -called down to him once. “Don’t kill yourself at -this job. It’s too damned hot to work hard.”</p> - -<p>Carl gave him a beaten grin and moved his -arms even faster while the lineman bewilderedly -meditated upon this imbecility. The lineman was -a burly young Swede with a broadly upturned -nose and thickly wide lips. His face suggested -poorly carved wood. The blankness of his mind -held few skirmishes with thought on this rasping -afternoon and his mental images were confined -to tools, stray glasses of beer, yielding pillows, -and feminine contours—the flitting promises that -held him to his day of toil. He possessed no -human significance to Carl—he was a drably accidental -automaton who shouted down the blessed -orders that gave Carl little time for definite -thoughts and emotions: an unconscious helper in -the flogging of mind and soul.</p> - -<p>As they walked down the street after the day’s -work Carl looked closely at him for the first time. -Sweat and dirt were violating the youthful outlines -of his face, and his small blue eyes were -contracted and deeply sunk as though still directing -the movements of his arms. The blunt -strength of his body sagged beneath the colorlessness -of clothes and his head was wearily bent -forward—the grey frenzies of a civilization had -exacted their daily tribute and it is possible that -he was not aware of the glory and impressiveness -which certain poets find in his cringing role. For -a time Carl looked at him with an exhausted -friendliness and felt tied to him by the intimate -bonds of confessing sweat and conquered toil, and -this illusion did not vanish until he spoke.</p> - -<p>“Me for beer and somethin’ to eat,” he said, -with heavy anticipation. “A day shust like this’ll -take the guts outa any man. Come along, Jack, -I’ll stand treat for the suds.... An’ say, lemme -give ya a tip—don’t overwork yourself out on -this job. It don’t pay. You won’t get a cent -more at the end of the week. Do whatcha gotta -do but take it kinda easy. Kinda easy. The boss -is too busy most of the time to notice who’s doin’ -the most work an’ unless you loaf on the job you -can get by without killin’ yourself.”</p> - -<p>The complacent roughness of his voice, divided -by the shallow wisdoms of the underdog, destroyed -the feeling of tired communion which Carl had -been sheltering, and his exhaustion began to creep -apart from the man, like a tottering aristocrat. -He was once more a proudly baffled creator, shuffling -along after a day of useless movements, and -his hatred for human beings awoke from its short -sleep and brandished a sneer on his loose and dirt-streaked -face.</p> - -<p>He walked into a corner saloon with Petersen -and gulped down a glass of beer. Its cool interior -kiss aroused a bit of vigor within him and he -looked around at the men who were amiably fighting -to place their elbows on the imitation mahogany -bar. Their faces were relaxed and soiled, -heavily betraying the aftermath of a day of toil, -and an expression of brief elation teased their -faces as they swallowed the beer and whiskey and -licked their lips. After each drink they stood with -blustering indecision, like generals striving to forget -a menial dream and regain their command of -an army, or quietly tried to erase the blunders and -supplications of a day, seeking nothing save the -solace of lazy conversation and weakly clownish -arguments. The strained, corrupt clamor of -voices debating over women, prize-fighters, and -money swayed back and forth and was timidly -disputed by the whir of electric-fans and the clink -of glasses. A wave of sleepy carelessness stormed -Carl as he watched these men. Inevitably thrown -in with them, as a sacrifice to a dubious reality, -he felt inclined to copy their actions and inanely -insult his actual self, since at this moment all -words and gestures seemed equally futile to him.</p> - -<p>“What essential difference is there between a -poet, boasting of his reputation, and a workman -bragging about the women who have allowed him -to molest their bodies?” he asked himself, forcing -the question out of the drained limpness of his -mind. “The poet has taught better manners to -his vanity, with many an inquisitive artifice, -while the other man is more natural and clumsy.”</p> - -<p>Petersen’s voice interrupted the soliloquy.</p> - -<p>“Come on, have another.”</p> - -<p>“Make it whiskey this time,” said Carl to the -bartender. “I’ll pay for this one, Petersen.”</p> - -<p>“Keep your money, keep it,” answered Petersen, -warmed by his beers to an insistent generosity. -“I got plenty of it. But say, I’ll be a little shorter -in kale tuhnight when Katie gets through with -me. There’s no way of spendin’ money that that -dame don’t know, but I guess all women are like -that. They make you fly some to get ’em. Gonna -meet her at eight tonight.”</p> - -<p>“Who’s Katie?” asked Carl, drowsily amused -after his whiskey.</p> - -<p>“She’s a little brunette I’m goin’ with. I’m -blonde myself so I like ’em dark an’ well-built. -Fine-lookin’ girl she is. Some curve! She ain’t a -fast dame by no means but I give her money so’s -she can look decent. You know the wages they -pay at them damn department-stores! I don’t -wanna be ashamed of her when I take her out so -I get her the best of everythin’—silk stockings, -nice hat, swell shoes.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t she feel kinda small about a man paying -for her clothes?” asked Carl, slipping into Petersen’s -language.</p> - -<p>“Well, she said no at first but I told her that -she didn’t have to give me nothin’ except what -she wanted to,” said Petersen. “I’m a straight -guy with women, I am.”</p> - -<p>“Do you love her?” asked Carl, wondering how -Petersen would take the question.</p> - -<p>He looked at Carl with a heavy disapproval.</p> - -<p>“Say, cut out the kiddin’,” he answered. “D’ya -lo-o-ove her”—he mimicked the words with astonished -derision—“none of that soft stuff for me. -She’s a good-lookin’, wise girl, and if I don’t see -anyone I like better I’ll prob’ly marry her, but -she ain’t got no ropes tied to me. You bet not! -There’s plenty of fish in the pond, Jack.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, if you’ve got the right kind of bait,” -answered Carl, deliberately falling into the other -man’s verbal stride, “but be sure that someone else -isn’t fishing for you at the same time. Hooked -from above, while not watching, you know.”</p> - -<p>“You’re a regular kidder, ain’t ya,” said Petersen, -who dimly felt that Carl was masking the sly -wisdom of sexual pursuits and respected him for -it. “But say, Katie’s got a nice friend—Lucy’s -her name. She’s a little thin, not much curve to -her, but some men like ’em that way. An’ she’s -kinda quiet too, don’t talk much, but I don’t care -for them when they’re always laughin’ and cuttin’ -up. Then they’re usually tryin’ to get on your -good side an’ work you for somethin.’ Would ya -like to meet this dame? I don’t know just how -far she’ll go but she might come across if you -work her right.”</p> - -<p>“Sure, lead me to her,” said Carl, inaudibly -laughing to himself.</p> - -<p>“Alright, I’ll make it for eight tuhmorrow night. -The four of us’ll go somewhere.... Well, one more -an’ we’ll beat it, Jack.”</p> - -<p>Glancing swiftly ahead, Carl saw that this -engagement would demand a certain sum of -money and he wondered how he could obtain it -since he would not be paid for his present work -until the end of the week. While he stood, grasping -this little perplexity, he noticed that a man -at his left had placed a ten-dollar bill on the bar, -in payment for a drink, and that the man was -immersed in a violent argument with a friend, -with his back turned to the bar. The bartender -was at the other end of the counter, and after a -glance at Petersen, who stood dully peering into -his empty glass, Carl whisked the bill into one of -his coat pockets. Then he quickly prodded Petersen’s -shoulder.</p> - -<p>“Come on, let’s go,” he said, and the two walked -out of the saloon, Carl taking care to stroll in a -reluctant fashion and steeling himself for the -angry shout that might come.</p> - -<p>As Carl walked down the street he felt a twinge -of regret at having stolen the money of a stumbling, -minor puppet. He told himself that this -petty gesture had been forced upon him by an -innately vicious contortion known as life, but his -emotions cringed as they arranged an appropriate -explanation.</p> - -<p>“This man whom I have robbed will curse the -treacherous unfairness of life and his eyes, dilated -with bitterness, will see more clearly his relation -to the things around him. In this way I have -really befriended him. The railroad-detective, -who once struck me on the head with the butt of -a pistol, when I was offering no resistance, was -trying to obtain revenge—revenge upon the people -who had made him their snarling slave—and he -blindly reached out for the object nearest to him, -which happened to be my head. But there was no -desire for vengeance in my own gesture. I steal -from men in order to prevent life from stealing -an occasional refuge for my thoughts and emotions. -A purely practical device.”</p> - -<p>He left Petersen at the next street-corner and -boarded a crowded street-car, reflecting on his -engagement to meet the “quiet an’ thin Lucy” as -he stood wearily clinging to the leather strap. -Petersen’s attitude toward women was a familiar -joke. Dressed in its little array of fixed and confident -variations it had pursued Carl in the past -without repulsing or flattering him. To him it -was an elaborately pitiful delusion of dominance -made by hosts of men, who felt the craving to -inject a dramatic variety and assurance into the -frightened monotones of their lives. In an aching -effort to dignify their barren days these men -adopted the roles of hunters and masters among -women. They entered, with infinite coarseness -and precision, a glamorous realm of lies, jealousies, -cruelties, and haloes, and in this wildly fantastic -land they managed to forget the flatly submissive -attitudes of another world. Carl was telling -himself that he had been waiting for a woman -who could bring him something more than the -crudely veiled undulation of flesh but he fashioned -the starving little romance with great deliberateness.</p> - -<p>“Women have excited my flesh and it has often -yielded to them, but that is simply a necessary -triviality,” he said to himself. “I, too, must seek -to evade the monotonies and restrictions of my -life, lest I become mad, but at least I am quite -conscious of the joke. The cheap little drug-store -does not witness any hoodwinked swaggers on my -part! So on to quiet Lucy, with her stiff stupidities -and elastic curves.”</p> - -<p>Once more he had to pass the garrulous sentries -at the gate—the neighbors around the doorstep. -They eyed the dirt upon his clothes and face with -an amazed contempt—Carrie Felman’s son a common -laborer!—and lost in their scrutiny they gave -him monosyllabic greetings.</p> - -<p>“Well, judging from the dirt all over you you’ve -found a job,” said his mother in tones of blunt -resignation.</p> - -<p>“Yes, I’m working as a lineman’s helper for the -telephone company,” he answered in an expressionless -voice.</p> - -<p>After he had washed his parents pelted him -with amiable questions—the details of his work, -wages, and companions—a dash of solicitude -swinging with their desire to entertain the dull -aftermath of a hot summer day. He answered -their questions patiently and they were glad that -their son seemed ready to plunge his “wildness” -into the soothing currents of an average life. -Their affection for him was only able to dominate -their hearts when he failed to challenge the peaceful -assumptions and bargains of their lives, for -otherwise it verged into hatred because it was confronted -by a stabbing mystery which it could not -understand.</p> - -<p>After the evening meal he sat in an easy chair -upholstered with violent green plush and usually -occupied at such times by his father, but donated -to him in honor of his first evening of submission. -He sprawled in the chair, trifling with the headlines -of a newspaper and throwing them aside. A -warm and not unpleasant stupor began to descend -upon his thoughts and emotions and they fluttered -spasmodically, like circles of drugged butterflies. -He closed his eyes. His legs and arms held a heaviness -which he enjoyed because he was not forced -to raise it.</p> - -<p>“Will this be my end—a swinging of arms and -legs during the daytime and then different shades -of sleep or sensual bravado at night?” he asked -himself drowsily—a well-remembered sentence -that needed little consciousness.</p> - -<p>Suddenly, an emotional revolt within him tore -against his physical lethargy, like lightnings from -some unguessed depth of his soul, and he was -astonished to find himself sitting upright in the -chair. He saluted the victory joyously.</p> - -<p>“By God, I won’t give in as easily as this,” he -whispered to the purple grapes on the tan wall-paper, -addressing them because their ugliness was -at least helplessly inert. “You’re concrete symbols, -if nothing else, and you don’t stumble amidst -unconquered clouds. I’ll go to the park and try to -write a poem.”</p> - -<p>Agreeably amazed at the returning vestige of -strength in his legs he walked to the public-park -and sat down upon a bench. Ignoring the people -who were strolling or romping around him he bent -over his paper-pad and tugged at the smooth insolence -of rhyme and meter, but the fight was an -uneven one since his mind and emotions were still -brittle and dazed from their day of hurried subjection. -After crumbling sheets of paper for two -hours he wrote:</p> - -<p>TO A SAND-PIPER</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">One blast—a mildly frightened little host</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of liquid sprites, each holding one high note,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Aroused from some repentance in the throat</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of this grey-yellow bird who skims the coast—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And silence. Far off I can somehow feel</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The drooping-winged sprites back to covert steal.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>The poem did not satisfy him, and in a measure -he felt like a sleepwalker who was imitating gestures -that had lost their meaning to him, but he -dared not substitute his actual thoughts and emotions -in place of the tenuous or stilted fancies -which he believed were all that poetry was allowed -to achieve. All that he wanted to say, and all -that he did say in conversation with himself, muttered -unhappily within him as he sat on the -bench and strained to capture the pretty suggestions -of a mystical rapture, but he was slave to -the belief that poetry was a thinly aristocratic -experience in which thoughts and emotions, -serene, noble, and ludicrously artificial, disdained -the lunges of thought and the turmoils of an actual -world—pale, washed-out princes contending -among themselves for trinket-devices known as -rhymes and meters.</p> - -<p>He rose from the bench, impoverished by the -effort that he had made to counteract a day of -toil, and trudged homeward.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h3 id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</h3> -</div> - -<p>After stumbling through another day of heaving -muscles and bruised shins, with his self-hatred -gloating over the slavery of his body, he met -Petersen and the two girls at a down-town street-corner, -grinning at the thought of what this -experience might hold, for he liked the idea of -pretending to be a sensual beggar while a sneer -within him played the part of a bystander.</p> - -<p>Petersen’s sweetheart, Katie Anderson, was a -short, plump girl who tried, with the incessant -swiftness of her tongue, to apologize for the -excessive slowness of her thoughts. The coarse -roundness of her face was determinedly obscured -by rouge and powder, and her large brown eyes -were continually shifting, as though they feared -that stillness might betray some secret which they -held. Her face knew a species of sly and mild -cunning not unlike that of a rabbit frequently -beaten by life but clinging to its mask of courage -while hopping through the forest of sensual -experience. Her friend, Lucy Melkin, was more -subdued and helplessly candid. Her small slender -body stooped a little as though some unseen hand -were pressing too familiarly upon one of her -shoulders—a hand of exhausted fear—and the -pale oval of her face had the twist of a loosely -pleading infant beneath its idiotic red and white. -Her blue eyes seemed to be endlessly waiting for -something to strike them and wondering why the -blow failed to arrive on time.</p> - -<p>Petersen suggested that they should visit an -adjacent vaudeville theater and when Carl and the -others agreed they walked through the crowded -streets.</p> - -<p>“Baby, but I’ve had some day,” said Katie. -“Them shoppers sure get on your nerves, I’m telling -you. But you’re not gonna let me work all -the time, are you, Charlie dear?”</p> - -<p>“There’s no harm in workin’,” said Petersen, -not wanting to be quite placed in the position of -disdaining an essential fact within his life. “No -harm. I gotta take a lot of sass myself from the -foreman but it’s all in the day’s game. You don’t -get nothin’ easy in this world, ’less you’re a crook, -and if y’are you’ll soon wind up in a place where -ya don’t wanta be. But still, a good-lookin’ girl -like you, Katie, shouldn’t hafta stand on her feet -all day. Don’t be afraid, I’ll make it easier for ya -pretty soon.”</p> - -<p>“Now Charle-e, the way you flatter is somethin’ -terrible,” said Katie, with a simper of nude -delight. “I suppose Mister Felman would like to -get some nice girl too, wouldn’t you, Mister Felman? -Or maybe you’ve got two or three already. -You men can never be trusted.”</p> - -<p>“No, I haven’t been lucky,” said Carl, secretly -exploding with a laughter that was partly directed -at himself.</p> - -<p>He had been afraid that these girls would prove -to be of the shallowly sophisticated, carefully -sulky type and he felt relieved at their coarsely -direct naivetes. An axe, with baby-blue ribbon -tied around it, was more entertaining than a -pocket-knife steeped in cheap perfume.</p> - -<p>“No, I haven’t been lucky,” he went on, “but, -you know, we’re always waiting for the right one.”</p> - -<p>“Why, that’s just what Lucy always says,” said -Katie, rolling her eyes as she looked at the other -girl in a ponderously insinuating manner. “She’s -always been rowmantic, like you, Mister Felman. -Why if I was to tell you of all the fellas she’s -turned down you wouldn’t believe me.”</p> - -<p>“No, perhaps I wouldn’t,” answered Carl, keeping -his face sober with a massive effort.</p> - -<p>“Now, Katie, you keep quiet,” said Lucy, and -Carl was surprised at the actual anger that hardened -her voice. “I’m perfectly able to talk about -my own business without your helpin’ an’ it’s not -nice to be sayin’ such things to a gen’lman who’s -just met me. I’m sure he’s not interested in my -past an’ even if he is I’m the one to tell him an’ -not you. You make me tired!”</p> - -<p>“Well, of all things,” cried Katie. “I was only -tryin’ to be nice an’ here you go and get real -angry about it. I’ve never had a girl frien’ who -was as touchy as you are. I didn’t really tell -Mister Felman anything about you ’cept that -you was rowmantic, an’ that’s nothin’ to be -ashamed about.”</p> - -<p>“See here, stop all this quarrelin’,” said Petersen, -to whom the speech of women was always an -ignorance that assailed the patience of masculine -wisdom. “You women can talk for ten hours -about nothin’! I didn’t bring my friend down to -have him lissen to your squabblin’. Cut it out, I -tell ya.”</p> - -<p>This storm in an earthen jar was amusing to -Carl. He marvelled at the ability of these people -to whip words into redundantly nondescript droves -in which thought gasped weakly as it strove to -follow the uproar of simple emotions. Continually, -he felt the reactions of a visitor from another -planet, witnessing an incredible vaudeville-show. -All human beings to him were hollow and secretly -despairing falsehoods separated only by the cleverness -or crudeness of their verbal disguises, and -he heard them with an emotion that was evenly -divided between amazement and a chuckle.</p> - -<p>“I’m sure that Miss Anderson meant no harm,” -said Carl, with a whim to become the glib peacemaker. -“She was just feeling gay and frisky, -and I took her words in the right spirit. Miss -Melkin was a little angry because she thought that -I didn’t understand Miss Anderson’s intentions, -but she needn’t be afraid. I never misinterpret. -It was just a little misunderstanding on both sides -so let’s forget about it.”</p> - -<p>“Mister Felman, you’re such a perfect gen’lman,” -said Katie, blithely.</p> - -<p>Carl looked at Lucy and saw that a wistfully -surprised expression was liking his words and trying -to explain them to her mind. It was the look -of a baby flirting with an incongruous sophistication -and striving to create a fusion between ingenuousness -and a certain sensual wisdom learned in -the alleys of life.</p> - -<p>“Ah, these starved dwarfs, how little it takes to -please them,” Carl sighed to himself.</p> - -<p>After the wiry, tawdry spectacle of the vaudeville -show, with its weary acrobats and falsetto -singers, the four visited a grimly gaudy Chinese -restaurant, where the Orient becomes an awkward -prostitute for Occidental dollars, and while -Petersen and Katie gossiped about their friends -Carl and Lucy traded hesitant sentences and -threw little sensual appeals from the steady gaze -of their eyes. Lucy, with her look of a stunned -infant, made him feel vaguely troubled—the -ghost of a fatherly impulse. After the meal the -group separated, since the girls lived in different -parts of the city, and as Carl and Lucy rode in the -trolley car they tried to make their anticipations -more at ease, with the veils of conversation.</p> - -<p>“Why do you live?” asked Carl, abruptly, to -see whether one or two words in her answer might -be different from what he expected.</p> - -<p>“What a funny question!” cried Lucy. “I don’t -know. Maybe it’s because I wanta be happy. I -never am mosta the time, but then I’m always -hopin’ that things’ll change. Why’d you ask me -that funny question?”</p> - -<p>The fumbling bewilderment of her words irritated -and saddened Carl, simultaneously, and in -an effort to slay the reaction he simulated a compassion.</p> - -<p>“Happiness doesn’t always speak the truth,” he -said, struggling to mould his words so that they -could reach her understanding. “It’s sometimes a -beautiful lie. You understand? A beautiful, soft, -desperate lie. And we say the lie because we -want to change ourselves and somebody else to -something that can make us forget our smallness. -You see, we are not very large, either in our bodies -or in our thoughts, and we try to make ourselves -several feet taller, tall enough to put our heads -on a level with the trees, tall enough to imagine -that the wind respects us. Beautiful, desperate -lies. Do you understand?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t quite understand you,” said Lucy. “You -speak so different from all the men I know, so -different, and yet I like the way you speak. Do -you mean it’s not good for anyone to be happy?”</p> - -<p>“If your happiness doesn’t put you to sleep it’s -good for you. When people try to be happy for -more than a little while it makes them sleepy. -And, you see, it’s much better to be very much -alive, or very dead.”</p> - -<p>“Honest, I’d like to get what you’re sayin’,” -said Lucy, perplexed and softly candid. “Maybe -you mean that we oughta keep movin’ all the time, -hearin’ and seein’ different things, an’ maybe -you’re right about that. I get tired of goin’ down -to work every mornin’ and coming back to the -same room every night. I’d like to travel around, -an’ see different people an’ places, an’ find out -what everything’s like. But I guess I never will.”</p> - -<p>“It’s much easier than you imagine,” said Carl. -“Just pack up your grip some morning and ride -away to another city and see what happens there. -After you’ve done it you’ll wonder what held you -back.”</p> - -<p>“Oh I just couldn’t do that. I’d make my -mother so unhappy if I did, an’ besides, I’d be -afraid of goin’ somewhere all alone. I might not -find any work in the place where I went, an’ then -I’d be up against it. I’d like to travel around with -plenty of money, an’ nothin’ to worry me, an’——”</p> - -<p>Her words trailed off into a revealing silence, -and Carl smiled sadly at the little, pitifully obvious -hint within her faltering. Perhaps it might be -best to marry this simple, mildly wistful, ignorant -girl and surrender himself to monotonous toil and -sensual warmth, forgetting the schemes that were -torturing his heart and mind. The reaction captured -him for a time and then died. No, he was -gripped by a snarling, nimble blackguard who was -determined to lead him to destruction or victory. -And in the meantime, here was sensual forgetfulness—an -interlude with a girl to whom happiness -was merely physical desire captivated by filmy -and soothing disguises.</p> - -<p>They reached her home, a grey cottage in the -suburbs, with a little yard of dusty grass and a -modest porch. It bore an aspect of abject simplicity, -and that meditative leer possessed by the -fronts of all cottages. They sat in a hammock -on the porch, and Carl suddenly kissed her with -the theatrical intensity of one who is trying to -shake off a deliberate role. The gasping expostulations -of her voice were contradicted by the limpness -of her body, and sighing at this prearranged -incongruity, Carl kissed her again, still feeling -like a skillful charlatan and still hoping to lure -himself into a tumultuous spontaneity. This time -she was silent but gripped his shoulders with both -hands, while little shades of fright and desire -gambled for her face. Suddenly, a meek candor -came to her eyes and the seriousness of a child -lost in an overwhelming forest moulded her lips.</p> - -<p>“Will you be good to me if I let you?” she whispered.</p> - -<p>The pathetic, cringing frankness of her words -made a stabbing lunge at his deliberateness and -a feeling of troubled tenderness mastered his -heart. He wept inaudibly, as though he himself -had become a begging child, and the illusion of -rare experience, cheated and twisted out of his -life, returned to betray him. His head struck her -shoulder like the death of regret.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h3 id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</h3> -</div> - -<p>From that night on his life fell into a regular -stride—days of wrenching labor and nights of -rebellious weariness, broken by intervals in which -he crept, like a swindled, dirty child, to the arms -of Lucy, washed into a dreamless rest by the -simple flow of her desire for him and her sightless -worship. To her he was an enigmatic, statuesque -prince delighting her with queer words -which she could finger as though they were new -toys and bringing her an eager compression of -grief and joy which she had never known before. -She realized, dimly, that he was fundamentally -alien to her, and she often said to herself: “Some -day he’ll meet a child who c’n understand all of -his funny words and then he’ll forget about me,” -but this fear only increased the stubbornness of -her grasp. And so his life wavered between toil, -and sensual peace, and little mildly stunted poems -until one morning in late autumn when, at the -main office of the telephone company, he was -discharged with the information that his job had -been merely a temporary one.</p> - -<p>“Thanks, old boy,” he said loudly in the face of -the astonished cashier. “If you knew what a -relief this is to me you’d take a drink with me to -celebrate the occasion.”</p> - -<p>“Now what in the devil’s the matter with you?”—the -man voiced his peevish perplexity as he -fished for Carl’s pay envelope.</p> - -<p>“I was getting accustomed to the chains, but -now that you’ve benignly removed them I’ll make -another effort to escape,” he answered, in the grip -of a gay and aimless relief.</p> - -<p>The clerk tapped his forehead, with a scowl, -and contemptuously tossed over the envelope. -Carl carelessly stuffed the sixteen dollars into a -pocket and walked out upon the crowded down-town -streets. The streets were touched with the -middle of forenoon, that hour when the business -section of an American city is most leisurely and -nondescript in its make-up. The wagons and -trucks were not yet bombarding time with the -full climax of their inane roar and the flatly -hideous elevated railroad trains were firing at -longer intervals. Noise had not yet become the -confused and staggering slave of an ill-tempered -avarice. The nomads and idlers of the city’s populace -were flitting in and out among housewives on -an early shopping-tour and those sleekly bloated -men who stroll belatedly to their offices. A sleepy -young vaudeville actress, painted and satiated, -hurried to some booking-agency; a middle-aged -pickpocket emphasized his grey and white checked -suit with sturdy limbs and examined passersby, -with the face of a shaved fox; an undertaker, tall -and old, paced along with that air of worried -dignity which his calling affects; a fairly young -housewife pounded the sedate roundness of her -body over the pavement and held the hand of a -small, oppressed boy; a stock-raiser from the west -slid his bulky ruddiness along the street, while -beneath his broad-brimmed hat his face held an -expression of awe-stricken delight; a college-girl, -slender and carefully hidden by silk, strove with -every mincing twist of her body to remind you -that she was pretty; a youth, trimly effeminate -and attended by an inexpensive perfume, trotted -along, eyeing the scene with an affected air of disapproval.</p> - -<p>The streets were cluttered with a ludicrous, -artificial union of people—people who were -close together and yet essentially unaware of each -other’s presence, and the invisible, purposeless -walls of civilization crossed each other everywhere. -If he swerved two inches to the right the -chained trance of this lonely farm-hand might -strike the shoulder of this dully wounded chambermaid -from the Rialto Hotel, and with this happening -their lives might become an inch less burdened -and struggling. Their sidelong glances -cross for a moment, like tensely held spears, but -they pass each other from cautious habit, striding -to more prearranged and empty contacts. -Civilization has raised wall-making to a fine art, -striving to hide its dreamlessness beneath an aspect -of complex reticence, and keeping its human -atoms feeble and solitary, since pressed together -they might break it into ruins. During the rush-hours -of a city you can see those streams of people -who are busily making and repairing the walls, -but during the lulls in the fever upon city streets -you may observe the stragglers, wanderers, and -grown-up children who are not quite connected -with this task and who humbly or viciously hurdle -the barriers that separate them.</p> - -<p>These thoughts and emotions formed themselves -in Carl’s mood as he strolled through the -clattering, mercenary sounds of a midwestern -city. The joy of not being compelled to cope with -undesired physical movements brought its lightness -to his legs, and he hurriedly fished for secrets -from the thousands of faces gliding past him. -This shrouded girl with a scowling face—was she -meditating upon the possibility of suicide, or wondering -why her sweetheart had failed to purchase -a more expensive box of candy? Each face curved -its flesh over a triviality or an important affair -and swiftly taunted his imagination, challenging -it to remove the masks that confronted it.</p> - -<p>“Life holds a measure of anticipation and mystery -because people for the most part pass each -other in silence. If they stopped to talk to each -other they would become transparent and wearisome.”</p> - -<p>As Carl walked along hope began to sing its -juvenile ballade within his contorted heart. He -planned to send his poems to the magazines and he -felt strengthened by the unexpected lull of this -late autumn morning. He hurried to his favorite -bench in the public square, one that he always -occupied if it happened to be vacant when he -passed. He had a shyly whimsical fancy—a last -remnant of youth asserting itself within him—that -his touch upon this bench stayed there while -he was absent and gave a sense of invisible, prodding -communion to other pilgrim-acrobats who -occupied this seat at times—an abashed bit of sentimentality -evading itself with an image. Filled -with the alert meeting of hope and bitterness he -wrote with a degree of fluid ease that had never -visited him before, and for the first time his -lyrics grazed a phrase or two that rumored recalcitrantly -of a proud story known as beauty. In -one attempted poem he asserted that an old, -blind, Greek huckster on the side street of an -American city had suddenly towered above the -barrenly angular buildings, in a massive reincarnation -of Homer, and he wrote in part:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">A purplish pallor stole</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Over your antique face—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The warning of a soul</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Rising with tireless grace.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Rising above your cart</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of apples, figs, and plums,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And with its swelling art</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Deriding the city’s drums.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>With a quivering immersion he bent over his -paper, lost to the keen realities of a city day. -Sidling vagrants and transients from small towns -glanced at him with morose disfavor and sometimes -stopped to stare at this shabby young man -whose head was never raised from his writing. -His abstraction was an insult to their sense of idle -release. He wrote for hours and only paused -when hunger of a different kind began irresistibly -to whisper within him, for he had not eaten since -morning. It was six o’clock when he hastened -from the park. He joined the homeward bound -masses, feeling satiated and apart, and dreading -the evening contact with his sagging, verbose -parents. They were sitting and standing in two -of the few postures that life still absentmindedly -allowed them—bending over newspaper and frying-pan.</p> - -<p>“Well, I’ve lost my job,” he said to his father.</p> - -<p>His father dropped the newspaper and his -mother shuffled in from the kitchen.</p> - -<p>“Lost your job—what do you mean?” said his -mother with slow incredulity, as though she had -just escaped being crushed by a falling wall.</p> - -<p>“They told me this morning that it had only -been a temporary one and they paid me off. I -thanked the clerk for his news but he didn’t seem -to take it in the right spirit.”</p> - -<p>“Ach, I knew it would happen, I knew it,” said -Mrs. Felman. “Here’s what you get from your -ma-anooal labor! What kind of work is that for -an educated boy like you? With your brains, now, -you could go out on the road and sell goods. You -should have more get-up about you. Mrs. Feinsthal -was telling me at my whist-club today that -her son Harry is making piles of money with -Liebman and Company. Sells notions and knick-knacks. -You could easy do the same if you had -any sense in your head.”</p> - -<p>“Carrie’s right, this slavery is no work for a -smart man,” said Mr. Felman. “Any fool, you -know, can work with his hands, but it takes real -intelligence to make a man buy something. I -want you to be able to laugh at people, and feel -independent, and not be a poor schlemiel all your -life.”</p> - -<p>“Well, you’ve been a travelling salesman for -twenty years,” said Carl, with a weary smile, “and -before that you tried a general merchandise store, -but it doesn’t seem to have brought you much -money or happiness. You recommend a treacherous -wine. The thing that you’ve fought for has -always scarred and eluded you. What’s the reason?”</p> - -<p>Mr. Felman lowered his head while the round -fatness of his face revealed a huddled confusion -of emotions in which shame and annoyance predominated. -He sat, tormenting his greyish red -moustache, as though it were a fraudulent badge, -and gazing with still eyes at a newspaper which he -was not reading.</p> - -<p>“Perhaps I’ve inherited nothing from you save -your curious inability at making money,” said -Carl, trying to feel a ghost of compassion for this -petrified, minor soldier lost in the uproar of a -battle but still worshipping his glittering general. -“You’ve spent all of your life in chasing a frigid -will-o’-the-wisp, made out of the lining of your -heart, and you want me to stumble after the same -mutilated futility. You’re not unintelligent, as -far as business ability goes, and yet, you’ve always -been doomed to a kind of respectable poverty. -Something else within you must have constantly -fought with another delusion to produce such a -result. You can’t simply blame it on luck—that’s -an overworked excuse. Perhaps you failed to win -your god because you’ve never been able to teach -efficiency and strength to the spirit of cruelty -within you. You have not been remorselessly -shrewd, my father, and now you are paying the -penalty.”</p> - -<p>“Well, because I’ve been a fool that’s no sign -that you should be one, too,” answered Mr. Felman -in a voice of reluctant and secretly tortured -self-reproach. “Yes, I’ve been too kind-hearted -for my own good, dammit, but I want that you -should be different. It’s been too easy for people -to swindle me. Yes, I want you to show them -something that your poor old father couldn’t. -Yes. And as for your talk about chasing money, -tell me, how can a man live decent without plenty -of money? How can he?”</p> - -<p>“We would have our nice store this very minute -if your father had listened to me,” said Mrs. Felman, -mournfully. “He never would let me handle -the reins. I know how to be firm with people, -believe me, but your father would always give -credit to every Tom-Dick-and-Harry that walked -into the store. And whenever he did have money -he always gambled it away. Gambling has been -the ruination of his life! All of your wildness, -Carl, has come from your father’s side and not -from mine!”</p> - -<p>Mr. Felman looked at his son with an embarrassed -admission of secret sins, while for a moment -he became a faun lamenting his awkwardness, -and his uneasy smile quivered as it tried to -say: “Alas, I am not so much better than you are, -my crazy, foolish son.” Carl grinned in return -and for the first time in his life was on the verge -of feeling a slight communion with his shamefaced -father. As the mother went on with her endless -story of the father’s crimes and incapacities the -rubbing of her words produced a glimmer of ill-temper.</p> - -<p>“Noo, don’t you ever stop?” he cried. “Always -nagging about the past! I might be a rich man -now if you hadn’t driven me crazy with your endless -complaints and hollering. Never a moment -of peace from the day I married you.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll have to give both of you something else to -complain about,” said Carl. “I’m going to stop -working for a while and write poetry, and send it -away to magazines.”</p> - -<p>“Ach, I thought those writing notions were out -of your head,” cried Mrs. Felman. “Who will buy -your good-for-nothing stuff? I can’t understand -a word of it myself! Writing again! Will my -miseries never end?”</p> - -<p>Mr. Felman glared at his son and the old hostility -fell opaquely between them.</p> - -<p>“Between you and your mother I’ll be in the -grave soon!” he shouted. “I’m done with you!”</p> - -<p>He arose and stalked out of the apartment, muttering -and producing a loud period of sound as he -closed the door.</p> - -<p>Al Levy strolled into the dining-room, triumphantly -tinkering with one of the points of -his small black moustache; lightly whistling a -tune from some latest musical comedy; and bearing -upon his face the look of bored patience which -he assumed when in the presence of an inferior -being. After he and Carl had exchanged constrained -“helloes” he sat at the table and nervously -interested himself in his cigar, as though -silently signaling for future words.</p> - -<p>“See here, Carl, I don’t want to butt in, and of -course, it’s none of my business, but I couldn’t -help hearing some of the argument that you’ve -just had with your parents and I want to give you -a little advice, purely for your own good. You’re -on the wrong track, old boy. You’re living in a -world that wasn’t made to order for you and you -can’t change it. If you don’t bow to the world the -old steam-roller will get you, and what satisfaction -is that going to bring you? This poetry of yours -is all very well as a side-line, something to fill in -the time when you’re not working, and of course -it’s very pretty stuff. I like to read poetry myself -sometimes. But really you shouldn’t take it more -seriously than that. I’m telling you all this -because you’ve really got a fairly good head on -you and I hate to see you go wrong.”</p> - -<p>The sleekly loquacious man in front of him, -offering his shop-worn little adulterations of -worldly wisdom, aroused Carl to a lightly vicious -mood.</p> - -<p>“You’ve wandered away from your natural -field, Levy,” he said. “Talk about the cheap jewelry -that you sell, or the physical merits of a -woman, or the next candidate for mayor, or the -latest prize-fight, but don’t speak about something -that’s simply an irritating mystery to you. You -know as much about poetry as I do about credits -and discounts, but you’re a swaggering, muddy -fool who imagines that the wisdom of the world -has kissed his head. I’m not interested in you or -your words—you’re simply five crude senses -dressed in a blue serge suit and trying to scoop in -as much drooling pleasure as they can before they -decay. Go out to your poolroom or down-town -theater and leave me in peace!”</p> - -<p>Levy gasped blankly for a moment and then -frowned with an enormous hatred.</p> - -<p>“Why, you stupid fool, this is the thanks I get -for giving you a little sensible advice!” he cried. -“You think that you’re better than everyone else -with all the rot you write about roses and love, but -let me tell you something, a common bricklayer -is more important than you are, any day in the -year! A man like that is helping the progress of -the world while you’re nothing but a puffed-up -little idler! And even you have got to do manual -labor because you’re not fit for anything else. -You’re just a bag of easy words. If it wasn’t for -your parents I’d punch you in the face and teach -you a lesson!”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Felman, who had been knitting on the rear -porch, rushed into the room.</p> - -<p>“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.”</p> - -<p>“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.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h3 id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</h3> -</div> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>“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.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, it’s nothing, nothing, Carl dear.”</p> - -<p>“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.”</p> - -<p>“Carl, you’re talking so funny again. I adore -you when you say things that I can’t understand. -But, oh Carl, I’ve forgotten, I mustn’t say that to -you any more. I mustn’t. You don’t know what’s -happened.”</p> - -<p>“No, I don’t. What is it?”</p> - -<p>“Why, my father says that he’s convinced by -now that your intentions to me aren’t serious an’ -he says that he doesn’t want me to go with you -any more. He says that you’re only triflin’ with -my affections else you’d have asked me to marry -you long ago, an’ my mother says I shouldn’t go -with you ’cause you don’t seem to have any ambition -to rise in the world an’ ’cause you haven’t -enough money to support a wife.... Gee, if you -knew the jawin’ they’ve been givin’ me for the -last two nights!”</p> - -<p>“Yes, but why has all this come so suddenly?” -asked Carl.</p> - -<p>“I don’t want to tell you, Carl.”</p> - -<p>“You might as well, Luce. I can see part of it -on your face now, because you always talk best -when you’re silent. Tell me.”</p> - -<p>“Well, you know my second cousin Fred has -always been runnin’ after me, only I’ve always -been cool to him because I don’t love him, of -course, but a couple of nights ago he came to my -father an’ said that he wanted to marry me an’ -that I wouldn’t have him. An’ ever since then -they’ve all been on top of me! He’s got a store -on the north side, a gents’ furnishing store, an’ he -makes piles of money, an’ all my family are just -crazy for me to marry him. They say I’m just -wastin’ my time with you an’ they’ve forbidden -me to see you after tonight.”</p> - -<p>Carl felt the incongruous embrace of amusement -and compassion as he listened to her simple, -broken, troubled words. This thinly yearning, -stifled girl who had folded him in the arms of her -puzzled adoration, was life really on the verge of -wounding the diminutive misty mendicant that -was her heart? He felt helpless, and a little -guilty because he was not as troubled as he should -have been.</p> - -<p>“Do you want to give me up?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“Carl, you know I don’t! You know it. But, -Carl, you wouldn’t ever marry me, would you?”</p> - -<p>“No, I’m not the kind of a person that you ought -to marry, Luce.”</p> - -<p>She was silent for a time and he watched her -with a pitying question. Had he been unfair to -this poignantly cringing child? Yes, but unfairness -was inevitable when people from those different -planets contained within an earth yield to a -surface emotional attraction.</p> - -<p>“Carl, I’ve always known that we’d hafta part -sometime,” she said, “only I tried to make believe -that I didn’t know it. But I did. We’re too different -from each other, Carl, an’ you know so much -more than I do an’ you’re so much better than I -am. I wanted to hold on to you ’cause I wanted -to make you happy, but all the time I knew that -we wasn’t meant for each other. O I knew it so -well!”</p> - -<p>“I’m not in any way better than you are,” said -Carl. “It’s just that we each want different -things from the world. You want to settle down -in a home, and polish your kettles, and sing to -your children, and blithely wait for your tired -husband every night, while I want to write foolish -words on slips of paper and escape from the -world around me.”</p> - -<p>“But, Carl, it’ll be so hard for me to leave you,” -she said, in the mournful, dazed voice of one who -turns away from a stone wall of whose existence -he is not quite certain.</p> - -<p>A tumult of frail inquiries found the corners of -her face and lips. Her breasts heaving beneath -the blue muslin waist suggested the movements -of loosely despairing hands. She sat with Carl -on the grass of a park and wept in a barely audible -manner as though she were intent upon giving -firmer outlines to a blurred and elusive grief. -Carl felt a softly potent disgust with himself and -life. Human beings—what did they ever bring -each other except pain cunningly disguised or -reaching for a phantom ecstasy? Now he would -be alone again; the slender thread binding him to -animated life would snap; while this child, who -held a cloud where a brain should have resided, -would hide her glimpse of a grotesquely forbidden -heaven and plod back to the soothing subterfuges -of her world. Flitting lies seducing a black void -into an attitude of false friendship. A stumbling -urge, mistaking its own drops of perspiring ardor -for permanent, actual jewels.</p> - -<p>As they stood upon the porch of her home she -looked at the darkened windows and then clutched -the lapels of his coat.</p> - -<p>“They’re all in bed now,” she whispered. “Carl, -I’ve got to have you once more before you go. -I’ve got to. Maybe I’m a bad girl, maybe, I don’t -know, but I want to hold you again.”</p> - -<p>“This will be the least thing that I can give -you,” said Carl inaudibly as they sat upon the -hammock. With great care he tried to form -within himself the intensity of a despairing father, -drawing the swift incense of motion into a farewell -to his child, in the hope that she might be -idiotic enough to preserve it afterwards as a -tangible comfort.</p> - -<p>He closed his eyes as he kissed her, a little -afraid to look into her face.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h3 id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.</h3> -</div> - -<p>One Sunday morning, Carl sat at home, lightly -wandering through a newspaper. On the previous -night he had met Petersen and had yielded to an -invitation to accompany “two swell brunettes -who don’t object to a gay time,” and the recollection -of his violent, drunken contortions came to -him like a weirdly teasing dream of no particular -significance but leaving the temptation of nausea -behind it. He had released a desecrating ghost -of himself from the sneering recesses of his self-despair. -Yes, you could burn away the sensual -rubbish, with derisive gestures, but your emptiness -and weariness always returned for their slow -revenge. He sought to put his thoughts to sleep -with the hasty versions of loves, catastrophes, -and law-suits that winked maliciously at him from -the newspaper.</p> - -<p>In the middle of one page he came upon a -rectangle of gossip concerning a poetry magazine -of whose existence he had never known, and -darting from his insensitive trance he lingered -greedily over the news. Through the efforts of -an elderly poetess several society people had -agreed to endow a small magazine that would be -entirely devoted to verse, and the newspaper item -was heralding the fact that one of these people -had contributed a sonnet to a recent issue of the -magazine. “Mr. Robert Endicott, the well-known -clubman and member of fashionable sets, appears -with a delicate contribution in this month’s issue -of The Poetry Review, our aristocratic little magazine -of the muse. This will be a surprise to those -who know Mr. Endicott only in his role of -business-man and society leader.” Carl strove to -be properly impressed by the surprise, decorating -it with the Order of the Nasty Chuckle.</p> - -<p>He felt that it might be consoling to receive -a rejection slip from an upper-world magazine of -this kind—a dab of caviar on the empty plate—and -so he sent them three poems. The paper -oblong came, but its blank side held the following -note: “Dear Mr. Felman: Your work interests -me. Won’t you drop into the office some time? -Clara Messenger.”</p> - -<p>What men call triumph is a fanciful exaltation -that may fall alike upon atoms and temples—a -grandiose child of hope, whose mother is egoism -and whose father is pain. Men, whose life is but -a sensitive or oblivious second—a fleeting stampede -within mist—seek the absurd consolation of -believing that their work will become immortal, -and this phantom lie has induced many a soldier -to writhe upon some trivial battlefield and many -a minor poet to fight with threats of the gutter. -Carl Felman, obscure, gasping struggler, communing -with the marks left by endless whips, felt -foolishly thrilled at this first glimpse of personal -attention from a magazine and became like a -swain to whom a glove has been thrown from -an enticingly high balcony. He stood peering up -with a timid excitement.</p> - -<p>On the following afternoon he managed to leave -the plumbing shop, with a plea of illness, and -raced to the office of the magazine. A feathery -swirl of quickly purchased emotions—fragments -of a youth that had been shattered—revolved -within his heart. As he closed the door of the -large office he saw two women seated at different -desks and poised over the rustle of papers. One -was elderly and sedate, and her sober clothes were -reprimanding a substantial body. Beneath a survival -of greyish-brown hair, plainly gathered, the -narrow oval of her face looked at life with a -politely questioning air. It was the mellowly -distorted expression of one who has arrived at -final convictions regarding the major parts of -life, and is patiently and inflexibly regarding the -lesser perceptions surrounding her. Her slightly -wrinkled face was dominated by a long, thin nose -and thin, tightly expectant lips, and it seemed -that her tired emotions had gone to sleep and -were staring out from a dream of suave wakefulness. -The other woman was hovering near the -last climax of her youth, and her slender body -rose unobtrusively to the pale repressions of her -face. Small and round, her face carried a well-trimmed -self-satisfaction—the reward of one -whose dreams have lived inwardly, with only an -occasional sip of forbidden cordials. Her loosely -parted lips guarded a receding chin and her barely -curved nose ascended to large brown eyes and a -high forehead.</p> - -<p>Carl walked to her desk and stood for a moment -like a child in a cumbersome robe who is waiting -for some inevitable rebuke. The harshly weary -assurance which he was able to display to other -people vanished in this imagined shrine of an -unattained art. The young woman looked up with -courteous blankness.</p> - -<p>“My name is Carl Felman. You wrote me a note -last week,” said Carl, delicately groping for the -inconsequential words.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, I remember”—her face attained a -careful smile, tempered by a modest curiosity. -“I’m so glad that you came down.”</p> - -<p>She turned to the other woman.</p> - -<p>“Mary, this is Mr. Felman, the gentleman that -I spoke to you about. He sent us a rather interesting -group of poems, you know.”</p> - -<p>Carl winced at the word “rather”—it was associated -to him with “more or less,” “somewhat,” -“somehow,” and “to some extent,” those words -and phrases with which cultured people manage -to say nothing and yet preserve the faint -appearance of saying something. His breathless -attention disappeared and was replaced by the old -morose aloofness. If this woman had asserted -that his poems were trivial or stifled, he would -have respected her, but now he spat contemptuously -at the smooth veil of her words.</p> - -<p>Mary Aldridge, editor of The Poetry Review, -moved her lips into an attitude that came within -a hair’s breadth of being a smile—an expression -of slightly amused and restrained condescension. -She lifted a pencil as though it were an age-old -scepter held by practiced fingers.</p> - -<p>“How do you do, Mr. Felman,” she said.</p> - -<p>Some people are able to say “how do you do” -in a way that makes it sound like “why are you -here?” and Carl inwardly complimented her on -this minor ability and said his repetition in a -voice that made it mean “slip down, fathead.” -After this exchange of vocal inflections, part of -the general vacuity with which human beings -greet each other for the first or last time, he -seated himself and clutched a roll of manuscripts -in the manner of a father who is frantically -shielding his child from some invisible danger.</p> - -<p>“I sent you some poems which were returned, -but I have some others here,” he said. “Perhaps -you will do me the favor of reading them. I am, -of course, anxious to know what may be wrong -with my work, and also what faint virtues it may -hold. Sometimes I feel sure that I am not a poet -and I allow myself the luxury of becoming angry -at the persistent longing that makes me run after -futilities. Will you read some of these poems and -tell me whether I am a fool, or a faltering pilgrim, -or anything definite?”</p> - -<p>The abashed and yet softly incisive candor -would have unloosened or entertained the emotions -of anyone except Mary Aldridge. She -regarded him with a coldly amused impatience.</p> - -<p>“We-ell, I’m very busy just now,” she said, -“but I’ll glance through some of your things. As -I recall, your work had a rather promising line -here and there.”</p> - -<p>He handed her his roll and she scanned the -poems, thrusting each one aside with a quick -frown. She lingered a bit over the last one, in -which he had extracted a sleeping Homer from -the soiled and cowering figure of a blind Greek -peddler.</p> - -<p>“M-m, this one isn’t so bad,” she said, “though -I think that the last lines are a little forced.”</p> - -<p>“If I decide to alter them, will you take the -poem?” asked Carl, bluntly.</p> - -<p>“Oh, no, no, Mr. Felman; your work is by no -means good enough for publication,” she answered. -“I merely meant that this poem in particular had -an element of interest.”</p> - -<p>Accustomed to blows of all kinds, Carl felt -relieved that her frigid shroud had been finally -lifted, and with a smile he reached for his cap. -Conversation is merely a tenuous or sturdy protection -given to an instinctive like or dislike, -and with their first words people unconsciously -reveal the attitude toward each other which they -will afterward try to excuse and defend with -great deliberation. Carl hated the woman in -front of him, not because she had slighted his -work, but because she held to him an attenuated -and brightly burnished hypocrisy that was like -a shriveled mask incessantly polished by her -words. He could have imagined her stamping -upon a hyacinth as though she were conferring -a careful favor upon the petals and calyx. Mary -Aldridge, on her part, disliked the straight lines -of intent which she could sense beneath his terse -questions and missed the bland insincerities of -those smoothly adjusted postures known as good -manners. Life to her was a series of stiffly -draped and modulated curves, violated only by -rare moments of guarded exasperation and anger.</p> - -<p>“Would you advise me to stop writing?” asked -Carl.</p> - -<p>“No, indeed,” she answered, with her first small -smile. “Your work is rather promising and you -seem to be quite young. Some of it reminds me -of Arthur Symons. Of course, I don’t think that -you will ever become a great poet, but we need -lesser voices as well as greater ones, you know.”</p> - -<p>“Would you mind if I asked you to stop using -that word ra-ather and try a little spontaneous -directness?” asked Carl, blithely.</p> - -<p>She rose suddenly and addressed the other -woman, ignoring his words as though they had -been a trivial insult.</p> - -<p>“I’ve just remembered that I must meet Mr. -Seeman at three,” she said. “I’m afraid that I -shall have to leave you with this impulsive gentleman.”</p> - -<p>Carl stood up, but the other woman revealed -with an unrestrained smile that she was actually -aware of his presence.</p> - -<p>“Won’t you stay awhile?” she asked. “We can -talk a bit over your work, if you care.”</p> - -<p>Carl looked at her with suspicion and interest—a -trace of gracious attention in this place. He -resolved to explore the seeming phenomenon and -settled back in his chair, while Mary Aldridge, -with a barely audible farewell, walked out of the -office.</p> - -<p>“Don’t you think you were a little crudely -sarcastic in your last remark to Miss Aldridge?” -asked Clara Messenger.</p> - -<p>“I like an axe sometimes,” said Carl, “although -I don’t worship it monotonously. For certain -purposes it works far better than the swifter -exuberance of a stiletto. Unless a person is -unassumingly frank to me I don’t feel that he -has earned a delicate retort.”</p> - -<p>“Why, it’s impossible to live in the world with -a code like that. One would have to become a -hermit.”</p> - -<p>“No, even hermits are never absolutely isolated. -Living on another planet would be the only remedy, -I guess.”</p> - -<p>“What a curious, lunging person you are! But -you shouldn’t have minded Miss Aldridge so much. -She’s always afraid that if she openly encourages -a young poet he’ll imagine that he’s a genius.”</p> - -<p>“That’s a harmless trick of imagination and it -doesn’t need any encouragement or censure. It’s -a shade better, perhaps, than imagining that you -are a fool.”</p> - -<p>“What an old-young person you are. When you -talk I feel that I’m listening to an insolent essay. -I’m not so sure that a poet doesn’t need praise. -It’s part of his task to change the polite praise -around him to an understanding appreciation, and -that can be very necessary and exciting.”</p> - -<p>“To a poet the appreciation of other people -must be like a glass of lukewarm wine taken after -work,” said Carl.</p> - -<p>“Well, I know that it means a great deal to -me,” said Clara Messenger. “It reassures me that -I’m speaking to the hearts and minds of the -people around me and I’d feel very unimportant -if at least a few people didn’t like my work. One -can’t live in a vacuum, after all.”</p> - -<p>“No? I’ve done it for five years or so. I think -that all of us secretly live in vacuums, but we -use our imaginations to conceal that fact. Words -were really invented to hide this essential emptiness.”</p> - -<p>“You’re a massive pessimist! The strangest -man of twenty-three that I’ve ever seen! If -things are so utterly hollow to you, why do you -live?”</p> - -<p>“In order to persuade myself that I have a -reason for living—a defiant entertainment in the -presence of an empty theater.... But it’s always -futile to defend your reason for living. Tell me, -instead, what do you think of your associate, Miss -Aldridge?”</p> - -<p>“I really think that she treated you a little -heartlessly, but at the same time I don’t think -that she meant to,” said Clara. “Mary is a woman -who grew into the habit of hiding herself from -people because so many of those who looked at -her youth, at one time, failed to understand it.”</p> - -<p>“I can understand that process, though I don’t -believe that it applies in her case. It’s a slow -and sullen withdrawing from the jibing strangers -around you—a wounded desire to meet their walls -of misunderstanding with even harder walls of -your own. As you grow older, I suppose, the -sullenness may change to a well-mannered and -hopeless aloofness. Age softens the attitude and, -still self-immersed, it seeks the distraction of -words.”</p> - -<p>“What has happened to make you say this?” -asked Clara, with a mistily maternal impulse.</p> - -<p>“Just now I’m working in a plumber’s shop, -helping the sewers with their sluggish germs of -future turbulence,” said Carl, “and that, of course, -can play its part in the making of a pessimist.... -But tell me what you think of my work?”</p> - -<p>“Plumbing or poetry?”</p> - -<p>“Both of them are interwoven.”</p> - -<p>“Your poems are stiff and dimly tinted, like a -row of plaster-of-paris dolls standing on a dusty -and venerated shelf. Don’t you see? You talk -about twenty times better than you write, and -I can’t understand this peculiar incongruity. -Perhaps you’ve been taught that poetry is something -that must be ethereal and noble at all costs, -and perhaps you’ve been inarticulate because the -rest of you has been at war with this one illusion. -I don’t feel that you’ve looked upon poetry as -a place where you could express your actual -thoughts and feelings.”</p> - -<p>When a man has been intangibly blind for a -long time, he usually stumbles at last, accidentally, -upon an incident or challenge that makes him -totter on the edge of vision, and in that moment -it is revealed whether this blindness has been -innate or not. If he wavers, then his lack of -sight has been an artificial ailment, and if his -first reaction after the stumble is one of stubborn -irritation his tightly-shut eyes are not apt to -open. Carl felt, without quite being able to shape -the picture, that he was walking out of a sublime -bric-a-brac shop, and yet the contact of him, left -behind in the shop, continued to speak with his -words. As he discussed poetry with Clara he -began slowly to feel that he had been a minute -and prisoned fool, although his words writhed in -an effort to escape an absolute admission. She -gave him practical scoldings, also, concerning -the exact way in which manuscripts should be -submitted to editors, and he listened with the -amusement that a man feels when he suddenly -sees that he has been walking along a street with -his shoes unlaced. She gave him, again and again, -her hazily maternal smile in which sensual desires -selfishly clothed themselves in an ancient and -soothing dress known as kindness.</p> - -<p>“I do hope that I’ve helped you,” she said. “I’d -like to feel that I’ve aided someone to discover -his real self.”</p> - -<p>When he returned to his room he applied a -match to everything that he had ever written and -watched the flaming pile of papers with an emotion -in which dread, tenderness, and elation were -oddly contending against each other. These bits -of paper, with their symbols of shimmering confusion, -had been decorated by the sweat of his -body, the brittle despair of his heart, and the -anger of his soul, and their death brought him -a helpless and jumbled sadness; but gradually -another reaction began to possess him. The naked -quivers of a fighter, crouched in the plan of his -first blow, centered around his heart, and all of -the thoughts within his mind gave one shout in -unison—a meaningless hurrah just before the -first leap of a creative battle. During the next -two months he wrote with an insane speed, and -all of his thoughts and emotions rushed out in -an irresistible, nondescript mob scene—a French -Revolution swinging its torches and howls against -every repression and constraint within him. Good, -bad, and mediocre, they rain in the circles of a -celebrated revenge, and his main purpose was -expressed in these first four lines of one of his -poems:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">You have escaped the comedy</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of swift, pretentious praise and blame,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And smashed a tavern where they sell</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The harlot’s wine that men call fame.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_II">PART II<br /> - -THE KNIFE</h2> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="The_Knife">The Knife</h2> - -<h3 id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.</h3> -</div> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-w.jpg" width="80" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="upper-case"> -With</span> Clara Messenger as his guide, -Carl began to discover that -another world nestled between the -dull apartment houses, raucous -markets, and underworld saloons -which had confined his body—a -world of smoother parlors and studios, in which -stood “poets,” painters, sculptors, novelists, critics, -Little Theater actors, art patrons, students of the -arts, all leading their little squads of camp followers -or plodding methodically in the ranks. This -world was swaggering and overheated, and within -it hosts of minor people were raising their faltering -or blissfully insincere prayers to a god with -a thousand faces, whom they called Artistic -Expression—a god of astigmatic egoism dressed -in cautious shades of emotion and thought, and -obsessed with a fear of irony and originality.</p> - -<p>Carl felt like an emancipated hermit suddenly -thrown as a sacrifice to an uproar of contending -philosophies and artistic creeds. His mind, accustomed -to solitary decisions, became bewildered -amidst the bloodless, tin-sword battle around him -and he wondered how he could possibly make his -own voice heard in the egoistic din. Each man -assured him that the other man was a fool or -a charlatan, and he listened to their conflicting -assumptions of wisdom with a naive dismay.</p> - -<p>“What has lured these people into their attitudes -of isolated and weary superiority?” he -asked himself, “and if the attitudes are genuine, -why do these people make a garrulous religion -of attacking each other? If they actually believed -that their convictions were mountain ranges, with -some snow of immortality soft beneath their feet, -they would dwell with a more pensive calmness -upon these substantial protests, instead of assiduously -pelting each other with flecks of mud in -the valleys.”</p> - -<p>With the melancholy idealism of his youth -Carl had made an emotional sketch in which -artists and writers were a band of profoundly -misunderstood martyrs, clinging to each other as -they accepted the indifference and ridicule of a -practical world, and he was amazed to find that -almost all of them were far too easy to understand, -and thronged with shudders of words at -the idea of clinging to one another. Like an -array of famished and animated housewives, they -traded gaiety and friendly argument while in -each other’s presence, while in secret they carved -each other with gossiping exaggerations, three-penny -sneers, and every hair’s-breadth edge of -derision. Even among their different “schools” -and cliques he found little fusion—the members -of each group were plotting to unseat their leader -because they had commenced to fear that he was -merely using them as a step-ladder.</p> - -<p>This trivial drama, with malice performing -menial duties in the service of the old, egoistic -dream of immortal expression and emotional tallness, -was a new reality to Carl and he surveyed -it with an alert contempt.</p> - -<p>“Why all of this clownish, papier-mache melodrama, -with words playing the part of overworked -murderers?” he asked himself. “Is it possible -that faint voices whisper within these people that -they are not as important and all-seeing as they -would like to be? Most ludicrous tragedy! The -noise, alas, must ever continue, since their doubts -and fears require a constant pounding. Poor, -astounding people! ... The critic, stroking his -suave patter above a tea-table: ‘Oh, yes, Mr. X. -is a very sound man, very sound.’ ‘Mr. C. is indeed -a great poet, for there’s a certain simplicity and -sincerity in everything he does.’ ‘Mr. E. is amazingly -clever and erudite—a most important man.’ -‘Mr. B.? I’m afraid that he’s only a minor Baudelaire, -you know, the old morbid straining after -originality’—this critic is merely allowing his -thoughts and emotions to perform their private -functions upon the publicity of a fanciful pedestal, -to retch, relieve themselves of fluids and rubbishes, -and scratch their smarts. It is, in truth, a weird, -prolonged indecency.”</p> - -<p>He meditated upon his own relation to this -explanation of the belligerent waste of energy -around him.</p> - -<p>“I am a better egoist than the people around -me,” he said. “I will not be forced to display -my private organs as often as they. Only an -absolute egoist can afford to be calm and more -obscurely naked. If I indulge, at rare intervals, -a secret grin will gain its reward.”</p> - -<p>His thoughts had mounted these conclusions -as he sat one night in Clara’s studio, with his -legs tucked in above a scarlet cushion. She looked -at him with a petulant question on her face.</p> - -<p>“Carl, why are you forever arousing the enmity -of people?” she asked.</p> - -<p>“Because I detest most of them; because I like -straight lines and angles in conduct while they -prefer curves and circles; and for a variety of reasons.”</p> - -<p>“But, Carl, you don’t need to be so deliberate -about antagonizing people.”</p> - -<p>“I’m not. I’m simply myself most of the time—a -difficult task, but it can be achieved.”</p> - -<p>“Well, everybody is sneering at your latest -stunt. Why, oh why, did you have to parade down -Scott street smoking that long Chinese pipe of -yours, with a red ribbon tied to the stem? Carl, -sometimes I almost believe that you love to pose!”</p> - -<p>“I ain’t guilty, I swear it. When that group of -my poems came out in the big eastern magazine -I simply felt that the event demanded an unashamed -celebration. It was like the christening -of a healthy child and I wanted something -stronger than whiskey or wine. An odd longing -that comes to me sometimes. I decided to commit -the inexplicable crime of becoming immersed in -a new toy of motion. I fitted a rubber mouthpiece -over the tip of the pipe and used it half of -the time as a cane. I’ve been told that a crowd followed -me but I didn’t turn my head to investigate.”</p> - -<p>“Well, everyone has heard about it and they’re -all calling you a cheap little poseur. And, really, -I don’t know that they’re wrong. I never felt so -angry in my life. You love to attract the attention -of other people and you’ll make every kind of excuse -rather than admit this fact!”</p> - -<p>He showed an outburst of surface anger.</p> - -<p>“You can act more impulsively in a camp of -lumber-jacks than before a crowd of so-called -artists and writers,” he said. “The lumber-jacks -might regard you with a simple amazement, or an -unrestrained laughter, but at least they’d grant -you the sincerity of insanity! Since I must -choose between stupid people I prefer the more -roughly natural ones.”</p> - -<p>“I’m tired of hearing you call everybody a hypocrite,” -said Clara. “It’s just a nice way that you -have of defending your own actions!”</p> - -<p>He arose and reached for his cap.</p> - -<p>“I’ll leave you to this weariness,” he said angrily. -“It may be possible that, as I walk down -the street, no one will believe that I’m striding -along in a highly deliberate manner. The thought -is pleasant.”</p> - -<p>“Carl, don’t be foolish,” she said, half-repentantly, -but without answering he walked out of -the studio.</p> - -<p>This had not been his first quarrel with Clara, -and the frequency of their collisions, always followed -by a skirmish of nervous laughter, made -him believe that they were both stupidly postponing -a sure separation. Clara was, in her entire -essence, a deft Puritan industriously beating the -back of a frightened Pagan. At certain intervals -the Pagan arose and knocked the Puritan unconscious -but the latter always gradually revived and -resumed its dulcet mastership, and Clara liked or -disliked Carl whenever her inner situation shifted -in these ways. Carl had grown weary of being -alternately punched and caressed by her moods. -He had long since realized that his relations with -her were merely the playthings of a fluctuating -emotional response and that neither he nor she -had the slightest respect for each other’s habits -and minds, and on this evening, as he walked -down the street after leaving her studio he knew -that the uncertain pretence of drama had ended.</p> - -<p>He had slowly discovered that almost all of the -people around him, with their different versions -of culture and art—those two realities hidden by -mincing courtezans of egoism—were distrustful -of bluntness and gay impulse in conduct and had -made a word known as “unconventional,” in order -to defend the ordinary fright that governed their -actions. A venerable contradiction among these -minor people but one that had held new outlines -for him. He had also learned that most of these -people were so accustomed to masquerades that -they could not believe in the reality of a carelessly -naked attitude and usually mistook it for a -dazzling and ingenious pose.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h3 id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</h3> -</div> - -<p>Filled with these gloomy realities he walked -down a roughly bright street where the underworld -tiptoed furtively between the ranks of semi-respectable -working-people—a street of gaping, -sleekly sinister saloons, cabarets, small, thickly -tawdry shops, and cheap, coffin-like hotels and -apartment houses. The hour was early—nine p.m.—and -he walked slowly, engaged in his favorite -pastime of watching the shrouded haste of crowds. -As he passed a moving-picture theater, dotted -with greasy electric lights and plastered with inanely -gaudy posters, he felt a light hand on his -shoulder. He turned and saw Lucy standing before -him. The sight gave him a friendly shock, -for on this evening he was tired of clever hypocrisies -and longed for anything that would be crude -and unassuming.</p> - -<p>“Lucy, have you fallen down from some sky?” -he asked.</p> - -<p>“No, I just came out of the theater here an’ -saw you walkin’ by. Gee, but I’m glad I did! It’s -been a year now since we’ve seen each other, -hasn’t it? An’ I never, never thought I’d meet -you again.”</p> - -<p>“Well, what has happened to you, Luce?” he -asked as they walked down the street together.</p> - -<p>“I’m married to Fred now. I didn’t see anything -else to do after you left, and all of my folks -just pushed me into it. ’Nen besides I was tired of -workin’ in that darn store. Tired.”</p> - -<p>“Are you less tired now? Happy?”</p> - -<p>“Mm, Fred’s an awful nice man in his way an’ -I s’pose I oughta be happy. He really loves me, -Fred does, an’ he don’t seem to lose his temper the -way some men do. ’Course, he’s a little stingy -with money but then I s’pose he’s tryin’ to look -out for the future.”</p> - -<p>“Do you love him now, Luce?”</p> - -<p>Her head drooped a little and she was silent for -a time.</p> - -<p>“I guess it’s terrible of me not to love him, -after all he’s done for me, but I just don’t. I -always keep rememberin’ all of your funny ways -an’ all the time we was together an’ I feel ashamed -of it too ’cause it’s kinda like not bein’ true to -Fred, but I can’t help it. There’s been times when -I’ve managed to forget about you but they don’t -last long enough.”</p> - -<p>He tried to make himself feel like a helpless -knave as he listened to this simple child of earth -who longed for the palely inexplicable god before -whom she had once grovelled in rhythmic speechlessness. -He had taken all of her eager silences, -pardoned by the damp understanding of flesh, and -bestowed upon her in return nothing save the -blurred vision of thoughts and emotions which it -would have been useless for her to understand, and -the tantalizing fantasy of his embraces. If he -had stayed with her he would have mutilated, -kicked, and evaded every longing and purpose of -his life while she would have revelled in happiness. -Walking down this street were thousands -of people, trying to embalm a softly sensual hour -with the fluids and devices of bravely stupid lies, -and inventing words—“honor,” “respectability”—to -conceal the grotesquely snickering effect of -their lives. Life was, indeed, an insipid mountebank!</p> - -<p>“Luce, I ought to feel like a selfish dog, for if I -did, then at least I could give you a belated -shoulder to cry upon,” he said. “We’re different -persons, that doesn’t need to be said, but still I’m -sorry at times that we parted. I need your stupidity.”</p> - -<p>“Do you still care for me, Carl?”</p> - -<p>“There are times when I want you again. You -brought me a delicate dumbness which I could -change into any kind of speech, with my fingers -and words. Your simplicity doesn’t swagger, or -point admiringly to itself, and I like that. Just -now I am surrounded by people who are not different -from you except that they have memorized -three or four thousand words more, and use them -with a moderate degree of cunning. Your silences -are much better.”</p> - -<p>“I’m not always silent ’cause I don’t understand -what you say. Sometimes I do understand, but I -keep quiet ’cause I don’t know how to tell you -about it.”</p> - -<p>They turned down a side-street and he looked -questioningly at her.</p> - -<p>“Aren’t you afraid that Fred may see us together?” -he asked.</p> - -<p>“I forgot to tell you. He left this afternoon for -Pittsburg, to see his mother, an’ he’ll be gone for -two weeks. I’m all alone now.”</p> - -<p>That conversing silence, in which a suggestion -is so strongly felt that it need not be heard, was -released from both of them and remained until -they reached the apartment building in which she -lived, and stood in the dark hallway.</p> - -<p>“I don’t want to leave you now”—her whisper -was frightened but stubbornly tender. “I don’t -want to. For all I know I may never see you again -and if I don’t I’ve got to have somethin’ that I can -hold on to. Somethin’ that’s not as foolish as just -talkin’ words.... I’m a dreadful girl, I s’pose. I -must be very wicked. I must be.... But I don’t -care. Please don’t go away.”</p> - -<p>They stood in the hallway like two dizzy, burdened -children feeling the advancing shadow of -an irresistible action and yet waiting for the exact -moment when all deliberate words would vanish. -Until their minds were quite free of words -their limbs could not move. Suddenly they both -mounted the stairway, hand in hand, as though a -kindly demon had decided to make playthings of -their legs.</p> - -<p>When Carl left the apartment building early on -the following morning and hurried to the suburban -cigar-store where he now worked half of the day -as a clerk, his old self-disgust was absent and a -cleanly wild lightness took his limbs, as if he had -slept upon the plain sturdiness of a hillside and -was pacing away with the borrowed vigor.</p> - -<p>“The only time that I dislike earth is when it -is dressed in urgent mud, adulterated perfumes, -strained lies, and repentant fears,” he told himself -as he walked through the bustling shallowness -of each city street.</p> - -<p>Before leaving Lucy he had promised to return -on the following night, and when she had wept -and begged him “not to think that she was a terribly -bad girl,” he had laughed softly and dropped -his lips upon her tears.</p> - -<p>“You have been yourself, Luce, and since the -world is always conspiring against such an arbitrary -occurrence, you can give yourself a bewildered -congratulation,” he told her, gayly.</p> - -<p>Without understanding his words she had felt -the presence of defiant sounds which had cheered -her. During the next two weeks, as he remained -with her each night, he reflected upon the possible -melodrama that lurked just outside of his visits.</p> - -<p>“If her husband suddenly returns and finds me -with her he’ll want to kill me,” he said to himself -once, as though he welcomed the idea. “He’ll feel -that only my death could heal his injured vanity—vermilion -medicine!—but, of course, instead of -admitting that to himself he’ll find an accommodating -phrase to hide the actual motive, such as -‘avenging his honor,’ ‘killing a treacherous -hound,’ ‘defending the family,’ etc. The newspapers -are full of such charming episodes, well -fortified by words, for without words to obliterate -his motives man would perish in a day. Melodrama -is the only real sincerity that life holds—the -one surprising directness in a world of false -and prearranged contortions. Perhaps I could -ravish my fears and welcome it. I don’t know, and -no one can until it actually arrives.”</p> - -<p>But the two weeks died without the blundering -interruption of drama, and Lucy and Carl parted -on the last morning with a chuckling stoicism—tears -and the syllables of laughter are always -similar—the madcap protest of a last kiss—lips -and tongues intent upon a future compensation—and -a final flitting of hands. They had slapped in -the face a violent shadow known as life and now -it would take a fancifully piercing revenge. They -had attained a quality known as bravery—a quality -that is only fear rising to a moment and effectively -sneering at itself.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h3 id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</h3> -</div> - -<p>Carl returned to the minor, suavely gesturing -groups of hypocrites in the city in which he lived, -and in going back to this “art and literary world” -he had the feeling of one who had deserted a -strong valley of desire to enter a stilted room -filled with imitation orchids, valiantly empty -words, and malice dressed in clumsy, velvet costumes. -This reaction was still dominating him -as he sat, one afternoon, in the office of a magazine -called “Art and Life,” perched upon a window-sill -and looking down at the black and dwarfed confusion -of a street.</p> - -<p>This office was a gathering place for several -young writers, each of whom fondled his pet rebellion -against conservative standards, and they -clustered around the anxiously seraphic face of -Martha Apperson, the young editor, and seriously -fought for the treason of her smiles. She was a -tall, sturdily slender woman with a blithely symmetrical -swerve to her body, and the natural pinkness -of her face parted into the curves of a lightly -distressed and virginal doll. Her blue-gray eyes -were looking at life with a startled incredulity—the -gaze of one who has been tempted to regard -a sometimes merry, but more often vaguely sorrowful -picture-puzzle. Life to her was a rapidly -taunting mixture of glints, hints, undertones, surface -blooms, fleeting tints, portentous shadows -with little shape to them, broken images, and -misty heights, and she was forever trying to lure -them all into a cohesive whole by striding from one -philosophy and creed to another, adding another -stride every three or four months. At such times -she would appear at her office and enthusiastically -assure her audience that she had finally accomplished -the almost obscene miracle of penetrating -the depths of human existence. She had started -her magazine as a strident protest against “the -people who live conventionally, steeped in a vicious -comfort that binds their imaginations and ruins -their legs and arms,” and its pages made an awkwardly -weird combination of sophomoric revolts, -longings for “beauty and splendor”—those easily -bought thrones for the importance of youth—and -enraged yelps against traditions and conventions, -with here and there a more satirically detached -note from Carl and two other men. Carl knew -that he wanted her body because it was the only -mystery that she seemed to possess and because -he wondered whether it might not be able to make -her thoughts less obvious. Her mind was a stumbling -jest to him and her jerkily volatile pretences -of emotion failed to cleave him.</p> - -<p>He began to turn his eyes impatiently toward -the office door. Martha had left him in charge, -promising to return in an hour, but he knew that -her hours were frequently afternoons as she cavorted -around the city, throwing out miniature -whirlwinds of appeals for money and attention. -In a corner of the office stood a huge photograph -of her latest god—a middle-aged, hawk-faced lecturer -from England—that fertile land from -whence all lecturers flow—a man who had recently -startled the city by speaking on Oscar Wilde, -dressed in a black robe and standing in a chamber -dimly disgraced by candles, incense, and muslin -poppies. The theatrically savage features of this -man rested beneath a framed letter from a prominent -writer—one of those abortions in which the -great man tells a small magazine that he earnestly -hopes that it will amount to something and -believes that it can accomplish a great purpose if -it pursues the ideals which have illuminated his -work. Carl’s eyes sought this framed joke for the -hundredth time, since his mood needed such artificial -humor to make it less aware of itself, and at -this moment Martha came with the rapid gait -of one who is returning to vast and uncompleted -tasks, although her day’s labors were at an end. -This was not a pose but merely a bouncing overabundance -of energy. With her was Helen Wilber, -a young disciple who scarcely ever left her side. -Helen had fled from a wealthy family in another -city and traded her debutante’s excuse for the -more fanciful robe of an ecstatic pilgrim starting -to ascend from the base of veiled mountains of -expression. She darted about on errands and interviews -and felt the humble fervors of a novice—a -tall, heavy girl with a long, soberly undeveloped -face and abruptly turned features that were -garlanded with freckles. She had made a fine art -of her determination to persuade herself that she -was masculine, giving it the intense paraphernalia -of stolen words and gestures, but beneath her -dubiously mannish attire and desperately swinging -limbs the desires of an average woman were -feebly questioning the validity of her days. She -greeted Carl with her usual ringing assumption of -boyishness.</p> - -<p>“Hello, old top! Been waiting long?”</p> - -<p>“Not as long as I expected to wait, considering -Martha’s superb indifference to the impudence of -time. Well, Martha, how have you been insulting -actualities—with your usual crescendoes of -insanity?”</p> - -<p>Martha reached for the device of quickly sliding -the tip of her tongue over her upper lip, a -movement that always gave its opiate to her embarrassment -or dismay, and then smiled with a -softly tragic aloofness.</p> - -<p>“Oh, people weary me so!” she said. “They’re so -impossible most of the time and so sublimely unaware -of that fact! I’ve just come from seeing -an elderly woman who said that she might be interested -in helping us. She was fat and expensively -gowned and she wanted to know whether -we wouldn’t print a story about the historical old -families of this city and how they had founded a -great, commercial and romantic fabric. I told her -that we were concerned with the restless and -flaming present, with the artists and thinkers of -our own time, and not with respectable tradespeople -of the past. Of course I put it as nicely as -I could but she flew into a temper and said I was -insulting the people who had built up a great and -mighty city.... O people are so impossible!”</p> - -<p>Carl envied the excited flow of her words and -wished that he could also feverishly felicitate his -emptiness at that particular moment.</p> - -<p>“I felt like telling her that men who’ve made -money and put up ugly buildings aren’t necessarily -important enough to talk about,” said Helen, -with a hollow seriousness, “but of course I didn’t -for fear of hurting Mart’s chances.”</p> - -<p>“I get so tired of wasting words on people who -lead monotonous lives and can’t see the variety -and beauty within life,” said Martha. “When you -talk to them they treat you as though you were -a little, misbehaving girl who would soon be -spanked and put to bed. ‘O you’ll soon get over all -of this artistic nonsense,’ they say.”</p> - -<p>“Ah, they can’t see that a defiance like yours, -Mart, is a fire that only grows stronger when -someone tries to put it out,” said Helen with a -spontaneously rhetorical worship.</p> - -<p>Carl grinned at the dramatic sincerity with -which these two women lunged at colossal targets.</p> - -<p>“What’s all of this endless stuff about beauty?” -he asked. “Beauty, beauty, I’m tired of the label. -No specific description but just a nice, sonorous -word. You might exalt your loves and punish -your aversions with a little more clarity.”</p> - -<p>“O you can’t diagram it as though it were a -problem in mathematics!” cried Martha. “It’s too -big and mysterious for that. You simply know it -when you see it. It quickens your breath and -drops like music upon your soul. It’s the thing -that makes you know that you have a soul—the -radiant weariness that springs from everything -that is strong, and lonely, and delicate, and elusive, -and tortured.”</p> - -<p>“The adjectives are stirring and the fact that -they happen to be meaningless is of little importance,” -said Carl. “I like the way in which you -make love to your emotions.”</p> - -<p>Martha gave a grimace of exasperation.</p> - -<p>“You’re the most insincere man I know,” she -said. “Some day I’ll fall in love with a man who -can be sincerely brilliant and beautiful and who -doesn’t put his words together carefully, as -though they were unimportant toys.”</p> - -<p>“Such a fate may be exactly what you deserve,” -said Carl, still grinning.</p> - -<p>“Here we’ve been tramping around all day, seeing -stupid people, and you waste Mart’s time with -your old arguments about beauty and words,” -said Helen with a jocose disgust. “I’m getting -famished. Let’s go home.”</p> - -<p>“I forgot to tell you, Carl—I’m having a party -at the apartment this evening,” said Martha. -“That strange, interesting Russian you met yesterday -is coming—Alfred Kone. And Jarvin who -runs the literary page on the Dispatch. You’ll -come with us now, won’t you?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I’m interested in Kone. He carries a certain -revolving electricity around with him. His -words and gestures are abruptly flashing like -showers of sparks. I’m almost tempted to find out -where the sparks come from.”</p> - -<p>“He’s a natural pagan,” said Martha with an admiring -sigh. “Don’t you love that European air -about him! It’s something that you wouldn’t like -if you could put your finger on it—something -elusive and graceful, and sophisticated.”</p> - -<p>“Is it possible that you mean that Kone is intricately -redundant?” said Carl, carelessly.</p> - -<p>“Carl, you always talk in such a careful, unearthly -way,” said Helen, with a combat of irritation -and wonder in her voice.</p> - -<p>“With most people talk is a weak, thin wine,” -said Carl. “They drink endless cups of it and at -last they become mildly intoxicated. I prefer to -achieve drunkenness with less effort.”</p> - -<p>The incongruous love-song of the conversation -continued as they departed for the Apperson -apartment. Carl became morbidly jovial as -though striving to goad himself into a mood, but -underneath his words he was sad as he side-stepped -Helen’s heavy lunges. “I have never -actually had youth—that glistening mixture of -blunders, sighs, cruel laughters, and a pleasant -sadness that does not cut too deeply,” he said to -himself as he listened to the obviously proud youth -of the two women.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h3 id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</h3> -</div> - -<p>Kone had already arrived at the apartment and -was waiting on the front porch. His heavy body, -of medium height, held the arrogant bulge of -muscles beneath his light grey suit and his pale -brown face cradled a wraith of bitter alertness—a -sneer attempting to break through the concealing -flesh. He had a short flattened nose, thick -lips, and the eyes of a forced and sprightly demon, -and the dark abundance of his eyebrows receded -into a low forehead, which in turn ended in a mass -of black hair brushed backward. He had come -to America some six years before this late Autumn -evening; had first worked as a porter in a -department store; had mastered English with a -miraculous speed; and was now studying at a -neighboring university and earning a living by -teaching Russian to classes of children. In place -of that violently disguised boredom commonly -known as a heart he seemed to have an over-perfect -dynamo that made him a mechanical wild-man—there -was a sharp, strained persistency in -all of his movements and the fact that he never -deigned to falter in his words and gestures gave -him an aspect of well-maintained artificiality. He -threw his vivid grin to Carl.</p> - -<p>“Hah, poet who seems to sleep but is always -awake—greetings,” he called out, in the crisply -dramatic way in which he usually spoke. “‘Demons -lurk in your dimples’—you should have written -that line about yourself.”</p> - -<p>“Portraits are merely pretexts—secret portraits -of oneself tortuously extracted from the blankness -of other people,” said Carl.</p> - -<p>“You would like to believe that. The involved -egoism of youth!”</p> - -<p>“It might be proving your case to answer you,” -said Carl, laughing.</p> - -<p>Kone was one of the few men who could make -him laugh, since he had the odd habit of laughing -only in praise and scarcely ever in derision—a custom -born in the loneliness of his former years. -Kone greeted Martha, who came in later, with -words in which an adroitly raised respect and -daring sensuality were carefully mixed, but, -although her surface was flattered by his obeisance, -his attentions failed to penetrate her radiant -self-immersion. That would have been a feat -worthy of century-old preservation. She listened, -like a convinced and mysterious referee, while -Kone and Carl indulged in the precise uselessness -of argument—a discussion on whether Dostoevsky -was an insane mystic, drunk with the details of -reality, or an emotional search-light stopping at -the edge of the world. The talk led to a question -of the exact value of originality.</p> - -<p>“So, you are looking for originality,” said Kone -with a metallic mockery in his voice. “A man may -stand on his head without in any way disturbing -the universe. Has it not occurred to you that life -is only a series of reiterations beneath the transparent -gowns of egoism?”</p> - -<p>“I prefer the gowns when they are a little less -transparent. I might also have to know why a -man was standing on his head before I could make -any conjecture concerning the agitation of the -universe”—an amused respect was in Carl’s voice. -He liked the stilted lunges of Kone.</p> - -<p>Helen appeared in the doorway.</p> - -<p>“Put your daggers aside for a while and come to -dinner,” she said, with the most benign of tolerances.</p> - -<p>After the meal Arthur Jarvin, the critic, arrived -with a woman named Edith Colson. Jarvin was -almost tall—one of many “almosts” composing -his entirety—and the plump old rose oval of his -face showed its immense self-satisfaction beneath -a fluffy mat of dark brown hair. He wore spectacles -and his features bore the petulant satisfaction -of one who has eaten too much for breakfast -and has not quite decided whether to regret that -fact or not. Since he held a contempt for the mad -limitations of time he always fondly lengthened -the utterance of his many “howevers” and “notwithstandings.” -His friend, Edith Colson, was a -tall, slender woman who freed a satirical vivacity -with each of her words, thus making one regret -the fact that she had nothing to say. One felt -that to herself she was intrenched upon modest -but well-guarded hill-tops of emotion; that, being -thinly perverse, she had purchased her castles in -Norway and scorned the more treacherous animations -of a warmer climate. Her icy effervescences—whirls -of powdered snows—sometimes subsided -to a softer note which told you that the dab of -warmth left within her was reserved for a select -two or three beings, and that her conversation -was an elaborate form of repentance. Outwardly -she offered the effect of a carefully ornamented -self-protection. The greenish brown length of -her face accepted the problems of a long straight -nose, loosely thin lips, and large black eyes, and -was topped by a disciplined wealth of brownish -black hair.</p> - -<p>They sat in a circle on the porch and the conversation -skipped with too much ease between recent -books, plays, and local celebrities among writers -and artists. Jarvin, full of the books that had -come to him for reviewing purposes, compared -and dissected them with the air of a professor who -boredly but genially lectures to his special class. -“This book was passable: of course it couldn’t -come up to so-and-so’s book. This other one—well, -not quite as good as his last novel. A little too -much of one style, you know. That new Frenchman? -Yes, they’re raising quite a fuss over him. -Grim, cruel stuff, but well done. Those books lose -a lot in the translations, though. That new poet? -Mm, he’s lyrical enough but he just misses inspiration. -The new crop will have to go a long way -before they can approach Shelley or Wordsworth. -Have you seen the new Shaw play at the Olympic? -After all, Shaw is one of the few men who can -make you laugh without being vulgar or obvious,” -etc.</p> - -<p>Carl sat in silence and rearranged, in his head, -the difficult line of a new poem, and to his immersion -the conversation had become a slightly -irritating and well-memorized murmur. Endlessly -he muttered to himself: “your face is stencilled -with a pensiveness ... pensiveness ... but I -need another adjective.”</p> - -<p>Kone ruffled the dulcet informations of the others -now and then with a polite but ironical jest -that was never too obviously at their expense; -Martha preserved her eagerly listening silence; -and Helen sat like a dazed woman at a verbal banquet, -scarcely daring to touch the glittering food -in front of her. Finally Jarvin found Carl’s direction -with a question that jerked him back to the -gathering although the exact words eluded him.</p> - -<p>“What were you saying? I haven’t been listening,” -said Carl.</p> - -<p>“That’s an insulting confession”—Edith Colson’s -voice snapped like a succession of breaking -wires. “Aren’t you interested in books?”</p> - -<p>“Well, not in the broad and detailed way in -which they seem to interest the rest of you,” said -Carl, with the sleepily candid smile which usually -made another person long to investigate the resiliency -of his throat. “Once every five months I -read one that should be spoken of with great vehemence -and then gradually forgotten, but that’s -a rare occurrence.”</p> - -<p>“O come, that’s an easy, superior attitude,” said -Jarvin. “Come down to the valley and join us, -Mr. Poet!”</p> - -<p>“All right, I’m down. I’ve passed your hills of -judicial comment and reached the moonlight on -the street pavement outside. It suggests a contest. -Suppose we all make up a line describing -the moonlight on the street—the moonlight that -falls like a quiet silver derision on all philosophies—and -we’ll see which of us is best acquainted with -the penitent promise of words. I’ll begin. ‘The -moonlight repressed the grey street, like a phantom -virtue.’ Only original lines—nothing from -books.”</p> - -<p>“Here I am in the midst of a talk on Bergson, -and this young poet asks me to make up some -pretty lines about the moon,” said Jarvin, in a -voice of poised scorn. “I read enough about the -moon in the flood of mushy poetry that pours into -my office.”</p> - -<p>“You might try to describe it yourself,” said -Carl. “In that way you could provide an excellent -antidote for your disgust. It is, I assure you, -an important task to rescue the moon from the -rape of trite words.”</p> - -<p>“No, I’ll leave that to minor poets,” said Jarvin.</p> - -<p>Carl gave him the malicious grin of one who is -enjoying a sham battle.</p> - -<p>“If the moon doesn’t satisfy you, Mr. Jarvin, -let’s try that whispering prison of trees just outside -of this window, or the people who place their -unsearching feet upon streets every day. Anything -except voluble shop-talk about the latest -mediocrities with now and then a philosopher or -scientist thrown in for purposes of repentance and -caution.”</p> - -<p>“Well, our young iconoclast even scorns philosophy,” -said Jarvin. “Perhaps it speaks with too -much thought and authority to suit your fancy. -It’s much easier to let your emotions juggle -words.”</p> - -<p>“Philosophy is a bottle-faced dwarf drowning -with imposing howls in an ocean that does not see -him,” said Carl, with a languid lack of interest. -“But philosophy should be read, if only with a -careful indifference.”</p> - -<p>Jarvin threw another rock, with haste, and Carl -gave him another epigram. Kone, always a restive -audience, interposed.</p> - -<p>“The anarchist, Pearlman, has just come to -town,” he said. “Perhaps all of you know that he -served twenty years in prison for attempting to -kill a millionaire. A cruel penance!”</p> - -<p>“I become rather tired of these anarchists who -are forever trying and plotting to blow up the -city-hall,” said Edith. “They’re neither artists -nor dull, useful citizens and they serve no purpose -that I can see. If they imagine that they can -change the present system of things by shrieking -and murdering people they ought to be sent to a -school for the feeble-minded.”</p> - -<p>“I’m not so sure that I’d want to see things -radically changed,” said Jarvin. “Of course I -know that there’s a great deal of graft and injustice -everywhere but I’m not sure that I’d care to -live in a Utopia—wickedness and cruelty are far -more interesting.”</p> - -<p>“The trouble with these anarchists and socialists -is that they miss all the beauty in life,” said -Martha. “If you show them a painting or a poem -they think that you’re trying to waste their time, -unless it contains a social message.”</p> - -<p>“I think that it’s cruel and useless to try to take -another man’s life,” said Helen, earnestly. “I hate -this fellow, Pearlman!”</p> - -<p>Kone listened to this stagnant symposium of -viewpoints, with a patient sneer.</p> - -<p>“In Russia we are more accustomed to murder,” -he said. “We have not attained the—what shall I -say?—the genial and practical compromises of -your American democracy. In our country, alas, -oppression takes off its mask and swings a red -sword! If you will realize that death does not -hold for us the mysterious terror that it holds for -you it may help you to understand Pearlman. He -came to this country—a young Russian—sentimental, -idealistic, crowded with naive longings -for martyrdom. He wanted to die for the people—that -grand, massive, mysterious, and yet near and -real people! When he tried to kill a millionaire, -who was stubbornly refusing to arbitrate with his -striking men, Pearlman was choked with a poem -of liberation that could not be denied. Then the -icy reality of his next twenty years—condemned -by both society and the strikers whom he had -tried to help, surrounded by the rigid leer of iron -bars; and squeezed into a niche of futility.... -This crucified Russian does not need your sarcasm, -my friends.”</p> - -<p>The conversation staggered and scampered for -another hour, with everyone save Carl animatedly -endeavoring to conceal the fact that he was in no -way interested in anyone’s opinions except his -own, and at last the party packed away its comedies, -irritations, and convictions, and arose from -the chairs. There were farewells, with just the -right compound of gaiety and caution, and the -gathering separated.</p> - -<p>Carl and Alfred Kone went to the latter’s room -in a dormitory at the university and sat until an -early hour of the morning, arguing with an intensity -that made their tobacco smoke seem a -cloud of gunpowder. Kone was that tense incongruity—an -ironical sentimentalist. Within him, -emotion cajoled thought to a softer brutality and -thought intruded its staccato, exploring note upon -the limpid abandon of emotion. A deliberate -friendship rose between these men, like a translucent -wall through which men can see each other -without touching, for each one knew that the -other held a baffling insincerity of imagination -and was afraid that he might be deftly ridiculed -if he failed to measure his words. Kone admired -the nimble restlessness of Carl, a quality which he -was compelled mechanically to imitate, while Carl -liked the explosive way in which Kone evaded himself. -Kone was now almost thirty years old but -his machine-like capering made him seem much -younger and he bounded through life like a sophisticated -street-urchin, swindling himself with -fiercely endurable makeshifts in place of dead -dreams. His tragedy rested in the fact that he -was not a creator and the knowledge of this was -to him a secret poison from which he had to escape -with many a gale of make-believe laughter.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h3 id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</h3> -</div> - -<p>One afternoon, four months after the Apperson -party, Carl, Kone, and Jenesco, a Roumanian -painter, sat in the latter’s little blending of studio -and bedroom and looked at a landscape which he -had just finished. Jenesco’s eyes lazily flirted -with triumph and his small, ruddy face displayed -the expression of a child throwing a few last, unnecessary -grains upon a sand-hill.</p> - -<p>“Boys, what do you think of it?” he asked in a -tone of confident fatherhood.</p> - -<p>Kone and Carl scanned the painting. It was a -mother-goose transfiguration, too quick in its acceptance -of violent colors and bearing a blandly -forced simplicity. Red, indigo, and orange trees -were lining both sides of a road, and the trees -were painted in such a manner that they seemed -to be kneeling at the roadside. In the distance -white mountains, resembling the suggestion of -upturned cups, refused the blue wine of sky, and -in front of them were fields that looked like -wrinkled, green tablecloths spread out to dry. In -the sky one large pink cloud forlornly squandered -its innocence.</p> - -<p>“Pleasant—pleasant,” said Kone. “Not realistic, -and not fantastic. It deceives both of its mistresses.”</p> - -<p>“You don’t see what I’m trying to get at,” answered -Jenesco. “I’m trying to make reality turn -an amiable somersault, as Carl would say. I want -to avoid the two extremes of painting the usual -photograph on the one hand and making something -that no one can understand on the other.”</p> - -<p>Carl listened to the seething argument that followed, -with the feelings of one who hears an exquisitely -worthless routine of sound. He was -always amazed at the fact that people could argue -about art—a word pilfered from that last desperate -undulation with which an ego decorates the -slavery of mud. Arguments on art to him were -like the antics of a sign-painter defending the -precious label which he has painted upon certain -of the more indiscreet and impossible longings -within him—a piece of inflexible nonsense. He -felt that works of art so-called could be described -and admired with a novel and independently creative -bow of words, but never defended and explained. -Books on art were to him a futile and -microscopical attempt to inject logic into a decorative -curiosity. As he listened to the wrestling -sounds of the present argument, words within him -began to flatter his indifference.</p> - -<p>“While Kone is talking, Jenesco sits, trying to -frame his reply and paying little heed to Kone’s -words,” he said to himself. “If Jenesco hears a -point that he has not previously considered he will -make a hasty attempt to shift his answer—a quick -sword-thrust at the new opponent—and then proceed -to forget about the matter. Serious arguments -might be of value if they were not windy -and elaborate. If men could decide to condense -their views into neat typewritten sheets, carried -in a coat pocket and distributed among people, -they could save a great deal of cheated energy.”</p> - -<p>“The poet has been sitting here like an amused -statue,” said Kone, after the argument had collapsed -to the usual stand still. “Come, we are -waiting for you to flay us.”</p> - -<p>“Splendid. Another tense battle. Haven’t you -had enough?” said Carl. “I would suggest that -we hold a debate on whether that spider on the -wall will crawl into the sunlight near the window, -or whether it will remain in the shade. In this -way we can speculate upon how much the laws of -chance may alter the spider’s conception of the -universe.”</p> - -<p>“Get away with that satirical pose!” cried -Jenesco.</p> - -<p>Carl smiled without answering, while the others -derided his self-immersion. Jenesco knew no other -weapon save an emotional club. He was a machinist -who had taken up painting two years before -this late winter afternoon and he still kept a little -shop where he occasionally sold and repaired machines. -This combination of rough mechanic and -art-desiring man had given its surface lure to -Carl’s imagination and he had commenced to spend -most of his time at Jenesco’s home. Short, and -with the body of a subdued, light-weight prize-fighter, -Jenesco was a small hurricane of physical -elations. He had the face of a corrupted cherub -that had sold its innocence to mental inanities, and -his mind was a conceited confusion of naive ideas. -He had been attracted to painting because it -brought his hands into motion, thus encouraging -the habit which they could not forget after their -working hours, and because it taught color and -flexibility to the hard greys, browns, and blacks -of his daily toil. He belonged to that band of men -who spend a lifetime in stubbornly walking down -a road of artistic effort which does not lead them -to any distinct surrender. Their imaginations are -not weak enough to kneel before the drab regularities -of life and not strong enough to escape from -the instinctive push of dead men’s realities.</p> - -<p>From that afternoon on, Carl began to see more -of Jenesco and less of Kone. Kone was not a creator -but merely transposed, with a hungry fire, the -sentences of other men, and after you solved the -snapping tricks with which he did this, his ironies -became thin and lamely transparent. Carl preferred -the wolfish wit with which Jenesco, an -ogling Proletarian, tore silk and satin from the -shrinking flesh of obvious hypocrisies in life. It -was at least a lurching circus of words—a pulsating -buffoonery. He scarcely ever saw Martha now, -since their self-immersions tended to create a -sterile restraint between them, with words and -hands playing the part of irrelevant intruders. -Each of them secretly despised life and its people, -while giving a pretended attention, but they used -different methods. Martha fluttered her emotional -veils, with a breathless coercion, while Carl dodged -beneath a carnival of grotesquely mated words.</p> - -<p>To amuse the secret loneliness which often became -a boring acid he formed, with Jenesco, that -hollow melee known as a debating club; called it -“The Questioners”—prodded by a ghost of humor—and -exhibited his words in the formal vaudeville-show. -The performances occurred at the -studio of a man named Fyodor Murovitch, a young -Polish sculptor with a softly melodramatic abundance -of dark brown hair and the face of a -strangely waspish saint—a saint who was tempting -himself with malices in order to conquer them. -One evening Carl sat in this place, drained by the -empty ritual of responding to noisy and firmly -convinced people and ogling his nerves with the -rhythm of pipe smoke. He looked up and saw -a woman—Olga Ramely—standing beside him. -His eyes experimented with the eyes of this -stranger and suddenly contracted. Her eyes -seemed to be two drops of quivering sweat left -behind by an emotional crucifixion. They were sensitive -with essences. Greyish-green, larger than a -dwindled sky, lost in a perilous dream of wakefulness, -holding the phantom glow of incredible tortures, -friendly to mental recklessness, they were -like a ludicrously clever imitation of his own eyes -and he trembled in the presence of an inexplicable -deception. His imagination was becoming a detached -devil much in need of correction. Olga -Ramely spoke to him.</p> - -<p>“I’ve been watching you all evening. The light -from the candles over your head fell upon your -yellow hair and put shadows on your face. The -shadows gave your face a soft excuse and you -looked half like a sprite and half like a martyr. -There was an indelicately impish weariness on -your face. Your hair was like light, and in one -glistening attempt it tried to reach the weariness, -but couldn’t. I told myself that you were not the -man that people say you are.”</p> - -<p>He made his peace with her eyes, moved by a -profound embarrassment, and discovered the rest -of her face, with an abject and yet faintly skeptical -desire. The surface flattery of her words had -been almost without meaning to him, but her voice -had given him a problem—deep with an alto -scheme, like a trailing memory of pain, and quivering -rebelliously under the disciplines of thought. -He examined her face for an affirmation of the -voice. Short, dark brown curls encumbered her -head, like a wig of lost thoughts undulating in an -effort to capture reality, and her skin was the -smoothly troubled fusion of white and brown. -Her nose was of moderate length and curved -slightly outward, in a subdued question of flesh; -her lips were small and thin—pliant devices of -doubt—and a tight survival of plumpness upon -her face told of a lucidly cherubic effect that had -existed before life dropped its hands heavily upon -her. Her body, verging on tallness, was immersed -in a last skirmish with youth.</p> - -<p>“What have you heard them say about me?” -he asked, craving the evasion of words that would -conceal a unique tumult within him.</p> - -<p>“I’ve heard people say that you were a thief, -and a rascal, and a disagreeable idiot, and a -poseur, and a liar, and an overwhelming egoist.”</p> - -<p>“What did you think of this dime-novel version -of iniquity?”</p> - -<p>“I have been, at times, partial to crude monsters, -but your work was a curious contradiction. -Why do they hate you?”</p> - -<p>“Hatred is, of course, fear—fear wildly attempting -to justify its presence. With most people -this fear skulks within a harmless parade of -adjectives, while others are compelled to fall back -upon their hands. And so people commit actual -murders while others slay their opponents in conversation. -The former is apt to be a little more -convincing than the latter, though.”</p> - -<p>Carl spoke slowly, still correcting the turbulence -of his mind with a plausible display of -words, and almost unconscious of what he was -saying.</p> - -<p>“You’ve left out a hatred for hypocrisy,” said -Olga, with the same abstracted indifference to -words and the same instinctive cunning at piecing -them together. “Some of the people who have -been flaying you alive walked up to you to-night -with outstretched hands and congratulations. And -I felt the emotion of one too tired to have more -than a twinge of disgust.”</p> - -<p>“It requires no effort to be stoical to this joke,” -said Carl. “The masks are too exquisitely futile -to become interesting unless, indeed, they attain -a moment of dextrous humor.”</p> - -<p>Jenesco and Murovitch, who had been disputing -in a corner of the studio, walked over and offered -a belated introduction.</p> - -<p>“Sorry to interrupt love scene, but maybe you -do not know names of each other,” said Murovitch -in his deliberate, shattered English. “Names tell -people how much like nothing they are. But -maybe both of you want to be somebody, in which -case it is wise to pity you.”</p> - -<p>“You have a crudely spontaneous imagination—it -spies love scenes and vacuums with a truly -lumbering swiftness,” said Carl, annoyed at the -interruption.</p> - -<p>Murovitch laughed—he had made a religion of -giving and receiving heavy blows and it made an -excellent screen for his inner timidities.</p> - -<p>“I like your frankness. It reminds me of a -heavy negro. It’s black and excited,” said Olga.</p> - -<p>“Felman’s complexion is a little dirty itself,” -said Murovitch, defiling his saint-like face with -a prearranged grin.</p> - -<p>As Carl and Olga walked to the studio where -she was living with a woman friend, she told him -some of the immediate facts of her life, as though -clearing away an opaquely intruding rubbish.</p> - -<p>“I’m working now as a waitress in a little cafeteria -on Winthrop street. Eight in the morning -to three in the afternoon. Two afternoons a week -off. These burns on my hands come from the -hot coffee. On the two afternoons I write poetry. -My body, you see, passes into a less visible conduct, -and thoughts rattle more effectively than -china cups. Then, on the next morning, I am -forced to recollect that life is in a continual -conspiracy to prevent this transformation of -manners. The plates are once more held up. -Beans and roast beef refuse to betray the secret.”</p> - -<p>They had reached the studio and were seated -opposite to each other.</p> - -<p>“And I work every morning in a tobacco shop,” -said Carl. “Since life works with ravishing incongruities, -everything there should be burned except -the cigars. Meditating on this, I am able to -wait more peacefully on the customers. Cringing -sounds slip from my lips. ‘Yes, MacLane will -win the next fight and the weather is terrible.’ -Strange, twisted little payments of sound. Life -clinks them in his empty purse.”</p> - -<p>“Be romantic—make it the brave bow to an -indelicate dream,” said Olga.</p> - -<p>“A background of colored compensations? -They, too, are endurable if you don’t turn your -head too often.”</p> - -<p>The adventure of stealing from a cautious world -to an alcove of unguarded expression changed -their physical desires into brightly unheeded -guests lurking just outside of their longing to -talk to each other. When their hands touched at -last, they laughed at the minute surprise tendered -by their flesh. They became two secret isolations -examining a velvet hallucination of fusion. Their -bodies touched while investigating this enticing -dream.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h3 id="CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.</h3> -</div> - -<p>The winter bickered with spring; days gave -their imaginary separation of time; Olga and -Carl stooped to the task of conjuring myriads -of fancifully plausible tongues from their dream -of perished identities lost in one search. Then -Olga left with a theater company that was about -to tour the middle west, having managed to -secure the small part of a garrulous chambermaid, -and Carl glided into a riot of writing, waiting for -the telegram that would send him to join her in -a far western city where her company would -stage its last performances. In the meantime, -he resolved to visit a wealthy uncle who lived in -the south and wanted to see this “queer nephew -of mine, who scribbles poetry and doesn’t care -about making money.”</p> - -<p>As he sat one morning in an elevated railroad -coach, with valises at his side, commencing the -journey to the city in which his uncle lived, his -mood was glittering and aimless. He danced with -outlines of Olga’s words; hummed briskly saccharine -tunes; and trifled with the contours of people -seated near him. Across the aisle a fatly rosy -man was reading a newspaper and Carl’s gaze -idly struck the front page and absorbed the headlines. -In a corner of the page he came to the -words: “Actress Dies in M——.”</p> - -<p>His intuition, springing from that complaint -vaguely known as metaphysical, changed his skin -to a subtle frost and laid its squeezing pressure -upon his eyes. The quick and heavy beat of his -heart became frantically audible to his ears, like -a gauntly terrifying horseman riding over him, -and his mind changed to a loud confusion. He -jumped across the aisle, tore the paper from the -gaping man, and read that the woman whom -he loved had instantly died after an accident. -Assailed by an oblique rain of black claws, he -tottered from the car, leaving his valises in the -aisle. The black claws vanished; his heart and -mind became extinct; and nothing remained save -a body turned to ice and guided by instinct. -Slowly, and with a brittle indecision in each step, -he walked through the bickering brightness of one -street after another, hearing and seeing nothing. -He reached the bold flatness of the stone apartment -building; read the delayed telegram held -out by his mother, with the barest shiver of -returning life, and dropped upon his bed.</p> - -<p>Sunlight stood within the small room, like an -emaciated patriarch entering through grey shades. -Sunlight ignored the glossy chastities of furniture -and dull yellow walls, and looked intently at the -bed standing in one corner of the room. A long -human collapse in black clothes stuck to the white -bedspread. A blotch of blonde hair rested stilly -in the weak light and hinted of a face. The body -shook now and then as though an inquisitively -alien hand were investigating its lifelessness. -Then sobs pushed their way from the hidden face—an -irregular orgy of distorted lyricism. It was -as though a martyr were licking up the blood -on his wounds and spitting it out in long gurgles -of lunatic delight. The sobs were separated by -rattling pauses that reminded one of a still living -skeleton endlessly wrestling with death. The -skeleton and the martyr sometimes felicitated each -other upon their endurance, and short silences, -like uneasy lies, glided from the hidden face. -Then the bleeding turmoil once more streamed -upon the air of the room, almost extinguishing -the dim sunlight.</p> - -<p>A peculiar species of happiness lurked beneath -the weeping. Grief, hating itself, found a revengeful -pleasure in attempting to tear and exhaust -itself into death. Sometimes the turmoil subsided -to a light and sibilant fight for breath. -The animal noise departed then and a small soul, -much lighter than a phantom sin, plucked unavailingly -at the mysterious spear that had suddenly -coerced its breast.... The dark words of -twilight finally entered the room, making an -opera of the marred lyricism that escaped from -the hidden face on the bed. Then night pardoned -the deficiencies of the room and corrected them -with moonlight, creating a tragic and chaste -boudoir. Carl Felman felt emptied of all sound, -and a mad craving for motion stabbed his limbs. -He wanted to rush endlessly into space, barely -supported by the breathless consolation of running -after something that could never be caught. -This would also be of great value to his heart, -which was a stiffly smirking acrobat who has -broken his legs but still strives to continue the -act.</p> - -<p>He leaped from the bed and seized his cap. -His mother, who had been entering his room at -intervals and vainly questioning him, stopped him -at the outer doorway.</p> - -<p>“Carl, where are you going?” she cried, in a -sharply fearful voice.</p> - -<p>With a hugely mechanical effort he managed -to twist low sounds from his useless lips.</p> - -<p>“Just—for a—walk—back—soon.”</p> - -<p>Without heeding her protests and questions, he -fled down to the street. Human beings had disappeared, -but he could see faces indented on the -fronts of houses. One had a look of mangled -suffering; another was studiously wicked, like a -learned burglar; and a third bore the pathetic -leer of a venturesome housemaid. He picked up -these details, glanced at them a moment, and then -threw them aside as though they were scandals -from another planet. He passed into a region of -three-story rooming-houses—flat wretches holding -an air of patient cowardice. People surreptitiously -filtered from the houses and walked down the -street with Carl—chorus girls with plump, sneaky -faces, underworld hoodlums with an air of wanly -etched bravado, ponderously rollicking servant -girls, clerks with the faces of genial mice, and -meekly dazed old men stumping to their dish-washing -jobs. To Carl they were also hurrying -after something that had vanished and cajoling -their mingled emptiness and pain with swift -motion. Now and then he waved an arm to them -in greeting, while an unearthly smile dug into -his face. His gesture, when observed, was taken -for an intended blow and he left attitudes of fear -and pugnacity behind him.</p> - -<p>He crossed a bridge above a narrowly turbid -river. The oily lights and toiling tug-boats were -to him an inexplicable affront. Their stillness and -slow motion insulted his passion for speed and -with the spite of a child he looked down at his -feet for a stone to throw at them. Finding a -pavement block, he cast it into the river and -rushed along, feeling for a second an exquisite -relief. He passed into a crowded theater and -business section. The strained melee of lights and -noises became an intensely sympathetic audience, -urging on his race, and the faces and forms of -human beings met in an applauding confusion. -With the cunning of a blind animal, he darted -through their ranks and avoided collisions. -Finally he reached another apartment-house -region—large brick boxes without a vestige of -expression. “The faces are gone!” he cried, with -a gasping incredulity, as though inanimate things -had alone become real to him. Moonlight, unable -to fathom their petty baldness, clung to them -with an attitude of limpid disgust. Thickly contented -families, mild and tightly garnished, issued -from the doorways, trundling to some moving-picture -show or ice-cream palace. An aspect of -well-washed and hollow serenity protested against -Carl’s direct flight. Wrapped by this time in a -warmly merciful daze, he did not detect the drably -swaying counterfeit of happiness that would have -awakened within him a maniacal response.</p> - -<p>He sped down street after street like an -inhuman hunter, and came to rows of wooden -houses separated by large fields and blackguarded -by the smoke of nearby factories and mills. An -attitude of mildewed supplication—a beggar rising -from ferns and mud—lifted itself over the scene. -Rushing along, he plunged into the open country, -where wild flowers, ditches, and fields of corn -pungently conversed with moonlight in a language -too simple and formless for human ears to catch. -But Carl’s ears had become inhuman, and he -started a loud talk with the growing objects -around him, revelling in their sympathy and -advice. By this time his long, half-running walk -had weakened him and he began to lurch over -the soft earth of the road like a crushed and -fantastic drunkard.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The ingenuous brilliance of a cloudless morning -stood hugely over the green fields and yellowish -brown roads and an air of alert innocence went -exploring between the flowers and ditches. Harriet -Radler walked slowly down the country road -on her way to the schoolhouse where she ruled -a little band of demons, drudges, minor poets, and -clowns. She lingered along the roadside, sometimes -stooping to tear a tiger lily from the shallow -ditch. Slender and short, a pliant virginity twined -itself around her body. Her young face, pink and -barely whipped, had been marked by a tentative -sorrow and was hungering for the actual battle. -Her black and white clothes lazily flirted with -imps of morning air and were encouraged by her -eyes.</p> - -<p>Looking down at the ditch, she saw the half-concealed -form of a man lying in the water, with -his head and arms resting upon the bank. A tragedy -of dry mud stamped its grey mosaic over his -face. His blonde hair drooped with dirt like a -trampled sunflower. The Pierrot-like hesitation of -his features peeped beneath the dirt—a still and -frightened ritual. With the horror of one who -believes that she is beholding a dead man, Harriet -knelt beside the figure and shook its head, her -face turned away and her eyes tightly closed. -Then she heard a mingled rustle and splash and -saw that the man was rising to his feet. He stood -with bent knees over the mud of the ditch, his -black clothes garlanded with slime, his face twitching -into life beneath its stiff mask of earth. With -a squeal of fright she scrambled to her feet and -ran down the road. The man in the ditch, Carl -Felman, felt that something was still evading him -and once more experienced the hunter’s frenzy -that had tumbled him over the night. Gripped by -a superhuman agility, he transcended his stiff -joints and pursued her down the road. He caught -her, his hands dropping upon her shoulders and -whirling her around. She faced him with uplifted -arms, a turbulence of fright and curiosity swiftly -toying with her eyes and mouth. He lowered his -hands and stood limply before her.</p> - -<p>“Do you know what grief is?” he asked, in an -almost indistinct voice.</p> - -<p>She stared and did not answer.</p> - -<p>“Do you know what grief is?” he asked, in a -softly clear voice.</p> - -<p>A look of loose wonder came to her face.</p> - -<p>“Do you know what grief is?” he asked, in an -almost loud voice.</p> - -<p>A darkly smiling contemplation revised the lines -of her face.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she whispered.</p> - -<p>Without another word they both walked down -the country road together.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_III">PART III<br /> -INSTIGATION</h2> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="Instigation">Instigation</h2> - -<h3 id="CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.</h3> -</div> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-t.jpg" width="80" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="upper-case"> -The</span> train in which Carl was riding -rolled slowly through the outskirts -of a southern city and he looked -out at the rows of negro cottages -and hovels that plaintively cringed -underneath the wide foliage of -willow and magnolia trees. Most of the cottages -were unpainted and grey with the impersonally -chaste kiss of time, while the hovels were mere -flimsy boxes covered with black tar paper. Sunflowers -and morning glories stood amid the weeds -and twined about the slanting fences like gaudy -virgins dismayed at their sight of a lewdly disordered -room and appealing to the sunlight for -protection. Negro women in faded sunbonnets -and wrappers could sometimes be seen shuffling -down the thickly dusty roads and negro children, -in weird incoherences of tattered clothes, tumbled -around the humble doorsteps. The children were -little black madmen unconsciously dodging a huge -fist that was concealed beneath the scene. The -dust of a late August morning had dropped upon -all things, sifting its listless sadness into every -crevice and crack, and even the fierce sun could -not dispel this invasion.</p> - -<p>Every shade of this scene was an accurately -friendly answer to Carl’s mood and he squandered -the brooding light of his eyes upon all of the -visual details outside of the train window. The -mask of careless bitterness upon his face said -its hello to the cowering and sinister apathy of -the houses and people, and viciously he longed to -leap out of the window and join the unashamed -animal rites which these hovels and human beings -were parading. Here an alien race was standing -amid clouds of evil-smelling squalor and staring at -its broken longings and dreams—staring with a -wild hopelessness. This race had lost its own civilization -and was clumsily imitating that of the -white man, not because of any innate desire, but -because it had been forced to blend into its surroundings -or perish, and Carl felt that all of his -life had also been an animated lie of flesh and -speech, devised to aid him in escaping from the -contemptuous eyes that vastly hemmed him in. -And now, with the feelings of a man who had -neatly murdered himself, he was planning to turn -the knives of his thoughts and emotions upon -other people, not for revenge, but because the -marred ghost of himself harshly desired to convince -itself that it was still alive. If this ghost -had yielded to the subterfuges of kindness and -gentleness it would have become too much aware -of its own thin remoteness from life, and cruelty -alone could induce it to believe that it was still -welded to the actualities of existence.</p> - -<p>As Carl sat at the window he could often hear -the grotesquely quavering, boldly mellow laughter -of negro men trudging to their work, but these -sounds did not express humor to him. They held -the strong effort of men to flee from tormenting -longings and the numbly vicious rebuke of poverty, -and the sounds which these men released -merely symbolized the long strides of their fancied -escape. Laughter can be merely the explosive -sound with which human beings seek to demolish -each other—the indirect weapon of self-hatred. -Carl laughed with a strained loudness, throwing -a magnified echo to the negroes on the dusty roads -outside, and a drowsily plump, middle-aged woman -in an opposite seat opened her mouth widely and -huddled into a corner, fearing that she might be -attacked by a maniac. He gave her a glance and -feasted upon her fear, for her shrinking attitude -was falsely and deliciously persuading the ghost -of himself that it still held a potency over other -people.</p> - -<p>Sometimes a song crazily drifted to Carl’s ears -from one of the negro cottages—a song that was -weighted with loosely undulating sadness—and he -listened with a stern greediness. Music is a huge, -treacherous sound made by thoughts and emotions -to console them for their feeling of minute mortality, -and after it has given them its dream of -permanent size it disappears, slaying the illusion -with silence. Now it brought a delusion of substantiality -to the ghost within the mould of Carl’s -flesh and he listened in a trance of gratitude. Lost -in the obliterations of his grief, he felt infinitely -nearer to these abject, musical negroes outside -than to the artificially silent, stiffly satisfied white -people with whom he was riding. Grief, which -is an insane tyrant among emotions, has an effortless -way of crossing all boundaries and walls, but -it does not reveal any hidden oneness between -human beings. Grief places men and women in a -vacuum of renunciation, or shows them that they -have little connection with the people around -them and that they have been enduring an alien -camp. Ruled by this latter discovery, Carl looked -with an undisguised hatred at the formal, complacent -white people in the railway coach and -felt that he was deeply related to the negroes -outside.</p> - -<p>Almost three months had passed since the invisible -knife had swung into the middle of his being, -and since he had staggered across the agitated -sincerity of night to the peaceful compassion of -the young school teacher. Now and then he -remembered their silent walk down the sturdy -brightness of the country road—a silence which -had been a soft wreath ironically thrown upon -the weakness of words—and the troubled way in -which she had helped him brush his clothes and -wash his face, and the stumbling simplicity of -the words with which she had tried to comfort -him. Although he had been a stranger to her, she -had thrown aside that distrust which is born of -sensual pride and a cheaply purchased worldly -wisdom, influenced by the helpless directness of -his demeanor and by the supple humility which a -grief of her own had once left within her. The -force of her fearlessness had fallen upon him like -the sweeping touch of another world, and in his -daze he had actually believed that she had been -sent by the woman whom he had lost as an alert -messenger striving to teach him how to hold his -ghostlike shoulders up beneath a future burden. -If she had held a human aspect to him he would -have hated and reviled her, for then she would -have been merely an atom in the vast, turbid -reality that had slowly lured him to an imbecilic -torture. He accepted the curves of her body as -an unearthly visitation and possessed them as one -who passes through a fragile ritual. But after -his departure from her, as he once more walked -down the shaggy, solid country road, she had -tiptoed away from him with a spectral quickness, -and the clamor of a world had once more attacked -him, like the scattered falsehoods of an idiot. -The rustle of trees had become an insignificant -whisper of defeat; the songs of birds had changed -to the shrill vacuities with which a monster entertained -himself; the colored groups of flowers had -become the pitiful remains of a violated carnival; -the earth beneath his feet had altered to the stolid -aloofness of a giant moron; and the sunlight had -seemed to be a theatrical accident.</p> - -<p>When he had reached the city, with its orderly -ranks of houses and factories and its dully precise -pavements, the scene had been to him a cunning -mirage made by dying people to suppress their -realization of the advancing destruction. The -people on the streets had held the complicated -glee and perplexity of an insane slave trying to -extract an imaginary importance from his bondage. -He had longed to jump at their throats -and silence the feverish lie that was reviling the -truthful stare of his eyes and only his physical -exhaustion had prevented him from doing this. -Grief is a spontaneous welcome sent to the insanity -that lurks within all human beings, and its -invitation greets a responsive strength or a frightened -weakness of imagination, according to the -man or woman who receives it.</p> - -<p>And so he had plodded back to his home, -carrying within him a numb confusion that was -sometimes disrupted by vicious impulses, and -forcing the ghost of himself into a motion which -it could not understand. He had tried to answer -the angry and uneasy questions of his parents -with plausible lies at his own expense. Yes, he -had met someone who had given him bad news -and in a fit of temper he had rushed from the -railroad station and deserted his valises. What -was in the telegram? Oh, just a message from -a friend. Where had he been for the past two -days? Why, he had gone on a spree and had slept -off his drunkenness at the house of a friend. -Shouldn’t he be locked in an insane asylum? Yes, -but life had already granted him that favor. With -a glib tongue he tried to serenade the barren -comedy of improbabilities to which he had -returned, but he scarcely heard the words that -he was uttering, and as he wrung them from the -empty ghost that was within him he longed to -strike his parents in the face and feed greedily -upon their rage and astonishment, in an effort -to convince himself that he was still substantially -powerful, still able to assert his reality by injuring -the people around him. With an act of this kind -he could destroy the indifferent fantasy of life -and change it to a tangible and active opponent. -The man standing before him—his father—was -merely an irritating puppet whose lack of understanding -moved jerkily, governed by the hands -of an ignorant dream.</p> - -<p>With a cry of hatred, Carl struck his father -in the face and watched him reel back against -the wall of the dining-room with a feeling of warm -triumph. He struck him again and revelled in -the blood that decorated the man’s lips. His -mother shrieked with fear; his father returned -the blows; and the two men fought around the -room, overturning chairs and vases. Several -neighbors, brought by the cries of his mother, -rushed in and overpowered him. Together with -his father, they held him down while someone -summoned a patrol wagon, and he was taken to -a cell in a police station. As he sat in the flatly -smelling semi-gloom of the cell he caressed, with -an overpowering fondness, the blood that had -stiffened upon parts of his face, for it mutely -testified that he had conquered the remote lie -around him and altered it to a satisfying enemy. -He had persuaded himself that he was still alive, -and the blows which he had given his father had -been the first proof of this illusory emancipation. -Throughout the night, as he shifted upon the iron -shelf that was his bed, he muttered to himself -at regular intervals, “I am alive, I am still alive,” -as though he were trying to preserve a triumphant -dream that would soon disappear, and the grief -within him rocked to and fro upon the words, -using them as a cradle.</p> - -<p>But when the morning dodged shamefacedly -into his cell, bringing with it a faint retinue of -city sounds, the annoying fantasy returned with -full vigor, and the ghost within him stealthily -assumed possession of his flesh. Once more he -was a thinly wounded spectator, filled with an -impotent hatred at the melee about him and -longing for the lusty release of physical motion. -Two small boys, lying upon their stomachs, peered -through the grating of his cell window, which -stood on a level with the sidewalk outside, and -jibed at him. He cursed them incessantly, with -an anger that was not directed at them, but at -the meaningless tensions of their voices, and with -the tumult of his own voice he vainly strove to -shake the wraith within him to firmer outlines.</p> - -<p>As he stood before the magistrate a few hours -later, an incredulous sneer was on his face, as -though the man at the desk above him were a -pompous, talkative scarecrow, and with a stubborn -silence he confronted the questions that were -thrown at him. In a low, hesitating voice his -father declared that he feared that his son had -become insane, and the judge ordered an examination -by one of the city physicians. Carl was -returned to his cell, after his parents had pelted -him with half-angry and half-bewildered sentences -in an ante-room of the court, and as he sat again -in his cell, surveying the rigid jeer of the iron -bars, his hatred began to listen to the advice -of cunning—a cunning pilfered from the wilted -depths of his despair. He began to see that -physical blows and silence were crude and ineffective -weapons in his attack upon the insulting -commotion of life and that, if he desired to injure -human beings so that both he and they might -become real for a moment, he must use more -indirect and ingenious methods.</p> - -<p>When the city physician, a tall, briskly-balanced -man with no imagination, questioned him in his -cell, he became a blandly appealing and submissive -actor.</p> - -<p>“Yes, doctor, I had a nervous breakdown from -overstudy, you know, and for a time I’m afraid -that I lost my reason. They tell me that I struck -my father and this has horrified me, as I haven’t -the slightest recollection of what I did. But I’ve -gathered myself together now and I can promise -you that I’ll never lose control of myself again—never! -And I’m awfully sorry for what I did. I -can assure you of the sincerity of my repentance.”</p> - -<p>The physician was putty in Carl’s adroit hands—this -composed young man with an intelligent, -contrite speech must, of course, be quite sane. -Carl, as he spoke to this man, slowly formed an -evil grin beneath the cool mask of his face, and -he relished the task of showering upon this man -earnest platitudes, smooth imitations of that limited -sleep known as “common sense,” and words -of self-reproach, because this trickery brought -back to him his old sense of power over his surroundings -and offered a subtle outlet for his hatred -of life. The physician ended by shaking his hand -with a genial respect and when evening came he -was given his freedom.</p> - -<p>He returned to his home, repeating the soft -treachery of his words while his fists still longed -to lunge out at the faces in front of him, but the -shrewdness of a ghost determined to regain a -semblance of life by cleverly deceiving and punishing -the people around it came to his rescue -and controlled his body. His parents had felt -wrathful at the presence of something which they -could only dimly see and which he made no effort -to clarify, but life had taught them to make a -god of submission, and a heavy tenderness mingled -with an alert fear crept into their posture toward -him. He trudged back to the loquacious, coarse -emptiness of his clerkship at the tobacco shop -and shunned the world that he had previously -inhabited, for he feared that if he met anyone -whom he knew he would feel again the irresistible -inclination to interrogate their throats, and he -knew that these impulses would only lead to his -own destruction. When he accidentally met some -acquaintance on the street, he would hurry on -like a nervous criminal, ignoring the other’s -greetings.</p> - -<p>He prowled about the city, still in search of a -violent dream that could offer its delusion of -reckless strength to the mutilated spirit whose -complaints drove him on. He ran to the soiled -raptures of prostitutes and sensually oppressed, -adventurous girls who could be picked up on the -streets, and gave them a twisted symphony of -blows, curses, whispered insinuations, lies, while -he revelled in the illusion of cruelty that was -lending a false reality to the thin futilities of -his mind and flesh. With a mixture of brutality -and delicately simulated caresses, he overawed -these women and they felt themselves in the -presence of a charming, abstracted fiend, whose -kaleidoscopic insincerity only made them long to -change it to a gesture of actual love. He sought -the company of thieves and hoodlums, and at first -they distrusted him because his restrained manners -and gently removed look were not proper -credentials, but when they saw how eager he was -for the impact of fists, and how he could take a -blow and rise with a grin of stunned delight, they -accepted him as an eccentric brother. They did -not know that these actions were not born of -courage, but were caused by a gigantic longing -for physical pain—pain that could shock his numb -spirit into a feeling of sharply hideous communion -with an actual world.</p> - -<p>But finally this life began to weary him because -it could not reach the flimsy loneliness that stood -within him. He carried within him at all times -an audience of ghostly thoughts and emotions, -and they were at last becoming bored with the -stolen melodrama. He determined to practice an -economy in movements and words, and he walked -alone at night and on streets where the possibility -of meeting someone who knew him would be -distant. He watched the syncopated gliding of -people with the irritation of a stranger. The men -and women who drifted or bobbed along were -cardboard mannikins to him and he vainly tried -to give life to their flatness and lack of color. -Sometimes he would pause and touch his arm and -face, wondering at the odd inadequateness of their -presence. Olga had become a living but invisible -being who was constantly groping for him, with -eyes unused to the outlines of earth, and sometimes -finding his shoulder in a fleeting and -accidental way. When this happened, he would -turn around abruptly and berate his inability to -extract her form from the concealing air. At such -times he would often speak to her. “Olga ... -Olga ... what is this unsought blindness that has -come to both of us?” he would cry into the night -air of a street. “A cruel chicanery ... a blurred -and simple pause ... a little fantasy within a huge -one? Am I a coward rolling in the mud that -stretches before a vast gate? Life seems a fantastic -conspiracy, panting and rattling in its -efforts to hide the emptiness beneath it.... -Olga ... take me to your burnished hermitage -... I am tired.”</p> - -<p>He would walk on, trying to imagine what her -answer had been, and winning an elusive and -deliberately wrought consolation that stayed for -an hour and then gradually departed. His life -had settled into the recurrence of these reactions, -when a second invitation arrived from his wealthy -uncle in the southern city, and he had accepted -merely because he wanted a new arena for his -struggle with a discredited reality—fresher targets -and a change in the illusion’s surface.</p> - -<p>And now he was seated in the train that slowly -rolled through the outskirts of a southern city -and giving his eyes to the squalid negro section -that unfurled before him....</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h3 id="CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.</h3> -</div> - -<p>He turned from the window and strove to place -an expression of close-lipped serenity on his face, -for the train had almost reached the station. He -had not seen his uncle for years and he played -with dim memories of the man’s appearance. -When he walked down the station platform he -found that his uncle, Doctor Max Edleman, was -waiting just outside of the iron gates. Doctor -Edleman was a man of sixty years, sturdily -rotund, with a tall body that was beginning to -be disgraced by its expanding paunch. His head -was unusually large and ruled by small blue eyes -and the sharply turned breadth of a nose. His -great, thick lips were tightly withdrawn to an outline -of benign patience and his florid face ridiculed -the trace of wrinkles that had flicked it. His -greyish blonde hair was still fairly abundant, and -all of him suggested a man who was uniquely -intact because he had scarcely ever allowed life -to clutch him familiarly. Since he was an Alsatian -Jew, he kissed Carl carefully on both cheeks, and -this annoyed Carl, not from the usual masculine -reasons, but because he felt that this was a jocose -insult from a fantasy that despised him, but he -submitted with a flitting grimace.</p> - -<p>He took Carl to an automobile and after they -had been driven away he smothered him with -questions.</p> - -<p>“Your dear mother tells me that you have been -acting queerly of late,” he said, in the heavily-measured -way of speaking he had. “You have -been refusing to speak to anyone and staying -away from home—bringing worry to your dear -mother. It seems to me that you have given -enough care and trouble to your parents, and -that it’s about time that you acted like a normal -man. I understand that you have been dissipating -and going with dissolute people. You are twenty-five -now and there is no longer any excuse for -this wildness. What have you to say for yourself?”</p> - -<p>“Don’t ask me to explain things that you -couldn’t understand,” said Carl, returning to act -in the falsely unpleasant play. “I have had a -great grief and I’m trying in my own way to -make it a friend of mine. If I tell you that your -questions bring back wounds, I am sure that you -will not desire to hurt me.”</p> - -<p>He gave his uncle words that would appease -and disarm him, while at the same time evading -his queries, and this game gave him a smooth -semblance of life.</p> - -<p>“So-o, so-o, I have no desire to penetrate your -secrets,” said Dr. Edleman, in a kindly voice that -feebly strove to comprehend. “I am simply advising -you to pull yourself together. Show some -consideration for the people around you.”</p> - -<p>He continued to offer the benevolent adulterations -of his advice, and as Carl listened he -suddenly thought of a high-school teacher who -had once rebuked him for bringing to class a -theme entitled “Women Who Walk the Streets,” -and with a vaporously swinging amusement in -his heart he almost felt human again. This -fantasy could hold a blustering smirk now and -then—its only extenuation. But the nearness -vanished as his uncle’s voice became a swindling -monotone, angering him with its formal pretense -of life. Carefully, and with a ghostlike insincerity -that bribed his voice with lightness, he gave -words that could hold this man at arm’s length. -The strain of adapting his words to the intelligence -of the man beside him brought him a closer -relation to the bickering phantasmagoria of men -and their motives without in any way summoning -his own thoughts and emotions. Dr. Edleman -felt that his nephew was skillfully attempting -to defend a selfish past and bringing into the -service of this motive a graceful keenness of -mind, but beyond this point Carl’s words were -unable to affect him.</p> - -<p>“I have always admired your brilliancy,” he -said, “and I only wish that you would use it in -the right way. A young man must pay some -attention to the desires and opinions of older -people. It will be a glad day for me when I see -that you are using your talents to bring happiness -to other people. A glad day.”</p> - -<p>Carl gave a sigh to the grave dullness that -marched forth in his uncle’s voice and meditated -upon the curious differences in sound with which -people petted their limitations and discretions. -These differences were known as words, and when -they pleased a great number of people they were -hailed as symbols of genius or power, but Carl -could see no distinction between any of them. -Like a horde of tired servants, they pranced to -the prides and hatreds of men and then returned -to their common grave, and only their exact -arrangement gave them a flitting assumption of -life. “What is the difference between this old -man and myself? Several keys to false doors of -thought and emotion, misplaced or lost in his -youth and found in mine.” Through reiterating -these plausibilities he tried to give bulk and -texture to the fantasy of existence.</p> - -<p>The automobile stopped before the Edleman -home, which was a large two-story structure—a -partial reproduction of the Colonial period modified -to conform to the more exuberant inclinations -of an Alsatian Jew. Four broad, high wooden -pillars, painted white, rose over a wide veranda -and ended in a slanting roof of black slate, and -the walls were of red brick courted by an abundance -of vines. A large garden, with tons of fruit -trees and brilliant episodes of flowers, surrounded -the house and was enclosed by a level hedge of -shrubs and a low iron fence. An impression of -dreamlessly cluttered luxury, verging in spots -upon bland somnolence, proclaimed the empty -heart of the place, but it was almost a distinct -flattery to Carl, who had grown tired of aggressive -angles and plain surfaces. Here, at least, the -mirage held a sleek flirtation with bunches of -color and burdened curves.</p> - -<p>His aunt Bertha, a short, stout woman in a -gown of brown taffeta and white lace, welcomed -him in a babbling and languid fashion and showed -him to his room. She was a softly shallow woman -whose major interests were card parties and the -lingering intricacies of gossip. The flabby roundness -of her face was in the last grip of middle -age and her mind was as scanty and precisely -glistening as the greyish-brown hair that slanted -back from her low forehead. After the dinner, -she hurried off to the mildly mercenary rites of -a bridge whist party and Carl was left to wander -idly around the garden. He sat on the grass -beneath a persimmon tree and played with lazy, -cruel thoughts in which he slapped a man’s face -or tortured a woman’s cheek, still moved by his -old mania to profane the empty dream which -life had become to him, forcing it into a vigorous -duplicate of reality.</p> - -<p>The bright afternoon, with its myriads of -shrilly clear and hissing sounds, was like a -troubled falsetto rapture and he weakly fought -to bring it nearer to his senses. As he sat beneath -the tree he resolved to give his mind some labor -with which it could transform the vision to a -more solid picture, and he thought of the people -who would soon be embarrassing him with their -mouths and eyes. They were Jews of a kind that -had rapidly spread over the south. The older -people among them had migrated to the south -some forty years previously and had gradually -won large or comfortable fortunes by means of -their thriftiness and trading abilities. They were -now contented grand-and great-grand-parents, -surrounded by two generations of their offspring, -and all of them were strangely indifferent to the -austere mysticism for which the Jewish race is so -verbosely noted. Dreamless, voluble, self-assured, -they angled with their religion in a half-hearted -way and blackmailed, with money, the occasional -flutters of mental curiosity. They had picked up -several mannerisms of the south—softly drawling -voices and unhurried movements—and the only -things that distinguished them as Jews were the -curved gusto of their faces and the fact that they -mingled only with each other—a last, lukewarm -trace of loyalty left by the surge of centuries -of past incidents.</p> - -<p>Carl went into the house and returned, with -paper and pencil, to his station beneath the persimmon -tree. He strove to write a poem to the -woman whom he had lost. It was a torture that, -like a starved monster, devoured the softer spaces -within his heart. It was as though he were -endeavoring to compress the ruins of an entire -world, making them narrower and narrower, more -and more alive, until at last they formed the body -of a woman. The effort brought him an actual -physical pain; drops of sweat were born on his -forehead, and his spirit reeled like a mesmerized, -beaten drunkard. “All of life is a lie unless I -make her appear on this paper,” he cried aloud -to the persimmon-tree leaves, for the lack of better -gods. He detested his own futility and sought -to avenge himself upon it. When the poem was -finished he fell into a troubled, plundered sleep -in which his consciousness busily made reports -that were unheeded. He could still see the trees -and flowers, but they were like the edge of the -universe miraculously brought near to his eyes. -Finally, with an effort like a straight line thrusting -aside several worlds, he roused himself and -read the poem. It failed to satisfy him; it was -a tangle of treacherous promises and pleading -fragments—the line of one of her arms, with -an ashen delicateness; the nervously boyish -rebuke of her eyes; the tenuous defiance of her -heart; the curled merriments of her hair—fragments -fastened to a slip of white paper and -lacking the great surge of breath that could have -whirled them into a speaking whole. He had -written other poems to her and they had produced -the same result; but still, huddled under the -tree, he continued to write, much like a dying man -who has no choice save to gasp for breath, only -in his case it was a ghost that struggled to avoid -a second death. The ghost was seeking to escape -a final extinction. He wrote until the lengthened -shadow of the tree told him that he must return -to the house; but it took him at least ten minutes -before he could censure his face and control his -breath. At last, with the thinly passive mask -once more adjusted and held by the slenderest of -threads, he walked from the garden.</p> - -<p>At supper he met his cousin, Dr. Joseph Rosenstein, -who was living at the Edleman home and -who treated him with a suspecting affability. -The presence of a poet is always a vague challenge -to those people who feel that he is somehow at -variance with the complacent finalities of their -lives, but who cannot draw the difference into a -clearer antagonism. For this reason they try to -cover their distrust with a nervous and questioning -amiability. After jovially advising Carl to -write a sonnet to a doctor, protesting to a great -admiration for the prettiness of poetry, and asking -Carl whether he didn’t think that practical people -were also of some use in the world, Rosenstein -deserted the farce and began to discuss the technical -details of an operation with Dr. Edleman. -Bertha Edleman uttered some placid remarks -concerning the possibility of Carl’s writing short -stories that would bring him a great deal of -money; inquired after his parents in a detailed -but listless way; and then, with more vigor, commenced -to speak of engagements, marriages and -divorces within her immediate circle. Dr. Edleman, -by turns waggish and blunt, presided over -the groups of corrupted words. Since Carl was -anxious not to provoke these people, he stooped -to the task of uttering pleasantly obvious remarks -in a timid and deliberate fashion, and since they -secretly felt that his work gave him a rank lower -than theirs, they liked the subdued and abashed -manner in which he spoke.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h3 id="CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII.</h3> -</div> - -<p>After that evening he managed to protect his -loneliness with clever words. He told the Edlemans -that he was looking for material for short -stories and that he intended to roam about the -city; and, elated at his purpose, they did not -object. Since most of his relatives were still -displaying their dignity, jewelry, and card-playing -abilities at northern summer resorts, he found -it easy to be alone.</p> - -<p>In the midst of his restless, empty wanderings -he often sat for a while in a little park that -rustled and nodded upon the top of a bluff overlooking -a broad river. There he would stare out -at the wide, yellowish-brown flat of water, and -the dull green convolutions of the distant shore, -and the water would become an ethereal canvas -where he painted fugitive salutes to the woman -who had fled from life’s semblances. Under the -spell of a melting daze he would sit for hours, -almost unconscious of the fact that he held a -body of slowly breathing flesh. At one end of -the park the line of benches turned sharply in -toward the city, and this shaded place, guarded -by bushes and trees, was known as “Rounder’s -Corner.” It was frequented by thieves, drug -peddlers, sly, lacquered women and an occasional -vagrant, and they gathered there from twilight -on and drained the fierce insincerities of conversation -and whiskey, with sometimes the lucid -edge of cocaine. Since Carl came to this spot -only during the afternoons, he did not see these -people until, one evening, he managed to absent -himself from the Edleman home on the pretense -of desiring a trip on a river steamboat, and -strolled into the park.</p> - -<p>He sat on a bench and looked around him, trying -to become interested in the immediate contortions -of the fantasy. One glance told him the identity -of the social circle into which he had dropped -and he felt a jerk of attention, for the more -openly rough and cruel people in life were to him -reflections of his ghostly self, spied in a coarsely -exaggerated mirror but none the less valid. Fresh -from the lazy inanities of the Edleman house, he -felt a little baffled vigor—the ghost lamenting its -lack of exercise—and he longed to roll once more -in that plastic phenomenon which men insist on -calling mud. It was only through plastering himself -with the concentrated moistness of earth that -he could force himself to believe, for a time, in -the reality of life, and he welcomed his chance -to repeat this process. He scanned the whispering, -laughing, loose-faced people around him and -turned over in his mind different ways of -approaching them, since he knew how easy it -was to heap fuel upon their suspicions.</p> - -<p>A woman dropped down beside him on the -bench. She was young in actual years—not more -than twenty-three—but her body had been slashed -by a premature herald of middle age and her -rounded face was too softly plump and wrinkled -a little under the eyes and below the chin. Youth -and age were stiffly twined about her in lines -that protested against each other. Her body was -short and held a slenderness that was unnaturally -puffed a bit here and there, giving an impression -of incongruous inflation rather than of solid flesh. -Her black hair was a plentiful mass of artificial -curls and pressed against a wide straw hat, festooned -with tulips made of gaudy cloth, and she -was clad in loosely white muslin with a crimson -sash around her waist. The effect was that of a -school girl playing the part of a street walker -in an amateur theatrical and, if you looked at her -clothes alone, the illusion remained. It was only -destroyed by a glance at her face, for the outward -costumes of reality are often unconsciously amateurish, -as though they were striving to obliterate -the professional aspect held by the faces of human -beings—a psychic confession. Men and women -can never quite memorize their parts in life and -their clothes sometimes express this absent-mindedness.</p> - -<p>As he looked at this woman Carl noticed that -her eyes were not those of the usual flesh -trader—shifting and infantile—but were filled -with a tense distraction. The mere sullen -aftermath of whiskey, or the departure of -a man? No, it almost seemed that she was -actually brooding over emotions that had removed -her leagues from the bench against which her -body was pressed. Eyes are often unwitting -traitors and they tell the truth more readily than -the rest of the face, or words, since human beings -are not so conscious of what their eyes are -announcing. The two holes in the mask of the -face are often transparent or careless admissions, -while the remainder of the face is immersed in -a more successful deception. Carl was interested -by the fact that this woman seemed to ignore -his presence and was staring straight ahead of -her. He began to believe that her indifference -was genuine and he watched her more closely. -Finally she tossed her head, with a gesture that -expressed the defiant return of consciousness, and -glanced at him. Then she threw him the usual -“Hello, honey,” and with a disgusted grimace he -dismissed a certain ghostly audience within him, -telling it that the play would not begin. For a -while he spoke to her, throwing slang pebbles at -her with an oppressed exactitude and brushing -aside her lustreless insinuations, a little weary -of the unconvincing comedy. Suddenly the stunt -nauseated him and he fled back to his own metaphoric -tongue.</p> - -<p>“Do you see that woman passing by?” he asked. -“She has a face half like a twitching mouse and -half like a poised cat. I have known such women. -They are continually robbing certain men of -emotions in order meekly to hand back their -thefts to other men. With a mixture of cruelty -and weak submission they entertain their own -emptiness.”</p> - -<p>He looked away from her, expecting a silence -or the affront of cracked laughter and preparing -to leave. Her answer swung his head toward her.</p> - -<p>“You may be speaking to such a woman. Life -has undressed me to all people except myself, and -I don’t know what I am. I think that I was born -to be a nun, but something kicked me down a -dirty hallway and when I woke up there were -many hands reaching for me and it didn’t seem -important to me whether they took me or not. -But I think that I was born to be a nun.... -Does that interest you?”</p> - -<p>He stared at her with his mouth almost describing -a perfect O and his eyes opened to a wild -uncertainty. For a moment he felt that they -were both quite dead and that her spirit had -been ravished by waiting words.</p> - -<p>“In God’s name, what have you been doing?” -he cried.</p> - -<p>“Playing a part, with the assistance of your -indifferent slang,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Why?”</p> - -<p>“I started out by talking to you as I do to -most men. You broke into a rough speech and I -parried as usual. The evening was commencing -in its usual convincing manner. Then I began -to see that you were acting. There was a strain -on your face, and sometimes you stopped in the -middle of a delicate simile.... I knew that I -might be wrong, so I kept on talking as you -expected me to talk.”</p> - -<p>On her face was the smile of a beggar whose -tinselled metaphors have been pummeled and -disheveled by surface realities. The plump curves -of her face seemed to fit less snugly beneath the -flat deceit of rouge.</p> - -<p>“I am a fool,” he said. “Your eyes told me -something, but I spat upon it. I think that you -had better leave me.”</p> - -<p>“I have no intention of leaving you,” she said.</p> - -<p>They sat and stared at each other.</p> - -<p>“Do you give yourself to different men every -night?” he asked, as though his sophistication, -in an instant curve, had retreated to an anxious -child long concealed within him.</p> - -<p>“I give them what they are able to take, and -that is little. They want to clutch me for a time, -but I don’t feel them unless they stop my breathing. -A man walks into a house, wipes his feet -on the mat, spits into one of the cuspidors, and -leaves with a vacant smile on his face.”</p> - -<p>“Why do you want them to come in?”</p> - -<p>“They give me money for whiskey and leisure -time in which I can read. I’ve never been able -to find a simpler way of getting these things.”</p> - -<p>The explanation was clear and delicate to him.</p> - -<p>“Of course, the whiskey makes you sneer like -a queen, and the books bring you affairs with -better men,” he said.</p> - -<p>“All that I want to do is to pray to my thoughts -with appropriate words, and every night until -two in the morning I pay for the granting of -this wish.... But I think that I was born to be -a nun.”</p> - -<p>“I think that I was born to be a monk, covering -the walls of his cell with little images, all of -them contorting his bright hatred for a world,” -he said. “I think that something also kicked me -into a mob of prattling marionettes, leaving me -exposed to the shower of unintended blows. I -have often looked behind me and vainly tried to -see who this first enemy was, but I am afraid -that he does not return until you die.”</p> - -<p>With their silence they continued the dialogue -for a time.</p> - -<p>“Have you a man who takes your money and -kicks you?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“No. Every now and then some dope peddler -pays me a visit, but I have a gun and I know -how to use it. I sent one of them to a hospital -once. They call me Crazy Georgie May and -they’re always afraid of something that they -can’t understand.”</p> - -<p>“I have a proposition to make to you,” he said. -“We’ll live together without touching each other -and each of us will be the monk and nun that he -should have been. I am a ghost who wants to -return to life and you are a living person who -wants to go back to the ghost that was kicked -into an insincere ritual of flesh. We’ll erect a -unique monastery of thought and emotion, and -pay for it with the slavery of your hands or -mine.... Will you live with me in this fashion?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, if only to see whether it can be done,” -she answered instantly.</p> - -<p>They rose from the bench and walked away -together—a noble rascal and an ascetic prostitute.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p class="right"><i>Typography and Printing by Printing Service Company, Chicago.</i></p> - -<p class="right"><i>Electrotyped by Simpson-Bevans Company, Chicago.</i></p> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> -<div class="chapter transnote"> -<h2 class="nobreak"> -Transcriber’s Notes -</h2> - -<p>A number of typographical errors were corrected silently.</p> - -<p>Cover image is in the public domain.</p> - -<p>Table of contents was augmented with chapter references.</p> - -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKGUARD ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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