CHAPTER II – THE SEVENTH-STORY MEN

NOT until he was crossing Sixth Avenue, under the elevated road, did it occur to him that she had deliberately broken her rehearsal appointment to have tea with him and then as deliberately, had left him for the rehearsal. He had interested her; then, all at once, he had ceased to interest her. It was not the first time Peter had had this experience with women, though none of the others had been so frank about it.

Frank, she certainly was!

Resentments rose. Why on earth had he sat there so meekly and let her go on like that – he, the more or less well-known Eric Mann! Had he no force of character at all? No dignity?

Suppose she had to write plays to suit the whims of penny-splitting Broadway managers who had never heard of Andreyev and Tchekov, were bored by Shaw and Shakespeare and thought an optimist was an eye doctor – where would she get off!

During the short block between Sixth Avenue and the Square, anger conquered depression. When he entered the old brick apartment building he was muttering. When he left the elevator and walked along the dark corridor to the rooms he was considering reprisals.

Peter shared the dim old seventh-floor apartment with two fellow bachelors, Henry Sidenham Lowe and the Worm. The three were sometimes known as the Seventh-Story Men. The phrase was Hy Lowe’s and referred to the newspaper stories of that absurd kidnaping escapade – the Esther MacLeod case, it was – back in 1913. The three were a bit younger then.

Hy Lowe was a slim young man with small features that appeared to be gathered in the middle of his face. His job might have been thought odd anywhere save in the Greenwich Village region. After some years of newspaper work he had settled down to the managing editorship of a missionary weekly known as My Brother’s Keeper. Hy was uncommunicative, even irreverent regarding his means of livelihood, usually referring to the paper as his meal ticket, and to his employer, the Reverend Doctor Hubbell Harkness Wilde (if at all) as the Walrus. In leisure moments, perhaps as a chronic reaction from the moral strain of his job, Hy affected slang, musical comedy and girls. The partly skinned old upright piano in the studio was his. And he had a small gift at juggling plates.

The Worm was a philosopher; about Peter’s age, sandy in coloring but mild in nature, reflective to the point of self-effacement. He read interminably, in more than one foreign language and was supposed to write book reviews. He had lived in odd corners of the earth and knew Gorki personally. His name was Henry Bates.

Peter came slowly into the studio, threw off coat and hat and stood, the beginnings of a complacent smile on his face.

“I’ve got my girl,” he announced.

“Now that you’ve got her, what you gonna do with her?” queried Hy Lowe, without turning from the new song hit he was picking out on the piano.

“What am I gonna do with her?” mused Peter, hands deep in pockets, more and more pleased with his new attitude of mind – “I’m gonna vivisect her, of course.”

“Ah, cruel one!” hummed Hy.

“Well, why not!” cried Peter, rousing. “If a girl leaves her home and strikes out for the self-expression thing, doesn’t she forfeit the consideration of decent people? Isn’t she fair game?”

Over in the corner by a window, his attention caught by this outbreak, the Worm looked up at Peter and reflected for a moment. He was deep in a Morris chair, the Worm, clad only in striped pajamas that were not over-equipped with buttons, and one slipper of Chinese straw that dangled from an elevated foot.

“Hey, Pete – get this!” cried Hy, and burst into song.

Peter leaned over his shoulder and sang the choppy refrain with him. In the interest of accuracy the two sang it again, The third rendition brought them to the borders of harmony.

The Worm looked up again and studied Peter’s back, rather absently as if puzzling him out and classifying him. He knit his brows. Then his eyes lighted, and he turned back in his book, fingering the pages with a mild eagerness. Finding what he sought, he read thoughtfully and smiled. He closed his book; hitched forward to the old flat-top desk that stood between the windows; lighted a caked brier pipe; and after considerable scribbling on scraps of paper appeared to hit upon an arrangement of phrases that pleased him. These phrases he printed out painstakingly on the back of a calling card which he tacked up (with a hair-brush) on the outer side of the apartment door. Then he went into the bedroom to dress.

“Who is she?” asked Hy in a low voice. The two were fond of the Worm, but they never talked with him about their girls.

“That’s the interesting thing,” said Peter. “I don’t know. She’s plumb mysterious. All she’d tell was that she is playing a boy at that little Crossroads Theater of Zanin’s, and that I’d have to go there to find her out. Going to-night. Want to come along?”

“What kind of a looking girl?”

“Oh – pretty. Extraordinary eyes, green with brown in ‘em – but green. And built like a boy. Very graceful.”

“Hm!” mused Hy.

“Do you know her?”

“Sounds like Sue Wilde.”

“Not – ”

“Yes, the Walrus’s child.”

“What’s she doing, playing around the Village?”

“Oh, that’s an old story. She left home – walked right out. Calls herself modern. She’s the original lady highbrow, if you ask me. Sure I’ll go to see her. Even if she never could see me.”

Later, Hy remarked: “The old boy asked me yesterday if I had her address. You see he knows we live down here where the Village crowds circulate.”

“Give it to him?”

“No. Easy enough to get, of course, but I ducked… I’m going to hop into the bathtub. There’s time enough. Then we can eat at the Parisian.”

Peter settled down to read the sporting page of the evening paper. Shortly the Worm, clad now, drifted back to the Morris chair.

They heard Hy shuffle out in his bath slippers and close the outer door after him. Then he opened the door and came back, He stood in the doorway, holding his bathrobe together with one hand and swinging his towel with the ether; and chuckling.

“You worm!” he observed. “Why Bolbo ceeras?”

The Worm looked up with mild eyes. “Not bolboceeras,” he corrected.

“Bolboeseras. As in cow.”

“But why?”

The Worm merely shrugged his shoulders and resumed his book.

Peter paid little heed to this brief conversation. And when he and Hy went out, half an hour later, he gave only a passing glance to the card on the door. He was occupied with thoughts of a slim girl with green eyes who had fascinated and angered him in a most confusing way.

The card read as follows:

DO NOT FEED OR ANNOY!

BOLBOCERAS AMERICANUS MULS

HABITAT HERE!

CHAPTER III – JACOB ZANIN

THE Crossroads Theater was nothing more than an old store, with a shallow stage built in at the rear and a rough foyer boarded off at the front. The seats were rows of undertaker’s chairs, But the lighting was managed with some skill; and the scenery, built and painted in the neighborhood, bordered on a Barker-Craig-Reinhardt effectiveness.

Peter and Hy stood for a little time in the foyer, watching the audience come in. It was a distinctly youthful audience – the girls and women were attractive, most of them Americans; the men running more foreign, with a good many Russian Jews among them. They all appeared to be great friends. And they handled one another a good deal. Peter, self-conscious, hunting copy as always, saw one tired-looking young Jewish painter catch the hand of a pretty girl – an extraordinarily pretty girl, blonde, of a slimly rounded figure – and press and caress her fingers as he chatted casually with a group.

After a moment the girl drew her hand away gently, half-apologetically, while a faint wave of color flowed to her transparent cheek.

All Peter’s blind race prejudice flamed into a little fire of rage. Here it was – his subject – the restless American girl experimenting with life, the selfish bachelor girl, deep in the tangles of Bohemia, surrounded by just the experimental men that would be drawn to the district by such as she…

So Peter read it. And he was tom by confused clashing emotions. Then he heard a fresh voice cry: “Why, hello, Betty!” Then he remembered – this girl was the Picabia dancer – Betty Deane – her friend! There was color in his own face now, and his pulse was leaping.

“Come,” he said shortly to Hy, “let’s find our seats.”

The first playlet on the bill was Zanin’s Any Street.

The theme was the grim influence of street life on the mind of a child. It was an uncomfortable little play. All curtains were drawn back. Subjects were mentioned that should never, Peter felt, be even hinted at in the presence of young women. Rough direct words were hurled at that audience.

Peter, blushing, peered about him. There sat the young women and girls by the dozen, serene of face, frankly interested.

Poor Hy, overcome by his tangled self-consciousness, actually lowered his head and pressed his handkerchief to his fiery face, murmuring: “This is no place for a minister’s assistant!” And he added, in Peter’s ear: “Lord, if the Walrus could just see this – once!”

Then a newsboy came running on the stage – slim, light of foot – dodged cowering in a saloon doorway, and swore at an off-stage policeman from whose clutches he had escaped.

There was a swift pattering of applause; and a whisper ran through the audience. Peter heard one voice say: “There she is – that’s Sue!”

He sat erect, on the edge of his chair. Again the hot color surged into his face. He felt it there and was confused.

It was his girl of the apple, in old coat and knickerbockers, tom stockings, torn shirt open at the neck, a ragged felt hat over her short hair.

Peter felt his resentment fading. He knew as he watched her move about the stage that she had the curious electric quality that is called personality. It was in her face and the poise of her head, in the lines of her body, in every easy movement. She had a great gift..

After this play the two went outside to smoke, very silent, suppressed even. Neither knew what to think or what to say.

There Zanin found them (for Peter was, after all, a bit of a personage) and made them his guests.

Thus it was that Peter found himself behind the scenes, meeting the youthful, preoccupied members of the company and watching with half-suppressed eagerness the narrow stairway by which Sue Wilde must sooner or later mount from the region of dressing-rooms below.

Finally, just before the curtain was rung up on the second play, he was rewarded by the appearance of Betty Deane, followed by the tam o’shanter and the plaid coat of his apple girl.

He wondered if her heart was jumping as his was.

Surely the electric thrill of this meeting, here among heaps of scenery and properties, must have touched her, too. He could not believe that it began and ended with himself. There was magic in the occasion, such magic as an individual rarely generates alone. But if it touched her, she gave no outward sign. To Zanin’s casual, “Oh, you know each other,” she responded with a quite matter-of-fact smile and nod.

They went out into the audience, and up an aisle to seats in the rear of the hall – Betty first, then Sue and Peter, then Hy.

Peter felt the thrill again in walking just behind her, aware through his very nerve-rips of her grace and charm of movement. When he stood aside to let her pass on to her seat her sleeve brushed his arm; and the arm, his body, his brain, tingled and flamed.

Zanin joined them after the last play and led them to a basement restaurant near the Square. Hy paired off with Betty and made progress. But then, Betty was evidently more Hy’s sort than Sue was.

In the restaurant, Peter, silent, gloomy, watched his chance for a word aside with Sue. When it came, he said: “I’m very glad you told me to come.”

“You liked it then?”

“I liked you.”

This appeared to silence her.

“You have distinction Your performance was really interesting.”

“I’m glad you think that.”

“In some ways you are the most gifted girl I have ever seen. Listen! I must see you again.”

She smiled.

“Let’s have a bite together one of these evenings – at the Parisian or Jim’s. I want to talk with you.”

“That would be pleasant,” said she, after a moment’s hesitation.

“To-morrow evening, perhaps?” Peter suggested.

The question was not answered; for in some way the talk became general just then. Later Peter was sure that Sue herself had a hand in making it general.

Zanin turned suddenly to Peter. He was a big young man, with a strong if peasant-like face and a look of keenness about the eyes. There was exuberant force in the man, over which his Village manner of sophisticated casualness toward all things lay like the thinnest of veneers.

“Well,” he said, “what do you think of Sue here?”

Peter repeated his impressions with enthusiasm.

“We’re going to do big things with her,” said Zanin. “Big things. You wait. Any Street is just a beginning.” And then an impetuous eagerness rushing up in him, his topic shifted from Sue to himself. With a turbulent, passionate egotism he recounted his early difficulties in America, his struggles with the language, heart-breaking summers as a book agent, newspaper jobs in middle-western cities, theatrical press work from Coast to Coast, his plunge into the battle for a higher standard of theatrical art and the resulting fight, most desperate of his life thus far, to attract attention to the Crossroads Theater and widen its influence.

Zarin was vehement now. Words poured in a torrent from his lips. He talked straight at you, gesturing, with a light in his eye and veiled power in his slightly husky voice. Peter felt this power, and something not unlike a hatred of the man took sudden root within him.

“You will think me foolish to give my strength to this struggle. Like you, I know these Americans. You can tell me nothing about them. Oh, I have seen them, lived with them – in the city, in the small village, on the farm. I know that they are ignorant of Art, that they do not care.” He snapped his big fingers. “Vaudeville, baseball, the girl show, the comic supplement, the moving picture – that is what they like! Yet year after year, I go on fighting for the barest recognition. They do not understand. They do not care. They believe in money, comfort, conformity – above all conformity. They are fools. But I know them, I tell you! And I know that they will listen to me yet! I have shown them that I can fight for my ideals. Before we are through I shall show them that I can beat them at their own game. They shall see that I mean business. I shall show them their God Success in his full majesty… And publicity? They are children. When I have finished they – the best of them – will come to me for kindergarten lessons in publicity. I’m hoping to talk with you about it, Mann, I can interest you. I wouldn’t bring it to you unless I knew I could interest you.”

He turned toward Sue. “And this girl shall help me. She has the talent, the courage, the breeding. She will surprise the best of them. They will find her pure gold.”

Hushed with his own enthusiasm, he dropped his hand over one of Sue’s; took hers up in both of his and moved her slender fingers about as he might have played absently with a handkerchief or a curtain string.

Hy, across the table, took this in; and noted too the swift, hot expression that flitted across Peter’s face and the sudden set to his mouth.

Sue, alter a moment, quietly withdrew her hand. But she did not flush, as Betty had flushed in somewhat similar circumstances a few hours earlier.

Peter laid his hands on the table; pushed back his chair; and, lips compressed, got up.

“Oh,” cried Zanin – “not going?”

“I must,” Peter replied, slowly, coldly. “I have work to do. It has been very pleasant. Good night.”

And out he went.

Hy, after some hesitation, followed.

Peter did not speak until they were nearly across the Square. Then he remembered —

“The Walrus asked you where she was, did he?”

“He sure did.”

“Worried about her, I suppose!”

“He’s worried, all right.”

“Humph!” said Peter.

He said nothing more. At the rooms, He partly undressed in silence. Now and again his long face worked in mute expression of conflicting emotions within. Suddenly he stopped undressing and went into the studio (he slept in there, on the couch) and sat by the window, peering out at the sights of the Square.

Hy watched him curiously; then called out a good night, turned off the gas and tumbled into bed. His final remark, the cheery observation – “I’ll tell you this much, my son. Friend Betty is some pippin!” drew forth no response.