the worm worked hard all of this particular day at the public library, up at forty-second street and fifth avenue. at five o'clock he came out, paused on the vast incline of marble steps to consider the spraying fountains of pale green foliage on the terraces (it was late april) and the brilliant thronging avenue and decided not to ride down to washington square on an autobus, but to save the ten cents and walk. which is how he came to meet sue wilde.
she was moving slowly along with the stream of pedestrians, her old coat open, her big tarn o'shanter hanging down behind her head and framing her face in color. the face itself, usually vital, was pale.
she turned and walked with him. she was loafing, she said listlessly, watching the crowds and trying to think. and she added: “it helps.”
“helps?”
“just feeling them crowding around—i don't know; it seems to keep you from forgetting that everybody else has problems.”
then she closed her lips on this bit of self-revelation. they walked a little way in silence.
“listen!” said she. “what are you doing?”
“half an hour's work at home clearing up my notes, then nothing. thinking of dinner?”
she nodded.
“i'll meet you. wherever you say.”
“at the muscovy, then. by seven.”
she stopped as if to turn away, hesitated, lingered, gazing out with sober eyes at the confusion of limousines, touring cars and taxis that rolled endlessly by, with here and there a high green bus lumbering above all the traffic. “maybe we can have another of our talks, henry,” she said. “i hope so. i need it—or something.”
“sue,” said he, “you're working too hard.”
she considered this, shook her head, turned abruptly away.
when he reached the old bachelor rookery in the square he did not enter, but walked twice around the block, thinking about sue. it had disturbed him to see that tired look in her odd deep-green eyes. sue had been vivid, striking, straightforward; fired with a finely honest revolt against the sham life into an observance of which nearly all of us, soon or late, get beaten down. he didn't want to see sue beaten down like the rest.
it was pleasant that she, too, had felt deeply about their friendship. this thought brought a thrill of the sort that had to be put down quickly; for nothing could have been plainer than, that he stirred no thrill in sue. no, he was not in the running there. he lived in books, the worm; and he reflected with a rather unaccustomed touch of bitterness that books are pale things.
peter, now—he had seemed lately to be in the running.
but it hardly seemed that peter could be the one who had brought problems into sue's life.... jacob zanin—there was another story! he was in the running decidedly. in that odd frank way of hers, sue had given the worm glimpses of this relationship.
he rounded the block a third time—a fourth—a fifth.
when he entered the apartment peter was there, in the studio, telephoning. to a girl, unquestionably. you could always tell, “you aren't fair to me. you throw me aside without a word of explanation.”
thus peter; his voice, pitched a little high, near to breaking with emotion; as if he were pleading with the one girl in the world—though, to be fair to peter, she almost always was.
the worm stepped into the bedroom, making as much noise as possible. but peter talked on.
“yes, you are taking exactly that position. as you know, i share your interest in freedom—but freedom without fairness or decent human consideration or even respect for one's word, comes down to selfish caprice. yes, selfish caprice!”
the worm picked up a chair and banged it against the door-post. but even this failed to stop peter.
“oh, no, my dear, of course i didn't mean that. i didn't know what i was saying. you can't imagine how i have looked forward to seeing you this evening. the thought of it has been with me all through this hard, hard day. i know my nerves are a wreck. i'm all out of tune. but everything seems to have landed on me at once...”
finding the chair useless as a warning, the worm sat upon it, made a wry face, folded his arms.
“... i've got to go away. you knew that, dear. this was my last chance to see you for weeks—and yet you speak of seeing me any time. it hurts, little girl. it just plain hurts to be put off like that. it doesn't seem like us.”
the worm wondered, rather casually, to how many girls peter had talked in this way during the past three years—stage girls, shop girls—the pretty little irish one, from the glove counter up-town; and that young marred person on the upper west side of whom peter had been unable to resist bragging a little; and maria tonifetti, manicurist at the sanitary barber shop of marius; and—oh, yes, and grace herring. only last year. the actress. she played lena in peter's the buzzard, and later made a small sensation in the gold heart. that affair had looked, for several months, like the real thing. the worm recalled one tragic night, all of which, until breakfast rime, he had passed in that very studio talking peter out of suicide.
he wondered who this new girl could be. was it sue, by any chance? were they that far along?
the worm got up with some impatience and went in there—just as peter angrily slammed the receiver on its hook.
“i hear you're going away,” the worm observed
peter swung around and peered through his big glasses. he made a visible effort to compose himself.
“oh,” he said, “hello! what's that? yes, i'm leaving to-morrow afternoon. neuerman is going to put the truffler on the road for a few; weeks this spring to try out the cast.”
the worm regarded him thoughtfully. “look here, pete,” said he, “it isn't my fault that god gave me ears. i heard your little love scene.”
peter looked blankly at him; then his face twisted convulsively and he buried his face in his hands.
“oh, henry!” he groaned. “it's awful. i'm in love, man!” his voice was really trembling. “it's got me at last—the real thing. i must tell somebody—it's racking me to pieces—i can't work, can't sleep. it's sue wilde. i've asked her to marry me—she can't make up her mind. and now; i've got to go away for weeks and leave things... za-zanin...”
he sat up, stiffened his shoulders, bit his lip. the worm feared he was going to cry. but instead he sprang up, rushed from the room and, a moment later, from the apartment.
the worm sat on a corner of the desk and looked after him, thought about him, let his feelings rise a little.... peter, even in his anger and confusion, had managed to look unruffled, well-groomed. he always did. no conceivable outburst of emotion could have made him forget to place his coat on the hanger and crease his trousers carefully in the frame. his various suits were well made. they fitted him. they represented thought and money. his shoes—eight or nine pairs in all—were custom made and looked it. his scarfs were of imported silk. his collars came from england and cost forty cents each. his walking sticks had distinction.... and peter was successful with women. no doubt about that.
the worm gazed down at himself. the old gray suit was; a shapeless thing. the coat pockets bulged—note-book and wad of loose notes on one side, a paper-bound volume in the russian tongue on the other. he had just one other suit. it hung from a hook in the closet, and he knew that it, too, was shapeless.
a clock, somewhere outside, struck seven.
he started; stuffed his note-book and papers into a drawer; drew the volume in russian from his other pocket, made as if to lay it on the table, then hesitated. it was his custom to have some reading always by him. sue might be late. she often was.
suddenly he raised the book above his head and threw it against the wall at the other end of the room. then he picked up his old soft hat (he never wore an overcoat) and rushed out.
the muscovy is a basement restaurant near washington square. you get into it from the street by stumbling down a dark twisting flight of uneven steps and opening a door under a high stoop. art dines here and anarchism; ideas sit cheek by jowl with the senses.
sue was not late. she sat in the far corner at one of the few small tables in the crowded room. two men, a poet and a painter, lounged against the table and chatted with her languidly. she had brightened a little for them. there was a touch of color in her cheeks and some life in her eyes. the worm noted this fact as he made his way toward her.
the poet and the painter wandered languidly away. the chatter of the crowded smoky room rose to its diurnal climax; passed it as by twos and threes the diners drifted out to the street or up-stairs to the dancing and reading-rooms of the freewoman's club; and then rapidly died to nothing.
two belated couples strolled in, settled themselves sprawlingly at the long center table and discussed with the offhand, blandly sophisticated air that is the village manner the currently accepted psychology of sex.
the worm was smoking now—his old brier pipe—and felt a bit more like his quietly whimsical self. sue, however, was moody over her coffee.
a pasty-faced, very calm young man, with longish hair, came in and joined in the discussion at the center table.
sue followed this person with troubled eyes, “listen, henry!” she said then, “i'm wondering—”
he waited.
“—for the first time in two years—if i belong in greenwich village.”
“i've asked myself the same question, sue.”
this remark perturbed her a little; as if it had not before occurred to her that other eyes were reading her. then she rushed on—“take waters coryell over there”—she indicated the pasty-faced one—“i used to think he was wonderful. but he's all words, like the rest of us. he always carries that calm assumption of being above ordinary human limitations. he talks comradeship and the perfect freedom. but i've had a glimpse into his methods—abbie esterzell, you know—”
the worm nodded.
“—and it isn't a pretty story. i've watched the women, too—the free lovers. henry, they're tragic. when they get just a little older.”
he nodded again. “but we were talking about you, sue. you're not all words.”
“yes i am. all talk, theories, abstractions. it gets you, down here. you do it, like all the others. it's a sort of mental taint. yet it has been every thing to me. i've believed it, heart and soul. it has been my religion.”
“i'm not much on generalizing, sue,” observed the worm, “but sometimes i have thought that there's a lot of bunk in this freedom theory—'self-realization,' 'the complete life,' so on. i notice that most of the men and women i really admire aren't worried about their liberty, sometimes i've thought that there's a limit to our human capacity for freedom just as there's a limit to our capacity for food and drink and other pleasant things—sort of a natural boundary. the people that try to pass that boundary seem to detach themselves in some vital way from actual life. they get unreal—act queer—are queer. they reach a point where their pose is all they've got. as you say, it's a taint. it's a noble thing, all right, to light and bleed and die for freedom for others. but it seems to work out unhappily when people, men or women, insist too strongly on freedom for their individual selves.”
but sue apparently was not listening. her cheeks—they were flushed—rested on her small fists.
“henry,” she said, “it's a pretty serious thing to lose your religion.”
“losing yours, sue?”
“i'm afraid it's gone.”
“you thought this little eddy of talk was real life?”
she nodded. “oh, i did.”
“and then you encountered reality?”
her eyes, startled, vivid, now somber, flashed up at him. “henry, how did you know? what do you know?”
“not a thing, sue. but i know you a little. and i've thought about you.”
“then,” she said, her eyes down again, suppression in her voice—“then they aren't talking about me?”
“not that i've heard. sue. though it would hardly come to me.”
she bit her lip. “there you have it, henry. with the ideas i've held, and talked everywhere, i ought not to care what they say. but i do care.”
“of course. they all do.”
“do you think so?” she considered this. “you said something a moment ago that perhaps explains—about the natural boundary of human freedom.... listen! you knew betty deane, the girl that roomed with me? well, less than a year ago, after letting herself go some all the year—it's fair enough to say that, to you; she didn't cover her tracks—she suddenly ran off and married a manufacturer up in her home town. i'm sure there wasn't any love in it. i know it, from things she said and did. all the while he was after her she was having her good times here. i suppose she had reached the boundary. she married in a panic. she was having a little affair with your friend—what's his name?”
“hy lowe?”
the worm smiled faintly. the incorrigible hy had within the week set up a fresh attachment. this time it was a new girl in the village—one hilda hansen, from wisconsin, who designed wall-paper part of the time.
but he realized that sue, with a deeper flush now and a look in her eyes that he did not like to see there, was speaking.
“when i found out what betty had done i said some savage things, henry. called her a coward. oh, i was very superior—very sure of myself. and here's the grotesque irony of it.” her voice was unsteady. “here's what one little unexpected contact with reality can do to the sort of scornful independent mind i had. twenty-four hours—less than that—after betty went i found myself soberly considering doing the same thing.”
“marrying?” the worm's voice was suddenly low and a thought husky.
she nodded.
“a man you don't love?”
“i've had moments of thinking i loved him, hours of wondering how i could, possibly.”
he was some time in getting out his next remark. it was, “you'd better wait.”
she threw out her hands in an expressive way she had. “wait? yes, that's what i've told myself, henry. but i've lost my old clear sense of things. my nerves aren't steady. i have queer reactions.”
then she closed her lips as she had once before on this day, up there on the avenue. she even seemed to compose herself. waters coryell came over from the other table and for a little time talked down to them from his attitude of self-perfection.
when he had gone the worm said, to make talk, “how are the pictures coming on?”
then he saw that he had touched the same tired nerve center. her flush began to return.
“not very well,” she said; and thought for a moment, with knit brows and pursed lips.
she threw out her hands again. “they're quarreling, henry.”
“zanin and peter?”
she nodded. “it started over zanin's publicity. he is a genius, you know. any sort of effort that will help get the picture across looks legitimate to him.”
“of course,” mused the worm, trying to resume the modestly judicial habit of mind that had seemed lately to be leaving him, “i suppose, in a way, he is right. it is terribly hard to make a success of such an enterprise. it is like war—-the only possible course is to win.”
“i suppose so,” said she, rather shortly. “but then there's the expense side of it. zanin keeps getting the bit in his teeth.... lately i've begun to see that these quarrels are just the surface. the real clash lies deeper. it's partly racial, i suppose, and partly—”
“personal?”
“yes.” she threw out her hands. “they're fighting over me. i don't mind it so much in peter. he has only lately come to see things our way. he never made the professions zanin has of being superior to passions, jealousies, the sense of possession.”
she paused, brooding, oblivious now to her surroundings, slowly shaking her head. “zanin has always said that the one real wrong is to take or accept love where it isn't real enough to justify itself. but now when i won't see him—those are the times he runs wild with the business. then peter has to row with him to check the awful waste of money. peter's rather wonderful about it. he never loses his courage.”
this was a new picture of peter. the worm gave thought to it.
“first he took zanin's disconnected abstractions and made a real film drama out of them. it's big stuff, henry. powerful and fine. and then he threw in every cent he had.”
“peter threw in every cent!...” the worm was startled upright, pipe in hand.
“every cent, henry. all his savings. and never a grudging word. not about that.”
she dropped her chin on her hands. tears were in her eyes. her boy-cut short hair had lately grown out a little, and was rumpled where she had run her fingers through it. it was fine-spun hair and thick on her head. it was all high lights and rich brown shades. the worm found himself wishing it was long and free, rippling down over her shoulders. he thought, too, of the fine texture of her skin, just beneath the hair. a warm glow was creeping through his nervous system and into his mind.... he set his teeth hard on his pipestem.
she leaned back more relaxed and spoke in a quieter tone. “you know how i feel about things, henry. i quit my home. i have put on record my own little protest against the conventional lies we are all fed on from the cradle here in america. i went into this picture thing with my eyes open, because it was what i believed in. it wasn't a pleasant thought—making myself so conspicuous, acting for the camera without clothes enough to keep me warm. i believed in zanin, too. and it seemed to be a way in which i could really do something for him—after all he had done for me. but it hasn't turned out well. the ideals seem to have oozed out of it.”
there she hesitated; thought a little; then added: “the thing i didn't realize was that i was pouring out all my emotional energy. i had zanin's example always before me. he never tires. he is iron. the jews are, i think. but—i—” she tried to smile, without great success—“well, i'm not iron. henry, i'm tired.”
the worm slept badly that night.
the next morning, after peter and hy lowe had gone, the worm stood gloomily surveying his books—between two and three hundred of them, filling the case of shelves between the front wall and the fireplace, packed in on end and sidewise and heaped haphazard on top.
half a hundred volumes in calf and nearly as many in morocco dated from a youthful period when bindings mattered. college years were represented by a shabby row—eschuylus, euripides, aristophanes, plato, plutarch, virgil and horace. he had another horace in immaculate tree calf. there was a group of early italians; an imposing dante; a boccaccio, very rare, in a dated florentine binding; a gleaning of french history, philosophy and belles-lettres from phillippe de comines and villon through rabelais, le sage. racine, corneille and the others, to bergson, brieux, rolland and anatole france—with, of course, flaubert, de maupassant and a tattered series of les trois mousquetaires in seven volumes; some modern german playwrights, hauptmann and schnitzler among them; ibsen in two languages; strindberg in english; gogol, tchekov, gorky, dosto?evski, of the russians (in that tongue); the modern psychologists—forel, havelock ellis, freud—and the complete works of william james in assorted shapes and bindings, gathered painstakingly through the years. walt whitman was there, percy's reliques, much of galsworthy, wells and conrad, the story of gosta berling, john masefield, and a number of other recent poets and novelists. all his earthly treasures were on those shelves; there, until now, had his heart been also.
he took from its shelf the rare old boccaccio in the dated binding, tied a string around it, went down the corridor with it to the bathroom, filled the tub with cold water and tossed the book in.
it bobbed up to the surface and floated there.
he frowned—sat on the rim of the tub and watched it for ten minutes. it still floated.
he brought it back to the studio then and set to work methodically making up parcels of books, using all the newspapers he could find. into each parcel went a weight—the two ends of the brass book-holder on the desk, a bronze elephant, a heavy glass paper-weight, a pint bottle of ink, an old monkey-wrench, the two bricks from the fireplace that had served as andirons.
he worked in a fever of determination. by two o'clock that afternoon he had completed a series of trips across the west side and over various ferry lines, and his entire library lay at the bottom of the north river.
from the last of these trips, feeling curiously light of heart, he returned to find a taxi waiting at the curb and in the studio peter, hat, coat and one glove on, his suit-case on a chair, furiously writing a note.
peter finished, leaned back, mopped his forehead. “the books,” he murmured, waving a vague hand toward the shelves. “where are they?”
“i'm through with books. going in for reality.”
“oh,” mused the eminent playwright—“a girl.”
“pete, you're wonderful.”
“chucking your whole past life?”
“it's chucked.” then the worm hesitated. for a moment his breath nearly failed him. he stood balancing on the brink of the unknown; and he knew he had to make the plunge. “pete—i've got a few hundred stuck away—and, anyhow, i'm going out for a real job.”
“a job! you! what kind?”
“oh—newspaper man, maybe. i want the address—who is your tailor?”
peter jotted it down. “by the way,” he said, “here's our itinerary. stick it in your pocket.” then he gazed at the worm in a sort of solemn humor. “so the leopard is changing his spots,” he mused.
“i don't know about that,” replied the worm, flushing,' then reduced to a grin—as he pocketed the tailor's address—“but this particular ethiop is sure going to make a stab at changing his skin.”
