The Trufflers

“Oh,” said she quickly, “that’s absurd, of course!”

“Of course. He rather insisted on taking the scenario and reading it to you himself. Now that won’t do.”

“I don’t care who reads it to me,” said Sue coolly.

“Certainly not. Now, if you’ll agree with me that there’s nothing personal between us, that we’re just whole-hearted workmen on a job, I…”

She raised her eyebrows a little, waking.

“…I came here with the idea of asking you to hunt Zanin up with me – making it a matter of company business, right now.”

“Oh,” said she, her independent spirt stirred, “I don’t see that that’s necessary. Why don’t you go ahead – just read it to me?” She looked about the smoky busy room. “But it’s noisy here. And people you know come in and want to talk. I’d ask you around to the rooms, only…”

“Only, Hy Lowe will be there.” Peter, feeling new ground under his feet, smiled.

Sue smiled a little herself.

“How about your place?” she asked them.

The question took Peter’s breath. She said it in unmistakable good faith, like a man. But never, never, in Peter’s whole adult life, had a woman said such a thing to him. That women came occasionally; into the old bachelor apartment building, he knew. But the implications! What would Hamer-ton, across the hall, think of him were he to meet them together in the elevator? What would John the night man think? Above all (this thought came second) what would they think of Sue?

“Oh,” observed Sue, with real good humor, “I remember! That’s the building where women callers can’t stay after eleven at night.”

Peter nearly succeeded in fighting back the flush that came.

“Which,” Sue continued, “has always seemed to me the final comment on conventional morality. It’s the best bit of perfectly unconscious humor in New York.”

Peter was thinking – in flashes and leaps, like Napoleon – startled by his own daring, yet athrill with new determination. The Worm was out of town; Hy very much engaged… Besides, Sue was honest and right. This was the sincere note in the New Russianism. Being yourself, straight-out. He must rise to it, now or never, if he was not to lose Sue for good.

So he smiled. “It’s only eight,” he said. “I can read you the whole thing and we can discuss it within a couple of hours. And we won’t be interrupted there.”

Walking straight into that building with Sue at his side, nodding with his usual casual friendliness to John the night man, chatting while the elevator crawled endlessly upward to the seventh floor, overcoming the impulse to run past the doors of the other apartments, carrying it all off with easy sophistication; this was unquestionably the bravest single act in the whole life of Peter Ericson Mann.

Peter could be a pleasant host. He lighted the old gas-burning student lamp on the desk; started a fire; threw all the cushions in one large pile on the couch.

Sue threw aside her coat and tarn o’shanter, smoothed her hair a little, then curled up on the couch with her feet under her where she could watch the fire; and where (as it happened) the firelight played softly on her alert face. She filled the dingy old room with a new and very human warmth.

Peter settled back in the Morris chair and after one long look at her plunged with a sudden fever of energy into the reading of the scenario.

It was the thing Peter did best. He read rapidly; moved forward in his chair and gestured now and then for emphasis with his long hands; threw more than a little sense of movement and power into it.

Sue listened rather idly at first; then, as Peter’s trained, nicely modulated voice swept on, lifted her head, leaned forward, watched his face. Peter felt her gaze but dared not return it. Once he stopped, flushed and hoarse, and telephoned down for ice-water. Those eyes, all alight, followed him as he rushed past her to the door and returned with the clinking water pitcher. He snatched up the manuscript and finished it – nearly half an hour of it – standing. Then he threw it on the desk with a noise that made Sue jump, and himself strode to the fireplace and stood there, mopping his face, still avoiding her eyes. She was still leaning eagerly forward.

“Well,” said he now, with a rather weak effort at casualness, “what do you think of it? Of course it’s a rough draft – ”

“Of course it is no such thing,” said she.

She got up; moved to the table: took up the manuscript and turned the first pages. Then she came to the other side of the hearth with it, “What I want to know is – How did you do it?”

“Oh, it’s Zanin’s ideas, of course; but they needed rearranging and pointing up.”

“This isn’t a rearrangement,” said she; and now he awoke to consciousness of the suppressed stirring quality in her voice, a quality he had not heard in it before. “It isn’t a rearrangement. It’s a created thing.”

“Oh,” he cried, “you really think that!”

“It carries the big idea. It’s the very spirit of freedom. It’s a – a sort of battle-cry – ” She gave a little laugh – “Of course it isn’t that, exactly; it’s really a big vital drama. I’m talking rather wildly. But – ” She confronted him; he looked past her hair at the wall. She stamped her foot. “Don’t make me go on saying these inane things, please! You know as well as I do what you’ve done.”

“What have I done?”

“You’ve stated our faith with a force and a fineness that Zanin, even, could never get. You’ve said it all for us… Oh, I owe you an apology! Zanin told you part of the truth. I didn’t dream – from your plays and things you have said – that you could do this.”

Peter looked at her now with breathless solemnity. “I’ve changed,” he said.

“Something has happened.”

“I’m not ashamed of changing.”

She smiled.

“Or of growing, even.”

“Of course not,” said she. “But listen! You don’t know what you’ve done. Do you suppose I’ve been looking forward to this job – making myself sensationally conspicuous, working with commercial-minded people? Oh, how I’ve dreaded that side of it! And worrying all the time because the scenario wasn’t good. It just wasn’t. It wasn’t real people, feeling and living; it was ideas – nothing but ideas – stalking around. That’s Zanin, of course. He’s a big man, he has got the ideas, but he hasn’t got people, quite; he just doesn’t understand women… Don’t you see,” she threw out her hands – “the only reason, the only excuse, really, for going through with this ordeal is to help make people everywhere understand Truth. And I’ve known – it’s been discouraging – that we couldn’t possibly do that unless it was clearly expressed for us… Now do you see what you’ve done? It’s that! And it’s pretty exciting.”

“Zanin may not take it this way.”

“Oh, he will! He’ll have to. It means so much to him. That man has lost everything at the Crossroads, you know. And now he is staking all he has left – his intelligence, his strength, his courage, on this. It means literally everything to him.”

Peter stared at her. “And what do you suppose it means to me!”

“Why – I don’t know, of course…”

Peter strode to the desk, unlocked the middle drawer next the wall, drew out the six little bank books, and almost threw them into her lap.

“Look at those,” he said – “all of them!”

“Why – ” she hesitated.

“Go through them, please! Add them up.”

Half smiling, she did so. Then said: “It seems to come to almost seven thousand dollars.”

“That’s the money that’s going to work out your dream.”

She glanced up at him, then down at the books.

“It’s all I’ve got in the world – all – all! That, and the three per cent, it brings in. My play – they’re going to produce it in the fall. You won’t like it. It’s the old ideas, the old Broadway stuff.”

“But you’ve changed.”

“Yes. Since I wrote it. It doesn’t matter. It may bring money, it may not. Likely not. Ninety per cent, of ‘em fail, you know. This is all I’ve got – every cent All my energy and what courage I’ve got goes after it – into The Nature Film Producing Company. Please understand that! I’m leading up to something.”

She looked a thought disturbed. He rushed on.

“Zanin’s got it into his head that he’s going to take you south to do all the outdoor scenes.”

“I haven’t agreed to that. He feels that it’s necessary.”

“Yes, he does. He’s sincere enough. Remember, I’m talking impersonally. As I told you, we’ve got to be businesslike – and frank. We’ve got to!”

“Of course,” said she.

“I’m beginning to see that Zanin is just as much of a hero with other people’s money as he is with his own.”

“That goes with the temperament, I suppose.”

“Undoubtedly. But now, see! That trip south – taking actors and camera man and outfit – staying around at hotels – railway fares – it will cost a fortune.”

“Oh,” said she, very grave, “I hadn’t realized that.”

“If we can just keep our heads – more carefully – spend the money where it will really show on the film – don’t you see, we can swing it, and when we’ve done it, it won’t belong to the Interstellar people – or to Silverstone; it’ll be ours. And that means it’ll be what we – you – want it to be and not something vulgar and – and nasty. The other way, it we give Zanin his head and begin spending money magnificently, we’ll run out, and then the price of a little more money, if we can get it at all, will be, the control.”

Re reached down for the books, threw them back into the drawer, slammed it and locked it.

“Yes,” he said, “that’s all I’ve got. I pledge it all, here and now, to the dream you’ve dreamed. All I ask is, keep in mind what may happen when it’s gone.”

She rose now; stood thinking; then drew on her lam o’shanter and reached for her coat.

“Let me think this over,” she said soberly.

“We must be businesslike,” said he. “Impersonal.”

“Yes,” said she, and stepped over to the fire, low-burning now with a mass of red coals.

Peter’s eyes, deep, gloomy behind the big glasses, followed her. He came slowly and stood by her.

“I must go,” she said gently. “It’ll he eleven first thing we known It would be a bit too amusing to be put out.”

They lingered.

Then Peter found himself lifting his arms. He tried to keep them down, but up, up they came – very slowly, he thought.

He caught her shoulders, swung her around, drew her close. It seemed to him afterward, during one of the thousand efforts he made to construct a mental picture of the scene, that she must have been resisting him and that he must have been using his strength; but if this was so it made no difference. Her head was in the hollow’ of his arm. He bent down, drew her head up, kissed, as it happened, her nose; forced her face about and at the second effort kissed her lips. If she was struggling – and Peter will never be quite clear on that point – she was unable to resist him. He kissed her again. And then again. A triumphant fury was upon him.

But suddenly it passed. He almost pushed her away from him; left her standing, limp and breathless, by the mantel, while he threw himself on the couch and plunged his face into his hands.

“You’ll hate me,” he groaned. “You won’t ever speak to me again. You’ll think I’m that sort of man, and you’ll be right in thinking so. What’s worse, you’ll believe I thought you were the sort to let me do it. And all the time I love you more than – Oh God, what made me do it! What could I have been thinking of! I was mad!”

Then the room was still.

CHAPTER XII – THE MOMENT AFTER

PETER tried to think. He could not lie there indefinitely with his face in his hands. But he couldn’t think. His mind had stopped running… At last he must face her. He remembered Napoleon. Slowly he lifted his head; got up.

She had seated herself on an arm of the Morris chair, taken off her tarn o’shanter and was running her fingers through her rumpled short hair. She did not look at him. After a moment she put the tam o’shanter on again, but did not instantly get up; instead, reached out and drew the manuscript toward her.

Peter stood over the fire.

“Is it any good saying I’m sorry,” he began… “Please don’t talk about it,” said she.

There was a long silence. Peter, helpless, tried and tried to think… hy had brought him to this. In his heart he cursed Hy.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Sue, fingering the manuscript; then suddenly turning and facing him – “you and I can’t do this sort of thing.”

“Oh, of course not,” he cried eagerly.

“If there’s going to be emotional tension between us, why – it’s going to Be hard to do the work.” She took the manuscript up now and looked thoughtfully from page to page. “As I see the situation – if I see it at all – it’s like this: You have solved our problem. Splendidly. There’s our play. Like the rest of us, you are giving all you have. We’ve got to work hard. More, we’ve got to cooperate, very finely and earnestly. But we’ve got to be IMpersonal, businesslike. We’ve simply got to.”

“I know it,” said he ruefully.

“So, if our wires – yours and mine – are going to get crossed like – like this, well, you and I just mustn’t see each other, that’s all.”

“Of course,” said he.

“It’s too bad. When you were reading the scenario, and I saw what power and life you have put into it, I thought it would be particularly interesting to have you coach me. You could help me so. But it is something, at least – ” she threw out her arms again with the gesture that he was sure he would associate with her as long as he lived – as he would remember the picture she made, seated there on an arm of the Morris chair, in his rooms…

His rooms! How often in his plays had he based his big scene on Her visit to His Rooms! And how very, very different all those scenes had been from this. He was bewildered, trying to follow her extraordinarily calm survey of the situation.

She was talking on. “ – it is something at least to know that you have been able to do this for us.”

She slipped off the arm of the chair now and stood before him – flushed, but calm enough – and extended her hand.

“The best way, I think,” she said, “is for you not to see much of me just now. That won’t interfere with work at rehearsals, of course. If there’s something you want to tell me about the part, you can drop me a line or call me up.”

Peter took her hand, clasped it for a moment, let it fall.

She moved deliberately to the door. He followed her.

“But – ” said Peter huskily – “but, wouldn’t I better walk home with you?”

“No,” said she, momentarily compressing her lips. “No! Better not! The time to start being businesslike is right now. Don’t you see?”

“Yes,” he murmured. “You are right, of course.” The telephone bell rang.

“Just a moment,” said Peter.

And Sue waited, by the door.

Peter took up the receiver. She heard him stammer —

“Oh – oh, all right – eleven o’clock – all right.”

“There,” said she, laughing a little. “It has happened, you see! I’m being put out.”

“I’m awfully sorry, Sue.”

“Oh, that doesn’t matter! It’s just amusing.”

“But I wouldn’t have had it happen – ”

His voice trailed off.

“Good night,” said she again.

“Good night, Sue. You are treating me better than I deserve.”

“We won’t talk any more about it. Good night.” She tried to turn the catch on the lock. He reached out to help. His hand closed over hers. He turned; his eyes met hers; he took her in his arms again.

They moved slowly back toward the fire. “Peter – please!” she murmured. “It won’t do.”

“Oh, Sue – Sue!” he groaned. “If we feel this way, why not marry and make a good job of it?”

Peter said this as she might have said it – all directness, matter-of-fact. “I wouldn’t stop you, Sue. I wouldn’t ever dominate you or take you for granted. I’d live for you, Sue.”

“I know.” She caught her breath and moved away from him. “You wouldn’t stop me, but marriage and life would. No, Peter; not now. Marriage isn’t on my calendar… And, Peter, please don’t make love to me. I don’t want you to.”

Peter moved away, too, at this.

“Look here, Sue,” he said, after a moment’s thought, rather roughly, “you go. We won’t shake hands again. Just go. Right now. I promise I won’t bother you. And we – we’ll put the play through – put it through right.”

Her eyes were on his again, with a light in them.

A slow smile was coming to the corners of her mouth.

“Oh, Peter,” she said very gently, “don’t you – when you say that – you make me – ”

“Please – please go!” cried Peter.

The telephone rang.

“I’ll think over the matter of the trip south,” said she, “and – ”

“Sue, I want you to go!”

“ – and let you know”. I’m not sure but what you’re right. If we can do it up here…”

“Good God, Sue! Please! Please!”

She moved slowly toward the door, turned the catch herself, then glanced hesitatingly back.

Peter was standing rigidly before the fire, staring into it. He had picked up the poker and was holding it stiffly in his right hand.

She did not know that the man standing there was not Peter at all, but a very famous personage, shorter than Peter, and stouter, whose name had rung resoundingly down the slope of a hundred years.

He would not turn. So she went out.

CHAPTER XIII – TWO GIRLS OF THE VILLAGE

IT is not a simple matter to record in any detail the violent emotional reaction through which Peter now passed. Peter had the gift of creative imagination, the egotism to drive it far, and, for background, the character of a theatrical chameleon. Of these qualities, I have always believed that the egotism predominated. He could appear dignified, even distinguished; he could also appear excitable, ungoverned. Either would be Peter.

Nothing that had happened hitherto in his life had excited him as had the events of this evening. The excitement was, indeed, greater than he could bear. It set his imagination blazing, and there was among Peter’s intricate emotional processes no hose of common sense adequate to the task of subduing the flames. He stood, breathless, quivering, at the window, looking out over the dim Square, exulting to the point of nervous exhaustion. He walked the floor. He laughed aloud. Finally, his spirit went on around the emotional circle through a high point of crazy happiness to an equally crazy despondency. More time passed. The despondency deepened. She had made stipulations. He was not to see her again. If it should be necessary to communicate, he was to write. She had been kind about it, but that was what she had said. Yes, she had been kind, but her reaction would come as his had. She would hate him. Necessarily. Hy was to that extent right.

He sat on the couch (where she had sat), held the paper in shaking hands and stared wildly into the dying fire. Thoughts, pictures, were now racing through his mind, in a mad tangle, hopelessly confused. One notion he laid hold of as it went by… She had been his guest – here in his rooms. She had trusted herself with him. He had violated the trust. If he permitted a man to do such a thing in one of his plays, it would be for the purpose of exhibiting that man as a cad at least – probably as a villain. The inference was clear. Any audience that Peter was capable of mentally projecting would instantly, automatically, accept him as such. Peter himself knew no other attitude. And now to find himself guilty of this very act brought the final bewilderment.

So he, Peter, was a cad at least – perhaps a villain.

And then, at the lowest ebb of his reaction, his imagination set to work building up grotesque plans for a new different life. All these plans were out of the conventional stuff of his plays; all were theatrical. They had to do with self-effacement and sacrifice, with expiation, with true nobility. There was a moment when he considered self-destruction. If you think this wholly fantastic, I can only say that it was Peter. Another notion was of turning explorer, becoming a world’s rough hand, of meeting hardship and privation. He pictured himself writing Sue manly letters, once a year, say. He would live then in her memory not as a cad or villain, but (perhaps) as a man who had been broken by a great love. Then, in reminiscent moments, as when she saw a log fire burning low, she would think tenderly of him. She might even sigh… And he tried to think out acceptable devices for leaving his money in her hands. For he must see the Nature Film through.

He had just finished deciding this when Hy Lowe came.

Had Peter been less preoccupied, he would have noted that Hy was unusually silent. As it was, conscious only that the atmosphere of magical melancholy had been shattered when the door opened, Peter undressed, put out the gas lamp and went to bed, his bed being the very couch on which she had curled up while he read the scenario. He knew that sleep would be impossible, but he felt that he should make every possible effort to control himself. Hy was fussing about in the bedroom.

After a while – a long while – he heard Hy come tiptoeing into the room and stand motionless.

“What the devil do you want!” cried Peter, starting up, all nerves.

“Just wanted to make sure you weren’t asleep.” And Hy chuckled breathlessly.

“Quit your cackling! What do you want?”

“Let me sit down, Pete. Damn it. I’ve got to talk – to somebody. Pete, I’m crazy. I’m delirious. Never mind what I say. Oh, my boy. My boy, you don’t know – you can’t imagine!.. She’s the darling of the gods, Peter! The absolute darling of the absolute gods!”

“Is that any reason why you should come driveling all over my room at this time of night?”

“Wait, Pete – serious now. You’ve got to stand by me in this. The way I’ve stood by you once or twice. To-day was Friday, wasn’t it? Or am I crazy?”

“Both.”

“Then it’s to-morrow! I’m just trying to believe it, Pete, that’s all.”

“Believe what?”

“Look here – you’ve got to know, and protect me if any unexpected thing should come up. We’re going on a little trip, Peter.” Hy was solemn now, but his voice was uncertain. “Betty and I, Pete. To-morrow. On the night boat.”

Peter was silent. Hy stood there for what seemed rather a long time, then suddenly bolted back into the bedroom. In the morning he was less expansive, merely asking Peter to respect his confidence. Which request Peter gloomily resented as he resented Hy’s luck. The fortunate young man then packed a hand-bag and hurried off to breakfast at the club.

Peter tried to work on an empty stomach, but the effort gave him a headache, so he made himself a cup of coffee.

He walked the streets for a while with increasing restlessness; then, to soothe his nerves, went to the club and listlessly read the magazines. At noon he avoided his friends, but managed to eat a small luncheon. At two o’clock he went out aimlessly and entered the nearest moving-picture theater. At five he wandered back to the club and furtively asked the telephone boy if there’ had been any messages for him. There had not.

He permitted himself to be drawn into a riotous game of Kelly pool. Also he permitted himself a drink or two.

During the evening, I regret to note, he got himself rather drunk and went home in a taxicab. This was unusual with Peter and not successful. It intensified his self-consciousness and his sorrow, made him even gloomier. But it did help him to sleep.

He was awakened, just before nine o’clock on Sunday morning, by the banging of a door. Then Hy, dusty, bedraggled, haggard of face, rushed in and stared at him.

Peter decided it was a dream and rolled over.

Hy shook him. “For God’s sake, Pete!” he cried. How hoarse he was! “Where is she? Have you heard anything?”

Peter was coming awake.

“God, Pete, I’m crazy! Don’t you understand – She wasn’t on the boat. Must have got the wrong one. Oh, it’s awful!.. I walked that deck nearly all night – got off way up the river and came back to New York with the milk cans. Something terrible may have happened.”

Peter sat up.

“It seems to me,” he said, rubbing his tousled head, “that I remember something – last night – ”

Hy waited, panting.

“Look on the desk. Didn’t I bring up a note or something and lay it there?”

Hy was on the desk like a panther. There was a note. He tore it open, then thrust it into Peter’s hands, crying hoarsely, “Read it!” – and dropped, a limp, dirt-streaked wreck of a man, into the Morris chair.