The color slowly left Peter’s face. The girl was speaking without the slightest self-consciousness or wish to offend. She meant it.
Peter managed to recover some part of his poise.
“Well!” he said. Then: “If they were all dreadful, why didn’t you stop after the first?”
“Oh.” – she waved her cigarette – “Odd Change came to town when I was in college, and – ”
“So you’re a college girl?”
“Yes, and a crowd of us went. That one wasn’t so bad as the others. You know your tricks well enough – especially in comedy, carpentered comedy. Theatrically, I suppose you’re really pretty good or your things wouldn’t succeed. It is when you try to deal with life – and with women – that you’re…” Words failed her. She smoked in silence.
“I’m what?” he ventured. “The limit?”
“Yes,” she replied, very thoughtful. “Since you’ve said it.”
“All right,” he cried, aiming at a gay humor and missing heavily – “but now, having slapped me in the face and thrown me out in the snow, don’t you think that you’d better – ” He hesitated, watching for a smile that failed to make its appearance. “That I’d better what?”
“Well – tell me a little more?”
“I was wondering if I could. The difficulty is, it’s the whole thing – your attitude toward life – the perfectly conventional, perfectly unimaginative home and mother stuff, your hopeless sentimentality about women, the slushy, horrible, immoral Broadway falseness that lies back of everything you do – the Broadway thing, always. Ever, in your comedy, good as that sometimes is. Your insight into life is just about that of a hardened director of one-reel films. What I’ve been wondering since we met this afternoon – you see, I didn’t know that we were going to meet in this way…
“Naturally.”
“… is whether it would be any use to try and help you. You have ability enough.”
“Thanks for that!”
“Don’t let’s trifle! You see, if it is any use at all to try to get a little – just a little – truth into the American theater, why, those of us that believe in truth owe it to our faith to get to work on the men that supply the plays.”
“Doubtless.” Peter’s mind was racing in a dozen directions at once. This extraordinary young person had hit close; that much he knew. He wondered rather helplessly whether the shattered and scattered remnants of his self-esteem could ever be put together again so the cracks wouldn’t show.
The confusing thing was that he couldn’t, at the moment, feel angry toward the girl; she was too odd and too pretty. Already he was conscious of a considerable emotional stir, caused by her mere presence there across the table. She reached out now for another cigarette.
“I think,” said he gloomily, “that you’d better tell me your name.”
She shook her head. “I’ll tell you how you can find me out.”
“How?”
“You would have to take a little trouble.”
“Glad to.”
“Come to the Crossroads Theater to-night, in Tenth Street.”
“Oh – that little place of Zanin’s.”
She nodded. “That little place of Zanin’s.”
“I’ve never been there.”
“I know you haven’t. None of the people that might be helped by it ever come. You see, we aren’t professional, artificialized actors. We are just trying to deal naturally with bits of real life – from the Russian, and things that are written here in the Village. Jacob Zanin is a big man – a fine natural man – with a touch of genius, I think.”
Peter was silent. He knew this brilliant, hulking Russian Jew, and disliked him: even feared him in a way, as he feared others of his race with what he felt to be their hard clear minds, their vehement idealism, their insistent pushing upward. The play that had triumphantly displaced his last failure at the Astoria Theater was written by a Russian Jew.
She added: “In some ways it is the only interesting theater in New York.”
“There is so much to see.”
“I know,” she sighed. “And we don’t play every night, of course. Only Friday and Saturday.”
He was regarding her now with kindling interest. “What do you do there?”
“Oh, nothing much. I’m playing a boy this month in Zanin’s one-act piece, Any Street. And sometimes I dance. I was on my way there when I met you – was due at three o’clock.”
“For a rehearsal, I suppose.”
She nodded.
“You won’t make it. It’s four-fifteen now.”
“I know it.”
“You’re playing a boy,” he mused. “I wonder if that is why you cut off your hair.” He felt brutally daring in saying this. He had never been direct with women or with direct women. But this girl created her own atmosphere which quite enveloped him.
“Yes,” said she simply, “I had to for the part.” Never would he have believed that the attractive woman lived who would do that!
Abruptly, as if acting on an impulse, she pushed back her chair. “I’m going,” she remarked; adding; “You’ll find you have friends who know me.”
She was getting into her coat now. He hurried awkwardly around the table, and helped her.
“Tell me,” said he, suddenly all questions, now that he was losing her – “You live here in the Village, I take it?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
She nearly smiled. “No, with another girl.”
“Do I know her?”
She pursed her lips. “I doubt it.” A moment more of hesitation, then: “Her name is Deane, Betty Deane.”
“I’ve heard that name. Yes, I’ve seen her – at the Black and White ball this winter! A blonde – pretty – went as a Picabia dancer.”
They were mounting the steps to the sidewalk (for Jim’s is a basement).
“Good-by,” said she. “Will you come – to-night or to-morrow?”
“Yes,” said he. “To-night.” And walked in a daze back to the rooms on Washington Square.
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