“Well!… To say that I was frightened doesn’t begin to suggest to you what I felt. In a second—a second—my spurious (perhaps not wholly spurious) passion for her had vanished. I stared at her as if at a total stranger who had somehow blundered into my stateroom; and I felt incredibly foolish and false. What on earth could I do?… Nothing. Absolutely nothing! If I’d been of more heroic mold, or anything at all of a Don Juan (which Heaven knows I’m not), I suppose I’d have made the final grand gesture and taken, unflinching, the final risk. But being a mere timid married man, unquestionably loyal and decidedly less than moyen sensuel, I was, to be quite frank, in a horrible funk, and could find nothing to do but look silly. I must have looked damned silly. But I did manage, after a moment, to pull myself together—and I said, with as much gravity as I could muster, that so great a sacrifice, on her part, was out of the question, and that of course any such permanent relation between us could not for a minute be considered. She gave me a queer, long, hard look, at that, with her hand on the doorknob—rather uncomfortably, as if she had suddenly seen me for the first time—and then said a flurried little goodbye, gave me her hand, and was gone.… And I never spoke with her again.”
Fred took off his spectacles and stared.
“Well, I’ll be—sunk,” he said.
“Sunk isn’t the word,” murmured the Professor. “I never heard such an outrageous anticlimax in all my life. You mean to say—”
Words failed him. He felt himself to be visibly speechless. So far—so agonizingly far—in pursuit of an ignis fatuus! To Karnak and back for a grain of sand! He finished his whisky at a gulp.
“Well, Bill,” he added, rising, “I congratulate you on your firm moral stand. It was splendid. Worthy of the best traditions of the college. Anyway, it’s a blamed good story, and now I’ve got to go home.”
“It’s a hum-dinger,” said Fred. “Did it really happen like that?”
“Absolutely, word for word.”
“Well, it’s a hum-dinger.”
The waiter being summoned, they paid the bill, put on their coats and galoshes, and climbed the worn stairs. The Professor felt himself to be a little unsteady on his feet, but perfectly clear-headed—perfectly. And he visualized the final scene in the stateroom with astonishing distinctness. There were certain details, however, about which he wished Bill had been a little more specific. Had they, or had they not, actually—
He was interrupted in this sly speculation by Fred’s asking him if he would like to ride in a taxi as far as Charles Street.
“Yes,” he said, and stepped in beside Fred, waving a hand to Bill, who was remaining behind.
“Good night!”
“Good night!”
They were off, and in three minutes had stopped at the corner of Charles and Beacon streets. It was snowing again, as he plodded up the hill—large soft flakes. Well, well—well, well! To think of a thing like that! Now if such a thing would only happen to him—
He inserted his key in the lock, and it stuck again. It wouldn’t go in any farther, or come out, or turn. Damn. He wrestled with it—he tugged at it—it was no use. Backing away into the street, he surveyed the front of the house to see if there were any lights. None. The servants, of course, had gone to bed. No light in Mrs. Trask’s room, either. Damn again. A hundred purple damns. He rang the bell, and nothing happened. Not a sound of a footstep. He rang again, prolongedly, and heard the bell trilling remotely in the distance, with the lost and melodramatic sound of a stage-bell. And the—joy!—the light in the hallway brightened, and the door opened. It was Mrs. Trask herself, clutching an ample black silk dressing-gown about her throat.
“I’m sorry,” he said—“my key has gone and got stuck. I think it must be defective. I’m afraid it will have to stay there.”
He pointed to the guilty key, smiling. Mrs. Trask smiled, too—he had the idea that she was smiling suggestively. Thinking him drunk, perhaps—because of the key? Or was it merely that she liked him?…
“I know it looks suspicious!” He gave a little laugh.
“Very suspicious!”
“But I assure you it stuck earlier in the evening as well!”
“Oh, did it?”
“Yes, it did.”
Mrs. Trask smiled again, as if waiting for something—of course, she was waiting for him to precede her upstairs. What an idiot he was!
“I’m sorry,” he said again, in a heartfelt tone, and then added, “good night, Mrs. Trask.”
“Good night, Mr. Milliken.”
Irony?… No.…
And then, as he stood before his mirror, a brilliant thought occurred to him—a positive illumination. Of course! She was attracted to him! Any fool could see that! If he were to go downstairs again, and knock quietly at her door—very, very quietly—
No sooner said than done. He knotted the cord of his bathrobe about his middle, opened his door, and listened. Nobody stirring—the hall was dark. He crept out, descended the stairs softly—his heart beating with absurd violence—and on the landing beside Mrs. Trask’s door paused to listen again. Not a sound—Mrs. Trask must have gone back to bed. He lifted one knuckle, poised it fatally, and knocked—once, twice.
“Who’s that?”
Mrs. Trask’s voice sounded muffled, a little frightened. To his dismay, the Professor found that his own voice had unaccountably failed him. He stood and waited, in abject and appalling silence.
“Is that you, Mr. Milliken?”
Ridiculous! He must do something. He summoned up his waning courage.
“Yes, it’s I, Mrs. Trask.”
“Are you ill?… Did you want something?”
Another portentous silence—a positive abyss. The hallway reeled. But wasn’t this, thank heaven, an opportunity for escape?
“Yes, I am.… Have you any brandy, Mrs. Trask?”
“I’m sorry—” came the muffled voice—“I haven’t … I’d get up, but I’ve just had an attack of vertigo myself—”
“Oh, don’t bother, please … I just thought if you had any brandy—”
He turned in an agony of humiliation and shame, and confronted the stairs. Ruined! He had all but ruined himself. Good Lord, what would Molly say when she heard of this! They would have to move. At once.… He stood as if paralyzed, clutching the post of the stair-rail. And then, for no valid reason, he twice struck his forehead against the post, and went quietly back to his room.
THE ORANGE MOTH
I.
A hot, sticky August evening. Almost six o’clock. The freckled young man, whose name was Cooke, had his watch before him on the table where he was writing. His sleeves were rolled up, showing thin freckled arms with sparse blond hairs, and he had taken off his collar, which lay on the top of the bookcase. He looked down through the tall open window into Twenty-third Street and saw, across the way, the latticed saloon door perpetually swinging. A man in his shirt-sleeves, carrying his pale alpaca coat over his left arm, fanned his red face with a panama. He said something to the woman, then disappeared through the swinging door. A girl came out carrying a tin pail brimful of beer—“rushing the growler.” A dingy terrier briskly trotted round the corner, trotting obliquely, carrying its hindquarters well to starboard. He peered under the swinging door, with one paw lifted, and the cat, crouched on the brown steps next door, began to arch her back. Then a green-and-white street car, crowded, cut off his vision, and Cooke again regarded, somewhat wearily, his manuscript. He was using yellow paper—he had bought a thick block of it in a Ninth Avenue shop, hoping that yellow would make him more prolific. But it didn’t seem particularly to help him. At the top of the page “Beauty” was written, and twice underscored. Below it was one long paragraph, disordered with cancellations and interpolations. He completed the sentence: “but to stare at Beauty, to attempt to track it down, to set snares for it, to turn a powerful glare of consciousness upon it, is almost inevitably to frighten it away. Beauty is the chimera which exists only in imagination. It is the mirage, born of drought, which the more it is approached, the more it dissolves. It is the gold and purple Phoenix which is reborn only out of ashes.…” No, this wouldn’t do at all. He crossed it all out, peevishly. This, as he had only just finished learning at college, was a mere purple passage. He wanted something purple, certainly, but not this frayed and mothy purple as of the old stage-robes of the player King. Something like “the eastern conduits ran with wine”: that was what he wanted. He opened De Quincey again—it had been helping him, or discouraging him, all afternoon—and read a page, opened to at random; while he read, he kept pulling at his shirt, which was soaked through with perspiration, to detach it from his body. Damned discouraging—he would never capture the secret of that style.… Perhaps it would be better if he tried red ink, like Flodden, who had the next room, and whom he could hear moving on his bed.… Or should he go back to blank-books?… He opened his latest blank-book, where an uncompleted poem ended with the lines: