HE had not confided to Rose-Ann the fact of his change of residence—though he had asked her to address him in care of the Chronicle. But after some hesitation, he did write to her an account of some of the new impressions of Chicago which that change of residence had yielded. He did so with the feeling, which he could not logically defend, that these things concerned her equally with himself. He told her of Don and Roger, of Doris Pelman, and the detached attitude. “Adventures in philosophy,” he called them; and he added:
“These people find life ugly, I think, and so they avoid and evade it. That is what I seem to myself to be doing at present, too. But I am not like them—I cannot just look on and be amused. Only I want to live my life understandingly—and I seem to have lost my bearings.”
A boyish letter, he thought, having sent it; and he was glad enough that her reply made no mention of its contents—being, in fact, only a brief, hurried uncommunicative note of acknowledgement. But its briefness did not hurt him; by the time it came she was an utter stranger to him again. He glanced at her note, threw it in the waste-basket, and went on writing some meaningless story for the Chronicle.... After all, he had one thing left—a certain pride in his work: though it was all of no consequence, he knew whether it was good or bad—nothing could take that away from him....
2
And then at another of Doris Pelman’s teas he began another “adventure in philosophy.”
He had been invited to come again. It appeared that these 84teas were an institution. He came, out of curiosity, and left early; and as he went out into the hall he was joined by a young man who had come late, and who had sat in the corner silently and with an expression of weary gloom. He was a short, thick-set young man with curly black hair and heavy lips. He had interested Felix as possibly—he thought certainly—the only person there besides himself who did not feel at home in that group.
Outside the apartment door, he turned to Felix with an expression of extreme distaste.
“La-de-da!” he said with a glance backward in the direction of the company they had just quitted. Felix smiled sympathetically.
“You know, those aesthetic birds,” the young man went on, as they descended the stairs, “—they make me sick.” They emerged upon the sidewalk. “Come on,” said the young man, “I know where there’s a real party going on tonight, with some real girls. We’ll get some grub, and then we’ll take it in. D’you ever eat at George’s? It’s a Greek place on Clark street, just north of the loop. Not bad at all.—I know you,” he added. “You work on the Chronicle. You don’t know me, but you ought to—I’m a pretty good scout. My name’s Budge—Victor Budge. I’m studying at Rush.”
“At what?” Felix interjected.
“Rush—Rush Medical College. Going to be one of the best little surgeons that ever cut out a gizzard.” He gave a dramatic flourish of his hand, as if wielding a scalpel. “But that’s not all. I write, too. In me you behold the world’s greatest novelist, living, dead, or unborn. Well may you be amazed—though I must say that you take the news rather calmly. I’ll tell you about it. I have a theory about art—just like those birds in there; only I’ve got the correct dope. The trouble with art is that it’s too detached from life. My idea is that the artist—the writer—has got to belong to the world he lives in—has got to be a part of it. That’s why I’m going to be a surgeon. With a simple twist of my accomplished wrist, and a four years’ course in human guts, I shall be able to make an honest living, and write on the side. Like 85Chekhov. I never read anything he wrote, but I understand he’s some writer. Yes, believe me, I shall put it all over these literary fakers!—You know Roger Sully?”
“Yes—and Don. The others I’ve merely met.”
“Well, they’re always gassing about where they’ve been—London, Paris, and places you never heard of. They’ve made a business of bumming all over the world. And they call that learning to write!”
“Acquiring background,” assented Felix.
“That’s the word. And avoiding anything that resembles real work. They have an elaborate code of morals about not working. It’s a point of honor with them not to work in an office, not to have any job that requires regular hours, and not to stick at anything longer than a month or so. A job, says Roger, is fatal to the spirit of art! Can you beat that?”
“But how do they get along?” asked Felix. He had wondered, for in his visits to the Sully-Carew apartment there had never been any mention of the manner of their subsistence.
“Oh, odd jobs on trade papers, publicity stuff—anything. Or nothing. Mostly nothing right now, I guess. People can live quite a while on coffee and cigarettes, and an occasional invitation to dinner. And when they’re short of cash, they can warm themselves with memories of the equator, I suppose.”
They reached the little basement restaurant, and entered. “I’ll order for you, if you don’t know the grub,” said Victor Budge. “This is on me anyway. One lamb kapama, one shish kebab, lots of olives, some red ink, two baklavas, and Turkish coffee.... Yes, the ripe olives, of course.”
The olives were put before them. “Those remind me of Roger,” said Victor Budge. “We were having dinner here one night, and he lifted one olive up, like this, delicately—poor devil, I’ll bet he hadn’t had a square meal for a week—and said, ‘When I shut my eyes and taste one of these salty olives, I am back on the Mediterranean, in a boat with a lateen sail!’ What do you know about that!”
Felix found himself rather sympathizing with Roger, and 86resenting the vulgarity of outlook of this young man, which like his vulgarity of speech, seemed deliberate and forced....
The food came, and Victor Budge served it. “I’m a realist,” he said. “When I’m hungry, I know it. I don’t pretend that I like olives because they remind me of the Mediterranean: grub is grub—you need it, and you’ve got to have it. And if you take life simply and realistically, it’s not hard to get all you want of it. What’s the use of starving in a garret? You and I know what life is like, and that it’s a pretty good old game if you play it like everybody else does. Be like other folks! Why should an artist feel that he has to be so damn refined and superior? What’s good enough for ordinary people is good enough for me. I don’t believe in this artistic belly-aching-around about how coarse and vulgar life is. Take things as you find ’em, and don’t bawl for the moon. That’s what I say.”
In spite of the way Victor Budge put this philosophy—its boisterousness somehow smacked of an inner lack of conviction, as though he were arguing to convince himself—yet there seemed to be sound sense in it. That, after all, was what Felix himself was trying to do—be like other people.... Yes, Victor Budge was right.
“Have some more red ink? Plenty more in George’s cellar.—And girls, for instance. Now I don’t have any use at all for this—this eternal poetizing about them! What’s a girl, after all? The same kind of critter we are! I don’t find ’em mysterious—and I don’t go ’round grouching about ’em, either. Girls and me have always got along perfectly well. Because I don’t expect them to be something else than what they are—Helen of Troy and the Blessed Damozel and all that sort of rot. I don’t go up to them asking, ‘Are you my long-lost ideal?’ They don’t want to be anybody’s long-lost ideal. They want to be taken for what they are! Isn’t it so?”
“I don’t know,” said Felix, humbly.... Yes, doubtless there was something unrealistic in his attitude toward girls—something 87that he must get over.... “I’m afraid I don’t know very much about girls. You may be right.”
“Of course I’m right,” affirmed Victor Budge. “It stands to reason that there isn’t just one girl in all the world for you or me.” Which, while perhaps not a logical sequitur to Victor Budge’s previous remarks, was precisely what Felix had been trying to convince himself of....
“That,” said Victor Budge, “that sort of silly nonsense in people’s heads is what makes them go around making themselves miserable, because they haven’t yet found the one and only. I guess if a man was cast away on a desert island with a girl, he’d find she was his one and only quick enough! Of course, if you’re going to have to spend the rest of your life with her, you’ll want somebody who knows what you’re talking about, and all that sort of thing! But when all you want is an evening’s good time, what difference does it make to you whether she’s read the latest book by Henry James? There are some damn fine girls that couldn’t tell Henry James from Jesse James, and you darn well know it!”
Yes, Felix thought, books are not the only things worth knowing; there is life itself. And he had certainly never intended to spend his days in Chicago without seeing anything of girls. To be sure, he did not want to fall in love—and he knew himself to be at this period in a dangerously susceptible mood. But must he be such a fool as to fall in love with the first girl he kissed? It was time for him to learn to be like other people—to take such things more lightly. If he could find the kind of solace which Victor’s words suggested ... and a part of his mind leaped to welcome the thought of that release from the torment of loneliness. He envisaged in fantasy a “real” girl, ready to put aside the hypocritic disguises of civilization and reveal herself as what she was—a splendid young animal whose touch was joy.... As this warm vision flashed and faded in his mind, he turned to Victor Budge and asked:
“Where is this party you’re taking me to tonight?” For the idea of these Arabian Nights come true in Chicago, 88seemed a little surprising. But doubtless there were many things that he did not know.
“Did I say party? Well, you know what I mean,” said Victor Budge, not without embarrassment. “It’ll be a real party, all right, before we get through! We’ll start down in Jake’s place, and take in the whole district.”
Felix flushed slowly, a painful flush of anger and shame that seemed to spread all through his body. Anger and shame at his own credulity. Arabian Nights, indeed! He laughed, loudly—at himself.
A picture came into his mind, compounded of things he had read, and the brief glimpses of actuality with which his curiosity had been satisfied and sickened back in Port Royal on the Mississippi—of the tawdry, dirty, dull, the incredibly dull, the joyless, loveless, hard, empty life of—as it was sometimes called—joy.... The stupid women, the foolish men, the mechanical noise and laughter, the boozy humour, the touch of stale, jaded, weary flesh.... And this was what Victor Budge was talking about—this was the subject upon which he had expended so much vulgar eloquence!... This, then, was Victor Budge’s realism. This was what he called a real party; and those were what he called “real girls”.... That was what he meant by taking things as one found them, and not bawling for the moon.
Victor Budge was staring at him. “What’s eating you?” he asked.
Felix laughed again. “Well,” he said, “I’ve some aesthetic theories of my own which make it impossible for me to accept your invitation. What’s good enough for other people isn’t good enough for me. I don’t want to take life simply and realistically. I’m going off to starve in my garret and write poems to Helen of Troy and the Blessed Damozel!”