1

FELIX began the task of forgetting—a task for youth in its most fantastically stern mood:—of trying to forget that unforgettable moment on the station platform with Rose-Ann. Or at least, to behave as though it had not occurred. For he was convinced that neither of them had intended it to occur.

It was obviously an accident—the mere mood of parting. It had meant nothing. It must be ignored.

But it was hard to ignore. It was a moment to which memory would recur. It dramatized vividly for him the fact—to which he sought to adjust himself—of Rose-Ann’s absence.

Rose-Ann’s absence made a great deal of difference, it seemed—and not only to himself. What she had predicted in regard to her dramatic class came true very quickly. Under Miss Clark’s fussy direction, all the fun was taken out of the work for everybody. Mrs. Perk looked on the altered face of things with an air of wry disapproval, and whispered to Felix, “Oh, it’s not the same place at all any more!” The children were listless. Paul froze into a silent rage at some unfortunate remark of Miss Clark’s about his scenery and left Community House, and Felix began to stay away from the rehearsals altogether.

He wrote these things to Rose-Ann, and received brief replies which showed how remote all these matters had now become to her. He accepted the probability that Springfield had captured her for good and all this time. It was true that she always inquired in a friendly way about the things in which they had both been interested; but these weekly inquiries were tinged with a kind of faint retrospective glamour, as though to her these interests were already invested with the pathos of distance. She was evidently saying good-bye to her moment of freedom.

Felix did not tell her how much he missed her. He was rather ashamed of the fact. There was something intellectually disgraceful about a state of dependence upon one person for companionship....

It was true, he had Clive. But he had been neglecting Clive, and now Clive had other concerns. Clive had several times urged him to come out over the week-end to Woods Point, where he was undertaking to spend the winter in his summer cottage, and Felix had always had some engagement with Rose-Ann which prevented his going. Now, when he would be glad to accept such an invitation, it was not renewed; Clive, it appeared, was so much interested in some girl that he had no time to spare for Felix. And Clive was the only person about the office that he cared for; at Community House since Rose-Ann had gone, there was no one. He wished that he had taken the trouble to make a few more friends. It made all the difference in the world to have some one to talk to at the day’s end, some one to share one’s thoughts with....

Suddenly he began to find Community House intolerable. He spent his evenings looking for a place to live. Certainly he could not be less lonely anywhere else! And one evening, on Canal Street, in a dingy building which had apparently once been a residence and was now rented out room by room, he found a tiny hall-room on the third floor which he had not the excuse of not being able to afford. He made some explanation for leaving Community House—which it seemed was not needed, for room there was much in demand—and moved at once into his new home.

It was a room about eight by eleven feet, hardly holding the cot-bed, table and chair, which constituted its furnishing. He improvised a shelf above the tiny radiator in the corner for his half-dozen books.... And for one evening he was happy, in being away from Community House, in being in a place of his own, in having in some way established his independence.

And then loneliness descended upon him in a black mist, obliterating the clear outlines of the actual world. He managed to get through the day’s work somehow, and then he wandered about hopelessly, unseeingly, the victim of a longing that made the very act of breathing a pain; a longing that he could not understand—for what was Rose-Ann to him?

2

He dined in various restaurants in the loop, in the vague hope of finding some one to talk to.

One evening, as he stood in a restaurant looking about for an empty table, he heard his name called. A young man, sitting alone, was beckoning to him. It was Eddie Silver, a reporter of whom Felix had been hearing much of late.

“Come over and congratulate me,” he said, grinning, “I’ve just been fired!”

“Really? What for?” Felix asked.

“Coming down to the office crazy drunk,” said Eddie Silver proudly. “Sit down.”

Felix had heard of Eddie Silver’s epic drunkennesses. Another thing he had heard was that Eddie Silver wrote poetry.... This was not so rare a thing among Chicago reporters as Felix would have supposed. Two in every dozen young reporters, as Clive had said, were poets of a sort. But, as Clive had added, it was always of a tame and colourless sort. Eddie Silver was not tame and colourless, whatever his poetry might be. Or rather there was nothing tame about the Eddie Silver legend—though its hero had appeared to Felix, whenever they met, to be the gentlest soul alive.

Eddie Silver was having a dinner which consisted mostly of cocktails; but he showed no signs of any of the alcoholic belligerency for which he was famed; he seemed, on the contrary, likely to burst into tears at any moment. He was in a soft poetic mood. He talked about poetry. He tried to recite it. But the lines kept getting mixed up.

“Come on over my place,” he said, “we’ll read some Swinburne.”

He took Felix to a large furnished room a little to the north of the loop, and propping himself on a couch with pillows, read “Poems and Ballads” in a sonorous and unintelligible manner until midnight. He invited Felix to come back the next evening for more Swinburne, and Felix went away feeling that the legend had rather over-emphasized the belligerent side of Eddie Silver’s character.... He came the next evening, which was spent in precisely the same manner, ending with an invitation to come in tomorrow evening for still more Swinburne.

Felix wondered if Eddie Silver read Swinburne every night.

Coming the third time, he found Eddie Silver’s room occupied by half a dozen young men all more or less drunk.

“C’m’ on in!” Eddie Silver called from the couch, where he sat propped with pillows as before, with a book in one hand and a glass in the other. “On’y two bo’l’s o’ Swinburne left!”

He rose, and poured a glassful of whiskey for Felix.

Felix looked at the huge drink with an involuntary gesture of dismay.

“’S all right,” said Eddie Silver. “Nas’y stuff, I know! But you take it ’n’ you’ll feel better right away!”

Felix had never been drunk. He had never wanted to be drunk. But it occurred to him that now was the proper time to have that experience.

He looked about the room. All these half dozen people were in that state, so eloquently described by the poets, of being “perplexed no more with human and divine.”

One of them was telling an incoherent story, and two others were laughing in the wrong place and being told indignantly that that wasn’t the point at all. Another was singing to himself, and not doing it very well. Poor devil! he probably wanted to sing and nobody would let him except when he was drunk. And still another was arguing with Eddie Silver, who paid no attention to him whatever, about somebody named John. “John means well,” he explained, with the air of one who understands all and forgives all. “John just don’t know how, that’s all! But he means well.”

Felix considered. Did he really wish to join them in that state, so merely ridiculous when viewed from the outside? Yet they were doubtless happy, in some way which he, in his inexperience, knew nothing about. Well, he would try it. He would get drunk.

And he might as well do it quickly.

He drank half the glassful down, choked, and was slapped on the back. He waited.

He was surprised, and a little disappointed, to find that it had no further effect than the same gentle exhilaration he had experienced from an evening’s slow sipping of his friend Tom Alden’s Rhine wine. That was not what he wanted. That was not enough. He braced himself, and drank the rest of the glassful.

Some hours later he was awakened from a deep and peaceful sleep on the floor of the bathroom by two of his companions, and walked out of the house.... He felt refreshed by the night air, and remembered a discussion about Chicago, and of slapping somebody’s face. He did not remember being knocked down—several times, they said. By a man named Smith. He did not remember Smith.

“And every time,” they told him gleefully, “you got up and solemnly slapped his face again. You said you wouldn’t allow anybody to talk that way about Chicago.... And you kept calling him ‘McFish.’”

His companions were taking him home. He thanked them extravagantly, and tried to give them directions, but they explained that they lived in the same building he did—a fact which at the time he found very puzzling. Nevertheless they affirmed that it was so.

He got up two flights of stairs without assistance, and opened his door, but immediately became overcome with sleep, and sank on the couch. They pulled off his shoes and left him....

At seven o’clock in the morning he awoke, located himself after a momentary wonderment and shook his head. No headache! That was strange! Apparently he was not going to suffer the traditional aftermath.... He went to take a cold bath, and returning found one of his companions of the night before in the hall. “How do you feel?” He felt fine. He had some breakfast at the nearest restaurant, and went to work.