and the Worm were standing near the inner entrance, Waiting for Hy, who, cigarette drooping from his nether lip, stood in the me at the ticket window.
Suddenly a man appeared – a stranger, from the casually curious glances he drew – elbowing in through the group in the outer doorway and made straight for the young poet who was taking tickets.
Peter did not see him at first. Then the Worm nudged his elbow and whispered – “Good God, it’s the Walrus!”
Peter wheeled about. He had met the man only once or twice, a year back; now he took him in – a big man, heavy in the shoulders and neck, past middle age, with a wide thin orator’s mouth surrounded by deep lines. He had a big hooked nose (a strong nose!) and striking vivid eyes of a pale green color. They struck you, those eyes, with their light hard surface. There were strips of whiskers on each cheek, narrow and close-clipped, tinged with gray. His clothes, overcoat and hat were black; his collar a low turnover; his tie a loosely knotted white bow.
He made an oddly dramatic figure in that easy, merry Bohemian setting; a specter from an old forgotten world of Puritanism.
The intruder addressed the young poet at the door in a low but determined voice.
“I wish to see Miss Susan Wilde.”
“I’m afraid you can’t now, sir. She will be in costume by this time.”
“In costume, eh?” Doctor Wilde was frowning. And the poet eyed him with cool suspicion.
“Yes, she is in the first play.”
Still the big man frowned and compressed that wide mobile mouth. Peter, all alert., sniffing out the copy trail, noted that he was nervously clasping his hands.
Now Doctor Wilde spoke, with a sudden ring in his voice that gave a fleeting hint of inner suppressions. “Will you kindly send word to Miss Wilde that her father is here and must see her at once?”
The poet, surprised, sent the message.
Peter heard a door open, down by the stage. He pressed forward, peering eagerly. A ripple of curiosity and friendly interest ran through that part of the audience that was already seated. A young man called, “What’s your hurry, Sue?” and there was laughter.
Then he saw her, coming lightly, swiftly up the side aisle; in the boy costume – the knickerbockers, the torn stockings, the old coat and ragged hat, the tom shirt, open at the neck. She seemed hardly to hear the noise. Her lips were compressed, and Peter suddenly saw that she in her fresh young way looked not unlike the big man at the door, the nervously intent man who stood waiting for her with a scowl that wavered into an expression of utter unbelief as his eyes took in her costume.
Hy came up just then with the tickets, and Peter hurried in after Doctor Wilde; then let Hy and the Worm move on without him to their seats, lingering shamelessly. His little drama was on. He had announced that he would vivisect this girl!
He studied her. But she saw nothing but the big gray man there with the deeply lined face and the pale eyes – her father! Peter noted now that she had her make-up on; an odd effect around those deep blazing eyes.
Then the two were talking – low, tense. Some late comers crowded in, chatting and laughing. Peter edged closer.
“But you shouldn’t have come here like this,” he heard her saying. “It isn’t fair!”
“I am not here to argue. Once more, will you put on your proper clothes and come home with me?”
“No, I will not.”
“You have no shame then – appearing like this?”
“No – none.”
“And the publicity means nothing to you?”
“You are causing it by coming here.”
“It is nothing to you that your actions are a public scandal?” With which he handed her a folded paper.
She did not look at it; crumpled in in her hand.
“You feel, then, no concern for the position you put me in?”
Doctor Wilde was raising his voice.
The girl broke out with – “Listen, father! I came out here to meet you and stop this thing, settle it, once and for all. It is the best way. I will not go with you. I have my own life to live, You must not try to speak to me again!”
She turned away, her eyes darkly alight in her printed face, her slim body quivering.
“Sue! Wait!”
Wilde’s voice had been trembling with anger; now, Peter thought, it was suddenly near to breaking. He reached out one uncertain hand. And a wave of sympathy for the man flooded Peter’s thoughts. “This is where their ‘freedom,’ their ‘self-expression’ leads them,” he thought bitterly. Egotism! Selfishness! Spiritual anarchy! It was all summed up, that revolt, in the girl’s outrageous costume as she stood there before that older man, a minister, her own father!
She caught the new note in her father’s voice, hesitated the merest instant, but then went straight down the aisle, lips tight, eyes aflame, seeing and hearing nothing.
The stage door opened. She ran up the steps, and Peter caught a glimpse of the hulking Zanin reaching out with a familiar hand to take her arm and draw her within… He turned back in time to see Doctor Wilde, beaten, walking rapidly out to the street, and the poet at the door looking after him with an expression of sheer uncomprehending irritation on his keen young face. “There you have it again!” thought Peter. “There you have the bachelor girl – and her friends!”
While he was thus indulging his emotions, the curtain went up on Zanin’s little play.
He stood there near the door, trying to listen. He was too excited to sit down. Turbulent emotions were rioting within him, making consecutive thought impossible. He caught bits of Zanin’s rough dialogue. He saw Sue make her entrance, heard the shout of delighted approval that greeted her, the prolonged applause, the cries of “Bully for you, Sue!”… “You’re all right, Sue!”
Then Peter plunged out the door and walked feverishly about the Village streets. He stopped at a saloon and had a drink.
But the Crossroads Theater fascinated him. He drifted back there and looked in. The first play was over. Hy was in a dim corner of the lobby, talking confidentially with Betty Deane.
Then Sue came out with the Worm, of all persons, at her elbow. So he had managed to meet her, too? She wore her street dress and looked amazingly calm.
Peter dodged around the corner. “The way to get on with women,” he reflected savagely, “is to have no feelings, no capacity for emotion, be perfectly cold blooded!”
He walked up to Fourteenth Street and dropped aimlessly into a moving-picture show.
Toward eleven he went back to Tenth Street. He even ran a little, breathlessly, for fear he might be too late, too late for what, he did not know.
But he was not. Glancing in at the door, he saw Sue, with Betty, Hy, the Worm, Zanin and a few others.
Hurriedly, on an impulse, he found an envelope in his pocket, tore off the back,
