The Restless Sex

She had been gone for some time when he awoke. As he sat up, blinking through the late afternoon sunshine, a pencilled sheet of yellow manuscript paper fluttered from his breast to the floor.

Jim, it is fine! I mean it! It is a splendid, virile, honest piece of work. And it is intensely interesting. I'm quite mad about it – quite thrilled that you can do such things. It's so masterly, so mature – and I don't know where you got your knowledge of that woman, because she is perfectly feminine and women think and do such things, and her motives are the motives that animate that sort of woman.

As you lie there asleep you look about eighteen – not much older than when I used to see you when you came home from school and lay on your sofa and read Kipling aloud to me. Then I was awed; you were a grown man to me. Now you are just a boy again, and I love you dearly, and I'm going to kiss your hair, very cautiously, before I go downstairs.

I've done it. I'm going now.

    STEVE.

CHAPTER XXII

It happened one day late in May that Cleland, desiring local accuracy of detail in a chapter of his brand new novel, put on his hat and walked to Washington Square and across it, south, into the slums.

New leaves graced the trees in the park; spring flowers bloomed around the fountain, and the grass was rankly fragrant where it had just been mowed.

But he left the spring freshness behind him when he entered that sad, dingy, swarming region to the south, where the only clean creature seemed to be the occasional policeman in his new summer tunic, sauntering aloof amid the noise and wretchedness and the foul odours made fouler by the sunshine.

Cleland presently found the squalid street which he wished to describe in convincing detail, and stood there on the corner in the shelter of a tobacconist's awning making preliminary mental notes. Then, as he fished out note-book and pencil, intent on professional memoranda, he saw Grismer.

The man wore shabbier clothes than Cleland had ever before seen him wear; he was crossing the filthy street at his usual graceful and leisurely saunter, and he did not see Cleland under the awning.

There was a chop-suey restaurant opposite, a shabby, disreputable, odoriferous place, doubly repulsive in the pitiless sunshine. And into this sauntered Grismer and disappeared.

The slight shock of the episode remained to bother Cleland all the morning. He kept thinking of it while trying to work; he could not seem to put it from his mind and finally threw aside his manuscript, took his hat and stick, and went out with the intention of lunching.

It was nearly lunch time, but he did not walk toward the cream-coloured Hotel Rochambeau, with its green awnings and its French flag flying. He took the other way, scarcely realizing what he meant to do until he turned the corner into Bleecker Street.

He found the basement he was in search of presently; two steps down, an area gate and bell encrusted with rust, and a diseased and homeless cat dozing there in patient misery.

"You poor devil," he said, offering a cautious caress; but the gaunt creature struck at him and fled.

He rang. Jangling echoes resounded from within. Two negro wenches and a Chinaman surveyed him from adjoining houses. He could smell a sour stench from the beer saloon opposite, where a fat German beast was washing down the sidewalk with a mop.

"Hello, Cleland. This is very nice of you. Come in!" said a pleasant voice behind him, and, as he turned, Grismer, in shabby slippers and faded dressing-gown, opened the iron wicket.

"I hadn't called," said Cleland a little stiffly, " – so I thought I'd drop in for a moment and take you out somewhere to lunch."

Grismer smiled his curious, non-committal smile and ushered him into a big, whitewashed basement, with a screen barring the further end and quite bare except for a few bits of furniture, some plaster casts, and half a dozen revolving tables on which stood unfinished studies in clay and wax.

Cleland involuntarily glanced about him, then went over and politely examined the studies in clay.

"I've a back yard, too," said Grismer, "where I work in good weather. The light in here isn't particularly good."

For the wretchedness of his quarters he made no further apology; he spoke in his easy, amiable way and entirely without embarrassment, standing beside Cleland and moving with him from one study to another.

"They're just as clever as they can be," said Cleland, " – infernally clever, Grismer. Are they commissions?"

"I'm sorry to say they are not," replied Grismer with a smile.

"But a man who can do this work ought never to want for commissions," insisted Cleland.

"I'm exceedingly glad you like my work," returned Grismer pleasantly, "but as for orders – " he shrugged – "when I didn't need them they came to me. But, Cleland, when the world learns that a man needs anything it suddenly discovers that it doesn't need him! Isn't it funny," he added good-humouredly, "that prosperous talent is always in demand, always turning down work which it has no time to do; but the same talent on its uppers is universally under deep suspicion?"

He spoke lightly, impersonally, and without the slightest trace of bitterness. "Sit down and light one of your own cigarettes," he said. "I've only pipe-tobacco, and you probably wouldn't care for it."

Cleland seated himself in the depths of a big, threadbare arm-chair.

Grismer said with a smile:

"No use informing you that I'm obliged to live economically. Models are expensive; so is material. Therefore, I live where I can afford both, and a roof to cover them… And do you know, Cleland, that after all it doesn't matter much where one sleeps – " he made a slight gesture toward the screen at the end of the room. "I used to think it did until I had to give up a place of my own full of expensive and beautiful things.

"But it really doesn't matter. The main idea is to be free – free of debt, free of expensive impedimenta which cause one anxiety, free from the importunities and restrictions of one's friends." He laughed and dropped one long leg over the other.

"I've niggers and Chinamen for neighbours. They cause me no inconvenience. It's rather agreeable than otherwise to sit here and work, or lounge about and smoke, wondering whether a commission is already on its way or whether it has not yet even taken shape in the brain of some person unknown who is destined by fate some day to exchange his money for my bronze or marble… It's an amusing game, Cleland, isn't it? – the whole affair of living, I mean… Not too unpleasant, not too agreeable… But if one's heart-action were not involuntary and automatic, do you know, if it lay with me I'd not bother to keep my heart ticking – I'd be too lazy to wind it up."

He stretched himself out in his chair gracefully, good-humoured, serenely amused at his own ideas.

"Did you have a good time abroad?" he inquired.

"Yes… When you get on your feet you ought to go to Paris, Grismer."

"Yes, I know." He looked humorously at his well-shaped feet stretched out before him in shabby slippers. "Yes; it's up to my feet, Cleland. But they're a wandering, indifferent couple, inclined to indolence, I fear… Is your work getting on?"

"I'm busy… Yes, I think it's taking shape."

He looked up at Grismer hesitatingly, frankly troubled. "Grismer, we were school-mates… I wouldn't wish you to think me impertinent – "

"Go ahead, Cleland."

"Are you quite sure?"

"I'm sure of you," returned Grismer, with a singular smile. "I know you pretty well, Cleland. I knew you in school, in college… We fought in school. You were civil to me at Harvard." He laughed. "I've always liked you, Cleland – which is more than you can say about me."

Cleland reddened, and Grismer laughed again, lightly and without effort:

"It's that way sometimes. I think that you are about the only man I have ever really liked. You didn't know that, did you?"

"No."

"Well, don't let it worry you," added Grismer, smiling. "Go on and say what you were about to say."

"It was – I was merely wondering – whether you'd take it all right if – " He began again from another angle: "I've a country place – up in the Berkshires – my father's old place. And I thought that a fountain – if you'd care to design one – "

Grismer had been watching him with that indefinable smile in his golden eyes, which perplexed men and interested women, but now he rose suddenly and walked to the barred windows and stood there with his back turned, gazing out into the area. After an interval he pivoted on his heels, sauntered back and seated himself, relighting his pipe.

"All right," he said very quietly. "I'll do your fountain."

Cleland drew a breath of relief. "If you like," he said, "come up with me to Runner's Rest in June and look over the garden. There ought to be a pool there; there are plenty of springs on the mountain to feed a fountain by gravity. I think it would be fine to have a pool and a fountain in the old garden. Is it understood that you'll do it for me?"