Willa Cather (1873-1947) effort to conceal.

Once, when he had been making a synopsis of a

paragraph at the blackboard, his English teacher had stepped to his side
Paul's Case (1905) and attempted to guide his hand. Paul had started back with a shudder and
thrust his hands violently behind him. The astonished woman could
scarcely have been more hurt and embarrassed had he struck at her. The
A Study in Temperament insult was so involuntary and definitely personal as to be unforgettable. in
one way and another he had made all his teachers, men and women alike,
It was Paul's afternoon to appear before the faculty of the Pittsburgh High conscious of the same feeling of physical aversion. In one class he
School to account for his various misdemeanors. He had been suspended a habitually sat with his hand shading his eyes; in another he always looked
week ago, and his father had called at the Principal's office and confessed out of the window during the recitation; in another he made a running
his perplexity about his son. Paul entered the faculty room suave and commentary on the lecture, with humorous intention.
smiling. His clothes were a trifle outgrown, and the tan velvet on the collar
of his open overcoat was frayed and worn; but for all that there was His teachers felt this afternoon that his whole attitude was symbolized by
something of the dandy about him, and he wore an opal pin in his neatly his shrug and his flippantly red carnation flower, and they fell upon him
knotted black four-in-hand, and a red carnation in his buttonhole. This without mercy, his English teacher leading the pack. He stood through it
latter adornment the faculty somehow felt was not properly significant of smiling, his pale lips parted over his white teeth. (His lips were continually
the contrite spirit befitting a boy under the ban of suspension. twitching, and be had a habit of raising his eyebrows that was
contemptuous and irritating to the last degree.) Older boys than Paul had
Paul was tall for his age and very thin, with high, cramped shoulders and a broken down and shed tears under that baptism of fire, but his set smile did
narrow chest. His eyes were remarkable for a certain hysterical brilliancy, not once desert him, and his only sign of discomfort was the nervous
and he continually used them in a conscious, theatrical sort of way, trembling of the fingers that toyed with the buttons of his overcoat, and an
peculiarly offensive in a boy. The pupils were abnormally large, as though occasional jerking of the other hand that held his hat. Paul was always
he were addicted to belladonna, but there was a glassy glitter about them smiling, always glancing about him, seeming to feel that people might be
which that drug does not produce. watching him and trying to detect something. This conscious expression,
since it was as far as possible from boyish mirthfulness, was usually
When questioned by the Principal as to why he was there Paul stated, attributed to insolence or "smartness."
politely enough, that he wanted to come back to school. This was a lie, but
Paul was quite accustomed to lying; found it, indeed, indispensable for As the inquisition proceeded one of his instructors repeated an impertinent
overcoming friction. His teachers were asked to state their respective remark of the boy's, and the Principal asked him whether he thought that a
charges against him, which they did with such a rancor and aggrievedness courteous speech to have made a woman. Paul shrugged his shoulders
as evinced that this was not a usual case, Disorder and impertinence were slightly and his eyebrows twitched.
among the offenses named, yet each of his instructors felt that it was
scarcely possible to put into words the real cause of the trouble, which lay "I don't know," he replied. "I didn't mean to be polite or impolite, either. I
in a sort of hysterically defiant manner of the boy's; in the contempt which guess it's a sort of way I have of saying things regardless."
they all knew he felt for them, and which he seemingly made not the least
The Principal, who was a sympathetic man, asked him whether he didn't and an airy blue Venetian scene or two that always exhilarated him. He
think that a way it would be well to get rid of. Paul grinned and said he was delighted to find no one in the gallery but the old guard, who sat in
guessed so. When he was told that he could go he bowed gracefully and one corner, a newspaper on his knee, a black patch over one eye and the
went out. His bow was but a repetition of the scandalous red carnation. other closed. Paul possessed himself of the peace and walked confidently
up and down, whistling under his breath. After a while he sat down before
His teachers were in despair, and his drawing master voiced the feeling of a blue Rico and lost himself. When he bethought him to look at his watch,
them all when he declared there was something about the boy which none it was after seven o'clock, and he rose with a start and ran downstairs,
of them understood. He added: "I don't really believe that smile of his making a face at Augustus, peering out from the cast room, and an evil
comes altogether from insolence; there's something sort of haunted about gesture at the Venus de Milo as he passed her on the stairway.
it. The boy is not strong, for one thing. I happen to know that he was born
in Colorado, only a few months before his mother died out there of a long When Paul reached the ushers' dressing room half a dozen boys were there
illness. There is something wrong about the fellow." already, and he began excitedly to tumble into his uniform. It was one of
the few that at all approached fitting, and Paul thought it very becoming-
The drawing master had come to realize that, in looking at Paul, one saw though he knew that the tight, straight coat accentuated his narrow chest,
only his white teeth and the forced animation of his eyes. One warm about which he was exceedingly sensitive. He was always considerably
afternoon the boy had gone to sleep at his drawing board, and his master excited while be dressed, twanging all over to the tuning of the strings and
had noted with amazement what a white, blue-veined face it was; drawn the preliminary flourishes of the horns in the music room; but tonight he
and wrinkled like an old man's about the eyes, the lips twitching even in seemed quite beside himself, and he teased and plagued the boys until,
his sleep, and stiff with a nervous tension that drew them back from his telling him that he was crazy, they put him down on the floor and sat on
teeth. him.

His teachers left the building dissatisfied and unhappy; humiliated to have Somewhat calmed by his suppression, Paul dashed out to the front of the
felt so vindictive toward a mere boy, to have uttered this feeling in cutting house to seat the early comers. He was a model usher; gracious and
terms, and to have set each other on, as it were, in the gruesome game of smiling he ran up and down the aisles; nothing was too much trouble for
intemperate reproach. Some of them remembered having seen a miserable him; he carried messages and brought programs as though it were his
street cat set at bay by a ring of tormentors. greatest pleasure in life, and all the people in his section thought him a
charming boy, feeling that he remembered and admired them. As the
As for Paul, he ran down the hill whistling the "Soldiers' Chorus" from house filled, he grew more and more vivacious and animated, and the
Faust, looking wildly behind him now and then to see whether some of his color came to his cheeks and lips. It was very much as though this were a
teachers were not there to writhe under his lightheartedness. As it was now great reception and Paul were the host. just as the musicians came out to
late in the afternoon and Paul was on duty that evening as usher at take their places, his English teacher arrived with checks for the seats
Carnegie Hall, he decided that he would not go home to supper. When he which a prominent manufacturer had taken for the season. She betrayed
reached the concert hall the doors were not yet open and, as it was chilly some embarrassment when she handed Paul the tickets, and a hauteur
outside, he decided to go up into the picture gallery--always deserted at which subsequently made her feel very foolish. Paul was startled for a
this hour--where there were some of Raffelli's gay studies of Paris streets moment, and had the feeling of wanting to put her out; what business had
she here among all these fine people and gay colors? He looked her over Paul had often hung about the hotel, watching the people go in and out,
and decided that she was not appropriately dressed and must be a fool to longing to enter and leave schoolmasters and dull care behind him forever.
sit downstairs in such togs. The tickets had probably been sent her out of
kindness, he reflected as he put down a seat for her, and she had about as At last the singer came out, accompanied by the conductor, who helped
story of eden
much right to sit there as he had. her into her carriage and closed the door with a cordial auf wiedersehen and eve. the
which set Paul to wondering whether she were not an old sweetheart of negro is the
When the symphony began Paul sank into one of the rear seats with a long his. Paul followed the carriage over to the hotel, walking so rapidly as not angel on the
sigh of relief, and lost himself as he had done before the Rico. It was not to be far from the entrance when the singer alighted, and disappeared edge of the
that symphonies, as such, meant anything in particular to Paul, but the first behind the swinging glass doors that were opened by a Negro in a tall hat garden.
sigh of the instruments seemed to free some hilarious and potent spirit and a long coat. In the moment that the door was ajar it seemed to Paul unnatural
within him; something that struggled there like the genie in the bottle that he, too, entered. He seemed to feel himself go after her up the steps, eden. lures
found by the Arab fisherman. He felt a sudden zest of life; the lights into the warm, lighted building, into an exotic, tropical world of shiny, of commodity
danced before his eyes and the concert hall blazed into unimaginable glistening surfaces and basking ease. He reflected upon the mysterious culture.
splendor. When the soprano soloist came on Paul forgot even the nastiness dishes that were brought into the dining room, the green bottles in buckets
of his teacher's being there and gave himself up to the peculiar stimulus of ice, as he had seen them in the supper party pictures of the Sunday
such personages always had for him. The soloist chanced to be a German World supplement. A quick gust of wind brought the rain down with
woman, by no means in her first youth, and the mother of many children; sudden vehemence, and Paul was startled to find that he was still outside
but she wore an elaborate gown and a tiara, and above all she had that in the slush of the gravel driveway; that his boots were letting in the water
indefinable air of achievement, that world-shine upon her, which, in Paul's and his scanty overcoat was clinging wet about him; that the lights in front
eyes, made her a veritable queen of Romance. of the concert hall were out and that the rain was driving in sheets between
him and the orange glow of the windows above him. There it was, what be
After a concert was over Paul was always irritable and wretched until he wanted--tangibly before him, like the fairy world of a Christmas
got to sleep, and tonight he was even more than usually restless. He had pantomime--but mocking spirits stood guard at the doors, and, as the rain
the feeling of not being able to let down, of its being impossible to give up beat in his face, Paul wondered whether he were destined always to shiver
this delicious excitement which was the only thing that could be called in the black night outside, looking up at it.
living at all. During the last number he withdrew and, after hastily
changing his clothes in the dressing room, slipped out to the side door He turned and walked reluctantly toward the car tracks. The end had to
where the soprano's carriage stood. Here he began pacing rapidly up and come sometime; his father in his nightclothes at the top of the stairs,
down the walk, waiting to see her come out. explanations that did not explain, hastily improvised fictions that were
forever tripping him up, his upstairs room and its horrible yellow
Over yonder, the Schenley, in its vacant stretch, loomed big and square wallpaper, the creaking bureau with the greasy plush collarbox, and over
through the fine rain, the windows of its twelve stories glowing like those his painted wooden bed the pictures of George Washington and John
of a lighted cardboard house under a Christmas tree. All the actors and Calvin, and the framed motto, "Feed my Lambs," which had been worked
singers of the better class stayed there when they were in the city, and a in red worsted by his mother.
number of the big manufacturers of the place lived there in the winter.
Half an hour later Paul alighted from his car and went slowly down one of and sat down. He was horribly afraid of rats, so he did not try to sleep, but
the side streets off the main thoroughfare. It was a highly respectable sat looking distrustfully at the dark, still terrified lest he might have
street, where all the houses were exactly alike, and where businessmen of awakened his father. In such reactions, after one of the experiences which
moderate means begot and reared large families of children, all of whom made days and nights out of the dreary blanks of the calendar, when his
went to Sabbath school and learned the shorter catechism, and were senses were deadened, Paul's head was always singularly clear. Suppose
interested in arithmetic; all of whom were as exactly alike as their homes, his father had heard him getting in at the window and had come down and
and of a piece with the monotony in which they lived. Paul never went up shot him for a burglar? Then, again, suppose his father had come down,
Cordelia Street without a shudder of loathing. His home was next to the pistol in hand, and he had cried out in time to save himself, and his father
house of the Cumberland minister. He approached it tonight with the had been horrified to think how nearly he had killed him? Then, again,
nerveless sense Of defeat, the hopeless feeling of sinking back forever into suppose a day should come when his father would remember that night,
ugliness and commonness that he had always had when he came home. and wish there had been no warning cry to stay his hand? With this last
The moment he turned into Cordelia Street he felt the waters close above supposition Paul entertained himself until daybreak.
his head. After each of these orgies of living he experienced all the
physical depression which follows a debauch; the loathing of respectable The following Sunday was fine; the sodden November chill was broken by
beds, of common food, of a house penetrated by kitchen odors; a the last flash of autumnal summer. In the morning Paul had to go to church
shuddering repulsion for the flavorless, colorless mass of everyday and Sabbath school, as always. On seasonable Sunday afternoons the
existence; a morbid desire for cool things and soft lights and fresh flowers. burghers of Cordelia Street always sat out on their front stoops and talked
to their neighbors on the next stoop, or called to those across the street in
The nearer he approached the house, the more absolutely unequal Paul felt neighborly fashion. The men usually sat on gay cushions placed upon the
to the sight of it all: his ugly sleeping chamber; the cold bathroom with the steps that led down to the sidewalk, while the women, in their Sunday
grimy zinc tub, the cracked mirror, the dripping spiggots; his father, at the "waists," sat in rockers on the cramped porches, pretending to be greatly at
top of the stairs, his hairy legs sticking out from his nightshirt, his feet their ease. The children played in the streets; there were so many of them
thrust into carpet slippers. He was so much later than usual that there that the place resembled the recreation grounds of a kindergarten. The men men
would certainly be inquiries and reproaches. Paul stopped short before the on the steps--all in their shirt sleeves, their vests unbuttoned--sat with their
door. He felt that he could not be accosted by his father tonight; that he legs well apart, their stomachs comfortably protruding, and talked of the
could not toss again on that miserable bed. He would not go in. He would prices of things, or told anecdotes of the sagacity of their various chiefs
tell his father that he had no carfare and it was raining so hard he had gone and overlords. They occasionally looked over the multitude of squabbling
home with one of the boys and stayed all night. children, listened affectionately to their high-pitched, nasal voices, smiling
• but he went in to see their own proclivities reproduced in their offspring, and interspersed
Meanwhile, he was wet and cold. He went around to the back of the house their legends of the iron kings with remarks about their sons' progress at
and tried one of the basement windows, found it open, raised it cautiously, school, their grades in arithmetic, and the amounts they had saved in their
and scrambled down the cellar wall to the floor. There he stood, holding toy banks.
his breath, terrified by the noise he had made, but the floor above him was
silent, and there was no creak on the stairs. He found a soapbox, and On this last Sunday of November Paul sat all the afternoon on the lowest
carried it over to the soft ring of light that streamed from the furnace door, step of his stoop, staring into the street, while his sisters, in their rockers,
 were talking to the minister's daughters next door about how many Mediterranean, and high play at Monte Carlo appealed to his fancy, and he
shirtwaists they had made in the last week, and howx many waffles was interested in the triumphs of these cash boys who had become famous,
someone had eaten at the last church supper. When the weather was warm, though he had no mind for the cash-boy stage.
and his father was in a particularly jovial frame of mind, the girls made
lemonade, which was always brought out in a red-glass pitcher, After supper was over and he had helped to dry the dishes, Paul nervously
ornamented with forget-me-nots in blue enamel. This the girls thought asked his father whether he could go to George's to get some help in his
very fine, and the neighbors always joked about the suspicious color of the geometry, and still more nervously asked for carfare. This latter request he
pitcher. red? had to repeat, as his father, on principle, did not like to hear requests for
money, whether much or little. He asked Paul whether he could not go to
Today Paul's father sat on the top step, talking to a young man who shifted some boy who lived nearer, and told him that he ought not to leave his
a restless baby from knee to knee. He happened to be the young man who schoolwork until Sunday; but he gave him the dime. He was not a poor
was daily held up to Paul as a model, and after whom it was his father's man, but he had a worthy ambition to come up in the world. His only
dearest hope that he would pattern. This young man was of a ruddy reason for allowing Paul to usher was that he thought a boy ought to be
complexion, with a compressed, red mouth, and faded, nearsighted eyes, earning a little.
over which he wore thick spectacles, with gold bows that curved about his
ears. He was clerk to one of the magnates of a great steel corporation, and Paul bounded upstairs, scrubbed the greasy odor of the dishwater from his
glasses/m was looked upon in Cordelia Street as a young man with a future. There hands with the ill-smelling soap he hated, and then shook over his fingers
irrors was a story that, some five years ago--he was now barely twenty-six--he a few drops of violet water from the bottle he kept hidden in his drawer.
had been a trifle dissipated, but in order to curb his appetites and save the He left the house with his geometry conspicuously under his arm, and the
many loss of time and strength that a sowing of wild oats might have entailed, he moment he got out of Cordelia Street and boarded a downtown car, he
versions had taken his chief's advice, oft reiterated to his employees, and at twenty- shook off the lethargy of two deadening days and began to live again.
of one had married the first woman whom he could persuade to share his
glittering fortunes. She happened to be an angular schoolmistress, much older than The leading juvenile of the permanent stock company which played at one
he, who also wore thick glasses, and who had now borne him four of the downtown theaters was an acquaintance of Paul's, and the boy had
children, all nearsighted, like herself. been invited to drop in at the Sunday-night rehearsals whenever he could.
For more than a year Paul had spent every available moment loitering
The young man was relating how his chief, now cruising in the about Charley Edwards's dressing room. He had won a place among
Mediterranean, kept in touch with all the details of the business, arranging Edwards's following not only because the young actor, who could not
his office hours on his yacht just as though he were at home, and afford to employ a dresser, often found him useful, but because he
"knocking off work enough to keep two stenographers busy." His father recognized in Paul something akin to what churchmen term "vocation."
told, in turn, the plan his corporation was considering, of putting in an
electric railway plant in Cairo. Paul snapped his teeth; he had an awful It was at the theater and at Carnegie Hall that Paul really lived; the rest
apprehension that they might spoil it all before he got there. Yet he rather was but a sleep and a forgetting. This was Paul's fairy tale, and it had for
liked to hear these legends of the iron kings that were told and retold on him all the allurement of a secret love. The moment he inhaled the gassy,
Sundays and holidays; these stories of palaces in Venice, yachts on the painty, dusty odor behind the scenes, he breathed like a prisoner set free,
and felt within him the possibility of doing or saying splendid, brilliant, more than he had to become a musician. He felt no necessity to do any of
poetic things. The moment the cracked orchestra beat out the overture these things; what he wanted was to see, to be in the atmosphere, float on
from Martha, or jerked at the serenade from Rigoletto, all stupid and ugly the wave of it, to be carried out, blue league after blue league, away from
things slid from him, and his senses were deliciously, yet delicately fired. everything.

Perhaps it was because, in Paul's world, the natural nearly always wore the After a night behind the scenes Paul found the schoolroom more than ever
guise of ugliness, that a certain element of artificiality seemed to him repulsive; the bare floors and naked walls; the prosy men who never wore
necessary in beauty. Perhaps it was because his experience of life frock coats, or violets in their buttonholes; the women with their dull
elsewhere was so full of Sabbath- school picnics, petty economies, gowns, shrill voices, and pitiful seriousness about prepositions that govern
wholesome advice as to how to succeed in life, and the inescapable odors the dative. He could not bear to have the other pupils think, for a moment,
of cooking, that he found this existence so alluring, these smartly clad men that he took these people seriously; he must convey to them that he
and women so attractive, that he was so moved by these starry apple considered it all trivial, and was there only by way of a jest, anyway. He
orchards that bloomed perennially under the limelight. had autographed pictures of all the members of the stock company which
he showed his classmates, telling them the most incredible stories of his
It would be difficult to put it strongly enough how convincingly the stage familiarity with these people, of his acquaintance with the soloists who
entrance of that theater was for Paul the actual portal of Romance. came to Carnegie Hall, his suppers with them and the flowers he sent
Certainly none of the company ever suspected it, least of all Charley them. When these stories lost their effect, and his audience grew listless,
Edwards. It was very like the old stories that used to float about London of he became desperate and would bid all the boys good-by, announcing that
fabulously rich Jews, who had subterranean halls there, with palms, and he was going to travel for a while; going to Naples, to Venice, to Egypt.
fountains, and soft lamps and richly appareled women who never saw the Then, next Monday, he would slip back, conscious and nervously smiling;
disenchanting light of London day. So, in the midst of that smoke-palled his sister was ill, and he should have to defer his voyage until spring.
city, enamored of figures and grimy toil, Paul had his secret temple, his
wishing carpet, his bit of blue-and- white Mediterranean shore bathed in Matters went steadily worse with Paul at school. In the itch to let his
perpetual sunshine. instructors know how heartily he despised them and their homilies, and
how thoroughly he was appreciated elsewhere, he mentioned once or twice
Several of Paul's teachers had a theory that his imagination had been that he had no time to fool with theorems; adding--with a twitch of the
perverted by garish fiction, but the truth was that he scarcely ever read at eyebrows and a touch of that nervous bravado which so perplexed them--
all. The books at home were not such as would either tempt or corrupt a that he was helping the people down at the stock company; they were old
youthful mind, and as for reading the novels that some of his friends urged friends of his.
upon him--well, he got what he wanted much more quickly from music;
any sort of music, from an orchestra to a barrel organ. He needed only the The upshot of the matter was that the Principal went to Paul's father, and
spark, the indescribable thrill that made his imagination master of his Paul was taken out of school and put to work. The manager at Carnegie
senses, and he could make plots and pictures enough of his own. It was Hall was told to get another usher in his stead; the doorkeeper at the
equally true that he was not stagestruck-not, at any rate, in the usual theater was warned not to admit him to the house; and Charley Edwards
acceptation of that expression. He had no desire to become an actor, any remorsefully promised the boy's father not to see him again.
 room; the frock coat and dress clothes he had bundled into the cab with his
The members of the stock company were vastly amused when some of linen. Then he drove to a hatter's and a shoe house. His next errand was at
Paul's stories reached them--especially the women. They were Tiffany's, where he selected his silver and a new scarf pin. He would not
hardworking women, most of them supporting indigent husbands or wait to have his silver marked, he said. Lastly, he stopped at a trunk shop
brothers, and they laughed rather bitterly at having stirred the boy to such on Broadway and had his purchases packed into various traveling bags.
fervid and florid inventions. They agreed with the faculty and with his
father that Paul's was a bad case. It was a little after one o'clock when he drove up to the Waldorf, and after
settling with the cabman, went into the office. He registered from
The eastbound train was plowing through a January snowstorm; the dull Washington; said his mother and father had been abroad, and that he had
dawn was beginning to show gray when the engine whistled a mile out of come down to await the arrival of their steamer. He told his story plausibly
Newark. Paul started up from the seat where he had lain curled in uneasy and had no trouble, since he volunteered to pay for them in advance, in
slumber, rubbed the breath-misted window glass with his hand, and peered engaging his rooms; a sleeping room, sitting room, and bath.
out. The snow was whirling in curling eddies above the white bottom
lands, and the drifts lay already deep in the fields and along the fences, Not once, but a hundred times, Paul had planned this entry into New York.
while here and there the long dead grass and dried weed stalks protruded He had gone over every detail of it with Charley Edwards, and in his
black above it. Lights shone from the scattered houses, and a gang of scrapbook at home there were pages of description about New York
laborers who stood beside the track waved their lanterns. hotels, cut from the Sunday papers. When he was shown to his sitting
room on the eighth floor he saw at a glance that everything was as it
Paul had slept very little, and he felt grimy and uncomfortable. He had should be; there was but one detail in his mental picture that the place did
made the all-night journey in a day coach, partly because he was ashamed, not realize, so he rang for the bellboy and sent him down for flowers. He
dressed as he was, to go into a Pullman, and partly because he was afraid moved about nervously until the boy returned, putting away his new linen
of being seen there by some Pittsburgh businessman, who might have and fingering it delightedly as he did so. When the flowers came he put
noticed him in Denny & Carson's office. When the whistle awoke him, he them hastily into water, and then tumbled into a hot bath. Presently he
clutched quickly at his breast pocket, glancing about him with an uncertain came out of his white bathroom, resplendent in his new silk underwear,
smile. But the little, clay-bespattered Italians were still sleeping, the and playing with the tassels of his red robe. The snow was whirling so
slatternly women across the aisle were in open-mouthed oblivion, and fiercely outside his windows that he could scarcely see across the street,
even the crumby, crying babies were for the nonce stilled. Paul settled but within the air was deliciously soft and fragrant. He put the violets and
back to struggle with his impatience as best he could. jonquils on the taboret beside the couch, and threw himself down, with a
long sigh, covering himself with a Roman blanket. He was thoroughly
When he arrived at the Jersey City station he hurried through his breakfast, tired; he had been in such haste, he had stood up to such a strain, covered
manifestly ill at ease and keeping a sharp eye about him. After he reached so much ground in the last twenty-four hours, that he wanted to think how
the Twenty-third Street station, he consulted a cabman and had himself it had all come about. Lulled by the sound of the wind, the warm air, and
driven to a men's-furnishings establishment that was just opening for the the cool fragrance of the flowers, he sank into deep, drowsy retrospection.
day. He spent upward of two hours there, buying with endless
reconsidering and great care. His new street suit he put on in the fitting

New York
 he achieves the perfect image in the mirror.
It had been wonderfully simple; when they had shut him out of the theater
and concert hall, when they had taken away his bone, the whole thing was When he awoke, it was three o'clock in the afternoon. He bounded up with
virtually determined. The rest was a mere matter of opportunity. The only a start; half of one of his precious days gone already! He spent more than
thing that at all surprised him was his own courage-for he realized well an hour in dressing, watching every stage of his toilet carefully in the
enough that he had always been tormented by fear, a sort of apprehensive mirror. Everything was quite perfect; he was exactly the kind of boy he
dread that, of late years, as the meshes of the lies he had told closed about had always wanted to be.
him, had been pulling the muscles of his body tighter and tighter. Until
Run from the now he could not remember the time when he had not been dreading When he went downstairs Paul took a carriage and drove up Fifth Avenue
superego something. Even when he was a little boy it was always there--behind him, toward the Park. The snow had somewhat abated; carriages and
or before, or on either side. There had always been the shadowed corner, tradesmen's wagons were hurrying soundlessly to and fro in the winter
the dark place into which he dared not look, but from which something twilight; boys in woolen mufflers were shoveling off the doorsteps; the
seemed always to be watching him--and Paul had done things that were avenue stages made fine spots of color against the white street. Here and
not pretty to watch, he knew. there on the corners were stands, with whole flower gardens blooming
under glass cases, against the sides of which the snowflakes stuck and
But now he had a curious sense of relief, as though he had at last thrown melted; violets, roses, carnations, lilies of the valley--somehow vastly
down the gauntlet to the thing in the corner. more lovely and alluring that they blossomed thus unnaturally in the snow.
The Park itself was a wonderful stage winterpiece.
Yet it was but a day since he had been sulking in the traces; but yesterday
afternoon that he had been sent to the bank with Denny & Carson's When he returned, the pause of the twilight had ceased and the tune of the
deposit, as usual--but this time he was instructed to leave the book to be streets had changed. The snow was falling faster, lights streamed from the
balanced. There was above two thousand dollars in checks, and nearly a hotels that reared their dozen stories fearlessly up into the storm, defying
thousand in the bank notes which he had taken from the book and quietly the raging Atlantic winds. A long, black stream of carriages poured down
transferred to his pocket. At the bank he had made out a new deposit slip. the avenue, intersected here and there by other streams, tending
His nerves had been steady enough to permit of his returning to the office, horizontally. There were a score of cabs about the entrance of his hotel,
where he had finished his work and asked for a full day's holiday and his driver had to wait. Boys in livery were running in and out of the
tomorrow, Saturday, giving a perfectly reasonable pretext. The bankbook, awning stretched across the sidewalk, up and down the red velvet carpet
be knew, would not be returned before Monday or Tuesday, and his father laid from the door to the street. Above, about, within it all was the rumble
would be out of town for the next week. From the time he slipped the bank and roar, the hurry and toss of thousands of human beings as hot for
notes into his pocket until he boarded the night train for New York, he had pleasure as himself, and on every side of him towered the glaring
not known a moment's hesitation. It was not the first time Paul had steered affirmation of the omnipotence of wealth.
through treacherous waters.
The boy set his teeth and drew his shoulders together in a spasm of
How astonishingly easy it had all been; here he was, the thing done; and realization; the plot of all dramas, the text of all romances, the nerve-stuff
this time there would be no awakening, no figure at the top of the stairs. of all sensations was whirling about him like the snowflakes. He burnt like
He watched the snowflakes whirling by his window until he fell asleep. a faggot in a tempest.
 his forced aggressiveness, of the imperative desire to show himself
When Paul went down to dinner the music of the orchestra came floating different from his surroundings. He felt now that his surroundings
up the elevator shaft to greet him. His head whirled as he stepped into the explained him. Nobody questioned the purple; he had only to wear it
thronged corridor, and he sank back into one of the chairs against the wall passively. He had only to glance down at his attire to reassure himself that
to get his breath. The lights, the chatter, the perfumes, the bewildering here it would be impossible for anyone to humiliate him.
medley of color--he had, for a moment, the feeling of not being able to
stand it. But only for a moment; these were his own people, he told He found it hard to leave his beautiful sitting room to go to bed that night,
himself. He went slowly about the corridors, through the writing rooms, and sat long watching the raging storm from his turret window. When he
smoking rooms, reception rooms, as though he were exploring the went to sleep it was with the lights turned on in his bedroom; partly
chambers of an enchanted palace, built and peopled for him alone. because of his old timidity, and partly so that, if he should wake in the
night, there would be no wretched moment of doubt, no horrible suspicion
When he reached the dining room he sat down at a table near a window. of yellow wallpaper, or of Washington and Calvin above his bed.
The flowers, the white linen, the many-colored wineglasses, the gay
toilettes of the women, the low popping of corks, the undulating Sunday morning the city was practically snowbound. Paul breakfasted late,
repetitions of the Blue Danube from the orchestra, all flooded Paul's dream and in the afternoon he fell in with a wild San Francisco boy, a freshman
with bewildering radiance. When the roseate tinge of his champagne was at Yale, who said he had run down for a "little flyer" over Sunday. The
added--that cold, precious, bubbling stuff that creamed and foamed in his young man offered to show Paul the night side of the town, and the two
glass-- Paul wondered that there were honest men in the world at all. This boys went out together after dinner, not returning to the hotel until seven love
was what all the world was fighting for, he reflected; this was what all the o'clock the next morning. They had started out in the confiding warmth of
struggle was about. He doubted the reality of his past. Had he ever known a champagne friendship, but their parting in the elevator was singularly
a place called Cordelia Street, a place where fagged-looking businessmen cool. The freshman pulled himself together to make his train, and Paul
got on the early car; mere rivets in a machine they seemed to Paul,-- went to bed. He awoke at two o'clock in the afternoon, very thirsty and
sickening men, with combings of children's hair always hanging to their dizzy, and rang for icewater, coffee, and the Pittsburgh papers.
coats, and the smell of cooking in their clothes. Cordelia Street--Ah, that
belonged to another time and country; had he not always been thus, had he On the part of the hotel management, Paul excited no suspicion. There was
not sat here night after night, from as far back as he could remember, this to be said for him, that he wore his spoils with dignity and in no way
looking pensively over just such shimmering textures and slowly twirling made himself conspicuous. Even under the glow of his wine he was never
the stem of a glass like this one between his thumb and middle finger? He boisterous, though he found the stuff like a magician's wand for wonder-
rather thought he had. building. His chief greediness lay in his ears and eyes, and his excesses
were not offensive ones. His dearest pleasures were the gray winter
He was not in the least abashed or lonely. He had no especial desire to twilights in his sitting room; his quiet enjoyment of his flowers, his
meet or to know any of these people; all he demanded was the right to look clothes, his wide divan, his cigarette, and his sense of power. He could not
on and conjecture, to watch the pageant. The mere stage properties were remember a time when he had felt so at peace with himself. The mere
all he contended for. Nor was he lonely later in the evening, in his lodge at release from the necessity of petty lying, lying every day and every day,
the Metropolitan. He was now entirely rid of his nervous misgivings, of restored his self-respect. He had never lied for pleasure, even at school;
but to be noticed and admired, to assert his difference from other Cordelia glare and glitter about him, the mere scenic accessories had again, and for
Street boys; and he felt a good deal more manly, more honest, even, now the last time, their old potency. He would show himself that he was game,
that he had no need for boastful pretensions, now that he could, as his he would finish the thing splendidly. He doubted, more than ever, the
actor friends used to say, "dress the part." It was characteristic that existence of Cordelia Street, and for the first time he drank his wine
remorse did not occur to him. His golden days went by without a shadow, recklessly. Was he not, after all, one of those fortunate beings born to the
and he made each as perfect as he could. purple, was he not still himself and in his own place? He drummed a
nervous accompaniment to the Pagliacci music and looked about him,
On the eighth day after his arrival in New York he found the whole affair telling himself over and over that it had paid.
exploited in the Pittsburgh papers, exploited with a wealth of detail which
indicated that local news of a sensational nature was at a low ebb. The firm He reflected drowsily, to the swell of the music and the chill sweetness of
of Denny & Carson announced that the boy's father had refunded the full his wine, that he might have done it more wisely. He might have caught an
amount of the theft and that they had no intention of prosecuting. The outbound steamer and been well out of their clutches before now. But the
Cumberland minister had been interviewed, and expressed his hope of yet other side of the world had seemed too far away and too uncertain then; he
reclaiming the motherless lad, and his Sabbath-school teacher declared could not have waited for it; his need had been too sharp. If he had to
that she would spare no effort to that end. The rumor had reached choose over again, he would do the same thing tomorrow. He looked
Pittsburgh that the boy had been seen in a New York hotel, and his father affectionately about the dining room, now gilded with a soft mist. Ah, it
had gone East to find him and bring him home. had paid indeed!

Paul had just come in to dress for dinner; he sank into a chair, weak to the Paul was awakened next morning by a painful throbbing in his head and
knees, and clasped his head in his hands. It was to be worse than jail, even; feet. He had thrown himself across the bed without undressing, and had
the tepid waters of Cordelia Street were to close over him finally and slept with his shoes on. His limbs and hands were lead heavy, and his
forever. The gray monotony stretched before him in hopeless, unrelieved tongue and throat were parched and burnt. There came upon him one of
years; Sabbath school, Young People's Meeting, the yellow-papered room, those fateful attacks of clearheadedness that never occurred except when
the damp dishtowels; it all rushed back upon him with a sickening he was physically exhausted and his nerves hung loose. He lay still, closed
vividness. He had the old feeling that the orchestra had suddenly stopped, his eyes, and let the tide of things wash over him.
the sinking sensation that the play was over. The sweat broke out on his
face, and he sprang to his feet, looked about him with his white, conscious His father was in New York; "stopping at some joint or other," he told
smile, and winked at himself in the mirror, With something of the old himself. The memory of successive summers on the front stoop fell upon
childish belief in miracles with which he had so often gone to class, all his him like a weight of black water. He had not a hundred dollars left; and he
lessons unlearned, Paul dressed and dashed whistling down the corridor to knew now, more than ever, that money was everything, the wall that stood
the elevator. between all he loathed and all he wanted. The thing was winding itself up;
he had thought of that on his first glorious day in New York, and had even
He had no sooner entered the dining room and caught the measure of the provided a way to snap the thread. It lay on his dressing table now; he had
music than his remembrance was lightened by his old elastic power of got it out last night when he came blindly up from dinner, but the shiny
claiming the moment, mounting with it, and finding it all-sufficient. The metal hurt his eyes, and he disliked the looks of it.
 this revolt against the homilies by which the world is run. Paul took one of
He rose and moved about with a painful effort, succumbing now and again the blossoms carefully from his coat and scooped a little hole in the snow,
to attacks of nausea. It was the old depression exaggerated; all the world where he covered it up. Then he dozed awhile, from his weak condition,
had become Cordelia Street. Yet somehow he was not afraid of anything, seemingly insensible to the cold.
was absolutely calm; perhaps because he had looked into the dark corner
at last and knew. It was bad enough, what he saw there, but somehow not The sound of an approaching train awoke him, and he started to his feet,
so bad as his long fear of it had been. He saw everything clearly now. He remembering only his resolution, and afraid lest he should be too late. He
had a feeling that he had made the best of it, that he had lived the sort of stood watching the approaching locomotive, his teeth chattering, his lips
life he was meant to live, and for half an hour he sat staring at the revolver. drawn away from them in a frightened smile; once or twice he glanced
But he told himself that was not the way, so he went downstairs and took a nervously sidewise, as though he were being watched. When the right
cab to the ferry. moment came, he jumped. As he fell, the folly of his haste occurred to him
with merciless clearness, the vastness of what he had left undone. There
When Paul arrived in Newark he got off the train and took another cab, flashed through his brain, clearer than ever before, the blue of Adriatic
directing the driver to follow the Pennsylvania tracks out of the town. The water, the yellow of Algerian sands.
snow lay heavy on the roadways and had drifted deep in the open fields.
Only here and there the dead grass or dried weed stalks projected, He felt something strike his chest, and that his body was being thrown
singularly black, above it. Once well into the country, Paul dismissed the swiftly through the air, on and on, immeasurably far and fast, while his
carriage and walked, floundering along the tracks, his mind a medley of limbs were gently relaxed. Then, because the picture-making mechanism
irrelevant things. He seemed to hold in his brain an actual picture of was crushed, the disturbing visions flashed into black, and Paul dropped
everything he had seen that morning. He remembered every feature of back into the immense design of things.
both his drivers, of the toothless old woman from whom he had bought the
red flowers in his coat, the agent from whom he had got his ticket, and all
of his fellow passengers on the ferry. His mind, unable to cope with vital
matters near at hand, worked feverishly and deftly at sorting and grouping release pf the body from the
these images. They made for him a part of the ugliness of the world, of the prison that is the shiny reflective
ache in his head, and the bitter burning on his tongue. He stooped and put he is replanting himself soul? lacan's shiny armor.
a handful of snow into his mouth as he walked, but that, too, seemed hot.
When he reached a little hillside, where the tracks ran through a cut some
twenty feet below him, he stopped and sat down.

The carnations in his coat were drooping with the cold, he noticed, their
red glory all over. It occurred to him that all the flowers he had seen in the
glass cases that first night must have gone the same way, long before this.
It was only one splendid breath they had, in spite of their brave mockery at
the winter outside the glass; and it was a losing game in the end, it seemed,