The Trufflers. Merwin Samuel
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, and scribbled, in pencil —
“May I walk back with you? I want vary much to talk with you. If you could slip away from these people.”
He went in then, grave and dignified, bowing rather stiffly. Sue appeared not to see him.
He moved to her side and spoke low. She did not reply.
The blood came rushing to Peter’s face. Anger stirred. He slipped the folded envelope into her hand. It was some satisfaction that she had either to take it or let them all see it drop. She took it; but Still ignored him. Her intent to snub him was clear now, even to the bewildered Peter.
He mumbled something, he did not know what, and rushed away as erratically as he had come. What had he wanted to say to her, anyway!
At the corner he turned and came part way back, slowly and uncertainly. But what he saw checked him. The Worm was talking apart with her now. And she was looking up into his face with an expression of pleased interest, frankly smiling. While Peter watched, the two moved off along the street.
Peter walked the streets, in a fever of spirit. One o’clock found him out on the high curve of the Williamsburg bridge where he could lean on the railing and look down on the river with its colored splashes of light or up and across at the myriad twinkling towers of the great city.
“I’ll use her!” he muttered. “She is fair game, I tell you! She will find yet that she must listen to me!” And turning about on the deserted bridge, Peter clenched his fist and shook it at the great still city on the island.
“You will all listen to me yet!” he cried aloud. “Yes, you will – you’ll listen!”
CHAPTER V – PETER TREADS THE HEIGHTS
HE walked rapidly back to the rooms. For his bachelor girl play was swiftly, like magic, working itself out all new in his mind, actually taking form from moment to moment, arranging and rearranging itself nearer and nearer to a complete dramatic story. The big scene was fairly tumbling into form. He saw it as clearly as if it were being enacted before his eyes… Father and daughter – the two generations; the solid Old, the experimental selfish New.
He could see that typical bachelor girl, too. If she looked like Sue Wilde that didn’t matter. He would teach her a lesson she would never forget – this “modern” girl who forgets all her parents have done in giving and developing her life and thinks only of her own selfish freedom. It should be like an outcry from the old hearthstone.
And he saw the picture as only a nerve-racked, soul-weary bachelor can see it. There were pleasant lawns in Peter’s ideal home and crackling fireplaces and merry children and smiling perfect parents – no problems, excepting that one of the unfilial child.
Boys had to strike out, of course. But the girl should either marry or stay at home. He was certain about this.
On those who did neither – on the bachelor girls, with their “freedom,” their “truth,” their cigarettes, their repudiation of all responsibility – on these he would pour the scorn of his genius. Sue Wilde, who so plainly thought him uninteresting, should be his target.
He would write straight at her, every minute, and a world should hear him!
In the dark corridor, on the apartment door, a dim square of white caught his eye – the Worm’s little placard. An inner voice whispered to light a match and read it again. He did so. For he was all inner voices now.
There it was:
He studied it while his match burned out. He knit his brows, puzzled, groping after blind thoughts, little moles of thoughts deep in dark burrows.
He let himself in. The others were asleep.
The Worm, in his odd humors, never lacked point or meaning. The placard meant something, of course… something that Peter could use…
The Worm had been reading – that rather fat book lying even now on the arm of the Morris ‘chair It was Fabre, on Insect Life.
He snatched it up and turned the pages. He sought the index for that word. There it was – Bolbuceras, page 225. Back then to page 225!
He read:
“… a pretty little black beetle, with a pale, velvety abdomen… Its official title is Bulbuceras Gallicus Muls.”
He looked up, in perplexity. This was hardly self-explanatory. He read on. The bolboceras, it began to appear, was a hunter of truffles. Truffles it would, must have. It would eat no common food but wandered about sniffing out its vegetable prey in the sandy soil and digging for each separate morsel, then moving on in its quest. It made no permanent home for itself.
Peter raised his eyes and stared at the bookcase in the corner. Very slowly a light crept into his eyes, an excited smile came to the corners of his mouth. There was matter here! And Peter, like Homer, felt no hesitation about taking his own where he found it.
He read on, a description of the burrows as explored by the hand of the scientist:
“Often the insect will be found at the bottom of its burrow; sometimes a male, sometimes a female, but always alone. The two sexes work apart without collaboration. This is no family mansion for the rearing of offspring; it is a temporary dwelling, made by each insect for its own benefit.”
Peter laid the book down almost reverently and stood gazing out the window at the Square. He quite forgot to consider