Michael was sobbing with his face in his
hands. “Michael!” cried Leo, with a look of
consternation. “Now you’ve done it! You’re
so drunk you can’t control yourself. I think
I’d better take you home!” He put his hand
on Michael’s shivering shoulder, but the
other shook him off petulantly and contin-
ued to sob.
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Leo in some
embarrassment. He stole a glance down the
length of the bar to see if anyone was watch-
ing this little scene. “Stop being a baby, will
you?” Then he began to laugh nervously.
“General lacrimae rerum is it? Is that why
you’re crying, the tears of things? My God,
you’re making a spectacle of yourself—some
people are beginning to watch you. Stop it,
Michael…”
Michael didn’t seem to hear what Leo
was saying.
Leo curled his lip a bit scornfully: “You
fool,” he said. “Stop being a pampered baby.
I’ve never seen such stickish weakness,
such drunkenness. It’s not like you at all;
when I first knew you—”
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“Good Lord!”
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 193
But Michael went on sobbing, with his
face hidden in his trembling hands.
“Everybody’s looking at you now,” Leo
whispered. “Stop it! And do you think
they’re sympathizing with you? Not on your
life!! If you think that, you’re certainly a psy-
chotic case—you’re just a foolish spectacle,
that’s about all…”
Leo began to be very embarrassed, sit-
ting there with a man who wept into his
hands like a woman. He picked up his
books tentatively.
“Well,” he said, after a pause. “I’m going
now. You’d better stop this or they’ll throw
you out. Come, now, aren’t you ever going
to stop.” Leo rose from his seat. “I’m going
now, Michael. Good-bye, Michael.”
Michael didn’t answer.
Leo hesitated another moment or two
and then, bestowing a nervous pat on
Michael’s quivering shoulder, he walked
away somewhat self-consciously. A man
was standing near the door as Leo
approached it.
He took Leo’s arm.
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 194
“What’s the mat-
ter with him
over there, that
fellow you were
sitting with
who’s crying?
Hey? Has someone
stolen his lol-
lipop, his itsy-
bitsy lollipop?
Hey? Is that
it...”
Leo didn’t answer, and, disengaging himself
from the man’s grip, went out the door.
“That’s what it is, isn’t it?” the man called
after him, and turned back to watch
Michael, laughing and shaking his head.
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 195
VII
WALKING ALONG
THE BOULEVARD,
Paul was trying to decide where he
should go in order to find Michael.
Suddenly, he realized that he must go to
his room. Would Michael be there? Most
likely. And if not—it was time to go there
in any event, and tidy up the room a bit,
and perhaps pay another week’s rent in
advance. Paul still had some of the
money that Michael had given him the
night of the party; he hadn’t spent much
during his week in the country.
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 197
Although Michael had heretofore never
visited Paul’s room, perhaps he would be
there now, tonight. He might also be in some
bar getting drunk, a habit of his when things
went wrong. Paul decided to go to his room
first.
street and strode along beneath the dripping
street lamp. Yes—Michael might want to talk
to him at last, of that Paul was almost certain.
With a mounting feeling of certainty, Paul
hurried to his gate and descended the stone
steps. Surely enough, the oil lamp was burn-
ing in his room, its yellow light fell feebly on
the dark puddles outside from underneath
the drawn shade.
Paul hastened along the damp hallway
and flung open his door.
“Helen!” he cried with joyous wonder.
A tall dark-haired girl stood in the center
of the room. She smiled and held out her
hands.
Paul, all beside himself with excitement,
ran up to Helen and stopped just short of her
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 198
outstretched hands. He teetered there for a
moment, looking incredulously into her face;
then, with a sighing smile, he dropped down
on his knees and took both of her hands in
his and began to kiss them over and over
again.
“Get off your knees,” Helen cried, blush-
ing. “Don’t be a fool.”
“Helen darling! Helen darling! I knew I
had to come here—I felt it! When did you
arrive here?”
“Just a few minutes ago,” she replied.
“Please get off your knees,” and she blushed
again charmingly.
Paul rose and led Helen to the couch.
Sitting her down slowly, and sitting beside
her, he kissed her reverently on the brow,
and then buried his face in her hair.
“You’ve come at last,” he whispered. “It’s
been so long. But I knew you’d come. Oh,
God! I’m so happy, so damned happy! Look!”
he cried suddenly, jumping up from the
couch and pointing to a pile of books on the
table. “Guess what? I’ve been studying and
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 199
learning all the while, and I’ve met all sorts
of intelligent students, friends of Michael’s.”
“Have you really been happy?”
“No! No! That, to say that, is to defame
this moment… Now I’m happy. Oh Helen,”
he cried, changing his tone again impul-
sively, and dropping on the couch beside
her. “Now that you’ve come, now that
you’ve come…it will all be over! Say that it
will!”
“We’ll wait,” she said slowly.
“Wait? Wait? For what?… For Michael?
He never comes here; he hasn’t once come
to my room. Only once he spoke a friendly
word, the night of a party to which I wasn’t
invited, and he wanted to know if I was
going to come anyway. I thought that was
the moment then, but nothing happened.
And later that night, he gave me money—he
still has all that money left he took with
him—but he gave it to me scornfully.
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 200
Helen,
it’s got
to stop; it’s
got to happen
some time!”
“He’ll come here tonight,” Helen said.
“He may not.”
“We’ll wait here for him.”
“But how can you be sure? Do you feel it,
Helen?”
She was silent.
Paul got up and began to stride around
the room impatiently. Coming back to
Helen, he fell on his knees again and began
to kiss her wrists feverishly. “I don’t know,”
he said, looking up at her fearfully, his face
distorted in the lamplight. “I don’t know,
Helen darling…”
“Well,” Helen assured him, stroking his
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 201
hair, “I do.”
Paul now lapsed into an ecstatic silence.
Then he jumped up again and went over to
the table. “All these books,” he said proud-
ly. Then, taking out a sheaf of papers from
his pockets, he threw them on the table.
“And these are some of his writings. I think
I understand most of them—I criticized
them to Leo this afternoon.”
“Who’s Leo?”
“A very brilliant student we know here at
Custos Nostrom University, one of my
friends.”
“And what have you been doing for a liv-
ing?” Helen asked. “Give me those papers
so I can look at them.” Paul brought the
papers over. He looked down at his shoes
and chuckled. “Well,” he said warily, “I
started out all right, when I first got here. I
had a job running an elevator, up and down,
the little children coming home from school
at noon, the old ladies with their dogs, the
old gentlemen going out for their constitu-
tionals, some of them retired savants…”
“And?” Helen persisted.
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 202
“Well, after a while, I was so busy, I had
to quit.”
“Busy at what?”
“Well, helping Anthony among other
things—he’s another wonderful friend of
mine, a drunkard but a wonderful soul—
and attending classes. Did I tell you? I
attended classes like a regular student for
awhile, until one day the Professor had to
put me out because I got mad over a theory
that Arthur was propounding. Arthur is
another friend of mine, a bit of a poet.”
“Then what did you do for a living, after
you quit your job?”
Paul looked at Helen. “As I say… You
know, he gave me money.”
Helen shrugged her shoulders.
“And why not?” Paul wanted to know.
“But now!” he added triumphantly, “Now
you’re here, and it will be all over at last,
won’t it?”
“I hope so,” Helen whispered. “Come, sit
with me some more. Kiss me, you fool—you
haven’t kissed me on the mouth yet.”
Paul ran laughing to Helen and kissed
her.
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 203
“We’ll go
back,” he whis-
pered savagely,
“we’ll go back
and bask by the
river bank,
won’t we? And
you’ll pre-
pare lunches...”
“Oh,” Helen
said, laughing,
“I hate pic-
nics. You and
your picnics!”
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 204
“And I’ve thought of all kinds of wonder-
ful new ideas. Here’s what I’d like us to do.
We’ll spend the whole summer going
around in our bare feet, somewhere among
the pine trees, not far from the surf. I want
to be up in the morning when the first ray of
dawn makes the top of the pines crack!
And—”
“All right,” Helen interrupted happily,
“that’s enough of your dreaming for now.”
“As though these things were impossi-
ble!” Paul cried wrathfully. “Who?” he
asked. “Who is going to tell me it’s impossi-
ble! Are you like those other people, like
Michael—afraid of being happy?”
“You’re talking gibberish,” Helen
mocked, pulling at Paul’s sleeve playfully.
“Don’t get mad!”
“I am mad!” Paul cried. He paced the
room. “I want to know where all this
meanness of spirit comes from—the world’s
crazy!” He went over to the table and
banged it. Then, changing his attitude
again in the flicker of a moment, he came
back to Helen and buried his face in her
hair. “Do you really think he’s coming?”
“I think so, yes.”
“You know, he hasn’t changed much—
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 205
he’s the same as when he left, only perhaps
worse. He’s more miserable than ever. He
tried to hit me with a floor lamp one night.
Helen, this can’t go on.” They were silent,
and they could hear the wind blow outside,
and the rain spatter into the street.
“Would you like a sandwich?” Paul asked.
“No, not yet. And your bread is all mouldy.
Let’s lie down and wait.”
Helen and Paul embraced each other,
with both their heads on the same pillow,
and in a few moments, Paul was dozing fit-
fully. Helen was watching him sadly. After
several minutes of droning rain-sounds,
Helen heard a step in the hall; there was a
knock on the door. Paul jumped up, startled
out of a half dream. He went to the door and
opened it. Leo was standing in the hall.
“Ah, here you are,” Leo said.
Paul said coldly, “Well?”
“I’ve been looking for you,” Leo began
uncertainly, in the face of Paul’s morose
reception. “I’m on my way to my room to
study, and…well, I just wanted to tell you
that Michael is in the Boulevard Bar, very
drunk, and he’s weeping and making a com-
plete show of himself…”
“Weeping?” Paul cried anxiously. “Why?”
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 206
“I don’t know,” said Leo. “He’s just drunk,
that’s all, and he looks as though he were com-
ing down with an illness or something—”
Helen came to the door and looked at
Leo. The latter was startled out of his wits,
but not quite enough to lose control of the
situation.
“Why,” he said politely, “how do you do?”
“This is Leo, Helen,” Paul said sullenly.
“Leo, Helen.”
Leo bowed from the waist.
“Goodbye,” said Paul, and closed the
door in the other’s face. “Now,” he said,
turning to Helen, “what are we going to do?
Did you hear what he just said? — Michael’s
sick, and drunk, and he’s crying in the bar.
I knew all this business would break him in
time—just today he was cast out of his com-
fortable little nook with a woman old
enough to be his mother.”
Helen went over to the table and stood by
it reflectively. “What were you saying about
a woman?” she asked presently.
“He was living with Maureen. Then,
when she found out of another affair, she
threw him out.. And the other girl doesn’t
want Michael, and he, like a fool, is taking
everything seriously. Oh! He has done so
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 207
many stupid things lately, I’m ashamed of
myself!” Paul sat on the couch. Again he
asked, “What are we going to do?”
“Do? We’ll just wait.” Helen sat down
beside him.
“I don’t see your logic!” Paul cried impa-
tiently.
“There’s no logic involved in it,” Helen
replied calmly. “Let’s lie down and wait
some more. Get some sleep; you look fear-
fully worn out.”
Paul smiled tenderly. “Oh Helen,” he
said, “if you only knew how much I love
you, if only! All right, I won’t be a pest. I’ll
be quiet, and we’ll wait. Everything’ll be all
right, won’t it?”
“Yes, Paul.”
Paul stretched out on the couch and
placed his head in her bosom. “I’m going to
sleep, yes,” he told her. “When I wake up, it
will be all over, and we’ll be together and in
love, like before… Helen, do you think that
Michael’s change will affect us?… do you
think it will be different?”
“Perhaps.”
“He wanted to be an artist,” Paul said
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 208
sadly, “and he left. It won’t be the same man
any more,” he added gloomily.
“It might be a better man,” Helen said, “if
only…he will come.”
They again fell into a long, peaceful
silence. Helen was stroking Paul’s hair; her
own long dark hair had disengaged itself
and fallen loosely over her cheek. She
watched Paul, as he began to fall asleep,
and stroked his hair…for a long time…and
waited. The rain drummed on the window.
“Call our secret call from where you are,”
she whispered softly, so as not to waken
Paul, who was now asleep, “and I shall call