The Trufflers - Samuel Merwin

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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:

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

      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 what the Worm had been thinking of when he printed out the little placard and tacked it on the door. He could see it only as a perfect characterization of the bachelor girls. Every one of those girls and women was a Bolboceras, a confirmed seeker of pleasures and delicacies in the sober game of life, utterly self-indulgent, going it alone—a truffle hunter.

      He would call his play, The Bolboceras.

      But no. “Buyers from Shreveport would fumble it,” he thought, shrewdly practical. “You've got to use words of one syllable on Broadway.”

      He paced the room—back and forth, back and forth. The Truffle-Hunter, perhaps.

      Pretty good, that!

      But no—wait! He stood motionless in the middle of the long room, eyes staring, the muscles of his face strained out of shape, hands clenched tightly..He was about to create a new thing.

      “The Truffler!”

      The words burst from his lips; so loud that he tiptoed to the door and listened.

      “The Truffler,” he repeated. “The Trifler—no The Truffler.”

      He was riding high, far above all worldly irritations, tolerant even toward the little person, Sue Wilde, who had momentarily annoyed him.

      “I had to be stirred,” he thought, “that was all. Something had to happen to rouse me and set my creative self working. New people had to come into my life to freshen me. It did happen; they did come, and now I an myself again. I shall not have time for them now, these selfish bachelor women and there self-styled Jew geniuses. But still I am grateful to them all. They have helped me.”

      He dropped into the chair by the desk, pulled out his manuscript from a drawer and fell to work. It was five in the morning before he crept into bed.

      Four days later, his eyes sunken perceptibly, face drawn, color off, Peter sat for two hours within a cramped disorderly office, reading aloud to a Broadway theatrical manager who wore his hat tipped down over his eyes, kept his feet on the mahogany desk, smoked panatelas end on end and who, like Peter, was deeply conservative where women were concerned.

      At five-thirty on this same afternoon, Peter, triumphant, acting on a wholly unconsidered impulse, rushed around the corner of Broadway and Forty-second Street and into the telephone room of a glittering hotel. He found Betty Deane's name in the telephone book, and called up the apartment.

      A feminine voice sounded in his ear. He thought it was Sue Wilde.

      It was Sue Wilde.

      He asked if she could not dine with him.

      There was a long silence at the other end of the wire.

      “Are you there?” he called anxiously. “Hello! Hello!”

      “Yes, I'm here,” came the voice. “You rather surprised me, Mr. Mann. I have an engagement for this evening.”

      “Oh, then I can't see you!”

      “I have an engagement.”

      He tried desperately to think up conversation; but failed.

      “Well,” he said—“good-by.”

      “Good-by.”

      That was all. Peter ate alone, still overstrung but gloomy now, in the glittering hotel.

      The dinner, however, was both well-cooked and hot. It tended to soothe and soften him. Finally, expansive again, he leaned hack, fingered his coffee cup, smoked a twenty-cent cigar and observed the life about him.

      There, were many large dressy women, escorted by sharp-looking men of two races. There were also small dressy women, some mere girls and pretty, but nearly all wearing make-up on cheeks and lips and quite all with extreme, sophistication in their eyes. There was shining silver and much white linen. Chafing dishes blazed. French and Austrian waiters moved swiftly about under the commanding eye of a stern captain. Uniformed but pocketless hat boys slipped it and out, pouncing on every loose article of apparel. … It was a gay scene; and Peter found himself in it, of it, for it. With rising exultation in his heart he reflected that he was back on Broadway, where (after all) he belonged.

      His manager of the afternoon came in now, who believed, with Peter, that woman's place was the home. He was in evening dress—a fat man. At his side tripped a very young-appearing girl indeed—the youngest and prettiest in the room, but with the make-up and sophistication of the others. Men (and women) stared at them as they passed. There was whispering; for this was the successful Max Neuerman, and the girl was the lucky Eileen O'Rourke.

      Neuerrman

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