There were cocktails to begin with,
though Shelby had intimated more than once that he abominated the
bourgeois American habit of indulging in such poison. And there was an
onion soup _au gratin_, a casserole, and artichokes, and special coffee,
and I don't know what else.
"He got positively human," Stanton put it, later, as we clustered round
him in the copy room. (Shelby hadn't turned up.) "I don't like him, you
know; and at first it was hard to get through the soup; but I acted up,
gave him a song and dance about my mythical business matter--I think he
feared I was going to 'touch him'--and finally got a little tipsy
myself. From then on it was easy. It was like a game."
It seems that afterwards, arm in arm, they walked out into Sixth Avenue
in the soft snow--it was winter, and the Burgundy had done the
trick--and Shelby, his inhibitions completely gone, began to weep.
"Why are you crying?" Stanton asked, his own voice thick.
"Because you fellers don't like me!" Shelby choked out.
The accent and the stick went together into the gutter, Stanton
laughingly told us. An immortal moment! The poseur with his mask off, at
last! Beneath all that grease-paint and charlatanism there was a solid,
suffering, lonely man; and even in his own dazed condition Stanton was
quick to recognize it, and to rejoice in the revelation.
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