money! Damnedest bargain I ever heard of! I’ve just been throwing my money away up there!”—he had been living at the Yale Club—“Damned if I don’t get me a room and move in right away!”
This sudden prospect of having Robert as a neighbour did not attract the other youth: he was working very hard with his classes and trying to complete a play he had begun to write, and he had no intention of becoming the companion or nurse of Robert’s drunkenness or the confessor of his fevered despair and unrest: he told him he would not like the Leopold, that the people were old and stodgy, and the rules of propriety very strict. Further, he made the mistake of emphasizing the difficulty of getting a room there, although there really was no difficulty: he told him the place was a quiet family hotel, that the management wanted regular tenants of quiet habits who intended to live there permanently, that the preference was given to middle-aged married couples, and that there were no vacancies, anyway—that a long list of applicants were waiting to get in. All this merely whetted Robert’s eagerness: he now said that he fulfilled all the requirements save marriage, and that this deficiency would soon be remedied: he said he had completely reformed his old habits of life, and that a quieter, steadier, more sober and industrious man did not exist: he said he was determined to live there, and he demanded that Eugene take him to the manager and plead for him without delay.
When Eugene saw that he was really determined, he agreed: they went downstairs to see the manager. He came out of his office with the habitual defensive look of caution and suspicion on his sour meagre face, and listened with his usual unwilling and disparaging air, not facing them or directly looking at them, but with his small parsley face averted and his eyes turned downward, while Eugene praised Robert up to the skies, said he had known him all his life, that he was the scion of an ancient and distinguished family in the South, a brilliant young attorney in a New York firm, and one of the steadiest and most proper youths that ever lived. Robert also put in from time to time with his deep voice and impressive manners, and at length Mr. Gibbs began to shake his head dubiously, to say he didn’t know, to tell how difficult it was to get admitted to the Leopold—until Eugene almost laughed in his face—but that in a case like this, because it was Eugene and he knew if he recommended a man he must be all right, and so on—he would see what he could do: he began to thumb over the pages of a meaningless ledger, peering at it and squinting along his parched finger as it moved across
