Firecrackers/Chapter 11
Mrs. Humphry Pollanger—Isabel, her intimate friends called her—occupied an anomalous and at the same time a strategic position in New York society. Without much difficulty she could trace her ancestry back to Anneke Jans Bogardus and, therefore, had she been so inclined, she was entitled to ally herself with the horde of similar descendants who sporadically sued Trinity Church Corporation for recognition of their proprietary rights in the sixty-three acres in lower Manhattan, much more valuable now than they were in the middle of the seventeenth century when Mrs. Bogardus died in what was then known as New Amsterdam. Mrs. Pollanger, however, did not entertain any such inclination. She had plenty of money, plenty of blood; her amiable ambition was for brains. So she joined all the women's clubs she could discover, wrote a paper on. The Relationship of the American Woman to the Young Intellectuals which, published in the Century, automatically admitted her to membership in the Authors' League, furnished her house with early American furniture, and entertained every visiting celebrity who would give her the privilege of doing so. She, therefore, constituted the bridge—practically the only effectual one since Edith Dale's Washington Square salon had been abandoned—between the professional world and what the New York Journal called "exclusive social circles." These two classes never mingle very successfully, although individuals may wander from one to the other without causing consternation. The result was that, after a short time, Mrs. Pollanger was looked upon by the authors as a woman of society, while the smart world regarded her as a club woman. Everybody laughed at her a good deal behind her back, but everybody went to her parties to eat the peerless chaud-froid, created by her French cook, and to consume the apparently inexhaustible supply of Pol Roger. Besides, these parties were amusing, although frequently unintentionally so. For one thing, the guests could count on the presence of Mr. Humphry Pollanger, who was vaguely known to sit behind a desk somewhere near Wall Street, cutting off coupons and signing papers for an hour or two each day. He attended these parties, but never seemed to be quite as much at home as his wife's friends. It frequently happened, indeed, that he was urged by some one who had not been introduced to him to take another glass of wine. He had even been mistaken, on occasion, for Mrs. Pollanger's butler.
When the newspapers announced that Gareth Johns would return to America for the first time in ten years, for the first time, that is, since his fame as a novelist had become international, his works now appearing in the Tauchnitz edition as fast as they were issued and even in Spanish and Swedish translations, it had been a foregone conclusion that Mrs. Pollanger would give some kind of entertainment for him. Her social gatherings assumed various forms; sometimes, as was the case with Hugh Walpole, she invited a few friends to a small informal dinner; sometimes, as was the case with Frank Swinnerton, she gave a large, informal breakfast. She had collected a theatre party to honour Lord Dunsany and she had arranged a ball for Rebecca West. Local celebrities, such as Joseph Hergesheimer, Sinclair Lewis, Carl Van Vechten, and Theodore Dreiser, were often bidden to attend these functions, and occasionally, if seldom, she included one or more of these in her dinner lists, but she had never been able to lure James Branch Cabell from Dumbarton, Virginia, into her house.
The house, as has been reported, was furnished in an early American style, the inappropriateness of which decorative scheme struck Campaspe more vividly than ever before, as she ascended the grand staircase with Jack and Lalla Draycott at eleven o'clock. She cherished her own peculiar ideas on the subject of period furniture, one of which was that people who lived in any epoch must always have retained in their homes chairs and tables and commodes and secretaries from preceding decades. Assuredly, no one was going to throw out Regency beds or Louis XIV tables that had belonged to one's mother because one happened to live in the time of Louis XV. Campaspe held another theory to the effect that all the comfortable furniture of any period was speedily worn out and discarded; only the ball-room chairs, the heavy, carved settles, and other like cheerless lumber, survived the hard usage of one age in sufficiently good condition to pass on to another. As time passed, even the semi-comfortable pieces began to decay, so that, if you were determined to furnish your house in the style of an epoch two or three centuries back you were obliged to rely on solid, stiff-backed chairs, and cupboards and beds, built, apparently, for eternity. In regard to the particular style chosen for the decoration of this particular house, possibly for patriotic reasons, for Mrs. Pollanger was loud in her praise of everything American, but more conceivably because it was fashionable at present and therefore expensive, Campaspe was repelled by its obvious incongruity. The grand piano and the modern, brightly hued dresses of the women, were assuredly ridiculous in this milieu. Perfect taste demanded that this setting should be occupied by men and women dressed in a sober, Puritan fashion, but it demanded in vain.
As Campaspe, flanked by her companions, approached the drawing-room, she drew her cloak of flamingo feathers more closely around the silvergrey of her clinging robe, and hesitated near the doorway, as she became aware that the standing group within was listening to a contralto of imposing, but finely moulded, proportions, singing La Chevelure. Her eye aimed its way across the room to where the woman stood, tall, handsome, massive, her blue-black hair, knotted in the back and bit by a coral comb, drawn severely away from her white face, slit by magenta lips. The singer, Campaspe next observed, wore a black velvet gown, short in front, but trailing behind, thickly embroidered in a design of bursting pomegranates, fashioned of seedpearls and rose tourmalines. This, she reflected, was no time or place to sing this song, certainly not with the shameless effrontery with which this woman sang it. A mood of embarrassment, a cold reaction, beset the room.
Campaspe's eye roved, although her ear was still attentive: standing on the dais near the performer, she saw Isabel Pollanger, elaborately enveloped in white satin, with, Campaspe thought, a good deal of the air of a superdreadnought in attendance on a masquerade garden-party. Across the floor, in the grateful vicinity of a lady with pale goldengreen hair, almost the shade of sea-foam, Paul hovered. She caught a glimpse of Hubert Miles and his wife, and of the Duquesa de Azul, who was said to be déclassée, but who went everywhere in spite of her noisome reputation. The Duquesa, Campaspe reflected, had chien. Nearer at hand were the towering blond, Frederic Richards, who was holding an exhibition at Knoedler's, and Florizel Hammond, whose chief claim to attention was the fact that he had constituted himself a species of walking gazette. Watching him stroke his feeble moustache, Campaspe noted that it was characteristic of him that he should wear an evening suit of dark blue, the trousers of which were copiously pleated near the waist-line.
The song was over, and after the applause subsided, the buzz of conversation began again.
Mystical, drawled Lalla, damned mystical, what?
Where's the old girl stow her whisky? Jack demanded.
Campaspe wondered if they both meant the same thing. She also marvelled that she had come at all. In this languid, disinterested mood, she listened to Florizel Hammond relating to a friend the extraordinary details of a new and celebrated divorce case.
She caught him very neatly, the youth was remarking. Gene came home one night, after an absence that needed explaining, and told her that he had dined with Bud Wetmore. Gertie called Bud up immediately and asked if he had served asparagus for dinner. Armed with Bud's negative response, she forced a confession from Gene.
At the end of the tale the spinner caught Campaspe's eye.
Hello, 'paspe, he said. How did you like the singing?
It made me a little nervous, she replied.
What I say is why sing that tripe at all? Girls are going abroad now to learn to sing Wagner and Debussy and Verdi, while the rest of the world has stopped listening to these birds. Why don't they stay at home and learn to sing George Gershwin—if they can? There's a career in that.
Bravo, Florio! Lalla applauded him, striking him on the back with her fan of rude hawk feathers.
Mrs. Pollanger was bearing down on the group.
Campaspe, she wheezed, like an asthmatic walrus, I am delighted! I was afraid you wouldn't come. And Lalla, too!
We dined together tonight, Campaspe explained, and Jack didn't get enough whisky.
There are barrels in the library.
Catching the last word, Jack disappeared. Campaspe permitted her mind to wander while Isabel chattered. From the ball-room the strains of the Limehouse Blues drifted down. Campaspe recognized the band as Paul Whiteman's. Florizel bubbled on—how did he find out so much?
It's her first novel. Have you read it? Well, it's as rotten as you'd expect. Agarista sent it to a publisher who owned a dog and the dog chewed up the manuscript before anybody had a chance to look it over. The publisher was forced to write her, of course, that he would accept her beautiful prose. Naturally, the story was too good to keep, and later it leaked out. Now she says that when she has written another masterpiece, she will urge her publisher to please refer it to his mastiff again.
Campaspe was aware of Laura, making her delicate way across the room in her direction. In W. H. Mallock's The New Republic, it will be recalled, Mr. Rose carried a scrap of artistic cretonne in his pocket when he visited an ugly house, as a kind of esthetic smelling-salts. To serve a similar requirement of her own nature, Laura, when she permitted herself to attend a function that she considered in any sense vulgar, always wore an unbecoming dress. It gave her, no doubt, a feeling of security even in the midst of a presumably smirched, social atmosphere.
O, Campaspe, I'm so glad you're here, Laura cried. George would come—he says it's as good as a trip to Montmartre—and so I came too, but I'm . . .
Again Campaspe was finding it impossible to listen. It was a comparatively simple matter to talk to Laura by interjecting a monosyllable now and then, and at the same time overhear what her neighbours were saying.
Arabella Munson is coming back to America, Florizel announced to Lalla. If she dances here with as few clothes as formerly I propose for the motto across the façade of the theatre where she appears, The old lady shows her medals.
A few feet in front of her, his back towards her, stood a tall, distinguished man, held in the merciless grip of Isabel Pollanger's concentrated attention.
How do you go about constructing your plots, situations, and characters, Mr. Johns?
So it was the guest of honour. Campaspe heard his response, suave enough in tone: I don't know that I go about it at all.
I mean, his hostess persevered, do you develop the atmosphere of your books consciously or unconsciously?
If you want to know whether I work when I am awake, the answer is that I do.
Isabel persisted: O, now do tell me, do you believe in working regularly so many hours each day or do you wait until the spirit moves you?
If I waited for anything, I'd still be waiting.
Do you work fast or slowly?
Fast and slowly.
Is it hard or easy?
Hard and easy.
Does it help you to talk over your ideas before you write them?
I have never tried it.
Do you like to meet other noted authors or do you prefer not to?
There are so few of us that it's not much use protesting.
What kind of writing do you think is the most fun?
Writing cheques.
What has proved the most popular with your public?
At this point an overwhelming sense of pity surged into the breast of Campaspe Lorillard. She turned away from Laura.
Isabel, she broke in, will you introduce me to Mr. Johns?
His eyes thanked her and then travelled caressingly down her rose and grey splendour until they met her satined feet. At the same time she took him in: thick, white hair, an interesting and sympathetic expression, behind which lurked a suggestion of bitterness and even cruelty.
My wife, Mrs. Lorillard, he explained, rather than introduced, a little woman in blue beside him whom Campaspe noticed for the first time. She had the air of a person eager to run errands, desirous only of serving as a buffer between her handsome and talented husband and the aggressive world.
I think you need a drink. Campaspe smiled at him.
Do you know where there is one?
In the lib—Mrs. Pollanger began to recite.
Excuse us, then, for a moment. They spoke in unison.
Mrs. Pollanger waved her fan. Come back, you clever man and tell me all about your new book!
What a woman! Gareth exclaimed. She looks like a footbath on wheels. Did you see all those diamonds on her . . . ? As though Queen Mary had belted the gas-works with her royal stomacher!
In the corridor stood the singer of La Chevelure, the nervous prey of Augusta Illinois, the celebrated soprano.
You're too fat, Claire, the Illinois proclaimed, to sing in public.
Claire Madrilena met her tormentor's eye. I've needed my body so little in my career, she retorted.
Pretty good. The ubiquitous Florizel Hammond was nudging Campaspe. Pretty fair. The Illinois has ostermoored her way into four opera houses, but no one has ever before expressed the fact so neatly.
Hello, 'paspe, Jack Draycott hailed them as they entered the library. Hello! You've trapped the lion!
He was thirsty, too.
I've got a bottle of fine old brandy, 1804, somewhere, Mr. Humphry Pollanger was explaining. Would you care to sample it?
Would we care to? Jack echoed mockingly. Bring it forth, old chap.
As his host departed on his mission of cheer, Jack demanded, who was that fellow, 'paspe?
Mrs. Lorillard did not reply. Fascinated, she was listening again to the indefatigable Florizel Hammond.
Speaking of brandy, that one was saying, Eddie Blue has got it cached all over his place down at Montauk Point, brandy and Burgundy and everything you can think of, all the best years, too. He was the only man in America to take prohibition seriously. Two months before the amendment went into effect he put a fortune into booze. Immediately thereafter he was confronted with the difficulty of discovering a place where he might store it safely. He solved the problem by hiring workmen to dig twelve hours into the earth on selected and charted spots on his estate. He figured, if it took a man twelve hours to dig a hole, that, after it was filled up, it would take a thief just as long and, as there are not twelve hours of darkness in any day, it was not likely that he could dig without being observed. He instituted further schemes for protection. He caused some of the caves to be filled with poison-gas and he stationed two men in the tower which caps his house to cover the prospect with machine-guns. Of course, any one can buy all the stuff he wants now, but if you want vintages and assured purity you have to drink at Eddie's. He won't even sell a bottle, although he possesses enough to keep three generations of his family stewed the year round.
I witnessed a most curious form of drinking the other night, Gareth Johns remarked. A mother nursed her child during Aguglia's performance of The Daughter of Jorio at the Thalia. I watched the baby, sucking, prattling, cooing, patting her mother's cheek during the tragic scenes. The mother's eyes dilated with horror. Would the child, I wondered, drink in some of her mother's emotion with the milk?
Florizel added a variation to the theme. D'Annunzio, he announced, advises his disciples to drink gallons of black coffee to keep them awake. He tells them that if they go to sleep they may miss something.
Campaspe asked herself again why she had come to this house. She dispatched Florizel on an errand. Invite Madame Madrilena to join us.
Will you wait for the 1804 brandy? she demanded of the author by her side, or . . . ? She waved her arm in the direction of the table, covered with an embroidered Italian linen cloth, on which liqueur bottles were ranged in the form of a rainbow, while champagne, whisky, a bowl of military punch, bottles of soda, and glasses and goblets of every description kept them company. Two men in uniform were constantly employed behind this improvised bar.
Gareth smiled. I'll wait for the brandy, he replied.
Florizel reappeared with the contralto in tow.
Do secure for me, she urged her escort after the presentations, one of those evil buns. You have such expressive feet, Mrs. Lorillard, she went on.
I'm admiring your sables, Campaspe countered.
This cloak was of a splendour before it wore out in the direction of the sit-upon. Now, it resembles a rabbit who has had an extensive career. Ah! thank you! She nibbled the bun. After singing I am pantophagous.
Do you think it's a moral act to take off so many vocal clothes?
Madame Madrilena rolled her eyes. It's good for these people, she explained. They're so middle-class. Look at those flowers—she pointed to the epergne on the table—even the flowers are middle-class. Utterly lacking in passion. I think I'd like to sing for them, too. They need a dash of sex!
I should think you are the one to give it to them, Gareth suggested.
I wish I might. I have only men to experiment on. Why were men made for women? They understand them so little.
I have heard of substitutes, Florizel muttered.
Mr. Humphry Pollanger had returned, carefully bearing a carafe half-full of an amber fluid. Here it is! he cried.
Don't crow too loud, old rooster, Jack counselled. There won't be enough for the crowd, you know.
He's pouring it out in the largest goblets, thank God! Florizel noted. That's the way to serve good brandy, just a little in the bottom so that the fumes fill the glass with an exquisite bouquet, but no one in this country seems to know it.
There isn't any good brandy in this country, unless this is it, declared Paul, who had joined them.
Silent now, each with glass to his nose, they savoured the rich aroma.
Great stuff, old fellow! Jack's was the first appreciation. Napoleonic, you said?
Yes, I think so. Mr. Humphry Pollanger's face was the façade of his delight. No one had ever before paid him so much attention.
They all took a sip.
Um.
Um.
Um.
Um.
George, come here.
Laura's husband attached himself to the group.
Marvellous.
Delicious.
Exquise.
An expression of doubt shadowed the face of Mr. Humphry Pollanger. He held the carafe at arm's length between his eyes and a lamp. Then he sniffed at the unstopped neck. I'm not so sure . . . he explained hesitantly. There were two carafes on the shelf. One of them certainly contains 1804 brandy. The other holds some whisky left over from our bootlegger's latest call.
Don't worry, old chap. Jack gave his unrecognized host a slap on the shoulder. Can't you tell brandy when you drink it? Cognac, fine champagne, that's what it is!
I'm not so sure . . . I think this is the whisky!
Of course, this is brandy, George asserted.
Paul executed a few steps of the Charleston while Mr. Pollanger made another hurried journey to his store of supplies. Presently he returned with a second carafe. He held the two to the light together, comparing them one with the other. Precisely the same colour, he muttered in despair.
Well, just to convince you, I'll try a little of the other, was Jack's handsome offer. He extended his empty goblet. This time he did not wait to enjoy the bouquet. He swallowed the contents in one gulp. Whisky! he sputtered. The first was brandy.
I think, Mr. Pollanger put forward timidly, after sampling a drink from the new bottle, that this is the brandy.
Whisky!
Brandy!
Let me try the first carafe again, Jack urged.
Madame Madrilena was working on the second. I think this is the brandy, she averred.
Let me try the new kind, George suggested. Who is that man? he whispered interrogatively to Campaspe.
Campaspe was experimenting with the second bottle. Why, they're both the same! she announced.
I think I can tell cognac when I drink it, Jack insisted hotly. The first was cognac, the second Scotch.
What's the row? Lalla, arriving, demanded.
Don't tell her, Paul urged, before we get her unbiased opinion. He offered her a drink from the first carafe.
What is it? Florizel inquired eagerly.
What's what?
What you're drinking.
Scotch, of course, Lalla replied.
Why, Lalla, can't you tell brandy when you drink it?
Brandy! Nonsense, Jack! You're so squiffy you'd call absinthe brandy.
Give her a taste of the other stuff.
Scotch, Lalla announced, even more firmly than before.
Madame Madrilena was occupied. I think they're both cognac, was her new decision.
Campaspe smiled. Whatever they are, she repeated, they're both the same.
The second carafe contains the cognac, Mr. Pollanger persisted, almost as if some one had hurt him.
Who is that man? Lalla demanded of George in a whisper.
The first is cognac. I, ought to be able to know cognac, Jack cried. Napoleonic cognac, at that.
Don't be an ass, Jack. They're both Scotch.
I think they're both fine champagne, Madame Madrilena insisted.
I've an idea, Campaspe suggested. Let Jack select them blindfold.
Splendid!
Great!
Just the thing!
Jack, bursting with pride over his capacity for distinguishing tastes, assented to this test willingly enough. Lalla bound the scarf around his eyes, and saw to it that it was efficacious in limiting his vision.
Brandy! Jack cried, after his first sip.
But, Paul expostulated, that's from the second carafe.
Jack tore off the bandage. You've mixed them up, he swore. That's from the first.
Don't be an ass, Jack, Lalla implored him. They're both Scotch.
One of 'em is brandy. . . . Poor Mr. Pollanger was ready to weep. . . . I'm certain one of 'em is brandy.
I've got it! cried George. We'll ask the barkeeps. They're sure to know.
Great! Paul encouraged the idea.
Though it won't make the least difference what they say, because both carafes contain Scotch, Lalla inserted.
One of 'em is brandy. I think it's the second, Mr. Pollanger politely demurred. Even in the throes of anguish over being contradicted, he recalled with some pleasure that never before had he carried on so extended a conversation with any of his wife's guests.
Who is that man? Madame Madrilena demanded feverishly, and then muttered sullenly, Cognac!
The servants readily agreed to decide the matter, but when George handed them the carafes it was discovered that both were empty.
A quarter of an hour later, Gareth and Campaspe were sitting in a small reception-room, which they occupied alone, on a curly maple settle, more picturesque than comfortable. In the distance, Paul Whiteman's band was playing Mama Loves Papa. The castenets snarled, the saxophone scolded, the banjos barked. Campaspe had thrown off her cloak of flamingo feathers, and was fingering the choker of moonstones that encircled her throat.
We haven't discussed your books yet, she remarked, not without malice.
Don't! he groaned. Everybody upstairs talked about them. If only they'd say something. He brightened. Maybe you would!
Campaspe's smile was sardonic. I haven't read them, she began, but I can ask you questions. Do you believe in working regularly so many hours each day or do you wait until the spirit moves you?
Devil! Madrilena was right. You have expressive feet. I'd like to write a book about your feet. He was examining the objects of his interest.
Smooth-shod.
What a title! May I borrow it?
Campaspe yawned. At this juncture Frederic Richards, accompanied by the girl with sea-foam hair, passed through the room.
Have you seen his drawings?
Whose drawings?
That was Frederic Richards.
You don't say. And the girl with the green hair?
I don't know her.
And where do you buy your gowns?
I have a little woman who comes in.
Chéruit or Jenny's her name, I suppose.
How do you go about constructing your plots, situations, and characters?
By spending as much of this evening as possible with you!
I was convinced you drew from the life. Do you work fast or slow?
Fast. I hope some day you will give me the opportunity to be unfaithful to you.
Laura, an anxious expression distorting her features, now hovered in the doorway. She brightened when she observed Campaspe.
O, Campaspe, have you seen George? I want to go home.
Saw him half-an-hour ago in the library. Have you met Mr. Johns?
O, Mr. Johns, I'm so glad! There is a question I want to ask you. I hope you will understand. I read Two on the Seine and I appreciate the style and the way you have drawn the characters and the art of it all, but why do you devote your genius to such sordid subjects?
My subjects choose me, Gareth replied. I have nothing to do with the selection.
Laura evidently regarded this as an attempt at cocoonery. But I don't see . . . she went on. If you would seek out subjects that would please people . . .
Probably then, Campaspe finished the sentence for her, his books would stop selling.
I think, Laura announced with dignity, that I shall look up George in the library.
Have you been to supper yet?
I don't want any supper. I want to go home.
Bestowing a frigid bow on the novelist, she wandered off.
Well, I do, Campaspe, rising, averred.
Do what?
Want supper. Come along and feed me.
Like the lady, Gareth protested, I'm in no mood for supper.
I suppose, Campaspe suggested gravely, the question Laura asked you is the one you hear most frequently.
She was amazed by the suddenness with which he threw off his mask of irony. Pricked in his vanity, he became as garrulous as a school-girl.
Every day! Every hour! Letters! Letters! All inquiring why I don't write about something else. I write about what I know, in the way I feel about it. It doesn't seem to occur to the crowd that it is possible for an author to believe that life is largely without excuse, that if there is a God he conducts the show aimlessly, if not, indeed, maliciously, that men and women run around automatically seeking escapes from their troubles and outlets for their lusts. The crowd is still more incensed when an author who believes these things refuses to write about them seriously.
Recently, in a London music hall, I saw an act which enthralled me. The curtain rose to disclose a house in process of construction. Three workmen were on the job. They did not speak a word. They indicated the symbols by pantomime. Their every action was ridiculously futile, ending in disaster. If a carpenter ascended a scaffold, the scaffold broke, giving him a hard fall of ten feet and undoing all the labour accomplished by his comrades; when one of the fellows began to plaster, he presently dropped into the mixing vat. So it went on, and whenever a man met with an accident his predicament was ignored by his companions. He was forced to extricate himself. As the curtain descended, the house, far from being in a further state of construction, was nearly demolished. The audience characteristically shrieked with laughter at this act, but I, for the same reason that they laughed, was on the verge of tears. This performance seemed to me exactly like life as we live it.
Don't you find it rather absurd to write books about the futility of life? Campaspe demanded.
Gareth grinned. Not at all, he replied. I write my books to prove how futile life is in a vain effort to forget how futile it is!
Campaspe studied the novelist's face with more interest. You do not appear to have many illusions, she volunteered.
Illusions! It would be pleasant if nobody had any. Only the thoroughly disillusioned expect nothing from others. They make life slightly more human. But all of us have illusions, or sentimental moods, which amount to the same thing. . . . My God! he went on, tossing his thick hair back with one hand, have you ever observed that after a few cocktails you can listen to a banal waltz played in a dimly lighted theatre and feel as sweet or good or true or noble as the most fatuous moron ever felt? I always become sentimental after I drink cocktails and music aggravates the sensation.
Have you written a book about that? If you have I'll read it.
It's damned difficult to get any intangible thought into a book. Anything subtle is almost impossible to get into a book. Yet that is the only thing I want todo. My reward is that after I get it in—or at least think I get it in—nobody knows it's there, unless I tell them. An old English actor, one George Bartley, said of the British theatre-going public: You must first tell them that you are going to do so and so; you must then tell them that you are doing it, and then that you have done it; and then, by God, perhaps they will understand you! Well, the same thing is true of the novel-reading public, but I don't tell them, and they don't under stand, but they read me anyway. Perhaps I should be satisfied.
Campaspe was silent, but it was obvious that she was listening, and after a moment he went on: The incoherence of life has always interested me, the appalling disconnection. We wander around alone, each with his own thoughts, his own ideas. We connect only in flashes.
Only in flashes?
Yes. It usually happens in this way: abruptly, quite unreasonably, one individual unconsciously—it's always unconsciously—produces an effect, a chemical change, let us call it, in another person with whom he comes in contact. This phenomenon in itself creates enough energy so that presently still others are affected. Wider and wider sweep the circles, like the circles created by the tossing of a pebble into a lake, until at last they dissipate, and the lake becomes placid again.
Campaspe regarded him with an interrogative eye.
Or, to put it figuratively in another fashion, he continued, you must think of a group of people in terms of a packet of firecrackers. You ignite the first cracker and the flash fires the fuse of the second, and so on, until, after a series of crackling detonations, the whole bunch has exploded, and nothing survives but a few torn and scattered bits of paper, blackened with powder. On the other hand, if you fail to apply the match, the bunch remains a collection of separate entities, having no connection one with any other. Explosions which create relationships are sporadic and terminating, but if you avoid the explosions you perdurably avoid intercourse. And now, he said, I think I'm hungry.
At this moment, Mrs. Johns appeared in the doorway. Gareth glared at her.
Gareth dear, she urged, you know that you have so much to do tomorrow.
Can't you see that I'm taking Mrs. Lorillard to supper? was the great author's impatient rejoinder.
That man from the Saturday Evening Post is coming at nine o'clock, she reminded him.
To hell with him!
Why don't you come to supper with us, Campaspe suggested, and then take your husband home?
Before this invitation, Gareth immediately became more reasonable. There, Bella, he cajoled her, I'll be with you shortly. I've something more to say to Mrs. Lorillard.
You won't be too long, dear, the little woman pleaded before she awkwardly retired.
Always trying to make me go home, Gareth grumbled.
She probably knows what's good for you.
Good Lord, yes, but I don't want to do what's good for me.
In the supper-room upstairs, they were joined by Florizel Hammond who, at evening entertainments, invariably divided his time between the rooms where food and drink were served.
You author chaps must get the low-down on all of us at these bull-fights, he opened up on Gareth.
We'd like to, Gareth replied.
Well, God knows, there's enough. Take a few notes. What do you want, 'paspe, a lobster sandwich or some Smithfield ham?
Both, Campaspe replied.
I thought I was taking you to supper, Gareth grumbled, as Florizel wandered away to execute his commission.
I asked you to, Campaspe smiled at him, but you were so long in accepting my invitation that I thought I might starve if I waited for you to fill my plate. Why don't you share supper with Florizel and me?
The large room was pleasantly full. Some, holding their plates, ate standing. Others sat, while they rested their plates on the arms of their chairs. In the centre of the room, on a great round table, heaped with dishes, food steamed in casseroles. A number of waiters in uniform, bearing trays laden with glasses of champagne, solemnly passed from guest to guest. The odour of Vague Souvenir soared above the confusion of other aromas.
Have you heard about Dennis Cahill? Florizel, returning with heaped plates, demanded, and without waiting for a reply went on, Well, you know, before he was married he was all mixed up in his subconscious—and every other way, too, but he wasn't aware of that yet, although his friends had their suspicions. So he went to Dr. Leonard and was psyched and all his suppressed desires were pulled out into the open, but when he married he discovered that these released desires weren't strong enough to see him through, and so he resorted to goat glands.
And lived happily ever after? Gareth queried.
My dear, you're wrong. They won't last six months. He'll be taking the Steinach treatment before the year's out. There's a tragic anecdote for you, Johns.
Too tragic, I fear. The public demands pleasant stories, I'm learning.
The group was interrupted by a dark beauty in flaming velvet who verbally assaulted the author without the formality of an introduction.
I just loved Two on the Seine, she avowed. I love all your books. What was that other one? O, yes, Black Oxen.
That is my own favourite, Gareth remarked.
Florizel, who is the girl? Campaspe inquired, as soon as the novelist's admirer was out of ear-shot.
That's Mahalah Wiggins, the actress.
Where does she act?
In an old-fashioned piece of furniture with four posts. Have you heard . . . Florizel continued without pause . . . about Isabel in Venice, the city where men fiddle while women burn? She embarked in a gondola, tossed a ring into the Grand Canal, and announced, Now, I am a dogaressa!
Campaspe again was not listening. Her nerves were playing her odd tricks. She had the impression of a presence in the room, a presence that was affecting her emotions in some disturbing way. Like a lone hunter, in the depths of the jungle, suddenly instinctively conscious that somewhere nearby, behind the screen of green that obstructs his vision, a man-eating tiger lies crouched for a spring, she awaited, not without trepidation, the moment when the unknown force should choose to become visible. Waited, icy cold, and alone. . . . Presently, she saw the other. Straight across the room, in uniform, like the rest of the servants, bearing a tray, he was moving, as yet unaware, directly towards her. Unaware, and yet uneasy. Silver, silver, the faint tinkling of bells, and a sickening, unfamiliar odour, an overpowering scent. Dizzy, she closed her eyes, and took two uncertain steps. Forcing herself, with every particle of will at her command to open them again, she stared ahead of her. And now, at last, he too saw her, and the secret she read in his eyes provided her with a new torment. Before, however, she was able to move forward or to speak, Gunnar averted his gaze, pivoted on his heel, and hurled the laden platter through a window, shattering the pane from sash to sill. Without hesitating a second, in one prodigiously agile leap, he followed the missile into the outside blackness.
Instantly, she regained her poise, resaw her companions, but now the appearance of the crowd was altered almost beyond recognition. The ladies screamed. Two men rushed to the aperture. Good God! Thirty feet! There's a perfectly good window gone! Mrs. Pollanger, a tragic barrel, held the centre of the floor and raised her hand. Tell them to stop the music! she cried hoarsely. Tell them to stop the music!