Peter Whiffle/Chapter 7
Edith Dale had returned to New York after three years in Florence. Near the old renaissance city, she had purchased an ancient villa in the mountains and had occupied herself during her sojourn there in transforming it into a perfect environment for the amusing people with whom she surrounded herself. The villa originally had been built without a loggia; this was added, together with a salone in the general style of the old house. The lovely Italian garden was restored. Cypresses pointed their dark green cones towards the sky and gardenias bloomed. White peacocks and statues were imported. Then, with her superlatively excellent taste at her elbow, Edith rushed about Italy in her motor, ravishing prie-Dieu, old pictures, fans, china dogs, tapestries, majolica, and Capo di Monte porcelains, carved and gilded renaissance boxes, fantastic Venetian glass girandoles, refectory tables, divans, and divers bibelots, until the villa became a perfect expression of her mood. When every possible accent had been added, she entertained in the evening. Eleanora Duse, a mournful figure in black velvet, stood on the loggia and gazed out over the hills towards Certosa; Gordon Craig postured in the salone; and Gertrude Stein commemorated the occasion in a pamphlet, printed and bound in a Florentine floral wall-paper, which today fetches a good sum in old bookshops, when it can be found at all. To those present at this festa, it seemed, doubtless, like the inauguration of the reign of another Lorenzo the Magnificent. There was, indeed, the prospect that Ease and Grace, Beauty, Wit, and Knowledge, would stroll through these stately and ornate chambers for indefinite months, while hungry artists were being fed in the dining-room. But to Edith, this culminating dreary festivity was the end. She had decorated her villa with its last china dog, and the greatest actress in the world was standing on her loggia. Under the circumstances, further progress in this direction seemed impossible. She was even somewhat chagrined to recall that it had taken her three years to accomplish these things and she resolved to move more quickly in the future. So, packing enough of her treasures to furnish an apartment in New York, she shut the villa door without looking behind her, and booked a passage on the next boat sailing from Genoa.
In New York she found the top floor of an old mansion in Washington Square exactly what she wanted and installed green glass, lovely fabrics, and old Italian furniture against the ivory-white of the walls and the hangings. She accomplished the setting in a week; now she required the further decoration which the human element would afford. Art, for the moment, was her preoccupation and, with her tremendous energy and her rare sagacity and taste, she set about, quite spontaneously, arranging for an exhibition, the first great exhibition of the post-impressionist and cubist painters in New York. This show has now become almost a legend but it was the reality of that winter. It was the first, and possibly the last, exhibition of paintings held in New York which everybody attended. Everybody went and everybody talked about it. Street-car conductors asked for your opinion of the Nude Descending the Staircase, as they asked you for your nickel. Elevator boys grinned about Matisse's Le Madras Rouge, Picabia's La Danse à la Source, and Brancusi's Mademoiselle Pogany, as they lifted you to the twenty-third floor. Ladies, you met at dinner, found Archipenko's sculpture very amusing, but was it art? Alfred Stieglitz, whose 291 Gallery had nourished similar ideas for years, spouted like a geyser for three weeks and then, after a proper interval, like Old Faithful, began again. Actresses began to prefer Odilon Redon to Raphael Kirchner. To sum up, the show was a bang-up, whale of a success, quite overshadowing the coeval appearance of the Irish Players, chaperoned by Lady Gregory. It was cartooned, it was caricatured, it was Dr. Frank Craned. Scenes in the current revues at the theatres were devoted to it; it was even mentioned in' a burlesque at the Columbia. John Wanamaker advertised cubist gowns and ladies began to wear green, blue, and violet wigs, and to paint their faces emerald and purple. The effects of this æsthetic saturnalia are manifest even today.
Fresh from the quieter insanity of Florence, Edith was intensely amused by all this. It seemed so extraordinarily droll to find the great public awake to the excitement of art. She surrounded herself with as many storm centres as possible. The crowds flocked to her place and she made them comfortable. Pinchbottles and Curtis Cigarettes, poured by the hundreds from their neat pine boxes into white bowls, trays of Virginia ham and white Gorgonzola sandwiches, pale Italian boys in aprons, and a Knabe piano were added to the decorations. Arthur Lee and Lee Simonson, Marsden Hartley, Andrew Dasburg, Max Weber, Charles Demuth, Bobby Jones—just out of college and not yet a designer of scenery—, Bobby Parker, all the jeunes were, confronted with dowagers from the upper East Side, old family friends, Hutchins Hapgood, Ridgely Torrence, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and pretty women. Arguments and discussions floated in the air, were caught and twisted and hauled and tied, until the white salon itself was no longer static. There were undercurrents of emotion and sex.
Edith was the focus of the group, grasping this faint idea or that frail theory, tossing it back a complete or wrecked formula, or she sat quietly with her hands folded, like a Madonna who had lived long enough to learn to listen. Sometimes she was not even at home, for the drawing-room was generally occupied from ten in the morning until midnight. Sometimes—very often, indeed—, she left her guests without a sign and went to bed. Sometimes—and this happened still oftener—, she remained in the room, without being present. Andrew Dasburg commemorated this aspect in a painting which he called The Absence of Edith Dale. But always, and Dasburg suggested this in his flame-like portrait, her electric energy presided. She was the amalgam which held the incongruous group together; she was the alembic that turned the dross to gold.
When dulness, beating its tiresome wings, seemed about to hover over the group, she had a habit of introducing new elements into the discussion, or new figures into the group itself, and one day it must have occurred to her that, if people could become so excited about art, they might be persuaded to become excited about themselves too, and so she transferred her interest to the labouring man, to unions, to strikes, to the I. W. W. I remember the first time I saw her talking earnestly with a rough member of the garment-maker's union. Two days later, Bill Haywood, himself, came in and the tremendous presence of the one-eyed giant filled the room, seeming to give it a new consecration. Débutantes knelt on the floor beside him, while he talked simply, but with an enthralling intensity, about the things that interested him, reinforcing his points by crushing the heels of his huge boots into the Shirvan rug or digging his great hands into the mauve tapestry with which the divan was upholstered. Miners, garment-workers, and, silk-weavers were the honoured guests in those days. The artists still came but the centre of interest had shifted. Almost half of every day, Edith now spent in Paterson, New Jersey, where the strike of the hour was going on, attending union meetings and helping to carry pickets back and forth in her motor. She continued to be diverted by the ironies and complexities of life.
Recruits to the circle arrived from Europe—for Edith knew half of Europe—; solemn celebrities, tramps, upper Fifth Avenue, Gramercy Park, Greenwich Village, a few actresses—I took Fania Marinoff there several times—were all mixed up with green glass vases, filled with fragrant white lilies, salmon snapdragons, and blue larkspurs, pinchbottles, cigarette stubs, Lincoln Steffens, and the paintings of Marsden Hartley and Arthur B. Davies. Over the whole floated the dominant odours of Coty's chypre and stale beer.
Edith herself was young—about thirty-four—and comely, with a face that could express anything or nothing more easily than any face I have ever seen. It was a perfect mask. She wore lovely gowns of clinging turquoise blue, spinel, and jacinth silks from Liberty's. When she went out, she wrapped herself in more soft silks of contrasting shades, and donned such a hat as Donatello's David wears, graceful with its waving plumes and an avalanche of drooping veils.
I spent whole days at Edith's and was nearly as much amused as she. To be truthful, I dare say I was more amused, because she tired of it before I did. But before these days were over I brought in Peter. I had telephoned Edith that we were coming for dinner and, when we arrived, the rooms were nearly empty, for she found it as easy to rid herself of people as to gather them in. Neith Boyce was there, .I remember, her lovely red hair caught in a low knot and her lithe body swathed in a deep blue brocade. There were two young men whose names I never knew, for Edith never introduced anybody and these young men did not interest me sufficiently to compel me to converse with them and they interested Edith so little that they were never allowed to appear again. The dinner, as always, was simple: a soup, roast beef and browned potatoes, peas, a salad of broccoli, a loaf of Italian bread, pats of sweet butter, and cheese and coffee. Bottles of whisky, red and white wine, and beer stood at intervals along the unclothed refectory table. The cynical Tuscan butler, who had once been in the service of Lady Paget, never interrupted the meals to serve these. You poured out what you wanted when you wanted it. The dinner was dull. The young men tried to make an impression on Edith, with a succession of witty remarks of the sort which would have made them exceedingly popular in anything like what Ward McAllister describes as Society as I Have Found It, but it was apparent that their hostess was unaware of their very existence. Neith and I exchanged a few inconsequential phrases concerning D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers. Peter, dressed as he had been when I met him in the Chinese shop, and even dirtier, was utterly silent. Long before coffee was served, Edith left the table and went into the salon to write letters.
When we followed her later, there were already a few people there, talking in corners, and more were arriving. Now and again, Edith glanced up from her letters to greet one of the newcomers but she did not rise. Peter wandered about the room, looking at the pictures, occasionally picking up a book, of which there were a great number lying about on the tables. Donald Evans, correct and rather portentous in his studied dignity, made an early appearance. At this period he was involved in the composition of the Sonnets from the Patagonian. He drew a manuscript from his pocket and laid it on the desk before Edith. Over her shoulder I read the line,
Hutchins Hapgood, haggard and restless and yet strangely sympathetic, came in and joined uneasily in an eager conversation with a young woman with bobbed hair who stood in a corner, fingering an African primitive carving in wood of a naked woman with long pointed breasts. Yorska was there, the exotic Yorska with her long nose, her tragic eyes, her mouth like a crimson slit in a face as white as Pierrot's, a modern Judith looking for a modern Holofernes and never finding him; Jo Davidson with his jovial black beard, Bacchus or satyr in evening clothes; Edna Kenton, in a pale green floating tunic of her own design; Max Eastman, poet and Socialist, and his wife, Ida Rauh; Helen Westley, a tall angular scrag with something of the aristocracy of the Remsen-Meseroles informing her spine, who had acquired a considerable reputation for being "paintable" by never paying the slightest attention to her clothes; Henrietta Rodman, the round-faced, cherubic Max Weber. . . . I caught all these and, quite suddenly, although for some time, I remembered afterward, I had been aware of the odour of Cœur de Jeannette, Clara Barnes. She was sitting, when I discovered her, on a sofa before the fire-place, in which the coals were glowing. She was more matronly in figure and was dressed with some attempt at stylization. She was wearing a robe of batik, iridescent in the shades of the black opal, with a belt of moonstones set in copper, and huge ear-rings fashioned of human hair. On her feet were copper-coloured sandals and I was pleased to note that her dress was long enough to cover her ankles. I leaned over the back of the sofa and addressed her,
Miss Barnes, I believe . . .
She turned.
Oh, it's you. What a long time it's been since Paris.
I perceived that her new manner was not exclusively a matter of clothes.
Peter is here tonight, I hazarded.
Is he? she parried, without any apparent interest.
What are you doing now?
What I have always been doing, studying for opera. That teacher in Paris nearly ruined my voice. I am really, it seems, a contralto, and that fool had me studying Manon. Carmen is to be my great rôle. I have a splendid teacher now and I am working hard. In two or three more years, I should be ready for my début. I want to get into the Metropolitan. . . . You, I hear, are with the Times. Perhaps you can help me. . . .
So she rambled on. I had heard everything she had to say many times before and I have heard it many times since; I found it hard to listen. Looking across the room, I saw Peter gazing at us. So he knew she was there, but he only smiled and turned back his attention to the book he held in his hand. Clara, however, had caught his eye. Her face became hard and bitter.
He might speak to me, she said and there was a tone of defiance in her voice. Then, more calmly, I never understood Peter; I don't understand him now. For three days, a week, perhaps, I thought he loved me. One day he disappeared, without any explanation; nothing, not a sign, not a word. I knew that he had left Paris, because he had taken the cat with him. I was not very much in love with him and so it didn't hurt, at least it didn't hurt deeply, but what do you make of a man like that?
He contradicts himself, I put in rather lamely, searching for words.
That's it! He contradicts himself. Why, do you know, I don't believe he cared at all for my singing. After the day I sang for you, he never asked me to sing again and when I offered to he always put me off.
An old lady in a black satin dress, trimmed with cataracts of jet beads, addressed me and fortunately drew me out of Clara's orbit.
Mrs. Dale has some remarkable pictures of the new school, she began, but, of course, I don't like them. Now, if you want to see pictures—I hadn't said that I did—you should go to Henry Frick's. Do you know Mr. Frick?
No, but I know the man who shot him.
The old lady grew almost apoplectic and the jet beads jangled like Æolian harps in a heavy wind. She managed, however, to gasp out with a sound that was remarkably like gurgling, O! indeed! How interesting! Then, peering about nervously, I don't suppose he's here tonight.
I haven't seen him, I said, but he often comes here and, as I see Emma Goldman yonder, I should think it extremely likely that he will appear later.
O! indeed! The old lady leitmotived once more, How interesting! How very interesting! Would you mind telling me the time?
It's a quarter of ten.
O! As late as that!—She had just arrived. Really, I had no idea it was so late. John—this to a decrepit old gentleman in shiny evening clothes—, John, it's a quarter to ten.
What of it? querulously demanded the old gentleman, with a curious upward turn to his ridiculous side-whiskers. What of it?
The old lady, forgetting her fifty years of training in the most exclusive drawing-rooms, turned and whispered something in his ear.
Now it was the turn of the old gentleman to feel a touch of apoplexy.
Berkman! he roared, Berkman! Where is the scoundrel? Where is the assassin?
The old lady looked almost shame-faced as she tried to pacify John: He's not here yet, but he may come.
We shall leave at once, announced the old gentleman decisively. Edith is trespassing on our good nature. She is going too far. We shall leave at once.
He offered the old lady his arm and they made their way rapidly out, rubbing against, in the passageway, a one-eyed man nearly seven feet tall. Now Edith had neither observed the coming or the going of this elderly couple but Bill Haywood had not crossed the threshold before she was shaking his hand and, a moment later, she had drawn him with her through a doorway into a little room at one side of the salon, where she could talk to him more privately.
The most fascinating man alive, volunteered a stranger at my elbow, a little fellow with a few wisps of yellow hair and a face like a pug-dog, that Bill Haywood. No show about him, nothing theatrical, not a bit like the usual labour leader. Genuine power, that's what he has. He never goes in for melodrama, not even at a strike meeting. The other day in Paterson, a child was hurt while the police were clearing the street of strikers. One of the policemen, with his billy, struck down the boy's mother and a man who was helping her to her feet. At the meeting the next day, Haywood recited the facts, just the bare facts, without comment or colour and without raising his voice. What's the policeman's name? cried a voice in the hall. His name, replied Haywood, as coldly as possible, is said to be Edward Duffy; his number is 72. That was all, but Edward Duffy, No 72, had been consigned to the perpetual hatred of every one of the two thousand men present at the meeting. He spurns eloquence and soap-box platitudes. He never gibbers about the brotherhood of man, the socialist commonwealth rising upon the ruins of the capitalist system, death to the exploiters, and all the other clichés of the ordinary labour agitator. Workers want simple, homely facts regarding their trades and he gives them these facts. He is—
What are all these God damn bourgeois doing here? demanded a high, shrill voice from the next room.
My companion smiled. That is Hippolyte Havel. He always asks that question, even at anarchist meetings, but it isn't a cliché with him; it's part of his charm.
Hippolyte, sweet, blinking, amblyoptic Hippolyte, his hair as snarly as the Medusa's, strode into the room.
Hush, some one adjured us, Hush! Yorska is going to recite.
After a few seconds, there was silence. All the chairs were filled; many were sitting on the floor or standing against the wall or in the doorways; ladies in black velvet, wearing diamonds, ladies in batik and Greenwich village sacks, ladies with bobbed hair and mannish-cut garments, men in evening dress, men in workmen's clothes. No one present, I noted, looked quite so untidy as Peter. Yorska, her tragic face emerging from three yards of black tulle and satin, recited, in French, Baudelaire's Le Balcon, fingering a red rose at her waist. As she uttered the last lines with passionate intensity,
there was a scattered clapping of hands, a few exclamations of delight. Now the Tuscan butler, as cynical as Herbert Spencer, threw open the doors to the dining-room, exposing the table laden with sandwiches, salads, cold meats, glasses, and bottles, including kümmel bottles in the form of Russian bears. A few of the young radicals were the first to surge to the repast. My companion and I slipped out in time to hear an instructive lecture on the subject of collective bargaining from a young man with a black flowing tie, who grasped a pinchbottle so fervidly that I felt sure it would never leave his hand until he had usurped the contents. Representation was a word which, in its different senses, was often used that evening. The labourers cooed over it, worshipped it, and set it up in a shrine, while the artists spurned it and cast it from them; "mere photography" was the phrase.
Helen Westley, black and limp, stood beside me.
Who, she asked, is that young man you brought here tonight?
Peter Whiffle, I replied.
Peter Whistle? was her interrogative reproduction.
Presently the quiet even voice of Bill Haywood was heard from the drawing-room, a voice that by its very mildness compelled silence:
Violence, yes, we advocate violence of the most violent sort, violence that consists in keeping your mouth shut and your hands in your pockets. Don't fold your arms, I say to the men, but keep your hands in your pockets to keep hired thugs and detectives from putting bombs there. In doing this and staying on strike you are committing the most violent acts in the world, for you are stopping industry and keeping it stopped until the mill owners grant your demands, an eight hour day, two looms to a worker, and higher wages.
See how he talks, pointed out my unidentified companion, rubbing his flabby fingers the while around the flange of his wine-glass, about half-full of red California wine. No rage, no emotion, a simple explanation of the humanities. Let us go in where we can hear him better.
But when we joined the throng in the drawing-room, we discovered that Haywood was not beginning. He had already finished what he had to say to the group and had returned to his more intimate conversation with Edith. He brought back to my mind Cunninghame Graham's description of Parnell, not popular, in the hail-fellow-well-met and loudly cheered conception of the word, but yet with an attraction for all women whom he came across, who were drawn to him by his careless treatment of them, and by the wish that nature has implanted in their sex, to be the rulers of all men who stand above their kind.
Did it ever occur to you? my companion began again, that there is some strange relationship between trade unionism and tribal magic? You know how the men of one union cannot do the work for the men of another union. What is this restriction but the taboo?
What, indeed? I echoed pleasantly, unable to think of anything more apposite to say. Besides, my attention was wandering. I had discovered Peter, who appeared to be engrossed in the charms of a pretty girl of whom I knew little except that her name was Mahalah Wiggins.
Now the round-faced, cherubic Max Weber rose to speak.
The art consciousness is the great life consciousness, he began in his somewhat high-pitched voice. Its product and the appreciation of its product are the very flower of life. . . . Hutchins Hapgood's companion continued to finger lovingly the polished wooden African figure. . . . Its presence in man is Godliness on earth. It humanizes mankind. Were it spread broadcast it would do away with dry, cold intellectualism, which dead and unfired, always seeks refuge in pretending to be more than it is. . . . Bill Haywood, the giant Arimaspian, was pounding the seat of the brocaded sofa with his great fist. . . . Art or art consciousness is the real proof of genuine human sympathy. It oozes spiritual expression. Were it fostered it would sooner solve the great modern economic problem than any labour propaganda. . . . Helen Westley was yawning, with a great open jaw, which she made no effort to conceal. . . . A lack of this art consciousness—Weber was very earnest, but in no sense theatrical—, on the part of both capital and labour, is one cause of this great modern struggle. Were this art consciousness more general, material possession would be less valued; the covetous spirit would soon die out. . . . Yorska, a wraith of black satin and black tulle, her pale Pierrot face slit with crimson and punctuated with two black holes, lined with purple, stood in the doorway motionless, like another Rachel, with one hand lifted above her head, grasping the curtain, trying to look uncovetous. . . . Art socializes more than socialism with its platform and its platitudes. . . . Bravo! This from Hippolyte Havel. . . . Economists go not deep enough into the modern monetary disease. They deal only with materialism. They concentrate only on what is obvious, the physical starvation of the toiling class, but never do they see or seem to realize the spiritual starvation or the lack of an art consciousness to both capital and labour. They would argue that the material relief must come first. I reply, now as always, we must begin with the spiritual. I do not see, however, how the spiritual or æsthetic can be separated from the material. . . . Clara Barnes gave an angry shake to her long ear-rings, but Donald Evans had the rapt attentive air of a man hearing a great truth for the first time. . . . The common solution of this great problem is too dry, too matter of fact, too calculated, too technical, too scientifically intellectual and not enough intellectually imaginative. Art consciousness is not merely a form of etiquette, nor a phase of culture—it is life—the quality of sensitive breathing, seeing, hearing, developed to a high true spirituality. Man would value man more. The wonder of and the faith in other human beings would kindle a new social and spiritual life.
That's good talk, was Bill Haywood's comment.
What does it all mean? Clara Barnes caught my attention again; it was obvious that she could catch no one else's.
It means what you are willing or able to put into it, nothing more, I affirmed.
Well, said Clara, yawning, I guess I can't put much into it. This is worse than a party I went to last week, given by a baritone of the Aborn Opéra Company.
At this point, a little school-marm type of person, with a sharp nose and eye-glasses, rose and shrilly began to complain.
I am a mere lay woman. I don't know a thing about modern art. I've been trying to learn something for five years. In the effort, I have attended all the meetings of this kind that I could in Paris, New York, and London. There's always a lot of talk but nothing is ever clear. Now I'd like to know if there isn't some explanation of modern art, an explanation that a mere lay woman could understand.
There was a ripple of amused laughter among the young artists and a rapid exchange of glances, but not one of them rose. Instead, a rather massive female, utterly unknown to me, with as many rows of gold braid across her chest as a French academician, a porter at the Crédit Lyonnais, or a soldier in the army of the Prince of Monaco, stood on her feet.
What, exactly, would you like to know? she asked in a voice in which authority and confidence were equal elements.
I'd like to know everything, but I'd be satisfied with anything. What, for instance, is the meaning of that picture?
She pointed to Andrew Dasburg's The Absence of Edith Dale, a cubistic contribution to æsthetic production in several planes and the colours of red, yellow, and blue.
The massive lady began with some hesitation. Her confidence had not deserted her but she seemed to be searching for precise words.
Well, she said, that picture is the kind of picture that gives pleasure to the kind of people who like that kind of picture. The arrangement of planes and colours is very satisfying. Perhaps I could explain it to you in terms of music. Do you understand the terminology of music?
Not at all, snapped the little woman with the eye-glasses.
The massive lady seemed gratified and continued, In that case, you may have difficulty in following me, but if you take the first and second themes of a sonata, their statement, the development or working-out section, the recapitulation, the coda. . . . It has some relation to the sonata form certainly, but. . . . The artist is in the room, the artist who painted the picture. Won't you explain the picture, Mr. Dasburg?
Andrew, very much amused, did not take the trouble to rise.
The picture is there, he said. You can look at it. Then, after a pause, he added, Henry James says, Woe, in the æsthetic line, to any example that requires the escort of precept. It is like a guest arriving to dine accompanied by constables.
Then, said the little lady, solemnly, I say, Woe to that picture, woe to it, for it certainly requires the escort of precept. Moreover, I don't think any one here knows anything, not a thing! she cried, her voice rising to a shrill intensity, not a blessed thing. It's just like the last chapter of Alice. If I shouted, Why, you're only a pack of cards, you'd all fly up in the air, a lot of flat paste-boards with kings, queens, aces, and deuces painted on your faces! I shall never ask another question about modern art. My private impression is that it's just so much junk.
Very indignant now, she wrapped an ice-wool shawl around her bony shoulders and made her way out of the room.
There wasn't an instant's pause and her departure caused no comment. A' new speaker began.
The world, it may be stated, for the purposes of classification, is divided into four groups: the proletariat, the aristocrats, the middle class, and the artist class. The artist class may be called by any other name, bohemians, anarchists, revolutionists, what you will. It includes those who think and act freely, without traditions or inhibitions, and not all people who write or paint belong to this class at all. The artist class lives the way it wants to live. The proletariat and the aristocrats live the way they have to live. The middle class is composed of members of the proletariat trying to live like the aristocrats. . . .
My mind wandered. I glanced across at Peter. He was still absorbed in Mahalah Wiggins and did not appear to be listening to the speaker. Yet, if he were really writing a realistic novel, the talk, the whole atmosphere of the evening should have interested and enthralled him. He never looked up and he was whispering very rapidly.
Some people resemble animals; some, perhaps, minerals; assuredly, some resemble flowers. Mahalah Wiggins was like a pansy. Her hair was black with purple lights; her eyes were a pale pansy blue; her face bore an ingenuous pansy expression that made one wonder why pansies were for thoughts. She wore a purple velvet dress with long tight sleeves ending in points which reached her knuckles, and, around her throat, a chain of crystal beads that hung almost to her waist.
Intercepting the long look I gave the girl, Neith Boyce smiled.
Are you, too, interested in Mahalah? she asked.
I am interested in the effect she is making.
She always makes an effect, Neith rejoined.
Who is she?
An orphan. Her father left her a little money, which she is spending at the Art Students' League, trying to learn to draw. Her only real talents are obvious. She knows how to dress herself and she knows how to attract men. Your friend seems to like her.
He does, indeed.
Mahalah comes here often and always spends the evening in a corner with some man. She seems to prefer married men. Is your friend married?
No.
A fat woman in a grey crêpe dress, embroidered in steel beads, standing in the centre of the room, shifted my attention.
Who is that? I asked.
That is Miss Gladys Waine, replied Neith. She is the wife of Horace Arlington, the sculptor.
Miss and a wife? What is she then, herself?
Nothing. She does not write, or paint, or compose. She isn't an actress. She is nothing but a wife, but she insists on retaining her individuality and her name. If any one addresses her as Mrs. Arlington, she is furious, and if you telephone her house and ask for Mrs. Arlington, although she may answer the telephone herself, she will assure you that Mrs. Arlington is not in, does not, in fact, live there at all. She adores Horace, too. The curious thing is that Horace's first wife, who divorced him, has never given up his name, of which she appears to be very proud. She is always called Mrs. Horace Arlington and trembles with rage when some tactless person remembers her own name.
My anonymous companion was by my side again with a plate of chocolatee ice cream which he offered me.
Did you ever try eating chocolate ice cream and smoking a cigarette simultaneously? he asked. If you haven't, allow me to recommend the combination. The flavour of both cigarette and ice cream is immensely improved.
An old lady with an ear-trumpet, thinking she had been addressed, took the plate of ice cream from his outstretched hand, leaned over us and queried, Eh?
I say, said my incognito companion, that there is nothing like a good dose of castor oil.
Nothing like it for what? she shrieked.
As a carminative! he yelled.
But I don't suffer from that complaint, she argued.
Allow me to congratulate you, madame, and he bowed to her.
As we were saying, he continued, in a confidential manner, grasping my arm, one cannot be too careful in writing a drama. Weak, low-born people in trouble are pathetic; the middle classes in the same plight are subjects for melodrama or comedy; but tragedy should deal with kings and queens.
The groups separated, came together, separated, came together, separated, came together: syndicalists, capitalists, revolutionists, anarchists, artists, writers, actresses, perfumed with botanical creams, feminists, and malthusians were all mixed in this strange salad. I talked with one and then another, smoking constantly and drinking a great deal of Scotch whisky. Somehow, my strange companion, like the Duchess in Alice, contrived always to be at my side. Remembering the situation at the Queen's croquet party, I could not help feeling grateful that his chin was square and that he was shorter than I. At one o'clock I had a headache and decided to go home. I looked for Edith.
She went to bed hours ago, Neith explained.
Then I made a vain search through the rooms for Peter.
One of the two young men who had dined with us stopped me.
If you are searching for your friend, he said, he went away with Mahalah Wiggins.