Chapter 9

An expression of pain tightened his mouth; he turned away without further speech. “We'll have it in the dining-room,” Claire announced; “big glasses filled with ice.” They gathered about the bare table, and Peyton Morris ranged the dark green bottles, capped in white foil, on the sideboard. He worked with a napkin at a cork: there was a restrained sibilant escaping pressure, and the liquid rose in frothing bubbles through the ice.

It was, Lee thought, a golden drink, flooded, up to a variable point, with an inimitable gaiety. In comparison whiskey was brutalizing; sherry was involved with a number of material accompanying pleasures; port was purely masculine and clarets upset him; beer was a beverage and not a delight; ale a soporific; and Rhine wines he ignored. Champagne held in solution the rhythm of old Vienna waltzes, of ball rooms with formal greenery, floating with passions as light as the tarleton skirts floating about dancing feet. But it wasn't, he insisted, a wine for indiscriminate youth--youth that couldn't distinguish between the sweet and the dry. It was for men like himself, with memories, unrealized dreams. Ugly women, and women who were old, and certainly prudes, should never be given a sip.

Peyton Morris again filled all the glasses; there was a clatter of talk, the accent of the South, about Lee; but he grew oblivious of it. Champagne always gave Fanny a headache; neither was it a drink for contented mothers, housewives. Contrarily, it was the ideal, the only, wine for seductions. It belonged most especially to masked balls, divine features vanishing under a provocative edge of black satin. He thought of little hidden tables and fantastic dresses, fragile emotion; lips and knees and garters. It all melted away before the intentness of Claire's expression. Peyton was doggedly holding to the rim of the table; Gilbert Bromhead was very close to Evadore; the black sheath of her hair had slipped and her eyes were blank; the blanched delicate hand of the South nearest Christian Wager had disappeared, Christian's hand on that side could not be seen. Peyton once more filled the glasses:

“It must all go,” Claire insisted; “I won't have a drop left.”

Wager's sentimentality overflowed in approved and well-established channels: Princeton was their mother, their sacred alma--alma mater. Here, under Peyton's roof, they had gathered to renew ... friendships unbroken with their wives, their true wives; oceans couldn't separate them, nor time, nor--nor silver locks among the gold. They must come to London next December: anniversary of mutual happiness and success. Take the children, the sons of old Princeton, to Christmas pantomine.

“Once,” Evadore told them, “I went to a night club. Do you know what that is, over here? I don't believe I can explain it; but there are quantities of champagne and men and principally girls; but they're not girls at all, if you see what I mean, not by several accidents. It would have been splendid, but I got sick, and it turned into a ghastly mess, mostly in the cab. That was rather thick, wasn't it?”

Claire rose, and Lee Randon heard her say, under her breath, “Oh hell”; but there was another full bottle, and she had to sit again. He had promised Fanny not to stay long, and, if he were coming home, she never went to sleep until he was in the house. Lee wasn't drunk, but then, he recognized, neither was he sober. Why should he be the latter? he demanded seriously of himself. His glass was empty, the champagne was all gone. Mrs. Gilbert Bromhead was perceptibly leaning on Christian Wager, her skill blurred; Evadore's face was damply pallid, her mouth slack; she left the table, the room, hurried and unsteady, evidently about to repeat the thickness of the act that had marred her enjoyment of the night club; Claire was openly contemptuous of them all.

Outside, it had grown much colder, the ruts in the road were frozen, treacherous, but Lee Randon drove his car with a feeling of inattentive mastery. He saw some stars, an arc light, black patches of ice; and, as he increased his speed, he sang to an emphatic lifted hand of a being in the South Seas who wore leaves, plenty of leaves ... But none of the silly songs now could compare with--with the bully that, on the levees, he was going to cut down. However, in his house, he grew quiet. “Lee,” his wife called sleepily from their room, “you are so late, dear. I waited the longest while for some of the addresses for our Christmas cards. You must remember to give them to me tomorrow.”

Her voice, heavy with sleep and contentment and love, fell upon his hearing like the sound of a pure accusing bell. He wasn't fit to have a wife like Fanny, children as good as Helena and Gregory: he, Lee Randon, was a damned ingrate! That bloody doll--he had threatened to put it in the fire before--could now go where it belonged. But the hearth was empty, cold. Cytherea, with her disdainful gaze, evaded his wavering reach.

III

Fanny, where the Groves were concerned, was utterly opposed to the plan which, Lee gathered, Claire had half supported. “It's really too foolish,” his wife told him; “what can Mrs. Grove and you have to say to each other? And you won't get anywhere with Mina Raff. Indeed, Lee, I think it isn't quite dignified of you.”

“That won't bother me,” he replied indulgently. “I was wondering--you haven't been away for so long--if you'd come with me. This other affair wouldn't take half a day: you could buy clothes and there are the theatres.”

“I'd love to.” She hesitated. “When did you mean to go?” But, when he said the following noon, she discovered that that didn't allow her enough time for preparations. “You don't realize how much there is to do here, getting the servants and the children satisfactorily arranged. You might telephone me after you're there; and, if you didn't come back at once, perhaps I could manage it.”

Lee telegraphed Mrs. William Loyd Grove of his intention; and, with a table put up at his seat in the Pullman car for New York, he occupied himself opportunely with the reports of his varied profitable concerns. He had had a reply, sufficiently cordial, to his telegram, arranging for him to go directly to the Groves' house; but that he had declined; and when he gave the driver of a taxi-cab the address on East Sixty-sixth Street it was past four and the appropriate hour for afternoon tea.

The house, non-committal on the outside--except for the perceived elaboration of the window draperies within--was, Lee saw at once, a rich undisturbed accumulation of the decorative traditions of the eighteen-eighties. The hall was dark, with a ceiling and elaborate panels of black walnut and a high dull silver paper. The reception room into which he was shown, by a maid, was jungle-like in its hangings and deep-tufted upholstery of maroon and royal blue velvets, its lace and twisted cords with heavy tassels, and hassocks crowded on the sombrely brilliant rugs sacred in mosques. There was a mantle in colored marbles, cabinets of fretted ebony, tables of onyx and floriated ormolu, ivories and ornaments of Benares brass and olivewood.

In the close incongruity of this preserved Victorianism Mrs. William Loyd Grove, when she appeared soon after, startled Lee Randon by her complete expression of a severely modern air. She was dressed for the street in a very light brown suit, rigidly simple, with a small black three-cornered hat, a sable skin about her neck, and highly polished English brogues with gaiters. Mrs. Grove was thin--no, he corrected that impression, she was slight--her face, broad at the temples, narrowed gracefully to her chin; her eyes were a darker blue than the velvet; and her skin at once was evenly pale and had a suggestion of transparent warmth. The slender firm hand she extended, her bearing and the glimpse of a round throat, had lost none of the slender flexibility of youth.

“The first thing I must do,” she told him in an unsympathetic, almost harsh, voice, “is to say that I agree with you entirely about this house. It's beyond speech. But William won't have it touched. Probably you are not familiar with the stubborn traditions of old New Yorkers. Of course, when Mrs. Simeon Grove was alive, it was hopeless; but I did think, when she died, that something could be done. You can see how wrong I was--William can't be budged.”

She was, he silently continued his conclusions, past forty, but by not more than a year, or a year and a half. All that her signature suggested was true: she was more forcible, decisive, than he had expected. Money and place, with an individual authentic strength of personality, gave her voice its accent of finality, her words their abruptness, her manner an unending ease.

“Mina said she might be here,” Mrs. Grove went on, from an uncomfortable Jacobean chair, “if something or other happened at the studio. But I see she is not, and I am relieved.”

“Mrs. Morris regretted she couldn't come,” Lee told her inanely; and his hostess replied:

“I can't at all say that I believe you--I was so upset I couldn't resist the attempt. But I hope she understood that it was absolutely impossible for me to go to Eastlake.”

He nodded, a shade annoyed by the briskness of her attack.

“We are immensely concerned about Mina,” Mrs. Grove went on. “You see, with our son killed in the Lafayette Escadrille early in the war, practically she has been our only child. She is a daughter of a cousin of William's. Mina, I must admit, has become very difficult; I suppose because of her genius. She is perfectly amenable about everything in the world, until her mind gets set, like concrete, and then she is out of reach. Tell me a little about Mr. and Mrs. Morris.”

Lee Randon spoke sharply for a minute or two, and a frown gathered on his hearer's brow. “Why,” she observed, “it is worse than I had hoped. But I should have guessed from the name--Peyton Morris. I am very sorry; you are fond of her, of Claire, that is evident.”

“I should not have come here for any other reason,” he admitted. “I am not much of a meddler: it is so dangerous for everyone concerned. Then it might be that this was the best for all three of them.”

“What a curious, contradictory thing for you to say,” she commented, studying him. “You mustn't let William hear that; he's far worse than I am.”

“I don't mean we can proceed from that attitude,” Lee explained, “it was a sort of digression. I want to do whatever is possible to break it up; yes, purely for Claire.”

“I hope we may succeed.” Her voice showed doubt. “William isn't always tactful, and I've told him again and again he's taking the wrong tone with Mina. What a pity the Morrises have turned out thoroughly nice--don't tell me your Claire didn't curse me, I know these girls--it is so much easier to deal with vulgar people. I can see now what it was in the young man that captured Mina, she'd like that type--the masculine with an air of fine linen.” The tea-table was rolled up to them. “If you would rather have Scotch or rye it's here,” she informed him. “But even the tea, you'll notice, is in a glass with rum; positively, soon no one will look at soup unless it's served as a highball.”

Lee Randon did prefer Scotch: none better, he discovered, was to be imagined; the ice was frozen into precisely the right size; and the cigars before him, a special Corona, the Shepheard's Hotel cigarettes, carried the luxury of comfort to its last perfection. Mrs. Grove smoked in an abstracted long-accustomed manner. “Well,” she demanded, “what is there we can do?”

“I rather trusted you to find that.”

“How can I? What hold have we on her? Mina is getting this nonsensical weekly sum; her contract runs for two years yet; and then it will be worse. Outrageous! I tell her she isn't worth it. And, now, this tiresome Morris has money, too; and you say he's as bad as Mina. Have you talked to her about Mrs. Morris? Mina is strangely sensitive, and, if you can find it, has a very tender heart.”

“I might do that over here,” he suggested. “In Eastlake it wasn't possible. You've discouraged me, though; I suppose I had the idea that you could lock her up on bread and water.”

She laughed. “An army of Minnesota kitchen maids would break into the house; millions of people have voted Mina their favorite; when she is out with me the most odious crowds positively stop my car. I won't go with her any more where she can be recognized.” Lee rose, and his expression showed his increasing sense of the uselessness of their efforts.

“You mustn't give up,” she said quickly; “you never can tell about Mina. You will come here for dinner, certainly; I'll send the car to your hotel at seven-thirty, and you will bring your bag. We can't argue over that, can we? William will enjoy having you very much. Do you mind my saying he'll be relieved? He is such a Knickerbocker. I needn't add, Mr. Randon, that you shall be entirely free: whenever you want to go down town Adamson will take you.” The exact moulding of her body was insolent. “Well, then, for the moment--” She gave him no chance at refusal, but, with the curtness of her hand, the apparent vanishing of all knowledge of his presence, dismissed him before he was aware of it to the adroitness of the maid in the hall putting him into his overcoat.

* * * * *

In a double room at his hotel, repacking the articles of toilet he had spread around the bathroom, Lee thought, but without heat, damn that Grove woman. He didn't want to go to the Grove house, it would complicate things with Fanny; and, if William did enjoy him, Lee Randon, would he enjoy William? It was questionable in the present state of his mind. Dinner, a servant at the Groves' informed him, would be at eight. His bag was swiftly and skillfully unpacked for him--this always annoyed Lee--and the water was turned into the tub. His room, richly draped and oppressive as the one downstairs, had a bed with a high carved oak headboard from which a heavy canopy, again of velvet and again crimson, reached to the floor at its foot; and by the side of the bed ran a long cushion over which he repeatedly stumbled.

His immediate necessity was to telephone Fanny; she was delighted at the sound of his voice; but, when he told her what had happened, where he was, an increasing irritation crept into her voice. “I can't understand it at all,” he heard her say, so clearly that it reconstructed her, expression and probable dress and setting, completely. “You asked me to come over and shop, and go to the theatre with you; and now that I have everything arranged, even Christopher pacified, you go to the Groves'. It seems to me most peculiar.”

He couldn't help it, he replied, with a slight responsive sharpening of his own speech; he had driven to the hotel, where he had secured their room, and Mrs. Grove had made it impossible for him to stay there. When he left--it would be late tomorrow or early the next day, Lee thought--she could meet him and do as they planned. But Fanny refused to agree: it would, now, be a needless expense. No, the other was what she had eagerly looked forward to. Lee, drawing her attention once more to the fact that it wasn't possible, was answered by so long a silence that he concluded she had hung up the receiver.

“Have a good time,” Fanny said at last; “you will, anyhow, with the Raff woman. I suppose Mrs. Grove, who seems to get everything she wants, is fascinating as well.”

“Indeed, I don't know, Fanny!” he exclaimed, his patience almost exhausted. “It hasn't occurred to me to think about her. I'm sorry you won't do what I suggest; it's not different from what we first thought of.”

“Good-bye,” she answered reluctantly; “the children are here and send their love. They'd like to speak to you, but probably you're in a hurry.”

“I may be late for dinner now,” he admitted.

The receiver in his house was abruptly, unmistakably, replaced. No one else, and for so little perceptible cause, could make him as mad as Fanny frequently did. He put on his waistcoat, changed his money from the trousers on the bed to those he was wearing, in a formless indignation. This wasn't his fault, he repeated; positively, judged by her manner, he might be doing something wrong. Fanny even managed to convey a doubt of Mrs. Grove, Mrs. William Loyd Grove. But she couldn't see how ridiculous that was.

William Grove Lee liked negatively; there was, patently, nothing in him to create an active response. His short heavy body was faultlessly clothed; his heavy face, with its moustache twisted into points, the clouded purple of his cheeks contradicted by the penetration of a steadily focussed gaze, expressed nothing more than a niceness of balance between self-indulgence, tempered by exercise, games in open air, and a far from negligible administration of the resources he had inherited.

“You are a relative of the Morrises?” he asked Lee, turning from the menu set before him in a miniature silver frame. This Lee Randon admitted, and Grove's eyebrows mounted. “Can't anything be done with the young man?”

“How are you succeeding with the young woman?” Lee returned.

“Oh, women--” William Grove waved his hand; “you can't argue with women. Mina wants her Peyton--if that's his name; God knows I've heard it enough--and there's no more to that.”

“It begins to look as though she'd get him,” Lee observed; “I must say we haven't got far with Morris.”

“Extraordinary.”

It was Mrs. Grove who spoke. She was dressed in grey, a gown cut away from sheer points on her shoulders, with a girdle of small gilt roses, her hair in a binding of grey brocade and amber ornaments; and above her elbows were bands of dull intricately pierced gold.

“I wonder what it's all about?”

Lee gazed at her with a new interest. “So do I,” he acknowledged; “I was thinking of that, really, before this happened: what is it all about?”

“I can answer that readily enough,” Grove assured them; “anyone could with a little consideration. They saw too much of each other; they ran their heads into the noose. Trouble always follows. I don't care who they are, but if you throw two fairly young people of opposite sex together in circumstances any way out of the ordinary, you have a situation to meet. Mina has been spoiled by so much publicity; her emotions are constantly over-strung; and she thinks, if she wants it, that she can have the moon.”

“You believe that, I know, William,” his wife commented; “I have often heard you say so. But what is your opinion, Mr. Randon--have you reached one and is a conclusion possible?”

“I can't answer any of your questions,” he admitted; “perhaps this is one of the things that must be experienced to be understood; certainly it hasn't a great deal to do with the mind.” He turned to William Grove, “Your view has a lot to recommend it, even if it solves nothing. Suppose you are right--what then?”

“I don't pretend to go that far,” Grove protested; “I am not answering the questions of the universe. Savina has an idea there's a mystery in it, a quality hidden from reason; and I want to knock that on the head. It's a law of nature, that's all; keep away from it if you want security. I can't imagine people of breeding--you will have to overlook this, Mr. Randon, on the account of Morris--getting so far down the slide. It belongs to another class entirely, one without traditions or practical wisdom. Yet, I suppose it is the general tone of the day: they think they can handle fire with impunity, like children with parlor matches.”

“It can't, altogether, be accounted for so easily,” Lee decided. “The whole affair has been so lied about, and juggled to suit different climates and people, that hardly any of the original impulse is left on view. What do you think would happen if for a while we'd lose our ideas of what was right and wrong in love?”

“Pandemonium,” Grove replied promptly.

“Not if people were more responsible, William,” Savina Grove added; “not for the superior. But then, all laws and order were made for the good of the mob. I don't need the policeman I see in the streets; and, really, I haven't a scrap more use for policeman-like regulations; I could regulate myself--”

“And there,” he interrupted, “is where Mina fails; she can't run herself for a damn; she ought to have a nurse. Your theories contradict each other, as well--you say one thing and do quite differently.”

She was silent at this, gazing at her hands, the beautifully made pointed fingers bare of rings. On their backs the veins, blue-violet, were visible; and there was a delicate tracery inside the bend of her arms. But her face, Lee reflected, was too passive, too inanimate; her lack of color was unvaried by any visible trace of emotion, life. She was, in fact, plain if not actually ugly; her mouth was too large; on the street, without the saving distinction of her dress, he wouldn't have noticed her.

But what, above the rest, engaged him was her resemblance to someone he knew but couldn't recall. What woman, seen lately, had Mrs. Grove's still, intent face, her pointed chin and long throat? She lifted her hand, and the gesture, the suspended grace of the wrist, was familiar to him. Finally Lee Randon, unable to satisfy his curiosity, exasperated at the usual vain stupidity of such comparisons, gave up the effort. William Grove informed Lee that he might accompany him to his club, stay, or go as he willed. Mrs. Grove, it developed, would be at home, where, if he chose, they might pursue the cause of Lee Randon's presence there.

* * * * *

There was, Lee soon grasped, very little that was useful to be said. They repeated what had been gone over before. Mrs. Grove explained again Mina Raff's unpredictable qualities, and he spoke of Peyton and Claire Morris. Beyond the admission of their surrender, Peyton's and hers, to each other, Mina had told the Groves nothing; Savina Grove was ignorant of what they intended. That it would begin at once was evident. “William is always a little annoyed by my contradictory character,” she observed, gazing down at her slippers. They were grey, slight like a glove, on slight arched feet that held his attention. The conversation about the situation before them, expanded to its farthest limits, inevitably dragged; they said the same things, in hardly varied words, a third and even a fourth time; and then Lee's interest in it wholly deserted him--he could excite himself about Mina no longer.

This left him confronted with himself and Mrs. Grove. A clock on the stairway struck ten. Her face hadn't a vestige of cordiality, and he wondered if she were fatigued, merely polite in remaining in the room with him? She needn't inconvenience herself on his account! It was pleasant enough at the Groves'; without doubt--in her own world--she was a woman of consequence, but he wasn't carried away by the privilege of studying her indifferent silences. Then she completely surprised him:

“I suppose you have been to all the cafés and revues you ever want to see; but I almost never get to them; and it occurred to me that, if you didn't too much mind, we might go. What do you think--is it utterly foolish?”