Junius P. Easton, popularly known on “the Street” as “old J. P.,” was
sulking in his tent like a certain ancient Greek, the said tent being
the Florentine library in his lake-side home. He was pacing up and down
the great sombre room with its tapestried walls and its high raftered
ceiling, chewing ferociously on a thick cigar, mumbling incoherently and
thinking things utterly unfit for publication. Every two or three
minutes he paused at the door opening into the music room and listened
to the confused medley of sounds which came to him from an apartment in
a far corner of the house—the light laughter of women, the clink of
china tea things and the occasional echo of a man’s voice, an
aggravatingly bland and urbane voice with a trace of a foreign accent in
its rhythms.
Every time J. P. caught the sound of that voice his bushy and grizzled
eye-brows came together over a deep perpendicular furrow in his forehead
and he swore audibly and with gusto. This performance had been going on
ever since a quarter to five that afternoon when he had arrived home
from his office after a particularly trying day full of perplexing
business problems and had been greeted by the butler with the
announcement that Miss Fannie was entertaining some sort of an Indian
prince and a group of friends at tea.
J. P. had tip-toed to the door of the Indian room, had cautiously peeped
through the heavy curtain and had been greeted with the spectacle of
Prince Rajput Singh, flanked by his be-whiskered servitors, lounging
luxuriously on a divan completely surrounded by adoring females of
uncertain age among whom his more or less revered sister was the central
figure. Fannie was running true to form and was successfully
monopolizing the attentions of the foreign visitor.
Filled with disgust J. P. had tip-toed away from the scene to the quiet
serenity of the library and had begun his imitation of a caged beast of
the jungle. It was one of the best things he did and he generally felt
himself called upon to perform in this manner two or three times a week
for there was no way of ever figuring what Fannie was going to do next
or who she was going to invite into the house. One afternoon it might be
an anarchist preaching the parlor variety of red revolutionary doctrine
and the next it was just as likely to be the latest exponent of the
simple life, tastefully attired in sandals and a robe made from Turkish
towels.
As J. P. remarked once to his closest friend “there’s only one thing you
can ever be certain about so far as Fannie is concerned—she’s always
sure to make a damned fool out of herself.”
And J. P. spoke by the book. He had lived with her for fifty years and
he knew whereof he spoke. He was always prepared for anything and yet he
was never able to maintain that air of philosophic calm with which he
would have liked to have greeted each new ebullition of her tempestuous
temperament. He pictured himself sometimes, in moments of reflection,
treating her with cold contempt and silent scorn, but when each new
issue arose he greeted it with an emotional outburst which was utterly
futile in its effect on her, but which gave him some slight measure of
satisfaction. A psychologist would have told him that his affection for
his sister found expression in that way. We can never be coldly
contemptuous of those we love. However, J. P. was no psychologist.
The festivities in the other corner of the house lasted until nearly six
o’clock and when the last guest had been given a gushing farewell by the
arch Miss Fannie the hostess bounced into the library to meet her
brother. She was attired in a short skirted pink silk afternoon gown
that looked as if it might have been designed for a sixteen year old
high school student, and she flounced into a sofa with an assumption of
girlish ingenuousness that was really pathetic to watch.
“I’ve just had the darlingest afternoon, brother dear,” she said gayly,
not heeding the glowering aspect of the head of the house, who stood
facing her with his hands in his trousers pockets. “We’ve had the spirit
and the mystery of the great, inscrutable East with us and it’s been so
uplifting and so perfectly wonderful that I’m in a daze. I’m sorry you
didn’t meet the dear prince, brother dear. He’s so charmingly soulful
and his eyes—well, they’re just deep pools of moonlight as some poet
said. I’m giving a dinner for him on Friday night. You’ll have to come
to that, of course.”
Junius P. Easton tossed back his head and erupted.
“I’ll be damned if I will,” he shouted, “and I’ll be damned if I’m going
to let you hob-nob with this fellow either. I’ve stood a lot from you
Fannie, but there’s a limit. I didn’t put up much of a holler last
winter when you had that greasy Esquimeaux here that evening with that
polar explorer and I’ve stood for Japanese, Chinese, Hawaiians, South
Sea Islanders, snake charmers, Bolshevists, shimmy dancers, poets and
short haired female nuts, but I’m going to draw the line on darkies and
don’t you forget it.”
J. P. strode over to a long table, opened a humidor, extracted another
cigar and savagely bit the end of it off. His sister was as unruffled as
the placid surface of a mountain lake on a hot mid-summer day. She
laughed a little before replying. It was such an irritatingly serene
sort of a laugh that J. P. winced at the sound of it.
“You poor, dear, foolish man,” she said with the patronizing
condescension of an indulgent aunt rebuking a fractious boy aged about
eight years. “He isn’t a colored man. You can be perfectly ridiculous at
times.”
“Well, he’s the next thing to it, isn’t he?” inquired her brother
helplessly.
“Don’t be absurd, J. P. He is the descendant of kings and potentates and
mighty warriors and he’s quite the most fascinating man I’ve ever met.
To know him is a privilege. He calls to your soul and bids you voyage
with him to the heights where you can leave behind you the petty affairs
of life and commune with the eternal and the unknowable.”
“Oh, bunk,” retorted her brother testily. “You give me a pain. The
heights, eh? If you take a trip up there you’d better be sure before you
start that you’ve got a return ticket. You’re likely to get all tangled
up in the cosmos and the eternal and lose your way as well as your mind.
And take a tip from me, old lady. Choose some other companion besides
that coffee colored harem keeper if you want to keep your friends.”
“My dear brother,” returned Miss Fannie, in a perfectly even tone of
voice. “I feel extremely sorry for you. You are of the earth earthy. You
have no soul. When the infinite calls you cannot hear it. I,
fortunately, am so attuned and delicately adjusted that it reaches me,
and I can pulsate in harmony with its vibrations. I know because the
dear prince told me so. It’s just wonderful.”
“Oh——piffle,” retorted J. P. impotently as he threw up his hands in a
gesture of hopeless despair and tore angrily out of the room with the
bitter realization that he had once more suffered defeat.
Miss Fannie Easton smiled indulgently and fondled a jade ring on her
left hand, a ring which Prince Rajput Singh had slipped from his own
royal finger and given her with the whispered expression of a hope that
she would wear it as a token of their friendship. Assuring herself that
no one was looking she kissed it long and ardently as something akin to
a rapturous look crept into her foolish, lusterless eyes.
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