"Seventy-five cents--think of that!"
* * * * *
As the Eoites came tramping back from the lecture, they found us still
seated there. At the first footstep we had swiftly moved apart.
I had been half-reclining, my head in her lap, strangely soothed and
happy as she ran her fingers through my hair. For a long time neither of
us had said a word.
Now I sat apart from her, awkward and wooden.
Spalton did not speak, inclined his head icily, as he strode by.
"He's mad because I didn't come to his talk," she whispered.
"I see my finish," I replied.
* * * * *
Now, Spalton was as much in love with Dorothy, his second wife, as I
have ever known a man to be in love with a woman. But that could not
entirely exclude his jealousy over my sympathetic relation with the
"Southern Lady," as the artworkers termed her. And he feared for her on
another score. She was, to use a constantly recurring phrase of the
Master's, whenever he wished to describe anyone as being wealthy, "lousy
with money," and he suspected, not without good cause, that I would warn
her against paying exorbitant prices for books and objects of art....
* * * * *
One night I was the cause of an accident which gave him a handle to
seize on.
We were having a musicale. A new musician had come to Eos. The former
Eos musician, Von Hammer, the father of the prodigy who played the
piano, had quarrelled with the Master and had retired to Buffalo. Where,
after a brief struggle as teacher of music, he had turned to playing for
the movies. It must have nearly slain the man, for he was a sincere
artist, a lover of classical music ... and now compelled to play ragtime
and popular melodies for a living.
All that I held of him, despite myself, was an unkind remembrance--his
breath had been charnel-foul, and always, when discussing anything, he
insisted on taking the lapel of his listener's coat and talking directly
into his nose....
* * * * *
But his successor was playing at an introductory musicale....
A tall, alert, dark young man ... Italian-dark ... his eyes shone behind
his gold-rimmed glasses, swimming large and distorted under the
magnification of the lenses ... his lips were full and red, his
moustache of a heavy, bristly black that made them look redder and
fuller still, almost negroid.
He played the piano with violent, expert energy ... his favourite work
was the "Turkish Patrol," which, Spalton exclaimed, as he applauded
vigorously, he would now adopt as the Eos anthem.
The drawing-room was crowded ... a few visiting celebrities ... Eoites,
too, but only the quasi-celebrities among them. The mass of the workers
was as rigidly excluded now, under the new régime, as ordinary retainers
ever are.
I stood by my "Southern Lady." She was in evening dress ... wore a
lorgnette ... I trembled as I leaned over her, for I could see the firm,
white-orbed upper parts of her breasts ... I was trying to be lightly
playful, and was clumsy at it. I took up her lorgnette and toyed with
it. I sat on the edge of a table ... and where I sat stood a supposed
Greek vase of great antiquity and value.
It is a law that prevails in three-dimensional space that two objects
cannot occupy the same place at one time. I dislodged the vase. It came
to the floor in a crash ... which stopped the music ... which stopped
everything. There fell a dead silence. I looked down at the fragments,
hardly knowing what to do....
Spalton came over to me ... intensely ... his eyes blazing.
"Razorre, come out into the lobby ... I want to speak to you." I
willingly followed him ... he wheeled on me when he had me alone.
"Do you know why we have these paintings of Gresham's hung high up there
on the wall?" he asked rhetorically, with an eloquent, upward sweep of
his arm, "it's so bums like you ... dirty tramps ... can't wipe their
feet on them."
"I am so sorry, so very sorry," I murmured, contrite.
Thinking my contrition meekness, and possibly fear of him, he went to
take me by the shoulders. I knocked his hands away promptly and quickly
stepped back, on the defensive ... all my reverence for him swallowed up
in indignation, rising at last, against his vulgar chiding.
At that moment, my widow, Mrs. Tighe, arrived ... she was weeping....
"Don't be hard on the poor boy," she pleaded ... "anyhow, it was all my
fault ... and I want to pay you for your vase ... whatever it cost."...
A momentary flicker of greed lighted the Master's eyes. But he
perceived as instantly how unmagnanimous he would appear if he accepted
a cash settlement.
"I am not thinking of my financial loss ... beauty cannot be valued that
way!" he exclaimed.
"Then you must not blame the boy."
"He is clumsy ... he is a terrible fool ... he is always doing the wrong
thing. Oh, my beautiful vase!" and he wrung his hands, lost in the pose.
Out he strode through the front door.
* * * * *
The musicale had been broken up.
"My poor, dear Johnnie, I am so sorry," murmured the young woman. I was
sitting in the large armchair where she had sat the memorable night of
the lecture that neither of us attended. She had seated herself on one
of the arms.
"You mustn't be despondent!" She was patting my hand.
She mistook my rage at the gratuitous insults Spalton had heaped on me
as despondency. She leaned closer against me ... quickly I caught her
into my arms, drew her into my lap ... held her little, quiet, amazed
face in my hands firmly, as I kissed and kissed her.... I knew how to
kiss now....
She rose presently. I stood up and caught her in my arms. Slowly and
firmly she disengaged herself ... silently she slid away. She stopped in
the shadow a moment before going up the long, winding stairs.
"Good night, my dear poet," she whispered.
She had no sooner disappeared than I started out, my heart beating like
a drum to a charge in me. Spalton frequently wrote till late, in his
office. I would go over there and, if he was there, call him to account
for his insults. There was a light lit within, and I could see him
through the window at his desk.
"Come in!" in answer to my knock. "Oh, it's you, Razorre!" and his eyes
snapped with fresh resentment. "What do you want? Don't you know that
I'm busy on _A Brief Visit_?"
"You know why I'm here!"
"Well?" challengingly.
"I've come for two reasons. I want to apologise to you for breaking that
vase ... and I demand an equal apology from you, in turn, for the way
you insulted me in Mrs. Tighe's presence."
"You deserved everything I said to you," he replied, rising quietly
from his chair.
"I may have deserved it ... but that doesn't alter in the least my
intention of smashing your face flat for the way you spoke to me, unless
you tell me you're sorry for it."
"My dear Gregory, don't be a fool."
"A fool?" I replied, inflamed further by the appellation applied to
quiet me in such a superior tone, "if you'll come on out into the street
and away from your own property, I'll show you who's a fool ... you'll
find you can't treat me like a dog, and get away with it!"
"Why, Razorre ... my dear, dear boy," calling me by my nickname and
taking another tack ... he laid his hand gently on my shoulder and gave
me a deep, burning look of compassionate rebuke ... though I saw fear
flickering back of it all....
"Look here, John," I burst out, never able to hold my wrath long, "I
like you ... think you're a great man--but you humiliated me before
other people ... and I've come to such a pass in my life that I wouldn't
let God Himself get away with a thing like that!"
"Then I apologise ... most humbly!"
"That was all I wanted. Good-night!" But I could not bring myself to
leave so abruptly.
"John," I wavered, "you _are_ a great man ... a much greater man than
you allow yourself to be ... I'm--I'm going away from here forever, this
time ... and I--I want you to know how I reverence and love the bigness
in you, in spite of our--our differences."
He was pleased.
"And so you're going to college somewhere?"
"Yes."
"Where?"