The party was on at the Cowles flat.
People came. They all set to it, having a party, being lively and gay,
whether they wanted to or not. They all talked at once, and had
delicious shocks over the girl from London, Nebraska, who, having
moved to Washington Place, just a block or two from ever so many
artists, was now smoking a cigarette and, wearing a gown that was
black and clinging. It was no news to her that men had a tendency to
become interested in her ankles. But she still went to church and was
accepted by quite the nicest of the St. Orgul's set, to whom Gertie
had introduced her.
She and Gertie were the only thoroughly qualified representatives of
Art, but Beauty and Gallantry and Wit were common. The conspirators in
holding a party were, on the male side:
An insurance adjuster, who was a frat-brother to Carl and Ray, though
he came from Melanchthon College. A young lawyer, ever so jolly, with
a banjo. A bantling clergyman, who was spoken of with masculine
approval because he smoked a pipe and said charmingly naughty things.
Johnson of the Homes and Long Island Real Estate Company, and his
brother, of the Martinhurst Development Company. Four older men,
ranging from thin-haired to very bald, who had come with their wives
and secretly looked at their watches while they talked brightly with
one another's wives. Five young men whom Carl could not tell apart, as
they all had smooth hair and eye-glasses and smart dress-shirts and
obliging smiles and complimentary references to his aviating. He gave
up trying to remember which was which.
It was equally hard to remember which of the women Gertie knew as a
result of her girlhood visit to New York, which from their membership
in St. Orgul's Church, which from their relation to Minnesota. They
all sat in rows on couches and chairs and called him "You wicked man!"
for reasons none too clear to him. He finally fled from them and
joined the group of young men, who showed an ill-bred and disapproved
tendency to sneak off into Ray's room for a smoke. He did not,
however, escape one young woman who stood out from the _melee_--a
young woman with a personality almost as remarkable as that of the
glorious creature from London, Nebraska. This was the more or less
married young woman named Dorothy, and affectionately called
"Tottykins" by all the St. Orgul's group. She was of the kind who look
at men appraisingly, and expect them to come up, be unduly familiar,
and be crushed. She had seven distinct methods of getting men to say
indiscreet things, and three variations of reply, of which the
favorite was to remark with well-bred calmness: "I'm afraid you have
made a slight error, Mr. Uh---- I didn't quite catch your name?
Perhaps they failed to tell you that I attend St. Orgul's evvvv'ry
Sunday, and have a husband and child, and am not at all, really, you
know. I hope that there has been nothing I said that has given you the
idea that I have been looking for a flirtation."
A thin, small female with bobbed hair was Tottykins, who kept her
large husband and her fat, white grub of an infant somewhere in the
back blocks. She fingered a long, gold, religious chain with her
square, stubby hand, while she gazed into men's eyes with what she
privately termed "daring frankness."
Tottykins the fair; Tottykins the modern; Tottykins who had read
_Three Weeks_ and nearly all of a wicked novel in French, and wore a
large gold cross; Tottykins who worked so hard in her little flat
that she had to rest all of every afternoon and morning; Tottykins the
advanced and liberal--yet without any of the extremes of socialists
and artists and vegetarians and other ill-conditioned persons who do
not attend St. Orgul's; Tottykins the firmly domestic, whose husband
grew more worried every year; Tottykins the intensely cultured and
inquisitive about life, the primitively free and pervasively original,
who announced in public places that she wanted always to live like the
spirit of the Dancing Bacchante statue, but had the assistant rector
of St. Orgul's in for coffee, every fourth Monday evening.
Tottykins beckoned Carl to a corner and said, with her manner of
amused condescension, "Now you sit right down here, Hawk Ericson, and
tell me _all_ about aviation."
Carl was not vastly sensitive. He had not disliked the nice young men
with eye-glasses. Not till now did he realize how Tottykins's shrill
references to the Dancing Bacchante and the Bacchanting of her
mud-colored Dutch-fashioned hair had bored him. Ennui was not, of
course, an excuse; but it was the explanation of why he answered in
this wise (very sweetly, looking Tottykins in the eyes and patting her
hand with a brother-like and altogether maddening condescension):
"No, no, that isn't the way, Dorothy. It's quite _passe_ to ask me to
tell you all about aviation. That isn't done, not in 1912. Oh
Dor-o-thy! Oh no, no! No-o! No, no. First you should ask me if I'm
afraid when I'm flying. Oh, always begin that way. Then you say that
there's a curious fact about you--when you're on a high building and
just look down once, then you get so dizzy that you want to jump.
Then, after you've said that----Let's see. You're a church member,
aren't you? Well then, next you'd say, 'Just how does it feel to be up
in an aeroplane?' or if you don't say that then you've simply got to
say, 'Just how does it feel to fly, anyway?' But if you're just
_terribly_ interested, Dorothy, you might ask about biplanes _versus_
monoplanes, and 'Do I think there'll ever be a flight across the
Atlantic?' But whatever you do, Dorothy, don't fail to ask me if I'll
give you a free ride when I start flying again. And we'll fly and
fly----Like birds. You know. Or like the Dancing Bacchante.... That's
the way to talk about aviation.... And now you tell me _all_ about
babies!"
"Really, I'm afraid babies is rather a big subject to tell all about!
At a party! Really, you _know_----"
That was the only time Carl was not bored at the party. And even then
he had spiritual indigestion from having been rude.
For the rest of the time:
Every one knew everybody else, and took Carl aside to tell him that
everybody was "the most conscientious man in our office, Ericson; why,
the Boss would trust him with anything." It saddened Carl to hear the
insurance adjuster boom, "Oh you Tottykins!" across the room, at
ten-minute intervals, like a human fog-horn on the sea of ennui.
They were all so uniformly polite, so neat-minded and church-going and
dull. Nearly all the girls did their hair and coquetries one exactly
like another. Carl is not to be pitied. He had the pleasure of
martyrdom when he heard the younger Johnson tell of Martinhurst, the
Suburb Beautiful. He believed that he had reached the nadir of
boredom. But he was mistaken.
After simple and pleasing refreshments of the wooden-plate and
paper-napkin school, Gertie announced: "Now we're going to have some
stunts, and you're each to give one. I know you all can, and if
anybody tries to beg off--my, what will happen----! My brother has a
new one----"
For the third time that month, Carl saw Ray turn his collar round and
become clerical, while every one rustled with delight, including the
jolly bantling clergyman.
And for the fourth time he saw Gertie dance "Gather the Golden
Sheaves." She appeared, shy and serious, in bloomers and flat
dancing-shoes, which made her ample calves bulge the more; she started
at sight of the harvest moon (and well she may have been astonished,
if she did, indeed, see a harvest moon there, above the gilded buffalo
horns on the unit bookcase), rose to her toes, flapped her arms, and
began to gather the sheaves to her breast, with enough plump and
panting energy to enable her to gather at least a quarter-section of
them before the whistle blew.
It was not only esthetic, but Close to the Soil.
Then, to banjo accompaniment, the insurance adjuster sighed for his
old Kentucky home, which Carl judged to have been located in Brooklyn.
The whole crowd joined in the chorus and----
Suddenly, with a shock that made him despise himself for the cynical
superiority which he had been enjoying, Carl remembered that Forrest
Haviland, Tony Bean, Hank Odell, even surly Jack Ryan and the alien
Carmeau, had sung "My Old Kentucky Home" on their last night at the
Bagby School. He felt their beloved presences in the room. He had to
fight against tears as he too joined in the chorus.... "Then weep no
more, my lady."... He was beside a California poppy-field. The
blossoms slumbered beneath the moon, and on his shoulder was the hand
of Forrest Haviland....
He had repented. He became part of the group. He spoke kindly to
Tottykins. But presently Tottykins postponed her well-advertised
return to her husband and baby, and gave a ten-minute dramatic recital
from Byron; and the younger Johnson sang a Swiss mountaineer song with
yodels.
Gertie looked speculatively at Carl twice during this offering. He knew
that the gods were plotting an abominable thing. She was going to call upon
him for the "stunt" which had been inescapably identified with him, the
song, "I went up in a balloon so big." He met the crisis heroically. He
said loudly, as the shaky strains of the Swiss ballad died on the midnight
mountain air of 157th Street (while the older men concealed yawns and
applauded, and the family in the adjoining flat rapped on the radiator):
"I'm sorry my throat 's so sore to-night. Otherwise I'd sing a song I
learned from a fellow in California--balloon s' big."
Gertie stared at him doubtfully, but passed to a kitten-faced girl
from Minnesota, who was quite ready to give an imitation of a child
whose doll has been broken. Her "stunt" was greeted with, "Oh, how
cun-ning! Please do it again!"
She prepared to do it again. Carl made hasty motions of departure,
pathetically holding his throat.
He did not begin to get restless till he had reached Ninety-sixth
Street and had given up his seat in the subway to a woman who
resembled Tottykins. He wondered if he had not been at the Old Home
long enough. At Seventy-second Street, on an inspiration that came as
the train was entering the station, he changed to a local and went
down to Fifty-ninth Street. He found an all-night garage, hired a
racing-car, and at dawn he was driving furiously through Long Island,
a hundred miles from New York, on a roadway perilously slippery with
falling snow.