a red chair waving a peacock fan. Gurdy’s friend kissed the arm she
thrust out and told her, “You look awfully well, Miss Joyce.”
The dancer nodded, beaming down at her painted feet in their sandals
of blue leather. Through her nose she said, “Feelin’ fine,” then in
throaty refinement, “Do get Choute Aurec to dance. She’s so difficult
now she’s had a success. So very difficult--Rodin used to say--” Her
empty and tired stare centred on Gurdy. With a vague dignity she asked,
“Do I know you?”
“Corporal Bernamer’s from Chicago,” the guide said.
Miss Joyce planted a thumb under her chin and drawled, “De mon pays!”
then her eyes rolled away. She reached for a silver cup on a table and
forgot her guests. Looking back, Gurdy saw her famous head thrown back
and, for a moment, comely as she drank.
“Bakst,” said his friend, jerking a hand about to show the walls of
grey paint where strange beasts cavorted among spiked trees, above the
mixed and coloured motion of the crowd. An American was playing ragtime
at the gold piano, in a clot of women. Choute Aurec was teaching a
British aviator some new dance. Beyond, a mass of women and officers
surrounded a lean shape on a divan. They gazed, gaped, craned at the
young man. His decorations twinkled in the glow. His blue chest stirred
when he spoke and his teeth flashed. Gurdy’s companion murmured, “They
say he’s got ten times more sense than most prize-fighters.... I think
that thin man’s Bernstein--the one with a dinner jacket. You get drinks
in the next room. Oh, there’s Alixe!”
He ran off. Gurdy slid through the mingling harlots and warriors
into the next, cooler room, fringed with men drinking champagne. An
American colonel glared at him over a glass, shifted the glare back to
a handsome ensign who had penned a blond girl in a corner. Gurdy found
a tray covered with sandwiches and ate one, pondering. He wondered
whether the ensign would go on trying to kiss the girl if he knew
that she had been, last month, on trial for the technical murder of
an octogenarian general. Well, morals were illusory, too. Some one
slapped his shoulder. He saw Ian Gail. The playwright was dressed as a
British captain. “Intelligence,” he said, “I’m too old and adipose for
anything else. And we shouldn’t be here, should we? A poisonous place.”
“Funny mixture.”
“Pride,” said Gail, “The poor woman can’t stand being neglected so she
gives these atrocious parties. But it’s nice running into you, old
son. I’d a letter from Mark yesterday. He told me you were here and I
was coming to look you up tomorrow in any case. I’m just from London.
Olive Ilden and Margot are hoping you’ll get leave to come over for
Christmas. Can’t you?”
“I don’t quite see how I can, sir.”
“But do try. I think you’d cheer Olive up. Margot’s a jolly little
thing but frightfully busy celebrating the peace. How decent of Mark
to let her stay with Olive! I fancied he’d take her back to the States
directly the war began.”
“Submarines,” Gurdy said, “But why does Mrs. Ilden need cheering up,
sir? She used to be an awfully cheerful sort of person.”
“Oh,” said Gail, “her boy--Bobby.”
“I hadn’t heard he--”
“Fell a year ago. Do try to run over.... How pretty Margot is!”
Gurdy ate another sandwich, correcting champagne. There would be long
illusions after this war. Grudges, idealized memories of trivial folk.
But he was sorry for Olive Ilden. He said, “I’ll try to get over.
I’ll--”
Choute Aurec ran through the doorway, yelped, “Ariane va danser,
messieurs, dames!” and darted out again.
“What did that incontinent little brute say?” Gail asked.
“I think Miss Joyce is going to dance,” said Gurdy.
“It’s disgusting,” the Englishman snorted, “Some cad always flatters
her into dancing and the poor woman falls on her face. Don’t go.”
The doorway filled with watchers. Women giggled. Some one played
slowly the first bars of the Volga Barge song. There was an applausive
murmur--then a thud. “She’s fallen,” said Gail and suddenly Gurdy
remembered that this was an American, that he had seen her dance to the
jammed ecstasy of the Metropolitan. The women in the doorway squealed
their amusement. The crowd parted and he saw the green gauze wrapping
her limp body as two Frenchmen carried her back to her throne. The
crowd applauded, now.
“Swine,” said Gail.
Gurdy summoned up his philosophy and shrugged. The young prize-fighter
came through the press and snapped to a civilian, “Je me sauve,
Etienne!”
“Mais--”
“C’est nauséabonde! Elle était artiste, vois tu? Allons; je file!”
“The boy’s right,” said the playwright, “Sickening. Come along.” They
passed through the beginning of a dance in the great chamber and down
the stairs into an alley where motors were lined. In a taxicab Gail
concluded, “End of an artist.”
Gurdy thought this sententious but a queer oppression filled him. It
was hideous that any one should finish as a butt with a prize-fighter
for apologist. Of course, life was nothing but a meaningless spectacle.
Money, something to drink, a dancing floor drew this crowd together.
The fat dancer was rather funny, if one looked it all over. Mark could
contrive the whole effect on a stage if he wanted.
“Mark writes that he’s almost decided to build his theatre in West
Forty Seventh.”
“I wish he’d hurry,” said Gurdy, “He’s been planning the Walling
for years. Funny. He told Mr. Frohman all about it just before the
_Lusitania_.”
“Poor Frohman,” the Englishman murmured, “Awfully decent to me.”
There should be a certain decency, a cool restraint in life, the
philosopher mused. He thought of this next morning when Choute Aurec
telephoned hopefully for a loan of a thousand francs. By noon he had
discovered that he was flatly homesick for Mark and thought of Margot
in London as the nearest familiar creature. The bureau permitted his
departure. He crossed a still Channel and made his way to London
in the company of an earnest Red Cross girl from Omaha who wanted
Fontainebleau turned into a reform school for rescued Parisian street
walkers. She had a General for uncle and Gurdy feared that she would be
able to forward her plan to the French government.
“D’you really feel that we’ve any business telling the French what to
do with their own homes?”
“But Fontainebleau could be made into a real home, Corpril!”
“So could Mount Vernon.”
“It’s too small. Fontainebleau’s so huge. All those rooms.”
“You don’t think that it’s any use just letting it stay beautiful?”
“But it isn’t really beautiful,” the young woman retorted, “It’s so
much of it Renaissance, you know?”
He was still hating this vacuity when the taxicab left him at Mrs.
Ilden’s house in Chelsea. The butler told him that “Lady Ilden” was not
at home and guided him through grey halls to a bedroom. Gurdy washed,
tried to recall Ilden’s rank in the British navy and the name of
Olive’s last novel. He strolled downstairs and met Margot in the lower
hall without knowing it. He saw a slim person in stark yellow reading
a letter and was startled when the girl said, “Good God, they didn’t
tell me you’d got here! Come and help me stick this holly about in the
library.”
She thrust a bowl filled with small sprays of holly into his hands and
frowned between the wings of her black, bobbed hair. He remembered her
plump. She was slender. She still wore glittering pumps with silver
buckles. When she chuckled it was in the former chime. She exclaimed,
“Of course! Uncle Eddie was born in Norway, wasn’t he?”
“I think dad was born in the steerage, coming over,” Gurdy said.
“You’re not at all American, anyhow,” she announced, “and that’s a
relief. I’m quite mad about Scandinavians. Only sensible people in
Europe. Come along. There’s a rehearsal in half a minute and--”
“Rehearsal?”
“Charity show. Barge along. This way.”
He grinned and followed her into the long library where she tossed bits
of holly to and fro on the shelves. She said, “Cosmo Rand’s rehearsing
us. Better not tell that to dad. He mightn’t like it.”
“Who’s Cosmo?”
“Cora Boyle’s husband. They’re playing here. Don’t get shocked about
it.”
“Don’t see anything to get shocked about. So Cora Boyle’s over here
again? What’s she playing?”
“A silly melodrama. She’s at the Diana. Saw her the other night. She’s
getting fat. Ought to be a law against fat women wearing old rose.”
“You’ve lost some weight,” Gurdy said.
“Work, old thing, work! Sewing shirts for snipers. Dancing with
convalescents.--It’s beastly you’ve got so tall. I hate looking up at
men.”
Gurdy laughed down at her and asked, “When did Mrs. Ilden get to be
Lady Ilden?”
“Jutland. It’s just the Bath, not a baronetcy. Olive’s at church.”
“I thought she was agnostic?”
Margot said gently, “It takes them that way, rather often. She’s been
to church a goodish bit ever since Bobby--”
“Oh, yes. Young Ilden was killed.--What sort of person was he?”
“One of the silent, strong Empire builders--but nice about it....
Olive’s aged, rather.” She planted the last holly spray on the lap
of a gilt Buddha then smiled at Gurdy across a yellow shoulder, “I’d
forgotten how blue your eyes are. Almost violet. Goes with your hair.
Very effective.... Your chin’s still too big.... Oh, a letter from Dad
this morning. He was thinking of running over. But Carlson’s worse....
D’you know, it’d be a noble deed to poison Carlson. There he is stuck
in the house. Why don’t useless people like that dry up and blow away?”
“I don’t think he’s useless,” Gurdy argued, “He makes Mark put on a
comedy now and then. He swears better than any one I know. And you
ought to be grateful to him. If Mark hadn’t had him for company you’d
probably have been hauled home long ago.”
Margot opened a Russian, lead box on a table and lit a cigarette. She
said, “Don’t think so. Dad’s never made the slightest sign of hauling
me home. Especially after Mr. Frohman.... Ugh! I almost had nervous
prostration, when I heard Dad had sailed after the _Lusitania_!” Her
lids fell and shook the astonishing lashes against the pale brown of
her cheeks. Then she chuckled, “The joke is, I’d as soon have gone
home long ago. I’m mad about Olive, of course. And I’ve had all sorts
of a good time. But I’d rather be home.... How’s your mother?” He
was answering when the butler barked names from the doorway. Margot
whispered, “Run. The rehearsal. Go hide in the drawing room. These are
all bores.”
He passed out through a group of men and girls, encountered a Colonel
of the British General Staff in the hall and was cordially halted. He
stood discussing military shoes with this dignitary as Olive Ilden let
herself into the hall. Gurdy recalled her slim and tall. Now that he
looked down, she seemed stout, no longer handsome but the deep voice
remained charming as it rose from her black veils. She led him off into
the drawing room and said, at once, “Margot’s pretty, isn’t she?”
“Yes. Mark’s been raving about her but I thought--”
“You thought he was idealizing, after his customary manner? He sent me
a picture of you, so I’m not surprised. Don’t sit in that chair. It’s
for pygmies.... I want to talk about Margot and it’s likely we won’t
have another chance. You two don’t write each other letters. Had you
heard from Mark that she wants to play?”
“Play?”
“Be an actress. I thought I’d better warn you,” Olive laughed, “I
don’t know when it started. I know Mark wouldn’t like it. Otherwise
the child’s the delight of my life.” She sank into a couch and asked,
“Now, what are these diplomatic idiots doing in Paris? I don’t like the
look of things.”
“Arranging for another war.”
“I do hope they’ll arrange it for twenty years from date. I’ll be past
sixty then and I won’t care. I’ll be able to sit and grin at the women
who’re going through what--Only, of course, I shouldn’t grin. I’m a
true blue Briton of the old breed when it comes to an emotion. I simply
can’t enjoy an emotion when it’s my emotion.... Had you ever thought
that that’s why bad plays and cinema rubbish are so popular? It’s the
unreality of the passions.... I dare say that’s why I’ve just been to
church.... Perhaps that’s why Margot wants to go on the stage. She’s
never had an emotion worth shedding a tear for. Well, how’s Mark?”
“Putting on three plays after Christmas and thinks they’re all winners.”
She drew her hands over her eyes and murmured, “Mark’s extraordinary.
Endless enthusiasm. Like a kiddy with a box of water colours. I suppose
it’s belief. He really believes in his job.... I once thought he
needed education.... If he’d been educated, he couldn’t have believed
so hard.... There has to be something childish to get along in the
theatre.... If he were worldly wise he’d have known half these plays
were rubbish and the rest not very good.... But I’m not sure what a
good play is, Gurdy. Tell me. You’re young, so you should know.”
He flushed, then laughed and asked what play Margot and her friends
rehearsed. The loud, spaced voices came across the hall. He felt an
unruly curiosity stir.
“It’s a one act thing of Ronny Dufford’s--Colonel the Honourable Ronald
Dufford. Quite a pal of Margot’s. That was he talking to you in the
hall just now--the Brass Hat. What are you laughing at?”
“Wondering what would happen to an American General Staff man if
he wrote plays.... Dufford? Mark put a thing of his on in nineteen
sixteen. It failed.”
“His things are rather thin. He’s been nice to Margot, though. He took
her about when I was in mourning--He’s a good sort. Forty eight or
so. I dare say he lectured Margot on the greatness of Empire and the
sacredness of the House of Lords. It didn’t hurt her. She hears enough
about the sacredness of the plain people, in the studios.”
“I thought you were an anti-imperialist and an anarchist?”
The tired woman laughed, “So I am.... It was tremendous fun being all
the right things when I was young and anarchists were rather few. I
expect you’re a cubist and a communist and agnostic and don’t believe
in marriage. So many of them don’t. Then they get married to prove the
soundness of their theory and get hurt; then they’re annoyed because
they’re hurt and get interested in being married. Most amusing to
watch.... The world’s got past me and I’m frightened by it.--We had
such a good time railing at the Victorians and repression. And now all
the clever young things tell their emotions to cab drivers and invent
emotions if they haven’t any.--All the gestures have changed and I
feel--You look rather like Mark. You know he was stopping at Winchester
when he heard Margot’s father’d been killed. I tried to shock him.
He.... Oh, do go and watch them rehearse, Gurdy!... I’ve just come from
church.... The music’s made me silly. I don’t know what I’m saying....”
The artifice smashed into a sob. Gurdy swung and hurried across the
hall. Certainly, the woman’s illusion of pain was notably real.
He sat smoking on a window seat of the library and tried to follow
the rehearsal at the other end of the wide room. The men and girls
strode about talking loudly. A slender man in grey broke the chatter
from time to time and gave directions in a level, pleasing voice. This
must be Cosmo Rand, the husband of Cora Boyle. Gurdy looked at him
with interested scorn but the amateurs took his orders in docile peace
and only Margot answered him from a deep green chair, “Rot, Cossy! I’m
supposed to be lost in thought, aren’t I? Then I shan’t look interested
when Stella giggles. Go on, Stella.”
Gurdy became intent on her posture in the dark chair. She was smoking
and her hair appeared through the vapour like solid, carved substance.
She seemed fixed, a black and yellow figure on the green. A vaporous
halo rose in the lamplight above her head. He stirred when she spoke
again, shifting, and a silver buckle sent a spark of light flitting
across the rug. He remembered that she had Italian blood from her
grandmother. She looked Italian. Mark was right. She was beautiful in
no common fashion. The other girls vibrating against the shelves were
mere bodies, gurgling voices.--The butler stole down the room and spoke
to Cosmo Rand who, in turn, spoke aloud.
“I say, Margot, Cora’s brought the motor around. Might I have her in?
Chilly and she’s been feeling rather seedy.”
A tall woman in black velvet entered as if this were a stage and
reposed herself in a chair. Gurdy had never seen Cora Boyle perform.
She was familiar from pictures when she drew up a veil across an
obvious beauty of profile and wide eyes. Presently she commenced a
cigarette and the motion of lighting it was admirably effected. An
expanding, heavy scent of maltreated tobacco welled from the burning
roll between her fingers. The line of her brows was prolonged downward
with paint. The whole mask was tinted to a false and gleaming pallor.
Grey furs were arranged about the robustness of her upper body. She was
older than Mark, Gurdy’s father said. She must be passing forty. She
should be weary of tight slippers. A glance stopped Gurdy’s meditation.
He looked away at Margot’s effortless stroll along the imagined
footlights. Cora Boyle spoke to him in a flat and pinched whisper.
“Isn’t your name Bernamer?” He bowed. She came to sit with him on the
window seat and dusted ash from her cigarette into the Chinese bowl.
Her eyes explored his face with a civil amusement. “You look awfully
like your father. You startled me. Let me see.... You and Miss Walling
live with Mark, don’t you? Sweet, isn’t she? And how is Mark? I’ve
played over here so long that I’ve rawther lost touch. Mr. Carlson’s
still alive?”
“Oh, yes. He’s bedridden, you know? Lives with Mark.”
She inhaled smoke, nodding.
“That’s so characteristic of Mark, isn’t it? But of course, Carlson was
kind to him. The dear old man’s bark was much worse than his bite. Good
heavens how frightened I was of him! I see that Mark acted in a couple
of Red Cross shows? I expect that all his old matinée girls turned out
and cried for joy.... But I do think that Mark was something more than
a flapper’s dream of heaven. Still, he must like management better.
He never thought more of acting than that it was a job, did he?” She
sighed, “One has to think more of it than that to get on.”
Gurdy wished that this woman didn’t embarrass him, resenting her
perfumed cigarette and the real, frail loveliness of her hands. The
embarrassment ended. Rand told the amateurs that they weren’t half bad
and departed with his wife, a trim, boyish figure behind her velvet
bulk. Colonel Dufford implored the grouped players to learn their
lines. Margot was much kissed by the other girls, dismissed them and
came in a sort of dance step to ask Gurdy what he thought of her acting.
“Couldn’t hear you. I had to talk to Miss Boyle. Ugly voice she has.
Are people really crazy about her here?”
Margot frowned and pursed her lips, tapping a cigarette on a nail.
“Oh, she has a following. They don’t dither about her as they do over
Elsie whatsername and some of the other Americans. Dull, isn’t she?”
“Very. She made a point of talking about Mark.--Lady Ilden’s all broken
up, isn’t she?”
“She’s too repressed,” Margot explained. “Tried not to show it when
Bobby fell and so she’s been showing it ever since. And Sir John’s been
at sea constantly and that’s a strain. He’s in Paris, now.--You don’t
show your feelings at all, do you? I was watching you talk to the Boyle
and you beamed very nicely. And you must have been bored. One of those
rather sticky women. Come and play pool. There’s an American table.”
He played pool and stolidly listened to her ripple of comments. She
had a natural disrespect for the American army that flashed up. “The
men did all they could, I dare say, but, my God, Gurdy, what thugs the
officers were! Some of them turned up at a garden party where the King
dropped in and he went to speak to one. The thing was cleaning its
nails in a corner and it shook hands with its pocket knife in the other
hand. I fainted and Ronny Dufford lugged me home in a taxi. I say, do
let me have St. Ledger Grant do a pastel of you. Dad would love it and
St. Ledger needs ten pounds as badly as any one in Cheyne Walk.”
“Who’s Sillijer?”
“Artist. Poor bloke who got patriotic and lost a leg in the Dardanelles
mess. Serve him right and so on but he’s ghastly poor.”
“You a pacifist?”
“Rather!”
“That’s why you like the Scandinavians? Because they stayed out?”
“Right. I forgive you though because you’re young and simple and your
legs are rather jolly in those things.” She twisted her head to stare
at his leggings and the black hair rose, settled back into its carved
composure below the strong, shaded lamp. The clear red of her lips
parted as she laughed, “Not a blush? Made the world safe for democracy
and aren’t proud of it? How did your friends get through? That rather
sweet lad who used to come to lunch when you were at school? Lacy--?”
“Lacy Martin. Lost a leg.”
She frowned. “Doesn’t matter so much for a chap like that with billions
but--the artists. I must have St. Ledger do you. We’ll go there
tomorrow. I had Cosmo--Rand have himself done.”
Gurdy made a shot and said, “Rand’s a much prettier subject than I’d
be.”
“Don’t get coy, my lad! You’re rather imposing and you know it.--Like
to meet Gilbert Chesterton? You used to read his junk. I can have you
taken there. Never met him, myself.”
“No thanks.--What’s that bell?”
“Dress for dinner. You can’t. I must.--I say, you’re altogether
different from what I thought you’d be.”
“What did you think?”
“I couldn’t possibly tell you but I’m damned glad you’re not. The
butler can make cocktails. Dad taught him in nineteen seventeen.”
The butler brought him an evil mixture. Gurdy emptied it into the
fireplace and leaned on the pool table wondering what Margot had
expected. It didn’t matter, of course. Yet she might recall him as a
sixteen year old schoolboy much absorbed in polevaults and stiff with
conceit for some acquirements in English letters. How people changed
and how foolish it was to be surprised at change! Sophomoric. Mark
really knew a pretty woman when he saw one. A man of genuine taste
outside the selection of plays.--She must know London expertly. She
must have a sense of spectacle. She must meet all conditions with this
liberal, successful woman as a guide. If she wanted a pastel made for
Mark she should have it. Gurdy dusted chalk from his leggings, evenly
taped about the long strength of his calves, strolled into the drawing
room and played the languid movement of the Faun’s Afternoon. Illusory
or not there was always beauty in the blended exterior of things. A
man should turn from the inner crassness to soothe himself with the
fair investiture, with the drift of delicate motions that went in
colour and music.--Olive thought him like Mark as she came in. She was
worried because Gail had written of meeting the boy on Montmartre.
“You’ve been enjoying Paris?”
“More or less. It’s a holy show, just now. I don’t suppose the
barkeepers--and other parasites--will ever have such a chance again.”
“I hope you’ve not been in too much mischief. Ian Gail wrote me that he
met you in some horrid hole or other.”
“A party at Ariana Joyce’s. I wasn’t doing any more harm there than the
rest of the Allied armies. But it was pretty odious.” The memory jarred
into the present satisfaction. He halted his long fingers on the keys
and Margot came rustling in, her gown of sheer black muslin painted
with yellow flowers and gold combs in her hair.
“Were you playing L’Après Midi?--And he’s only twenty, Olive! Most
Americans don’t rise to respectable music until they’ve lost all their
money and have to come and live over here. Any nails in your shoes,
Gurdy? We’re going to a dance.”
“Where?” asked Olive.
“Something for war widows at Mrs. Rossiter-Rossiter-Rossiter’s--that
fat woman from Victoria. I promised some one or other I’d come. We’ll
go in time for supper.”
The charity dance seemed less fevered than dances in Paris. There were
ranks of matrons about the walls of a dull, long room. At midnight
Margot rescued him from a girl who was using him as an introduction to
American economics and found a single table in the supper hall. Here
the batter of ill played ragtime was endurable and the supping folk
entertained him.
“The country’s so ghastly with houses shut and no servants that most
people have stuck to town,” Margot said, refusing wine. “Lot of
eminences here. Who’re you looking at?”