Gilbert Palgrave turned back to his dressing table. An hour gave him
ample time to get ready.
"Don't let that bath get cold," he said. "And look here. You may take
those links out. I'll wear the pearls instead."
The small, eel-like Japanese murmured sibilantly and disappeared into
the bathroom.
This virginal girl, who imagined herself able to play with fire without
burning her fingers, was providing him with most welcome amusement. And
he needed it. He had been considerably bored of late--always a
dangerous mood for him to fall into. He was thirty-one. For ten years
he had paid far more than there had been any necessity to keep
constantly amused, constantly interested. Thanks to a shrewd ancestor
who had bought large tracts of land in a part of Manhattan which had
then been untouched by bricks and mortar, and to others, equally
shrewd, who had held on and watched a city spreading up the Island like
a mustard plant, he could afford whatever price he was asked to pay.
Whole blocks were his where once the sheep had grazed.
Ingenuity to spend his income was required of Palgrave. He possessed
that gift to an expert degree. But he was no easy mark, no mere
degenerate who hacked off great chunks of a splendid fortune for the
sake of violent exercise. He was too indolent for violence, too
inherently fastidious for degeneracy. And deep down somewhere in a
nature that had had no incentive to develop, there was the fag end of
that family shrewdness which had made the early Palgraves envied and
maligned. Tall and well built, with a handsome Anglo-Saxon type of
face, small, soft, fair mustache, large, rather bovine gray eyes, and a
deep cleft in his chin, he gave at first sight an impression of
strength--which left him, however, when he spoke to pretty women. It
was not so much the things he said,--light, jesting, personal
things,--as the indications they gave of the overweening vanity of the
spoiled boy and of a brain which occupied itself merely with the fluff
and thistledown of life. He was, and he knew it and made no effort to
disguise the fact, a typical specimen of the very small class of
indolent bystanders made rich by the energy of other men who are to be
found in every country. He was, in fact, the peculiar type of
aristocrat only to be found in a democracy--the aristocrat not of blood
and breeding or intellect, but of wealth. He was utterly without any
ambition to shine either in social life or politics, or to achieve
advertisement by the affectation of a half-genuine interest in any
cause. On the contrary, he reveled in being idle and indifferent, and
unlike the aristocrats of Europe he refused to catch that archaic
habit, encouraged at Eton and Oxford, of relating everything in the
universe to the standards and prejudices of a single class.
Palgrave was triumphantly one-eyed and selfish; but he waited, with a
sort of satirical wistfulness, for the time when some one person should
cause him to stand eager and startled in a chaos of individualism and
indolence and shake him into a Great Emotion. He had looked for her at
all times and places, though without any troublesome optimism or
personal energy, and had almost come to believe that she was to him
what the end of the rainbow is to the idealist. In marrying Alice he
had followed the path of least resistance. She was young, pretty and
charming, and had been very much in love with him. Also it pleased his
mother, and she had been worth pleasing. He gave his wife all that she
could possibly need, except very much of himself. She was a perfectly
dear little soul.
Joan only kept him waiting about fifteen minutes. With perfect patience
he stood in front of an Italian mirror in the drawing-room, smoking a
cigarette through a long tortoise-shell holder. He regarded himself
with keen and friendly interest, not in the least surprised that his
wife's little friend from the country so evidently liked him. He found
that he looked up to his best form, murmured a word of praise for the
manner in which his evening coat was cut and smiled once or twice in
order to have the satisfaction of getting a glimpse of his peculiarly
good teeth. Then he laughed, called himself a conceited ass and went
over to examine a rather virile sketch of a muscular, deep-chested
young man in rowing costume which occupied an inconspicuous place among
many well-chosen pictures. He recognized Martin, whom he had seen
several times following the hounds, and tried to remember if Alice had
told him whether Joan had run away with this strenuous young fellow or
been run away with by him. There was much difference between the two
methods.
He heard nothing, but caught the scent of Peau d'Espagne. It carried
his mind back to a charming little suite in the Hotel de Crillon in
Paris. He turned and found Joan standing in the doorway, watching him.
"Did you ever row?" she asked.
"No," he said, "never. Too much fag. I played squash and roulette. You
look like a newly risen moon in her first quarter. Where would you like
to go?"
"I don't know," said Joan. "Let's break away from the conventional
places. I rather want to see queer people and taste different food. But
don't let's discuss it. I leave it to you." She went downstairs. She
might have been living in that house for years.
He followed, admiring the way her small, patrician head was set on her
shoulders, and the rich brown note of her hair. Extraordinary little
person, this! He told his chauffeur to drive to the Brevoort, and got
into the car. It was possible at that hour to deal with the Avenue as a
street and not as a rest-cure interrupted by short spurts.
"Would you rather the windows were up, Gehane?" he asked, looking at
her through his long lashes.
"No. The air's full of new ferns. But why Gehane?"
"You remind me of her, and I'm pretty certain that you also could do
your hair in the same two long braids. Given the chance, I can see you
developing into some-thing like medievalism and joining the ranks of
women who loved greatly."
They passed the Plaza with all its windows gleaming, like a giant's
house in a fairy tale.
Joan shook her head. "No," she said. "No. I'm just the last word of
this very minute. Everybody in America for a hundred and fifty years
has worked to make me. I'm the reward of mighty effort. I'm the
dream-child of the pioneers, as far removed from them as the chimney of
the highest building from the rock on which it's rooted."
Palgrave laughed a little. "It appears that you did some thinking out
there in your country cage."
"Thinking! That's all I had to do! I spent a lifetime standing on the
hill with the woods behind me trying to catch the music of this street,
the sound of this very car, and I thought it all out, every bit of it."
"Every bit of what?"
"Life and death and the great hereafter," she said, "principally life.
That's why I'm going out to dinner with you instead of going early to
bed."
The glare of a lamp silvered her profile and the young curve of her
bosom. Somewhere, at some time, Palgrave had knelt humbly, with strange
anguish and hunger, at the feet of a girl with just that young proud
face and those unawakened eyes. The memory of it was like an echo of an
echo.
"Why," said Joan, halting for a moment on her way to the steps of the
old hotel, "this looks like a picture postcard of a bit of Paris."
"Yes, on the other side of the Seine, near the Odeon. Our grandfathers
imagined that they were very smart when they stayed here. It's one of
the few places in town that has atmosphere."
"I like it," said Joan.
The hall was alive with people, laughing and talking, and the walls
with the rather bold designs of the posters. A band, which made up in
vim and go what it lacked in numbers, was playing a selection from "The
Chocolate Soldier." The place was full of the smell of garlic and
cigarette smoke and coffee. There was a certain dramatic animation
among the waiters, characteristically Latin. Few of the diners wore
evening clothes. The walls were refreshingly free from the hideous gold
decorations of the average hotel.
Men stared at Joan with undisguised interest and approbation. Her
virginity was like the breath of spring in the room. Women looked after
Palgrave in the same way. Into that semi-Bohemianism he struck a rather
surprising note, like the sudden advent of caviar and champagne upon a
table of beer and pickles.
They were given a table near the wall by the window, far too close to
other tables for complete comfort. Waiters were required to be gymnasts
to slide between them and avoid an accident. Palgrave ordered without
any hesitation, like a newspaper man finding his way through a daily
paper.
"How do you like it?" he said.
Joan looked about her. Mostly the tables were occupied by a man and a
woman, but at a few were four and six of both in equal numbers, and
here and there parties of men. At one or two, women with eccentric
heads sat together in curious garments which had the appearance of
being made at home on the spur of the moment. They smoked between
mouthfuls and laughed without restraint. Some of the men wore longish
hair and the double tie of those who wish to be mistaken for
dramatists. Others affected a poetic disarrangement of collar, and
fantastic beards. There were others who had wandered over the border of
middle age and who were bald and strangely adipose, with mackerel eyes
and unpleasant mouths. They were with young girls, gaudily but shabbily
dressed, shopgirls perhaps, or artists' models or stenographers, who in
dull and sordid lives grappled any chance to obtain a square meal, even
if it had to be accessory to such companionship. The minority of men
present was made up of honest, clean, commonplace citizens who were
there for a good dinner in surroundings that offered a certain stimulus
to the imagination.
"Who are they all?" asked Joan, beating time with a finger to the
lilting tune which the little band had just begun, with obvious
enjoyment. "Adventurers, mostly, I imagine," replied Palgrave, not
unpleased to play Baedeker to a girl who was becoming more and more
attractive to him. "I mean people who live by their wits--writers,
illustrators, actors, newspaper men, with a smattering of Wall Street
brokers seeking a little mild diversion as we are, and foreigners to
whom this place has a sentimental interest because it reminds them of
home. Sophisticated children, most of them, optimists with moments of
hideous pessimism, enthusiasts at various stages of Parnassus, the peak
of which is lighted with a huge dollar sign. A friendly, kindly lot,
hard-working and temperamental, with some brilliance and a rather high
level of cleverness--slaves of the magazine, probably, and therefore
not able to throw stones farther into the future than the end of the
month. This is not a country in which literature and art can ever grow
big; the cost of living is too high. The modern Chatterton detests
garrets and must drive something with an engine in it, whatever the
name it goes by."
There was one electrical moment during the next hour which shook the
complacency of every one in the larger room and forced the thoughts,
even of those who deliberately turned their backs to the drama of
Europe, out across the waters which they fondly and fatuously hoped cut
off the United States from ever being singed by the blaze. The little
band was playing one of those rather feeble descriptive pieces which
begin with soft, peaceful music with the suggestion of the life of a
farmyard, and the sound of church bells, swing into the approach of
armed men with shrill bugle calls, become chaotic with the rush of
fearful women and children, and the commencement of heavy artillery,
and wind up with the broad triumphant strains of a national anthem. It
happened, naturally enough, that the particular national anthem chosen
by the energetic and patriotic man who led the band at the piano was
"The Marseillaise."
The incessant chatter and laughter went on as usual. The music had no
more effect upon the closely filled room than a hackneyed ragtime.
Suddenly, as the first few notes of that immortal air rang out, a
little old white-haired man, dining in a corner with a much-bosomed,
elderly woman, sprang to his feet and in a voice vibrating with the
fervor of emotion screamed "Vive la France--vive la patrie!" again and
again.
Instantly, from here and there, other men, stout and middle-aged,
lifted out of their chairs by this intense and beautiful burst of
feeling, joined in that old heart-cry, and for two or three shattering
minutes the air was rent with hoarse shouts of "Vive Joffre," "Vive la
France," "Vive la patrie," to the louder and louder undercurrent of
music. Indifference, complacency, neutrality, gave way. There was a
general uprising and uproar; and America, as represented by that olla
podrida of the professions, including the one which is the oldest in
the world, paid homage and tribute and yelled sympathy to those few
Frenchmen among them whose passionate love of country found almost
hysterical vent at the sound of the hymn which had stirred all France
to a height of bravery and sacrifice never before reached in the
history of nations.
There were one or two hisses and several scoffing laughs, but these
were instantly drowned by vigorous hand-clapping. The next moment the
room resumed its normal appearance.
When Palgrave, who had been surprised to find himself on his feet, sat
down again, he saw that Joan's lips were trembling and that there were
tears in her eyes. He gave a little laugh, but before he could say any
thing, her hand was on his arm. "No, don't," she said. "Let it go
without a single word. It was too good for sarcasm."
"Oddly enough, I had no sarcasm ready," replied Palgrave. "When our
time comes, I wonder whether we shall have an eightieth part of that
enthusiasm for our little old tune. What do you think?"
"Our time? What time?"
"The time when we have to get into this melee or become the pariah dog
among countries. I don't profess to any knowledge of international
affairs, but any fool can see that our sham neutrality will be the most
costly piece of political blundering ever perpetrated in history. Here
we are in 1915. The war's nine months old. For every day we stand aside
we shall eventually pay a year's bill."
"That's all too deep for me," said Joan. "And anyway, I shan't be asked
to pay anything. What shall we do now?"
"What would you like to do? Go on to the Ritz and dance?" He had a
sudden desire to hold this girl in his arms.
"Why not? I'm on the verge of getting fed up with this place. Let's
give civilization a turn."
"I think so." He beckoned to his waiter. "The check," he said. "Sharp's
the word, please."
The Crystal Room was not content with one band. Even musicians must
sometimes pause for breath, and anything like a break in the jangle and
noise might bring depression to the diners who had crowded in to dance.
As soon, therefore, as the left band was exhausted, the one on the
right sprang in with renewed and feverish energy. Whatever melody there
might have been in the incessant ragtime and fox trots was lost beneath
the bang and clang of drum and cymbals, to which had been added other
more ingenious ear tortures in the shape of rattles and whistles.
Broken-collared men and faded women struggled for elbow room like a
mass of flies caught on sticky paper. There was something both
heathenish and pathetic in the whole thing. The place was reekingly hot.
"Come on," said Joan, her blood stirred by the movement and sound.
Palgrave held her close and edged his way into the crowd between
pointed bare elbows and tightly clasped hands.
"They call this dancing!" he said.
"What do you call it?"
"A bullfight in Hades." And he laughed and put his cheek against her
hair and held her young slim body against his own. What did he care
what it was or where they were? He had all the excuse that he needed to
get the sense and scent of her. His utter distaste of being bruised and
bumped, and of adding himself to a heterogeneous collection of people
with no more individuality than sheep, who followed each other from
place to place in flocks after the manner of sheep, left him. This girl
was something more than a young, naive creature from the country,
childishly keen to do everything and go everywhere at fever
heat--something more than the very epitome of triumphant youth as clean
and sweet as apple blossoms, with whom to flirt and pose as being the
blase man of the world, the Mr. Know-All of civilization, a wild flower
in a hot house. Attracted at once by her exquisite coloring and
delicious profile, and amused by her imperative manner and intolerant
point of view, he had now begun to be piqued and intrigued by her
insurgent way of treating marriage and of ignoring her husband--by her
assumption of sexlessness and the fact that she was unmoved by his
compliments and looked at him with eyes in which there was no remote
suggestion of physical interest.
And it was this attitude, new to him hitherto on his easy way, that
began to challenge him, to stir in him a desire to bring her down to
his own level, to make her fall in love and become what he called
human. He had given her several evenings, and had put himself out to
cater to her eager demand to see life and burn the night away in crowds
and noise. He had treated her, this young, new thing, as he was in the
habit of treating any beautiful woman with whom he was on the verge of
an affair and who realized the art of give and take. But more than ever
she conveyed the impression of sex detachment to which he was wholly
unaccustomed. He might have been any inarticulate lad of her own age,
useful as a companion, to be ordered to fetch and carry, dance or walk,
go or come. At that moment there was no woman in the city for whom he
would undergo the boredom and the bruising and the dementia of such a
place as the one to which she had drawn him. He was not a provincial
who imagined that it was the smart thing to attend this dull orgy and
struggle on a polished floor packed as in a sardine tin. Years ago he
had outgrown cabaret mania and recovered from the fascination of
syncopation. And yet here he was, once more, against all his
fastidiousness, playing the out-of-town lad to a girl who took
everything and gave nothing in return. It was absurd, fantastic. He was
Gilbert Palgrave, the man who picked and chose, for whose attentions
many women would give their ears, who stood in satirical aloofness from
the general ruck; and as he held Joan in his arms and made sporadic
efforts to dance whenever there was a few inches of room in which to do
so, using all his ingenuity to dodge the menace of the elbows and feet
of people who pushed and forced as though they were in a subway crush,
he told himself that he would make it his business from that moment
onward to lay siege to Joan, apply to her all his well-proved gifts of
attraction and eventually make her pay his price for services rendered.
He had just arrived at this cold-blooded determination when, to his
complete astonishment and annoyance, a strong, muscular form thrust
itself roughly between himself and Joan and swept her away.