We looked as if we were prepared to say that we were beaten by the
city. But in fairness we could not altogether put it down to the city
that it had been a trying day--as our mothers would have called it,
although we would have used a stronger term. It was the end of the
winter’s gaieties, and the beginning of the hot weather, and what we
liked to call the humidity had begun to roll in from the ocean and fall
upon us. The pigeons wheeled more languidly, the sparrows fought with
less ferocity, and even the gulls following the rivers up from the sea
might have had no real hope so half-heartedly did they dip, and recover
themselves, and go on their pilgrimage.
We came from a tea-party where our souls had been dipped in vinegar.
For at the tea-party two of our friends had, as Winnie Conant put it,
behaved like wild cats. We toiled up the stairs, from the last stop
of the elevator, to the penthouse wherein we were to partake of an
informal supper; and in a despairing effort to enjoy ourselves we
trouped along shouting to each other, not a whit abashed by the heads
of tenants who glared through doors on the jar. Divided by floors, our
heads called to each other over the banisters, sophisticated cherubs
with wings and no legs. James Pomeroy said in a stage whisper: “Call
out the names of ‘us’ loudly enough, and you will start up a hue and
cry; and tomorrow these people will buy your books. Never neglect a
chance of advertising amongst the masses.” Slightly out of breath, but
foppish in his use of his hands, he opened the question of a possible
marriage with Priscilla Swords. Winnie Conant wanted to know why he
felt the urge to do this revolutionary thing. “Besides, you have a
wife,” she added, economizing her usual flow of words because of the
ascent.
Pomeroy halted to adjust his eye-glasses. The narrow black
ribbon waggled jauntily from his extended little finger.
“Winnie--dearest!--don’t be literal? That could be arranged.”
No one discussed the recent antics of Eva Litchfield and Molly
Underhill because they climbed the stairs with us.
The hostess unlocked her door, and we were at once in the most unique
small residence in town. No one looked around. We wanted to sit in
comfortable chairs and tell our thoughts. To this day, none of us has
the slightest conception of how that room looks. It will always, for
us, be swathed in the memory of knots of people who at once told all.
I had a twinge of anticipatory horror when I realized that Florence
Quincy had captured the chair next the one to which I dashed. The
women were collecting in groups, hard at it talking; and I needed to
talk to men. Our hostess lifted chastened eyes--the eyes of a nun with
a past: “Oh, do you really think it a nice party? Oh, how good you
are to me!” I said to Florence: “This woman will have us telling the
worst about ourselves. We’ll do it anyway; we’re proud of the worst in
ourselves.”
Florence was in a fractious mood. “There’s no way of getting around
it--a spit of conventionality runs through me, pinning me to discomfort
when I stop long enough to think. The thing is, not to stop long enough
to think. Possibly I’m an invertebrate? When Molly Underhill and Eva
Litchfield pull their scenes, such as we had to live through this
afternoon, the spirit of Cotton Mather--or is it Jonathan Edwards?--not
that it matters--seizes on my brain and I think that the best way to
fix it is to drop a bomb in our next party and lay us all low at the
feet of Saint Peter. If you can stop being a champion of Eva and her
divine right to behave as she pleases--what did you think of it, Dinah?”
It had been a tea given by Molly’s publisher in order that she might
read her latest poem to the usual scratch lot of people who would hate
the poem.
Without waiting for a reply, Florence continued: “I acknowledge that
Molly snivelled through her nose in high C, and that it was enough to
make the gods revolt. But--and this is more to the point, naturally,
for I’m a selfish woman and like my ease--it made me feel torn inside
by screams I’m too much of an inherited lady to release, that Eva
staged her scene as soon as Molly finished hers. I call it beastly
selfish of her.”
“With both of them,” stated Winnie Conant, “it’s a case of suppressed
sex.”
My attention attracted by a gaze full upon us, I glanced up. Charles
Glidden looked at each of us in turn, between the eyes and not into
them; he might have been a surgeon who had operated on these brains and
was watching the reactions. For the moment seeing through the lenses of
his analytical eyes, it ran through the minds of each of us, I daresay,
that it was not a question of what was moral and what was immoral,
because what we did was incited by our nerves and not by our emotions.
His eyes--which might have had no lids, so immovable were they--seemed
to say that men were the poor deluded moths flying head-on into the
dazzle of electricity. What I had been about to remark fell into a
dead silence; he disconcerted me. But Winnie was of a hardier nature:
she asserted that only the surface of Eva Litchfield was vitreous.
“Underneath, if she’d only acknowledge it, she’s a human being like
the rest of us. But she would die sooner than own up. With Molly, the
surface is quite ordinary, while inside--who knows? Therefore, she
gives out that she is having one affair after another.”
With his smile, which might have been the outward sign of tremendous
inner laughter except that it was without human mirth, Glidden said
that this was no place for a modest man; and with his cold stare on us
he might, in spite of his words of repudiation, have made up his mind
to see it through, as he would, without weakening in his purpose of
observing stripped emotions, have seen through all conflicts between
living organisms from the flea circus to the circus of life. He said:
“Do you like to peer and pry into the insides of those whom you call
friends? I ask in no spirit of censure. But I’m interested in the
workings of the mind of a realist. Why do you realists go the whole
way? You may be said to tell all about your hero’s toe nails. It’s
so disgusting. Who cares about toe nails? Eva, thank God, is not a
realist.”
“Her work is almost precious,” Molly criticized.
“It’s actual beauty,” Glidden rebuked her. “What is the matter with you
women, anyway? Why turn and rend Eva?”
Florence said indifferently: “I am cooling down; but by way of
justification of my attitude I’ll say that I object to the implied
but ever-present self-praise of the hedonist. Why should Eva take the
position that, because she is Eva Litchfield, she is privileged to ruin
a party? Naturally, I don’t acknowledge your right to ask. What a crowd
we are, to be sure!” She lifted her shoulders. “You weren’t there when
Molly read her poem; so you missed Eva’s dramatic ‘That I--I!--should
have to listen to such words! Such ill-chosen words! It kills me! It
kills me!’ If she for her part is going back on her friends----”
Glidden murmured: “Will you stand by ‘hedonist’?”