The Italians have a proverb about waiting for some one who does not
come. They call it deadly. Among the lapping shadows Lennox felt the
force of it. But concluding that visitors had detained his guests, he
dressed and went around a corner or two to the Athenaeum Club where
usually he dined.
In the main room which gives on Fifth Avenue, he found Ten Eyck Jones
talking war. Jones was a novelist, but he did not look like one. There
was nothing commercial in his appearance, which was that of a man
half-asleep, except when he talked and then he seemed very much awake.
He was not fat and though an inkbeast, he dressed after the manner of
those who put themselves in the best hands and then forget all about it.
But for Lennox he had a superior quality, he was a friend. With him was
Harry Cantillon, who, the night before, had danced away with Kate
Schermerhorn. Straddling an arm of Cantillon's chair was Fred Ogston, a
young man of a type that, even before the war, was vanishing and which
was known as about town. Adjacently sat Peter Verelst. Servants brought
little decanters and removed others. In a corner an old man glared with
envious venom at the liquors of which he had consumed too many and of
which, at the price of his eyesight, he could consume no more.
Jones waved at Lennox. "I have been telling these chaps that before they
are much older they will be in khaki."
"Houp!" cried Cantillon. He sprang up, ran to the arched entrance,
where, lightly, without effort, he turned a somersault and was gone.
The old man in the corner raised himself, shuffled to a table, sat down
and wrote to the house committee. Such conduct could not be tolerated!
Having said it, he raised himself again and shuffled over with the
letter to Dunwoodie, a lawyer with the battered face of a bulldog and a
ruffian's rumpled clothes.
Dunwoodie, instead of taking the letter, gave the old man a look, one
look, his famous look, the look with which--it was said--he reversed the
Bench. Angrily the old man turned tail, collided with Paliser,
apologised furiously, damning him beneath his breath, damning Dunwoodie,
damning the house committee, damning the club.
"Are you to dine here?" Jones asked Ogston, who swore gently, declaring
that, worse luck, he was due at his aunt's.
"But you are," Jones told Lennox. "Come on and I'll make your hair stand
on end." He turned: "And yours, too."
Peter Verelst smoothed the back of his head. "Thank you, Ten Eyck. But
such hair as I have I prefer should remain as it is."
The two men went on and up into another room, spacious, high-ceiled, set
with tables, where a captain got them seated, took their orders,
carefully transmitted them to a careful waiter, an omnibus meanwhile
producing ice-water which Jones had promptly removed.
He smiled at Lennox. "Who was the jeunesse you and Paliser were talking
to last night? She had been singing."
Lennox unfolded a napkin. "I thought you were to make my hair stand on
end."
"Well," said the novelist, who spoke better than he knew, "she may make
Paliser's. There's a young man with plenty of perspective. I saw him in
London just before the deluge. He was then en route for the Marquesas. I
envied him that. I envied him the vanilla-scented nights; the skies, a
solid crust of stars, and also, and particularly, the tattooed ghosts.
But I am forgetting your hair. Were you ever in Berlin?"