She always makes an effect, Neith rejoined.
Who is she?
An orphan. Her father left her a little money, which she is spending
at the Art Students' League, trying to learn to draw. Her only real
talents are obvious. She knows how to dress herself and she knows how
to attract men. Your friend seems to like her.
He does, indeed.
Mahalah comes here often and always spends the evening in a corner with
some man. She seems to prefer married men. Is your friend married?
No.
A fat woman in a grey crêpe dress, embroidered in steel beads, standing
in the centre of the room, shifted my attention.
Who is that? I asked.
That is _Miss_ Gladys Waine, replied Neith. She is the wife of Horace
Arlington, the sculptor.
_Miss_ and a wife? What is she then, herself?
Nothing. She does not write, or paint, or compose. She isn't an
actress. She is nothing but a wife, but she insists on retaining
her individuality and her name. If any one addresses her as Mrs.
Arlington, she is furious, and if you telephone her house and ask for
Mrs. Arlington, although she may answer the telephone herself, she will
assure you that Mrs. Arlington is not in, does not, in fact, live there
at all. She adores Horace, too. The curious thing is that Horace's
first wife, who divorced him, has never given up his name, of which she
appears to be very proud. She is always called Mrs. Horace Arlington
and trembles with rage when some tactless person remembers her own name.
My anonymous companion was by my side again with a plate of chocolate
ice cream which he offered me.
Did you ever try eating chocolate ice cream and smoking a cigarette
simultaneously? he asked. If you haven't, allow me to recommend the
combination. The flavour of both cigarette and ice cream is immensely
improved.
An old lady with an ear-trumpet, thinking she had been addressed, took
the plate of ice cream from his outstretched hand, leaned over us and
queried, Eh?
I say, said my incognito companion, that there is nothing like a good
dose of castor oil.
Nothing like it for what? she shrieked.
As a carminative! he yelled.
But I don't suffer from that complaint, she argued.
Allow me to congratulate you, madame, and he bowed to her.
As we were saying, he continued, in a confidential manner, grasping
my arm, one cannot be too careful in writing a drama. Weak, low-born
people in trouble are pathetic; the middle classes in the same plight
are subjects for melodrama or comedy; but tragedy should deal with
kings and queens.
The groups separated, came together, separated, came together,
separated, came together: syndicalists, capitalists, revolutionists,
anarchists, artists, writers, actresses, "perfumed with botanical
creams," feminists, and malthusians were all mixed in this strange
salad. I talked with one and then another, smoking constantly and
drinking a great deal of Scotch whisky. Somehow, my strange companion,
like the Duchess in Alice, contrived always to be at my side.
Remembering the situation at the Queen's croquet party, I could not
help feeling grateful that his chin was square and that he was shorter
than I. At one o'clock I had a headache and decided to go home. I
looked for Edith.
She went to bed hours ago, Neith explained.
Then I made a vain search through the rooms for Peter.
One of the two young men who had dined with us stopped me.
If you are searching for your friend, he said, he went away with
Mahalah Wiggins.
_Chapter VIII_
Friendship usually creates onerous obligations. Our friends are
inclined to become exigent and demanding. They learn to expect
attentions from us and are hurt when we do not live up to these
expectations. Friends have an unpleasant habit of weighing on our
consciences, occupying too much of our time, and chiding us because we
have failed them in some unimportant particular. Is it strange that
there are moments when we hate them? Friendship, indeed, is as perilous
a relationship as marriage; it, too, entails responsibility, that
great god whose existence burdens our lives. Seemingly we never escape
from his influence. Each newly contracted friendship brings another
sacrifice to the altar of this very Christian divinity. But there was
no responsibility connected with my friendship for Peter. That is why
I liked him so much. When he went away, he seldom notified me of his
departure; he never wrote letters, and, when he returned, I usually
re-encountered him by accident. In the whole of our long acquaintance,
there never was a period in which he expected me to telephone him after
a decent interval. We were both free in our relationship, as free as it
is possible for two people, who are fond of each other, to be. There
was a great charm in this.
A whole month went by, after Edith Dale's party, without my hearing
from him. Then I sought him out. By this time, I knew him well enough
to be prepared for some transmutation; but I was scarcely prepared for
what I saw. His room on East Broadway had been painted ivory-white.
On the walls hung three or four pictures, one of Marsden Hartley's
mountain series, a Chinese juggler in water colour by Charles Demuth,
a Picabia, which ostensibly represented the mechanism of a locomotive,
with real convex brass piston-rods protruding from the canvas, a
chocolate grinder by Marcel Duchamp, and an early Picasso, depicting a
very sick-looking pale green woman, lying naked in the gutter of a dank
green street. There were lovely desks and tables, Adam and Louis XIV
and François I, a chaise longue, banked with striated taffeta cushions,
purple bowls filled with spiked, blue flowers, Bergamo and Oushak rugs,
and books bound in gay Florentine wall-papers. The bed was covered with
a Hungarian homespun linen spread, embroidered in gay worsteds. The sun
poured through the window over George Moore's ample back and he looked
happier.
Peter was wearing green trousers, a white silk shirt, a tie of Chinese
blue brocade, clasped with a black opal, and a most ornate black
Chinese dressing-gown, around the skirt of which a silver dragon
chased his tail. He was combed and brushed and there was a faint odour
of toilet-water. His nails were manicured and on one of his little
fingers I observed a ring which I had never seen him wear before.
Later, when I examined it more closely, it proved to be an amethyst
intaglio, with Leda and the Swan for its subject. It has been said,
perhaps too often, that you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's
ear. It is even more true that you cannot make a sow's ear out of a
silk purse.