"Why, Gordon?"
"I"m sorry I cut in on you--its unfair to you. You"re pure woman--and all that sort of thing. Here, I"ll get some one else to dance with you."
He rose clumsily to his feet, but she reached up and pulled him down beside her on the stairs.
"Here, Gordon. You"re ridiculous. You"re hurting me. You"re acting like a--like a crazy man--"
"I admit it. I"m a little crazy. Something"s wrong with me, Edith.
There"s something left me. It doesn"t matter."
"It does, tell me."
"Just that. I was always queer--little bit different from other boys.
All right in college, but now it"s all wrong. Things have been snapping inside me for four months like little hooks on a dress, and it"s about to come off when a few more hooks go. I"m very gradually going loony."
He turned his eyes full on her and began to laugh, and she shrank away from him.
"What _is_ the matter?"
"Just me," he repeated. "I"m going loony. This whole place is like a dream to me--this Delmonico"s--"
As he talked she saw he had changed utterly. He wasn"t at all light and gay and careless--a great lethargy and discouragement had come over him. Revulsion seized her, followed by a faint, surprising boredom. His voice seemed to come out of a great void.
"Edith," he said, "I used to think I was clever, talented, an artist.
Now I know I"m nothing. Can"t draw, Edith. Don"t know why I"m telling you this."
She nodded absently.
"I can"t draw, I can"t do anything. I"m poor as a church mouse." He laughed, bitterly and rather too loud. "I"ve become a d.a.m.n beggar, a leech on my friends. I"m a failure. I"m poor as h.e.l.l."
Her distaste was growing. She barely nodded this time, waiting for her first possible cue to rise.
Suddenly Gordon"s eyes filled with tears.
"Edith," he said, turning to her with what was evidently a strong effort at self-control, "I can"t tell you what it means to me to know there"s one person left who"s interested in me."
He reached out and patted her hand, and involuntarily she drew it away.
"It"s mighty fine of you," he repeated.
"Well," she said slowly, looking him in the eye, "any one"s always glad to see an old friend--but I"m sorry to see you like this, Gordon."
There was a pause while they looked at each other, and the momentary eagerness in his eyes wavered. She rose and stood looking at him, her face quite expressionless.
"Shall we dance?" she suggested, coolly.
--Love is fragile--she was thinking--but perhaps the pieces are saved, the things that hovered on lips, that might have been said. The new love words, the tendernesses learned, are treasured up for the next lover.
V
Peter Himmel, escort to the lovely Edith, was unaccustomed to being snubbed; having been snubbed, he was hurt and embarra.s.sed, and ashamed of himself. For a matter of two months he had been on special delivery terms with Edith Bradin, and knowing that the one excuse and explanation of the special delivery letter is its value in sentimental correspondence, he had believed himself quite sure of his ground. He searched in vain for any reason why she should have taken this att.i.tude in the matter of a simple kiss.
Therefore when he was cut in on by the man with the mustache he went out into the hall and, making up a sentence, said it over to himself several times. Considerably deleted, this was it:
"Well, if any girl ever led a man on and then jolted him, she did--and she has no kick coming if I go out and get beautifully boiled."
So he walked through the supper room into a small room adjoining it, which he had located earlier in the evening. It was a room in which there were several large bowls of punch flanked by many bottles. He took a seat beside the table which held the bottles.
At the second highball, boredom, disgust, the monotony of time, the turbidity of events, sank into a vague background before which glittering cobwebs formed. Things became reconciled to themselves, things lay quietly on their shelves; the troubles of the day arranged themselves in trim formation and at his curt wish of dismissal, marched off and disappeared. And with the departure of worry came brilliant, permeating symbolism. Edith became a flighty, negligible girl, not to be worried over; rather to be laughed at. She fitted like a figure of his own dream into the surface world forming about him. He himself became in a measure symbolic, a type of the continent baccha.n.a.l, the brilliant dreamer at play.
Then the symbolic mood faded and as he sipped his third highball his imagination yielded to the warm glow and he lapsed into a state similar to floating on his back in pleasant water. It was at this point that he noticed that a green baize door near him was open about two inches, and that through the aperture a pair of eyes were watching him intently.
"Hm," murmured Peter calmly.
The green door closed--and then opened again--a bare half inch this time.
"Peek-a-boo," murmured Peter.
The door remained stationary and then he became aware of a series of tense intermittent whispers.
"One guy."
"What"s he doin"?"
"He"s sittin" lookin"."
"He better beat it off. We gotta get another li"l" bottle."
Peter listened while the words filtered into his consciousness.
"Now this," he thought, "is most remarkable."
He was excited. He was jubilant. He felt that he had stumbled upon a mystery. Affecting an elaborate carelessness he arose and waited around the table--then, turning quickly, pulled open the green door, precipitating Private Rose into the room.
Peter bowed.
"How do you do?" he said.
Private Rose set one foot slightly in front of the other, poised for fight, flight, or compromise.
"How do you do?" repeated Peter politely.
"I"m o"right."
"Can I offer you a drink?"
Private Rose looked at him searchingly, suspecting possible sarcasm.