His expression remained unmoved. "It is so difficult," he retorted, "to find the proper subject. A man of my experience frightens the inexperienced: the experienced frighten me."
"You mean--?"
"That I have reached the age where the innocence no longer possible to me seems the only thing worth while."
Mrs. Ennis wrinkled her nose daintily. "Nonsense!" she observed, and helped herself to the dish the servant was holding out to her. "What you have said," she resumed, "is the last word of the sentimentalist. If I thought you really meant it, I would know at once that you were very cold and very cruel and rather silly."
"Thanks!"
"Oh, I"m talking more or less abstractly."
"Well, possibly I am all of those things."
"But you want me to be personal?"
Pollen laughed. "Of course! Doesn"t everybody want _you_ to be personal?"
For an instant Mrs. Ennis looked again at Burnaby and Mary Rochefort, and a slightly rueful smile stirred in her eyes. It was amusing that she, who detested large dinners and adored general conversation, should at the moment be so engrossed in preventing the very type of conversation she preferred. She returned to Pollen. What a horrid man he really was! Unangled and amorphous, and underneath, cold! He had a way of framing the woman to whom he was talking and then stepping back out of the picture. One felt like a model in all manner of dress and undress. She laughed softly. "Don"t," she begged, "be so mysterious about yourself! Tell me--" she held him with eyes of ingratiating sapphire--"I"ve always been interested in finding out just what you are, anyway."
Far back in Pollen"s own eyes of golden brown a little spark slowly burst into flame. It was exactly as if a gnome had lighted a lantern at the back of an unknown cave. Mrs. Ennis inwardly shuddered, but outwardly was gay.
How interminably men talked when once they were launched upon that favorite topic, themselves! Pollen showed every indication of reaching a point of intellectual intoxication where his voice would become antiphonal. His objective self was taking turns in standing off and admiring his subjective self. Mrs. Ennis wondered at her own kindness of heart. Why did she permit herself to suffer so for her friends; in the present instance, a friend who would probably--rather the contrary--by no means thank her for her pains? She wanted to talk to Burnaby. She was missing most of his visit. She wanted to talk to Burnaby so greatly that the thought made her cheeks burn faintly. She began to hate Pollen. Mary Rochefort"s cool, young voice broke the spell.
"You told me," she said accusingly, "that this man--this Mr. Burnaby, has all the primitive virtues; he is the wickedest man I have ever met."
"Good gracious!" said Mrs. Ennis.
"The very wickedest!"
Pollen"s mouth twisted under his mustache. "I wouldn"t have suspected it," he observed, surveying Burnaby with ironic amus.e.m.e.nt. There was just a hint of hidden condescension in his voice.
Burnaby"s eyes drifted past him with a look of quiet speculation in their depths, before he smiled at Mrs. Ennis.
"Roumania has changed you," she exclaimed.
He chuckled. "Not in the least! I was simply trying to prove to Madame de Rochefort that hot-bloodedness, coolly conceived, is the only possible road to success. Like most innately moral people, she believes just the opposite--in cool-bloodedness, hotly conceived."
"I moral?" said Mary Rochefort, as if the thought had not occurred to her before.
"Why, of course," said Burnaby. "It"s a question of att.i.tude, not of actual performance. The most moral man I ever knew was a habitual drunkard. His life was spent between debauch and disgust. Not, of course, that I am implying that with you--"
"Tell us what you meant in the first place," commanded Mrs. Ennis.
"Something," said Burnaby slowly, "totally un-American--in short, whole-heartedness." He clasped his sinewy, brown hands on the table-cloth. "I mean," he continued, "if, after due thought--never forget the due thought--you believe it to be the best thing to do to elope with another man"s wife, elope; only don"t look back. In the same way, if you decide to become, after much question, an ironmonger, be an ironmonger. Love pa.s.sionately what you"ve chosen. In other words, life"s like fox-hunting; choose your line, choose it slowly and carefully, then follow it "h.e.l.l-for-leather."
"You see, the trouble with Americans is that they are the greatest wanters of cake after they"ve eaten it the world has ever seen. Our blood isn"t half as mixed as our point of view. We want to be good and we want to be bad; we want to be a dozen utterly incompatible things all at the same time. Of course, all human beings are that way, but other human beings make their choices and then try to eradicate the incompatibilities. The only whole-hearted people we possess are our business men, and even they, once they succeed, usually spoil the picture by astounding open scandals with chorus-girls."
Mrs. Ennis shook her head with amused bewilderment. "Do you mean," she asked, "that a man or woman can have only one thing in his or her life?"
"Only one very outwardly important thing--publicly," retorted Burnaby.
"You may be a very great banker with a very great background as a husband, but you can"t be a very great banker and at the same time what is known as a "very great lover." In Europe, where they arrange their lives better, one chooses either banking or "loving"." He smiled with frank good humor at Pollen; the first time, Mrs. Ennis reflected, he had done so that night. A suspicion that Burnaby was not altogether ingenuous crossed her mind. But why wasn"t he?
"You"re a man, Pollen," he said; "tell them it"s true."
Pollen, absorbed apparently in thoughts of his own stammered slightly.
"Why--why, yes," he agreed hastily.
Mrs. Ennis sighed ruefully and looked at Burnaby with large, humorously reproachful eyes. "You have changed," she observed, "or else you"re not saying but half of what you really think--and part of it you don"t think at all."
"Oh, yes," laughed Burnaby, "you misunderstand me." He picked up a fork and tapped the table-cloth with it thoughtfully; then he raised his head. "I was thinking of a story I might tell you," he said, "but on second thoughts I don"t think I will."
"Don"t be foolish!" admonished Mrs. Ennis. "Your stories are always interesting. First finish your dessert."
Pollen smiled languidly. "Yes," he commented, "go on. It"s interesting, decidedly. I thought people had given up this sort of conversation long ago."
For the third time Burnaby turned slowly toward him, only now his eyes, instead of resting upon the bland countenance for a fraction of a second, surveyed it lingeringly with the detached, absent-minded stare Mrs. Ennis remembered so well. "Perhaps I will tell it, after all," he said, in the manner of a man who has definitely changed his mind. "Would you like to hear it?" he asked, turning to Mary Rochefort.
"Certainly!" she laughed. "Is it very immoral?"
"Extremely," vouchsafed Burnaby, "from the accepted point of view."
"Tell it in the other room," suggested Mrs. Ennis. "We"ll sit before the fire and tell ghost stories."
There was a trace of grimness in Burnaby"s answering smile. "Curiously enough, it is a ghost story," he said.
They had arisen to their feet; above the candles their heads and shoulders were indistinct. For a moment Mrs. Ennis hesitated and looked at Burnaby with a new bewilderment in her eyes.
"If it"s very immoral," interposed Pollen, "I"m certain to like it."
Burnaby bowed to him with a curious old-fashioned courtesy. "I am sure,"
he observed, "it will interest you immensely."
Mrs. Ennis suddenly stared through the soft obscurity. "Good gracious,"
she said to herself, "what is he up to?"
In the little drawing room to which they returned, the jonquils seemed to have received fresh vigor from their hour of loneliness; their shining gold possessed the shadows. Mary Rochefort paused by the open window and peered into the perfumed night. "How ridiculously young the world gets every spring!" she said.
Mrs. Ennis arranged herself before the fire. "Now," she said to Burnaby, "you sit directly opposite. And you"--she indicated Pollen--"sit here.
And Mimi, you there. So!" She nodded to Burnaby. "Begin!"
He laughed deprecatingly. "You make it portentous," he objected. "It isn"t much of a story; it"s--it"s really only a parable."
"It"s going to be a moral story, after all," interjected Mrs. Ennis triumphantly.
Burnaby chuckled and puffed at his cigarette. "Well," he said finally, "it"s about a fellow named Mackintosh."
Pollen, drowsily smoking a cigar, suddenly stirred uneasily.
"Who?" he asked, leaning forward.