George Webber had, in fact, taken two or three stiff drinks before he left his rooms, in preparation for the ordeal. The raw odour of cheap gin hung on his breath, his eyes were slightly bright and wild, and his manner was quick and a trifle more feverish than was his wont. Just the same he was, as Esther had phrased it to herself, “all right”.
“If only people—my friends—everyone I know—didn’t affect him so,” she thought. “Why is it, I wonder. Last night when he telephoned me he talked so strange! Nothing he said made any sense! What could have been wrong with him? Oh, well—it doesn’t matter now. He’s here. I love him!”
Her face warmed and softened, her pulse beat quicker, and she went to meet him.
“Oh, hello, darling,” she said fondly. “I’m so glad you’re here at last. I was beginning to be afraid you were going to fail me after all.”
He greeted her half fondly and half truculently, with a mixture of diffidence and pugnacity, of arrogance and humility, of pride, of hope, of love, of suspicion, of eagerness, of doubt.
He had not wanted to come to the party at all. From the moment she had first invited him he had brought forward a barrage of objections. They had argued it back and forth for days, but at last she had won and had exacted his promise. But as the time approached he felt himself hesitating again, and last night he had paced the floor for hours in an agony of self-recrimination and indecision. At last, around one o’clock, he had seized the telephone with desperate resolve and, after waking the whole household before he got her, he had told her that he was not coming. Once more he repeated all his reasons. He only half-understood them himself, but they had to do with the incompatibility of her world and his world, and his belief, which was as much a matter of instinctive feeling as of conscious thought, that he must keep his independence of the world she belonged to if he was to do his work. He grew almost desperate as he tried to explain it to her, because he couldn’t seem to make her understand what he was driving at. In the end she became a little desperate, too. First she was annoyed, and told him for God’s sake to stop being such a fool. Then she became hurt and angry and reminded him of his promise.
“We’ve been over all of this a dozen times!” she said shrilly, and there was also a tearful note in her voice. “You promised, George—you know you did! And now everything’s arranged. It’s too late to change it now. You can’t let me down like this!”
This appeal was too much for him. He knew, of course, that the party had not been planned for him and that no arrangements would be upset if he failed to appear. No one but Esther would even be aware of his absence. But he had given his promise to come, however reluctantly, and he saw that the only issue he had succeeded in raising in her mind was the simple one of whether he would keep his word. So once more, and finally, he had yielded. And now he was here, full of confusion, and wishing with all his heart that he was anywhere else.
“I’m sure you’re going to have a good time,” Esther was saying to him eagerly. “You’ll see—” and she squeezed his hand. “There are lots of people I want you to meet. But you must be hungry. Better get yourself something to eat first. You’ll find plenty of things you like. I planned them especially for you. Go in the dining-room and help yourself. I’ll have to stay here a little while to welcome all these people.”
After she left him to greet some new arrivals, George stood there awkwardly for a moment with a scowl on his face and glanced about the room at the dazzling assemblage. In that attitude he cut a rather grotesque figure. The low brow with its frame of short black hair, the burning eyes, the small, packed features, the long arms dangling to the knees, and the curved paws gave him an appearance more simian than usual, and the image was accentuated by his not-too-well-fitting dinner jacket. People looked at him and stared, then turned away indifferently and resumed their conversations.
“So!” he thought with somewhat truculent self-consciousness—“These are her fine friends! I might have known it!” he muttered to himself, without knowing at all what it was he might have known. The poise, assurance, and sophistication of all these sleek faces made him fancy a slight where none was offered or intended. “I’ll show them!” he growled absurdly beneath his breath, not having the faintest idea what he meant by that.
With this, he turned upon his heel and threaded his way through the brilliant throng towards the dining-room.
“I mean!...You know!...”
At the sound of the words, eager, rapid, uttered in a rather hoarse yet strangely seductive tone of voice, Mrs. Jack smiled at the group to whom she had been talking. “There’s Amy!” she said.
Then, as she turned and saw the elflike head with its unbelievable harvest of ebony curls, the snub nose and the little freckles, and the lovely face so radiant with an almost boyish quality of animation and enthusiasm, she thought: