“So this is why you didn’t want to come!” he thought scornfully. “You were afraid some silly fool of an ill-bred woman would make an inane remark that would prick your delicate hide! God, what a fool you are! Esther was right!”
But had she been right, really? He had made such an issue of it with his talk about the work he had to do as a novelist, and how he had to keep clear of her world in order to do it. Was all that just a way of rationalising his sense of social inadequacy? Had he gone to such lengths of theorising merely to spare his tender ego the ridicule and humiliation of such a scene as he had just precipitated?
No, that was not the answer. There was more to it than that. By now he had cooled off enough to be able to look at himself objectively, and all at once he realised that he had never got clear in his own mind what he had meant when he had talked to Esther about her world and his world. He had used the phrases as symbols of something real, something important that he had felt instinctively but had never put into words. And that’s why he hadn’t been able to make her understand. Well, what was it? What had he been afraid of? It wasn’t only that he didn’t like big parties and knew himself to be unschooled in the social graces that such occasions demanded. That was a part of it—yes. But it was only a part—the smallest part, the petty, personal part. There was something else—something impersonal, something much bigger than himself, something that mattered greatly to him and that would not be denied. What was it now? Better face it and try to get it straight.
Completely cool now, and fascinated by the inner problem which the ridiculous little incident had brought into sharp focus, he began to look about him at the people in the room. He watched their faces closely and tried to penetrate behind the social masks they wore, probably, boring, searching as for some clue that might lead him to an answer to his riddle. It was, he knew, a distinguished gathering. It included brilliant, successful men and beautiful women. They were among the best and highest that the city had to offer. But as he looked them over with an alert eye and with all his sensitivities keenly awakened by his present purpose, he saw that there were some among them who wore quite another hue.
That fellow there, for instance! With his pasty face and rolling eyes and mincing ways, and hips that wiggled suggestively as he walked—could there be any doubt at all that he was a member of nature’s other sex? Webber knew that people of this fellow’s type and gender were privileged personalities, the species being regarded tenderly as a cross between a lap-dog and a clown. Almost every fashionable hostess considered them essential functionaries at smart gatherings like this. Why was it, George wondered. Was it something in the spirit of the times that had let the homosexual usurp the place and privilege of a hunch-backed jester of an old king’s court, his deformity become a thing of open jest and ribaldry? However it had come about, the thing itself was indubitable. The mincing airs and graces of such a fellow, his antics and his gibes, the spicy sting of his feminine and envenomed wit, were the exact counterparts of the malicious quips of ancient clowns. So, now. As this simpering fellow minced along, the powdered whiteness of his parchment face held languidly to one side, the weary eyes half-closed and heavy-lidded, he would pause from time to time to wave with a maidenly gesture of his wrist at various people of his acquaintance in different parts of the big room, saying as he did so:
“Oh, hello!...There you are!...You must come over!”
The effect of all this was so irresistible that the ladies shrieked with laughter, and the gentlemen spluttered and guffawed.
And that woman over there in the corner, the one with the mannish haircut and angular lines and hard, enamelled face, holding the hand of that rather pretty and embarrassed young girl—a nymphomaniac if ever he saw one.
At the sound of the splintered phrases: “I mean!...You know!“—Webber turned and saw the dark curls of Amy Carleton. He knew who she was, and he knew her story, but even if he had not known he thought he would have guessed a part of it by the tragic look of lost innocence in her face. But what he noticed chiefly now was the group of men who followed her about, among them the young Jew and the young Japanese—and the sight made him think of a pack of dogs trailing after a bitch in heat. It was so open, so naked, so shameless that it almost made him sick.
His eye took in John Ettinger, standing a little apart with his wife and his mistress, and he read their relationship unmistakably in their bearing towards each other.