“My two. Two of the people that I love best in the whole world. You must know and love each other as I do you.”
In the grip of her deep emotion she fell silent, while the other two remained clumsily holding hands. After a moment, awkwardly, they let their hands drop to their sides and stood ill at ease, looking at each other.
Just then Mr. Lawrence Hirsch sauntered up. He was calm and assured, and did not seem to be following anyone. His hands in he trouser pockets of his evening clothes, a man fashionably at ease, urbanely social, a casual ambler from group to group in this brilliant gathering, informed, alert, suave, polished, cool, detached—he was the very model of what a great captain of finance, letters, arts, and enlightened principles should be.
“0 Esther,” he said, “I must tell you what we have found out about the case.” The tone was matter-of-fact and undisturbed, carrying the authority of calm conviction. “Two innocent men were put to death. At last we have positive proof of it—evidence that was never allowed to come to light. It proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that Vanzetti could not have been within fifty miles of the crime.”
Mr. Hirsch spoke quietly, and did not look at Miss Mandell.
“But how horrible!” cried Mrs. Jack, righteous anger blazing up in her as she turned to Mr. Hirsch. “Isn’t it dreadful to know that such things can happen in a country like this! It’s the most damnable thing I ever heard of!”
For the first time, now, Mr. Hirsch turned to Miss Mandell, casually, as if he had only just become aware of her presence. “Yes, isn’t it?” he said, including her with charming yet not over-zealous intimacy within the range of his quiet enthusiasm. “Don’t you think—?”
Miss Mandell did not actually step on him. She just surveyed him slowly, with a smouldering look of loathing. “What!” she said. Then to Mrs. Jack: “Really! I simply can’t—” She shrugged helplessly, despairingly, and moved away, a miracle of sensual undulance.
And Mr. Hirsch—he did not follow her, not even with a glance. Nor did he show by so much as the flicker of a lash that he had seen or heard or noticed anything. He went on talking in his well-modulated tones to Mrs. Jack.
In the middle of what he was saying, suddenly he noticed George Webber. “Oh, hello,” he said. “How are you?” He detached one hand from his elegant pocket and for a moment bestowed it on the young man, then turned back again to Mrs. Jack, who was still burning with hot indignation over what she had heard.
“These miserable people who could be guilty of such a thing!” she exclaimed. “These despicable, horrible, rich people! It’s enough to make you want a revolution!” she cried.
“Well, my dear,” said Mr. Hirsch with cool irony, “you may have your wish gratified. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility. And if it comes, that case may still return to plague them yet. The trials, of course, were perfectly outrageous, and the judge should have been instantly dismissed.”
“To think that there are people living who could do a thing like that!” cried Mrs. Jack. “You know,” she went on earnestly and somewhat irrelevantly, “I have always been a Socialist. I voted for Norman Thomas. You see,” she spoke very simply and with honest self-respect, “I’ve always been a worker. All my sympathy is on their side.”
Mr. Hirsch’s manner had become a trifle vague, detached, as if he were no longer paying strict attention. “It is a cause cél?bre,” he said, and, seeming to like the sound of the words, he repeated them portentously: “A cause cél?bre.”
Then, distinguished, polished, and contained, with casual hands loose-pocketed beneath his tails, he sauntered on. He moved off in the general direction of Miss Mandell. And yet he did not seem to follow her.
For Mr. Lawrence Hirsch was wounded sorrowfully. But he could wait.
“Oh, Beddoes! Beddoes!”
At these strange words, so exultantly spoken that they rang round the walls of the great room, people halted in the animation of their talk with one another and, somewhat startled, looked in the direction from which the sounds had proceeded.
“Oh, Beddoes by all means!” the voice cried even more exuberantly than before. “Hah-hah-hah! Beddoes!“—there was gloating in the laugh. “Everyone must, of course, they simply must!”