But just then the door-bell rang, and a lot of new people were ushered in by Nora. Mrs. Jack looked somewhat bewildered, for the new arrivals were utter strangers. For the most part they were young people. The young women had that unmistakable look of having gone to Miss Spence’s School, and there was something about the young men which indicated that they were recently out of Yale and Harvard and Princeton, and were members of the Racquet Club, and were now connected with investment brokers in Wall Street.
With them was a large and somewhat-decayed looking lady of advanced middle age. She had evidently been a beauty in her palmy days, but now everything about her—arms, shoulders, neck, face, and throat—was blown, full, and loose, and made up a picture of corrupted elegance. It was a picture of what Amy Carleton might look like thirty years from now, if she were careful and survived. One felt unpleasantly that she had lived too long in Europe, probably on the Riviera, and that somewhere in the offing there was something with dark, liquid eyes, a little moustache, and pomaded hair—something quite young and private and obscene and kept.
This lady was accompanied by an elderly gentleman faultlessly attired in evening dress, as were all the others. He had a cropped moustache and artificial teeth, which were revealed whenever he paused to lick his thin lips lecherously and to stutter out: “What? What?”—as he began to do almost at once. Both of these people looked exactly like characters who might have been created by Henry James if he had lived and written in a later period of decay.
The whole crowd of newcomers streamed in noisily, headed by a spruce young gentleman in white tie and tails whose name was shortly to be made known as Hen Walters. He was evidently a friend of Mr. Logan. Indeed, they all seemed to be friends of Mr. Logan. For as Mrs. Jack, looking rather overwhelmed at this invasion, advanced to greet them and was dutifully murmuring her welcome, all of them swarmed right past her, ignoring her completely, and stormed into the room shouting vociferous gaieties at Mr. Logan. Without rising from his knee-pads, he grinned at them fondly and with a spacious gesture of his freckled hand beckoned them to a position along one wall. They crowded in and took the place he had indicated. This forced some of the invited guests back into the far corners, but the new arrivals seemed not to mind this at all. Indeed, they paid not the slightest attention to anybody.
Then somebody in the group saw Amy Carleton and called across to her. She came over and joined them, and seemed to know several of them. And one could see that all of them had heard of her. The debutantes were polite but crisply detached. After the formalities of greeting they drew away and eyed Amy curiously and furtively, and their looks said plainly: “So this is she!”
The young men were less reserved. They spoke to her naturally, and Hen Walters greeted her quite cordially in a voice that seemed to be burbling with suppressed fun. It was not a pleasant voice: it was too moist, and it seemed to circulate round a nodule of fat phlegm. With the gleeful elation which marked his whole manner he said loudly:
“Hello, Amy! I haven’t seen you for an age. What brings you here?” The tone indicated, with the unconscious arrogance of his kind, that the scene and company were amusingly bizarre and beyond the pale of things accepted and confirmed, and that to find anyone he knew in such a place was altogether astounding.
The tone and its implications stung her sharply. As for herself, she had so long been the butt of vicious gossip that she could take it with good nature or complete indifference. But an affront to someone she loved was more than she could endure. And she loved Mrs. Jack. So, now, her green-gold eyes flashed dangerously as she answered hotly:
“What brings me here—of all places! Well, it’s a very good place to be—the best I know…And I mean!“—she laughed hoarsely, jerked the cigarette from her mouth, and tossed her black curls with furious impatience—“I mean! After all, I was invited, you know!”
Instinctively, with a gesture of protective warmth, she had slipped her arm round Mrs. Jack, who, wearing a puzzled frown upon her face, was standing there as if still a little doubtful of what was happening.
“Esther, darling,” Amy said, “this is Mr. Hen Walters—and some of his friends.” For a moment she looked at the cluster of young débutantes and their escorts, and then turned away, saying to no one in particular, and with no effort to lower her voice: “God, aren’t they simply dreadful!...I mean!...You know!“—she addressed herself now to the elderly man with the artificial teeth—“Charley—in the name of God, what are you trying to do?...You old cradle-snatcher, you!...I mean!—after all, it’s not that bad, is it?” She surveyed the group of girls again and turned away with a brief, hoarse laugh. “All these little Junior League bitches!” she muttered. “God!...How do you stand it, anyway—you old bastard!” She was talking now in her natural tone of voice, good-naturedly, as though there was nothing in the least unusual in what she Was saying. Then with another short laugh she added: “Why don’t you come to see me any more?”