“You must come, my boy,” Mr. Stoat had wheezed over the wire. “You can’t afford to miss this, you know. Henrietta Saltonstall Spriggins is going to be there. You must meet her. And Penelope Buchanan Pipgrass is going to give a reading from her poems. And Hortense Delancey McCracken is going to read her latest play. You simply must come, by all means.”
So urged, George accepted and went, and it was quite an occasion. Mr. Stoat met him at the door and with a pontifical flourish of the eyebrows led him into the presence of Cornelia Fosdick Sprague. After he had made his obeisances Mr. Stoat piloted the young man about the room and with repeated flourishes of the eyebrows introduced him to the other guests. There was an astonishing number of formidable-looking females, and, like the imposing Cornelia, most of them had three names. As Mr. Stoat made the introductions he fairly smacked his lips over the triple-barrelled sonority of their titles.
George noticed with amazement that all of these women bore a marked resemblance to Cornelia Fosdick Sprague. Not that they really looked like her in feature. Some were tall, some were short, some were angular, some were fat, but all of them had a certain overwhelming quality in their bearing. This quality became a crushing air of absolute assurance and authority when they spoke of art. And they spoke of art a great deal. Indeed, it was the purpose of these meetings to speak of art. Almost all of these ladies were not only interested in art, but were “artists” themselves. That is to say, they were writers. They wrote one-act plays for the Little Theatre, or they wrote novels, or essays and criticism, or poems and books for children.
Henrietta Saltonstall Spriggins read one of her wee stories for tiny tots about a little girl waiting for Prince Charming. Penelope Buchanan Pipgrass read some of her poems, one about a quaint organ-grinder, and another about a whimsical old rag man. Hortense Delancey McCracken read her play, a sylvan fantasy laid in Central Park, with two lovers sitting on a bench in the springtime and Pan prancing round in the background, playing mad music on his pipes and leering slyly out at the lovers from behind trees. In all of these productions there was not a line that could bring the blush of outraged modesty to the cheek of the most innocent young girl. Indeed, the whole thing was just too damned delightful for words.
After the readings they all sat round and drank pale tea and discussed what they had read in fluty voices. George remembered vaguely that there were two or three other men present, but they were pallid figures who faded into the mist, hovering in the background like wan ghosts, submissive and obscure attendants, husbands even, to the possessors of those sonorous and triple-barrelled names.
George never went back again to Cornelia Fosdick Sprague’s salon, and had seen nothing more of Mr. Donald Stoat. Yet here he was, the last person in the world he would have expected to find in Lloyd McHarg’s apartment. If Mr. Stoat had ever read any of McHarg’s books—a most improbable circumstance—his moral conscience must have been outraged by the mockery with which, in almost every one of them, McHarg had assaulted the cherished ideals and sacred beliefs that Mr. Stoat held dear. Yet here he was sipping his dry sherry in McHarg’s room with all the aplomb of one who was accustomed to such familiar intimacy.
What was he doing here? What on earth did it mean?
George did not have to wait long for an answer. The telephone rang. McHarg snapped his fingers sharply and sprang for the instrument with an exclamation of overwrought relief.
“Hello, hello!” He waited a moment, his inflamed and puckered face twisted wryly to one side. “Hello, hello, hello!” he said feverishly and rattled the receiver hook. “Yes, yes. Who? Where?” A brief pause. “Oh, it’s New York,” he cried, and then impatiently: “All right, then! Put them through!”
George had never before seen the transatlantic telephone in operation, and he watched with feelings of wonder and disbelief. A vision of the illimitable seas passed through his mind. He remembered storms that he had been in and the way great ships were tossed about; he thought of the enormous curve of the earth’s surface and of the difference in time; and yet in a moment McHarg, his voice calm now, began to speak quietly as if he were talking to someone in the next room:
“Oh, hello Wilson,” he said. “Yes, I can hear you perfectly. Of course…Yes, yes, it’s true. Of course it is!” he cried, with a return to his former manner of feverish annoyance. “No, I’ve broken with him completely…No, I don’t know where I’m going. I haven’t signed up with anyone yet…All right, all right,” impatiently. “Wait a minute,” he said curtly. “Let me do the talking. I won’t do anything until I see you…No that’s not a promise to go with you,” he said angrily. “It’s just a promise that I won’t go anywhere else till I see you.” A moment’s pause while McHarg listened intently. “You’re sailing when?...Oh, tonight! The Berengaria. Good. I’ll see you here then next week…All right. Goodbye, Wilson,” he snapped, and hung up.