The Unpossessed (28 page)

“I thought Blake said,” began the first one, “I thought
you
said
Blake
said, that we were absolutely to have the bar.”

“He did, I did,” her twin snapped back, “but after all it's lady Middleton that runs the show and what does she care for a promise? a typical, bourgeois, snobbish trick.”

“Anyway Fish,” said the double conciliatingly, “the blond will make more money than we ever could at the bar.”

“Speak for yourself, Lydia,” said Comrade Fisher witheringly.

“All right, it's hotter than hell,” said Lydia obediently.

The early guests continued to be shy—this party had no definite precedent somehow—and so they wandered, looking for signatures so to speak, harking for familiar signals; wondering if the Ballisters would deign to come; if Mrs. Fancher on the other hand would dare—and how did one treat Emily Fancher these days anyway, as a grass widow or
what
? and Hatcher, Graham Hatcher, what had Merle said he was? in musical comedy perhaps? Some of them passed in slow approving judgment before the hams and paper napkins, picked over the nuts dispassionately (it was too early to take eating seriously) and glanced in polite consternation at the angry turtle-necks behind the table. At about the tray of sturgeon each eye brightened, quickened, each owner moved with more composure, doing double-time to the still slow-motion of the music with which Arturo appeased his artistic conscience; past the rickety baby rescued by the Hunger Marchers, past the platters of celery stuffed with cheese, past the tottering Capitol and on firmly toward the brave familiar note, the happy combination which made a party a party and life a respectable repetition: the bar, a Daughter of the Confederacy, a large Wedgwood bowl for coins. Society, Liquor, the Poor: faith, hope and charity revived; the guests began to recognize the party. There seemed no reason why the Ballisters should
not
come.

Up with wraps and down with gleaming shoulders, with solid stiff white shirt-fronts; here and there a costume odd and dated, designed in all humility for modest daytime wear—the obscure proud owners dodging Merle as though she were hostess in a restaurant! For her house was like a theater tonight, anyone could come for the price of a ticket, her home was public, her hospitality for sale. (And her own son! Emmett, where was Emmett? what were they doing with her boy?) Merle had searched her wardrobe for a fitting dress; and been driven to buy one, a strange thing neither in the mode nor out of it, Greek in its simplicity but distinctly French in the details. (A Rabelaisian puritan, Vammie had said, bowing before her beauty; taking back with the left hand what the right hand giveth, Al had said in his crude crass way—but of course Al was terribly jealous of the little Doctor.) “My dear, so
glad
to see you, yes isn't it unique, no not my idea entirely, my young friend's, Jeffrey Blake the novelist—oh yes, I
invited
Emily Fancher but whether she will
come
, well Mr. Crawford, well well, you'll find Al somewhere about if you're lucky, ah Marion, ah Laura, now don't be
too
startled, I did think
one
Negro . . .” “We can take it,” snickered Laura Tit-comb vulgarly, “if
you
can.” “A bit of local colah eh,” said Mr. Crawford who fell short of being an English lord only by birth and a monocle; “oh jolly, jolly, jolly”; and passed on as best he could under the double handicap to March's more competent guidance. Vammie floated up like a straw in a wintry sea and Merle gratefully took his arm; stood watching the backs of her friends floating toward her party to make or break it, and thanked God for March standing like an old and faithful habit by the curtains.

And jolly, jolly, jolly, continued Mr. Crawford rapping with his knuckles on the sloping forehead of March's belly. “Quite a circus in the old homestead tonight,” said Mr. Crawford handing over his ticket good-naturedly. March bared his teeth. “Quaite a circus,” Mr. Crawford improved on his accent and March slipped his teeth back into his head again and raised the velvet portière in the rôle of a Christian ushering fellow-Christians to the lions' den.

“Well pretty jolly, pretty jolly, pretty jolly, Middleton,” said Crawford advancing like a good fellow, a prince of a good fellow, a jolly old egg, good old bean. “All the er banners and pretty jolly the music and what not, the wife's notion, eh Middleton, and what ayah you doing with that tuhkeystick, a bit under ayah you, Middleton, ah jolly jolly jolly.” “What ayah you doing here, Crawford,” said Al sternly brandishing the drumstick, “why aren't you battering at our Capitol side by side with our . . . the least you can do, my good fellow, is ruin your stomach for charity.” “But whose benefit,” began Mr. Crawford puzzled. “For mine, I'm trying to make the girl that makes the punch.” And jolly jolly jolly, Mr. Crawford continued, first to space left by Al Middleton and then to the astonished glass of punch in his own hand and at last less vaguely to his pinochle chum Bud Chapman who was under the distinct impression that the Negro was a part of the entertainment which had got in too early by mistake or else was an Abyssinian prince; and both of them reckoned that their old third, Jim Fancher, wasn't doing much in the way of pinochle
now
. . . more likely solitaire!

“Are you masquerading as laryngitis, my good girls, or is it just the latest craze for teasing bulls?” Al Middleton leered down above the buffet girls, foreshortening his creased lean face till it resembled a gargoyle sardonically adorned with gold-capped teeth. “Thought you gals were communists?”

“Sympathizers,” they answered in their quick defensive chorus.

“Ah sisters.” He surveyed them sorrowfully. “What kind of sympathizers do you call yourselves! why aren't you down there in Washington D. C., marching, starving—sleeping, with our boys.” He leered through his gold-capped teeth and tapped Fisher on the head with his drumstick; “heh heh heh” he said wearily and passed down the table from them, firmly wavering toward the bar.

“Oh!” breathed Lydia, swallowing her giggle and drawing indignation from her comrade.

“Oh!” breathed Ruthie Fisher in genuine disgust; and felt forlorn, abandoned, as though Jeffrey had exposed her, left her out somewhere, a prey to anybody.

Arturo was giving the Boys a rest and looking over the growing crowd approvingly. Pretty fine folks, he thought, at this house. He took a drink from the bottle the host had brought up for the band and swallowed reflectively. The drink was mellowing. The crowd was beautiful. Arturo began to feel pleasantly sorry for himself. It might be that he had indeed that divine gift his teachers had spoken of back in the Music Academy days; it might be that he had never got the breaks. Married too young, for one thing (Mary was a ripe, rich-blooded girl and eighteen none too soon for her); the kids came right away; living costs plenty—was it his fault altogether that he had turned his back on creative music and earned his way as the leader of a little party band? Arturo sipped steadily. He didn't join in the talk of the Boys who liked parties and used these intermissions for spotting the beauties. “Nifty crowd,” said Frankie Teener, tightening the pegs on his instrument. Arturo smiled sadly and tossed his head for the Boys with Toscanini's borrowed gesture.

“But I do not,” Mr. Hatcher was saying unhappily, “represent anything in particular, Miss Titcomb; at least as I am here tonight; perhaps you have confused me with someone else. . . .” “Ah
that's
impossible,” Miss Laura Titcomb gayly shook her finger (but hadn't she said something rather funny there?); “and Mrs. Middleton assured us,” she went on by way of covering up, “that you are a ve-ry interesting person, so we think you're hiding your light,” said Miss Titcomb merrily—and stopped; and blushed; and floundered; and said there was her uncle and she must go and greet him because there he was and he was her uncle.

“Oh Christ, here comes your Negro again,” said Al; “a black fate, Miss Powell honey. I'll tell him off, we'll have no raping at
this
bar. . . . Good evening, kuhnel,” he greeted the impeccable Graham Hatcher advancing behind the cheery vanguard of his smile.

“Who—” began Lydia.

“I really don't know,” said Fisher, crestfallen. Both of them stared at the Negro. “I wonder,” said Ruthie Fisher, “if he might not be the communist candidate for vice-president; he must be
somebody
.”

“Have you ever—” began Lydia.

“No, but I do think they're awfully attractive,” said Fisher thoughtfully.

“
Would
you ever—” began Lydia.

“Of course, I'm no bourgeois,” snapped Fisher; and thought she saw Jeffrey Blake at last; but no, it was a tall bald man who stooped, who bore no resemblance to her handsome Jeffrey; her heart beneath her turtle-neck sank painfully.

“Whoever said you were,” said Lydia placidly.

Decidedly, thought Mrs. Stanhope, organizing her equine faction about herself and Mr. Merriwell, if Emily Fancher had any guts at all, she would appear. And I'd like to see any of you, she threatened them with her high-drawn mustang countenance, cutting her; just try and let me see you.

“This party,” said the little Doctor, smiling and bowing and kissing hands at the bottom of the stairs, “is society psychoanalyzed, all the cross sections exposed as in a tree. . . .” Oh Vammie was doing his best for her, Merle gratefully knew, but this was agony! why had she not given her usual New Year's Party and let it go at that? and where was Emmett (whom she had seen just once since that awful night of the meeting, since Doctor Leonard had carried him off)? and where was Jeffrey Blake? . . . “Oh go right in, how nice to see you” (and the Ballisters hadn't come!) “oh very Bohemian, Emmett's young socialist friends you know, oh good of you to come Bianca, why yes I really
expect
Emily Fancher, so embarrassing inviting her you know, whether to address her Mrs. Jim or Mrs. Emily, no not the guest of honor there really
is
no guest of honor, just one of our more distinguished Negroes. . . .”

She studied their quizzical looks with alarm and weighed their reactions in her minutest social scale. One thing was certain: her party could not be less than a magnificent failure, if a failure it was destined to be. Sensational—no one could deny it: the banners, the speeches planned for midnight, even the guests' quixotic costumes; the orchestra, the food—somehow the recollection of the bills was reassuring. . . . “A noble experiment,” said Al's lawyer bending to kiss her hand; “and a gorgeous experimenter,” said the efficiency expert treading in his wake; “a study in contrasts,” said the efficiency expert's wife who was so clever that they all suspected she was a Jewess.

“Do you see,” the little Doctor had hit on something new to sell Merle's party, “
they
want to blow us up; but they come here and enjoy our company. Also we
know
they want to blow us up; yet we enjoy theirs.” The little Doctor fairly glittered, polished his moustaches with delighted fingers. “And why?” he asked of himself in his brilliant pedantic Hungarian manner. The Whitmans and the Drapers stood still in their tracks. “Because we are decadent. Because they are decadent. Destroyers and victims drinking to each other from the common bowl, perversion.” The Drapers and the Whitmans bridled in a kind of flattered amusement.

“A study in contrasts, do you see,” Merle plagiarized from the efficiency expert's wife. Lucius Whitman smiled; thrust his wife toward Henry Draper and ludicrously embraced his old friend's wife. “Since we're all decadent,” he said; and led Violet Draper laughing toward the party; “since it's the end of the world anyway,” he tossed to his own wife over Violet's shoulder; “why here's to it,” he said and waved his noble cinema-banker's head, winked to his wife and gravely escorted Mrs. Draper as his own.

Vammie had brilliantly struck the right note. His words went to everyone's head like little drops of Tokay. Merle's own head grew light and gay. The party would be a success, she knew it now, by her proper hostess' instinct. If only Jeffrey Blake would come! For Merle had a promise to keep to herself. (Not again would she succumb to cowardice, holding her finger to her lips and pretending to hear her husband. . . .) She grew a little reckless; smiled too long at Mrs. Stanhope's brother-in-law; fairly writhed in charm before the oldest member of the New York City bar; laughed uproariously at Mr. Thayer (who was a wit she generally rebuked) for his suggestion that they act toward Emily Fancher (if she came) as though Jim Fancher were enjoying a rest-cure in the South. . . . “Just as in our fashionable magazines,” Vammie was keeping up a steady stream, “the cruelest caricatures are of society . . .” “idea suggested, do you see,” Merle helped him out, “by my young socialist friends . . .”

“Communist,” said a stern voice coming down the stairs. “Communist, Mrs. Middleton, not socialist.” It was young Flinders (but Jeffrey was not with him!); his wife, Merle supposed it must be, on his arm—a pretty, shabby girl. “Ah Mr. Flinders,” Merle brightly cried and extended her hand, “does it matter, does it really matter, I mean aren't we all drifting toward the same goal anyhow. . . .”

“Watch them high-hat the Negro,” said Comrade Fisher indignantly; “race-conscious snobs.”

“Just the same I wish,” said Lydia, “that
I
had on an evening dress cut down to my middle like the bar-keep's; I'd sell more ham and God knows I'd feel cooler.”

“Upper class steam,” said Comrade Fisher viciously. “They turn on all they've got to show they can afford it.” They drew their hair virtuously behind their ears in deadly contrast to the fluffy Powell's.

“Fish! Will you promise to pinch me the minute
he
comes in?”

“God I'm tired of you being a virgin,” said Ruthie Fisher scornfully; and longed with all her heart for Jeffrey Blake.