Читать книгу The Lorenzo Bunch - Booth Tarkington - Страница 6

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The Foots, Irene and Ernie, were the last arrivals at the evening party given by Arlene and Roy Parker in the hope that agreeable affiliations would be accomplished and the newcomers adopted into the Lorenzo bunch. Three varnished brown doors in a row stood brightly open to the corridor; the Stems and the Finches having cordially lent spaciousness to the evening. Guests might play cards in the Finches’ apartment or dance in that of the Stems’ to the Stems’ big radio-phonograph; but these diversions were for later. The guests of honor were awaited in the Parkers’ living-room, where two vases of chrysanthemums on a white-covered side table rose gayly above a gleaming symmetrical display of spoons, forks, knives, stacked plates and piled napkins. Expectant here were host and hostess and the Stems, the Finches and the Rices—octet nucleus of the Lorenzo bunch. In addition there were two other couples, non-resident members, so to speak, since they lived elsewhere than at the Lorenzo. There were also, from lower floors of the Lorenzo, two eager ladies widowed by divorce, a divorced young druggist and the exotic member, Mr. Ben Raphael, a bachelor.

Most of the ladies seemed to have based their hair and dress upon Hollywood’s glisteners; the gentlemen were unanimously in black with short coats darkly framing their white shirtfronts. “See you had to get out the good old tuck for to-night, Ed,” was Mr. Finch’s greeting to Mr. Stem. “I wasn’t going to; but Mabe said Carrie said you were. Lucky! I’d ’a’ pulled a bad one on myself if I hadn’t.”

Charlie Rice joined them. “I like a tuck, myself,” he said. “If I got to change my shirt anyway, I just as lief get into a tuck as not.” He spoke further upon this theme, became the center of a male group, all in genially serious agreement with him. The ladies, collecting in another part of the room, likewise spoke of clothes. They praised one anothers’ garments effusively, revealed prices amid marveling exclamations, insisted upon their envy of one another’s hair, finger-nails, lip stains and artificial smells.

Everybody glanced sidelong repeatedly at the open door of the little hallway;—Roy Parker, nervous, heard the click of the elevator grille.

“Guess that’s them,” he said, and strode out into the corridor.

A moment later he was heard returning and talking cordially in the little hallway. “That’s good; that’s good! Lay your wrap on that table, Irene. Hardly needed it just coming up from the fourth floor, did you? Wore it just to prove you were coming to a party, I expect!” He laughed hospitably. “Thinking last night how nice you and Arlene having names so much alike—Irene and Arlene certainly ought to get along together, what? Step right on in, Ernie.”

Polite but awkward, he urged this chosen friend of his through the door and into the room before himself and Mrs. Foot. From both Roy and Arlene the expectant guests had already heard much in favor of the young man, and his appearance agreeably bore out the prophecies. Dark-haired, slender, amiable-looking, he came into the room smiling deferentially and instantly made the right impression upon the ladies, who all chattered but the more loudly, pretending not to be aware of him. Nevertheless, under this cover, there was approving comment upon him.

“Reminds me of Claud Barnes,” Mabel said hastily, out of the side of her mouth, to Mrs. Stem. “Awful aristocratic and the same soft look around the eyes Claud gets. Slim-waisted and wears his tuck buttoned, the way Claud did in his last picture. I bet that’s absolutely the right——”

She was silent abruptly. The general chatter died away, leaving upon the air only a few detached murmurs, breathed exclamations of wonder. For a moment the room was hushed in one of those dramatic pauses that sometimes take place even in the most polite assemblies upon the arrival of a surprising personage. The host came in with Irene Foot beside him, and she was so startling that no one could make the least pretense of not being aware of her.

Brunette and blue-eyed, she was one of those few fortunate women to whom short hair is fascinatingly becoming; she had the right head and the right, round neck for it—the thick dark curls, not touseled, were symmetrical upon this symmetrical head. Her nose was short but not stinted; the right mouth and the right chin went with it, and she had the smooth and even coloring that is often called an olive complexion, but isn’t. Twenty-six perhaps, at that age she had attained the full lustre of silken first youth; its glamor was like a glow from her, and the glance of her eye was ardent and adventurously inquiring.

Other women in the room were often thought pretty, and tall Arlene Parker was definitely a handsome creature; but everybody realized instantly that no competition could here be offered with this beauty, which was something of another and incomparably rarer class. Nevertheless, the Lorenzo ladies, after their first breathless moments of inward disturbance, were prepared to forgive her. Suave and exquisite modelings were easily divined beneath the close fabric of her silvery satin dress; she showed a silver high-arched foot, graceful arms, and hands that were pretty even though the delicate nails were as red as an Arab beggar’s toes; but neither the dress nor the slippers were new or of the year’s fashion, and, tending even more than this to mollify wifely apprehension, she wore an expression of gentle sweetness—a look of modesty that seemed to contradict the adventurous glancing of her brilliant eyes. For just the first half instant of her entering the room she seemed to sweep forward flashing, inquiring and bold; then the quick sweetness came over her, and her dark lashes lowered in an appealing deference. The whom room seemed brightened and enriched.

Honest Roy Parker had the needless embarrassment of a plain man who accompanies a conspicuous woman; he tried to appear easy. “Listen, folkses!” he said in a loud voice, addressing the company. “This is Ernie and Irene Foot that we’re throwing all this splurge for. Don’t stand off. They’re the best ever, so just treat ’em the way you——”

“No, no!” Arlene hurried forward, laughing. “Think you’re announcing a wrestling match? Listen, Roy; Ernie and Irene got to know people’s names, don’t they?”

Upon this, everybody laughed noisily; tension relaxed and voices resumed their function. Everywhere among the ladies there sounded an almost whistling hissing betokening their warmed approval—“Sweet!” “So sweet!” “So sweet-looking!” and “Isn’t she sweet?” The gentlemen fingered their neck gear; their eyes brightened and their expressions became fatuous yet furtive, as if some guilty secret had suddenly made them happier. Arlene began to present Irene to the other guests, pronouncing names distinctly, and Roy Parker, taking Ernest Foot by the arm, moved about the room introducing him, bragging of him warmly.

“Shake hands with Ernie Foot, Ed. Ben, I want you to meet Ernie Foot, my best friend. Started in under me at the Old Windsor Wholesale, and only last week they put him at the head of the Art Hardware Department. Shows brains can always do something, depression or no depression, what? These babies are Mr. Ed Stem and Mr. Ben Raphael, Ernie.”

The host continued to circulate with his protégé, and a happy discovery was made—a fraternal bond already existed between the male guest of honor and Art Finch. “Gave each other the grip,” Roy explained to all who would listen. “Ernie went a year to State College and Art was at Iola Tech a while. Art always wears his Chi Theta pin or whatever you call it, and Ernie saw it on him and right away before I introduced ’em they stuck out their hands and gave each other the grip! Wish I’d been a year to some college; it’s a big advantage.” He took his friend again by the arm. “Art, sorry I got to cut in on you and Ernie brothering each other: you’ll get to talk to him some more later, Art. Right now he’s got to meet these girls. Here, Lide, I want you to meet Ernie Foot; he’s artistic, so they’ve made him our new head of the Art Hardware Department at the Old Windsor Wholesale. Her name’s Mrs. Rice, Ernie, and that young fellow over there with the red head’s her husband, so come on we’ll go shake hands with him, too.”

The party became informal. The phonograph presently sounded brassily from the Stems’ apartment, where dancing began, and the red-legged card-table in the Finches’ living-room acquired bridge players. Roy Parker’s long figure went hovering from one room to another; he carried an open cigar box, proffering it hopefully everywhere—once absent-mindedly even to his wife, as she joined a group near the Stems’ resounding radio-phonograph.

“Crazy!” She laughed at him benevolently. “Put it down and dance with me.”

They danced, Roy conscientiously and the tall Arlene gracefully, observed from the doorway by Mrs. Finch and Mrs. Rice, who began talking to each other aside. “Can you beat it?” Lida Rice murmured. “Would you think there was such a person as Mr. Gillespie Ives in the world? You haf to hand it to her, how she puts it over. Poor good old Roy’d never dream she had a thought for any man in the world but him; she always acts like she just worships him. Why, if I had some big Goldwood baby come three times to the Garfield Avenue on account of me, I could no more go up to my Charlie afterwards the way Arlene just——”

“Me either!” Mabel said. “I’d pretty near be scared to look Art in the eye.” Her glance went musingly from the Parkers to the only other couple dancing just then, Mrs. Foot and Mr. Rice. Mabel didn’t need to explain that her topic had changed from Arlene to Irene as she murmured seriously, “Cute feet, too, hasn’t she?”

“Cute all over,” Lida Rice said in the tone women use when they feel they must face such facts. “That silver satin she’s got on’s anyhow a couple years old and those slippers been scuffed some, too; but Gosh! she should worry! With her shape and those eyes and that profile and hair I’d be willing to wear a few old doodads, myself!” She paused; then added with detachment, philosophically, “Kind o’ makes you sick o’ husbands, don’t it?”

“How d’you mean, Lide?”

“All of ’em looking and behaving so gollblame silly just because some sweet-faced cutie’s got a silhouette like that! You wait till I get Charlie alone—if I don’t put him through a course of sprouts!” She laughed. “All of ’em trying to dance with her at once, and then those that get left standing around giving her the eye and posing, thinking she’s looking at ’em, when any fool knows a woman like that couldn’t think about anybody except herself to save her life; no matter how sweet she acts! Look at Ed Stem letting on to be terrible graceful and turning on that loud la-dee-da laugh of his, the way he does when he thinks somebody swell is listening to him. Him and Art pretending to be talking to each other but half the time looking sideways at her to see if she’s noticing. In a minute they’ll both try to grab her from Charlie again.”

“Sure!” Mabel said. “There they go.” To her pleasure, however, the two gentlemen were defeated. Dark Mr. Ben Raphael, more adroit than they, detached the beautiful Mrs. Foot from Charlie Rice’s lingering arm and suavely moved with her in fashionably voluptuous rhythms. Mabel tittered. “Look at Art and Ed! Like a couple o’ poodle pups that somebody’s grabbed away their bone!” Then she became serious. “Her husband’s pretty near as smooth a looker for a man as she is for a girl; s’pose I and you made ourselves as goofy over him as Art and Charlie are over her, would they ever stop rubbing it in?”

Young Mrs. Rice didn’t reply; for the moment she seemed lost in perplexing thought; then, as if she had solved a puzzle, she said triumphantly, “Yes, sir! I bet that’s it!”

“You bet what’s what, Lide?”

“Listen! Anybody when they get caught in a jam, they can’t think quick enough to make up a whole story to get themselves out of it; so about half what they say’ll be the truth. Arlene told you Mr. Gillespie Ives was following her and another woman downtown and she wanted to keep this other woman from noticing him, so she pushed her into the Chev and left him flat. Well, s’pose that part of her story happened to be true. S’pose there was another woman with her. Mrs. Ernest Foot!”

“What?” Mabel stared from Lida Rice to the dancing Irene and back again. “But it was all just a smoke-screen, so how——”

“No, sir!” Lida exclaimed. “There was that other woman. It works out just perfect. Arlene told you it was some cousin of hers because she knew you’d be getting acquainted with Mrs. Ernest Foot before long and she didn’t want you telling her Mr. Gillespie Ives is crazy enough about her to be hanging around the Garfield Avenue Theater looking for her and——”

Mrs. Finch’s mouth opened wide and then closed. “Lida Rice, you’re a wiz!”

“You bet!” Mrs. Rice agreed. “Yes, and you bet it was true Arlene hustled Irene away from Mr. Gillespie Ives and into the Chev! S’pose I or you had a rich friend on a string and was downtown walking with Mrs. Ernest Foot, and he came up, we’d get her out of the way as quick as we could, too, wouldn’t we? Yes, and keep her out of his way afterwards as long as we could, too! No wonder Arlene was shaking her head at him in the lobby of the Garfield Avenue when he was trying to get her to tell him where he could see Irene Foot again!”

“Pete’s sakes!” Mabel’s bosom was stirred by a profound enjoyment, one of those rich emotions known by ladies of the Lorenzo bunch, and like bunches, when one of their number is hiddenly perceived to be walking a secret and perilous path. Mrs. Finch and Mrs. Rice shared an almost breathless silence during which their brightened eyes apparently enlarged.

Their husbands, smiling falsely, approached them, Lida’s to dance with Mabel, and Mabel’s to dance with Lida; the two ladies had to separate. For the next few moments each loyally rallied the other’s husband, taxed him with posing at Mrs. Foot and waggishly put him in his place, the worm’s. Then the two busy heads joined again, in the doorway. Good old Roy Parker might be quiet but he wasn’t a man you better play tricks on, they agreed. Arlene was a woman you might think you knew her; but did you? Irene Foot might be in love with her attractive husband or she mightn’t; you couldn’t tell, but Beauties weren’t likely to be, no matter how sweet they looked. As for Mr. Gillespie Ives, so that was the way these Oldwood millionaires acted outside of the home, for heaven’s sake, was it?—and for crying out loud, what about his wife?

To the view of Mabel and Lida, six people, Arlene and Roy, and Irene and Ernie, and two remoter figures upon a high and gilded horizon, Mr. and Mrs. Gillespie Ives, were absorbingly involved.

Something must come of it. Lida and Mabel, like spectators delightedly stirred by the opening of a play, leaned forward, staring at Irene Foot.