Richard’s mental confusion was not greatly cleared up by this breathless discourse. A certain Lucretia was evidently no prude and a certain Tassie was evidently a maiden who couldn’t be left unprotected in the streets of New York.
He hazarded a leading question to this long-legged damsel whose athletic person was giving him at that moment what children call pins and needles, as she leaned against him as if he were a convenient piece of furniture, completely devoid of normal sensibility.
‘Who is this you are speaking of, this man you are expecting here?’
‘Who is it?’ She jumped up from his side and ran, or rather bounded, into the kitchen. ‘You’ve never told him about Ivan!’ she cried indignantly. ‘Here have I been chattering on for the last half hour and I find he doesn’t know who Ivan is! Do you and he go round with different crowds?’
Nelly’s answer was interrupted by such a burst of laughter that Richard could not catch its purport. The two women then launched into a whispered colloquy punctuated by little smothered shrieks of amusement.
What children they are, he thought, stretching himself out in his big chair and lighting another cigarette. If it were Canyot and I making that coffee, we should be either propitiating one another’s vanity with the most pompous earnestness, or we should be quarrelling like the devil!
They came back into the room at last, with the coffee not quite spoilt by so elaborate a preparation. At that very moment the doorbell rang again. Richard ran down to open it, full of curiosity to see this much talked-of Ivan. As he descended the stairs he could not help thinking with what completely different an eye he regarded everything in the world, now that he had seen Elise.
He opened the door to the stranger; who walked in with hardly a gesture of thanks. When the door was shut he turned upon Richard and showed himself under the electric light of the little hallway to be a man of about thirty with a pointed black beard and a head of small stiff black curls. His eyes were at once dreamy and alert; dreamy on the surface of them and profoundly alive beneath the surface. ‘Is she up there?’ he inquired.
Richard lifted his eyebrows. The man’s manner irritated him. ‘Is it our place you’re looking for? Please come up, will you? We’re on the next floor’ — and he proceeded to lead the way.
Halfway up the stairs the man caught Richard by the arm. ‘Is she angry with me?’ he whispered. ‘Has she told you about me?’
The long rambling discourse he had just submitted to, squeezed so very close to the young person in question, rose confusedly in his memory.
‘I really don’t know,’ he answered drily. ‘But please come in. I’m sure my wife will be delighted to see you.’
They entered together and Nelly greeted the newcomer enthusiastically. He was introduced to Richard as Ivan Karmakoff. Catharine, who had once more taken possession of the armchair, extended to him a long languid brown arm without making any attempt to rise.
They all sat down and began drinking coffee.
Catharine concentrated herself upon Richard, and in order to face him more directly she swung her legs over the arm of the chair, displaying a greater length of openwork silk stocking than he had ever associated in his life before with any respectable conversation.
‘You’ve seen Fancy Goring in The Way of all Souls, I suppose?’ she asked. ‘She’s a good actress, but her personality is terrible. Oh, and have you seen Keenie Trench? She does that innocent-little-girl business adorably — a regular young Greuze, don’t you think so? But what you must see, if you haven’t yet, is Jack Candid in The Blue Mirror. He’s a bit wobbly in the serious parts but he does that harlequin stunt to absolute perfection. What a pity Charlie Guelph didn’t do the set for that thing! Don’t you think so? He’s the only one of that Broadway bunch who’s got any gumption. It was real creative stuff that he did for Ralph’s Banbury Cross — those conventional trees, you remember? and that market place? They say he’s never got another job since his affair with Lena Hastings. Kind of pulled him to pieces, so they say at Aunt Flouncy’s. Disintegrated him. Broke his spirit. Lena’s mad about Jack Candid now, who’ll hardly speak to her. Serve her right, I say. But she’s very unhappy. Jack Candid’s the last person a girl ought to get involved with. I like him myself. We have splendid times together. But he knows he can’t be at all personal with me. And so he treats me quite decently. She’s a little fool I think. And I’d tell her so, for a cent! Oh, and have you seen Elise Angel yet?’
This unexpected question coming bolt out, at the end of a rigmarole that Richard had quite lost the thread of, made him give a palpable start.
Like one greater than himself and on a very different occasion, he lied bluntly and deeply.
‘Elise Angel? No I’ve never seen her work. What is she? an imitator of Clarice Darling?’
Catharine Gordon clasped the arm of the chair and bounded to her feet. She forgot all about her difficulty with Ivan and turned to him with something like a shriek of excitement.
‘He’s never seen Elise Angel! Is it possible? He says he’s never heard of her!’
There was a general movement of aesthetic consternation. Richard felt that he had damned himself for ever with the initiated of Manhattan.
Even Nelly attacked him — ‘But surely, Richard, surely—’
‘Why,’ cried Catharine. ‘Nelly told me you’d spent years in Paris. It’s only Paris that really understands Elise. She gets outrageously wretched houses over here. She hates this place and I don’t blame her. But her time will come. They’ll be sorry for it. Why, my good man, she’s the greatest artist in the world. She and the Duse. Tell him about her, Ivan. It’s incredible he shouldn’t know!’
‘I can only tell him,’ said Ivan, speaking very slowly and deliberately, ‘that her genius has revolutionized the whole modern theatre. Her influence is behind everything — not only dancing, but everything. The Russian Ballet of course — they’ve admitted that themselves. And everything that’s been done since! It’s her ideas, they say, that started Charlie Guelph with his best sets.’
Richard began to curse himself for his treachery to his goddess. Never had his diplomacy blundered so abominably. He felt instinctively that Nelly was watching him very closely in his discomfiture. He felt that his power of self-control was on the point of abandoning him. He felt that just because it was all so impossible he might at any moment blurt out the truth.
In desperation he got up from his seat. ‘Well, some of you people must take me to see her,’ he muttered. ‘Yes, I think I do remember hearing of her in Paris. But this office work today has put everything charming out of my head. And I had too good a dinner tonight — that’s another thing — a dinner uptown, you know? I scared Nelly when I came in. I really wasn’t quite myself. They gave me champagne.’
‘Who’s they?’ cried Catharine Gordon, flinging out her long arms and seizing Richard by the shoulders. ‘Shall I make him confess, Nelly?’
Richard looked helplessly at the arms that held him. They were bare except for the loose short sleeves of the smock she was wearing, and their skin looked brown and soft above the elbows like the skin of a young gipsy.
He threw them off almost roughly. ‘I think I must go out for a bit of air,’ he said. ‘I seem to have been indoors all day. You people will look after Nelly till I come back, won’t you?’