“Dick, why don’t you go to Eleanor’s? She’s giving a party for all the boyars.”
“Is she really going to marry that horrid little prince?” Eveline nodded with that same cold bitter look in her eyes. “I suppose a title is the last word in the decorating business… Why won’t Eleanor put up some money?” “I don’t want to ask her. She’s filthy with money, though, she’s had a very successful fall. I guess we’re all getting grasping in our old age… What does poor Moorehouse think about the prince?”
“I wish I knew what he thought about anything. I’ve been working for him for years now and I don’t know whether he’s a genius or a stuffed shirt… I wonder if he’s going to beat Eleanor’s. I want to get hold of him this evening for a moment… That’s a very good idea… Eveline, you always do me good one way or another.”
“You’d better not go without phoning… She’s perfectly capable of not letting you in if you come uninvited and particularly with a houseful of émigrée Russians in tiaras.”
Dick went to the phone and called up. He had to wait a long time for Eleanor to come. Her voice sounded shrill and rasping. At first she said why didn’t he come to dinner next week instead. Dick’s voice got very coaxing. “Please let me see the famous prince, Eleanor… And I’ve got something very important to ask you about… After all you’ve always been my guardian angel, Eleanor. If I can’t come to you when I’m in trouble, who can I come to?” At last she loosened up and said he could come but he mustn’t stay long. “You can talk to poor J. Ward… he looks a little forlorn.” Her voice ended in a screechy laugh that made the receiver jangle and hurt his ear.
When he went back to the sofa Eveline was lying back against the pillows soundlessly laughing. “Dick,” she said, “you’re a master of blarney.” Dick made a face at her, kissed her on the forehead and left the house.
Eleanor’s place was glittering with chandeliers and cutglass. When she met him at the drawingroom door her small narrow face looked smooth and breakable as a piece of porcelain under her carefully-curled hair and above a big rhinestone brooch that held a lace collar together. From behind her came the boom and the high piping of Russian men’s and women’s voices and a smell of tea and charcoal. “Well, Richard, here you are,” she said in a rapid hissing whisper. “Don’t forget to kiss the grandduchess’s hand… she’s had such a dreadful life. You’d like to do any little thing that would please her, wouldn’t you?… And, Richard, I’m worried about Ward… he looks so terribly tired… I hope he isn’t beginning to break up. He’s the type you know that goes off like that… You know these big shortnecked blonds.”
There was a tall silver samovar on the Buhl table in front of the marble fireplace and beside it sat a large oldish woman in a tinsel shawl with her hair in a pompadour and the powder flaking off a tired blotchy face. She was very gracious and had quite a twinkle in her eye and she was piling caviar out of a heaped cutglass bowl onto a slice of blackbread and laughing with her mouth full. Around her were grouped Russians in all stages of age and decay, some in tunics and some in cheap business suits and some frowstylooking young women and a pair of young men with slick hair and choirboy faces. They were all drinking tea or little glasses of vodka. Everybody was ladling out caviar. Dick was introduced to the prince who was an olivefaced young man with black brows and a little pointed black mustache who wore a black tunic and black soft leather boots and had a prodigiously small waist. They were all merry as crickets chirping and roaring in Russian, French and English. Eleanor sure is putting out, Dick caught himself thinking as he dug into the mass of big greygrained caviar.
J.W. looking pale and fagged was standing in the corner of the room with his back to an icon that had three candles burning in front of it. Dick distinctly remembered having seen the icon in Eleanor’s window some weeks before, against a piece of purple brocade. J.W. was talking to an ecclesiastic in a black cassock with purple trimmings who when Dick went up to them turned out to have a rich Irish brogue. “Meet the Archimandrite O’Donnell, Dick,” said J.W. “Did I get it right?” The Archimandrite grinned and nodded. “He’s been telling me about the monasteries in Greece.” “You mean where they haul you up in a basket?” said Dick. The Archimandrite jiggled his grinning, looselipped face up and down. “I’m goin’ to have the honorr and pleasurr of introducin’ dear Eleanor into the mysteries of the true church. I was tellin’ Mr. Moorehouse the story of my conversion.” Dick found an impudent rolling eye looking him over. “Perhaps you’d be carin’ to come someday, Mr. Savage, to hear our choir. Unbelief dissolves in music like a lump of sugar in a glass of hot tay.” “Yes, I like the Russian choir,” said J.W.
“Don’t you think that our dear Eleanor looks happier and younger for it?” The Archimandrite was beaming into the crowded room. J.W. nodded doubtfully. “Och, a lovely graceful little thing she is, clever too… Perhaps, Mr. Moorehouse and Mr. Savage, you’d come to the service and to lunch with me afterwards… I have some ideas about a little book on my experiences at Mount Athos… We could make a little parrty of it.” Dick was amazed to find the Archimandrite’s fingers pinching him in the seat and hastily moved away a step, but not before he’d caught from the Archimandrite’s left eye a slow vigorous wink.
The big room was full of clinking and toasting, and there was the occasional crash of a broken glass. A group of younger Russians were singing in deep roaring voices that made the crystal chandelier tinkle over their heads. The caviar was all gone but two uniformed maids were bringing in a table set with horsdœuvres in the middle of which was a large boiled salmon.
J.W. nudged Dick. “I think we might go someplace where we can talk.” “I was just waiting for you, J.W. I think I’ve got a new slant. I think it’ll click this time.”
They’d just managed to make their way through the crush to the door when a Russian girl in black with fine black eyes and arched brows came running after them. “Oh, you mustn’t go. Leocadia Pavlovna likes you so much. She likes it here, it is informal… the bohème. That is what we like about Leonora Ivanovna. She is bohème and we are bohème. We luff her.” “I’m afraid we have a business appointment,” said J.W. solemnly. The Russian girl snapped her fingers with, “Oh, business it is disgusting… America would be so nice without the business.”
When they got out on the street J.W. sighed. “Poor Eleanor, I’m afraid she’s in for something… Those Russians will eat her out of house and home. Do you suppose she really will marry this Prince Mingraziali? I’ve made inquiries about him… He’s all that he says he is. But heavens!” “With crowns and everything,” said Dick, “the date’s all set.” “After all, Eleanor knows her own business. She’s been very successful, you know.”
J.W.’s car was at the door. The chauffeur got out with a laprobe over his arm and was just about to close the door on J.W. when Dick said, “J.W., have you a few minutes to talk about this Bingham account?” “Of course, I was forgetting,” said J.W. in a tired voice. “Come on out to supper at Great Neck… I’m alone out there except for the children.” Smiling, Dick jumped in and the chauffeur closed the door of the big black towncar behind him.
It was pretty lugubrious eating in the diningroom with its painted Italian panels at the Moorehouses’ with the butler and the second-man moving around silently in the dim light and only Dick and J.W. and Miss Simpson, the children’s so very refined longfaced governess, at the long candlelit table. Afterwards when they went into J.W.’s little white den to smoke and talk about the Bingham account, Dick thanked his stars when the old butler appeared with a bottle of scotch and ice and glasses. “Where did you find that, Thompson?” asked J.W. “Been in the cellar since before the war, sir… those cases Mrs. Moorehouse bought in Scotland… I knew Mr. Savage liked a bit of a spot.”