The figure laughed outright
"Or have I succeeded," said Eustace, "where all the scientists have failed, and changed dead clay into organic colloidal matter, charged with pep and energy? That must be it. In that case I'm the hell of a sculptor!"
"Have it your own way," said the figure. "In any case you're a lousy ventriloquist, and it's ventriloquism that rakes in the I don't know how many hundred thousand a year."
"There is something in that," said Eustace. "But since you can speak so well, surely we can give terrific performances."
"Not with me as the stooge," said Bertie. "I have the looks and I have the personality. I'm not sitting on your knee any more. You can sit on mine if you like, and I'll run the show and draw the money."
"Me sit on your knee?" cried Eustace. "No!"
"Oh, it's not so bad," said the other. "Come on, why don't you try it? You don't want to? Well, perhaps the little lady will try."
"Yes, I will," said Sadie. "I don't think I don't know how many hundred thousand a year is to be sneezed at." With that she seated herself on the image's knee.
"How d'you like it, honey?" asked the image.
"I think we ought to be engaged," said she. "In fact, I think we ought to be married."
"Don't worry about that," said the image, chucking her under the chin. "On the stage, it's different. We troupers are practical."
"Then take your practicality out of my studio," said Eustace. "I'm going back to ideals. No more ventriloquism, no more clay, no more springs! I'm going to make tombstones, and by gosh, I'll make 'em heavy!"
"Just as you please," said the image. "Sadie and I will get on very well as a couple."
"She will not like the pins," said Eustace.
"I shall allow no pins," said the image with a reassuring glance at Sadie. "Just a little matter of this sort." As he spoke, he gave her another pinch, similar to the first he had given her, only this time her squeal was in a deeper, fuller tone.
"Your squeal is very deep and full," said Eustace to her, as he icily opened the door for their exit. "You had better remember that some of the springs I used were abominably old and rusty."
With that he shut the door after them, and, contrary to his expressed intention, he approached a chunk of clay that stood handy, and began to model it into a very fetching Eve-like figure. Halfway through, however, he changed his mind yet again, and turned out a cute little Sealyham.
YOUTH FROM VIENNA
Young men with open faces, red cheeks, and brown hair all behave in the same way, and nothing in the world could be more reasonable. They fall into a job or in love with the utmost readiness and enthusiasm. If oil and Lucille let them down, they pretty soon console themselves with steel and Estelle.
Other young men seem born for one passion only, or maybe two, one job and one woman. If both passions are there they run together, like railway lines; they are strong as steel, and as devoid of romantic colouring. They go on forever, and if one or other fails the results are apt to be serious. Young men of this sort are sometimes very tall, lean to emaciation, with skull-like faces, deep-set and rather burning eyes, and mouths either terribly sensitive or terribly cruel, it is hard to say which. If they are poor they look like nothing on earth; if they are rich they look like Lincoln in the rail-splitting period.
Such young men frequently devote themselves to science; sometimes to medicine. The research side appeals to them. If they are brilliant enough, and have money enough, they study under the world's greatest authorities. If they are interested in certain functions of the glands, this takes them to Lilley's or the Ford Foundation, but in the old days, in the days of our youth, it took them to Vienna.
Before going to Vienna, Humphrey Baxter went to dine with a married couple of his acquaintance. These, not having a word to say about glands, had provided themselves and him with tickets for the theatre. The play turned out to be a light romantic comedy which was also only very indirectly concerned with the glands. Humphrey sat regarding it with forebearance until, at a well-chosen moment early in the first act, Caroline Coates walked on to the stage. Humphrey leaned forward in his seat. The movement passed unnoticed because everyone else in the theatre also leaned forward.
It may well be asked why this considerable expenditure of human energy was exerted on account of a girl who only escaped being the worst actress in the world by being so very obviously not an actress at all. The fact is, Caroline Coates was a goddess. I think it was Alexander Woollcott who wrote: "To enquire as to her capacity as a mummer would be like asking, of a real actress, what is her prowess in trapeze work. Talent in this young woman would be a mere dilution, like soda in a highball; the less of it the better. When the divine Aphrodite walks on the stage, we do not wish her to perform like the divine Sarah."
Caroline had been put into a play by some fantastic mistake in the very year she left Bennington. It was at once apparent that she was one of those girls there is only one in each generation whose fortune it is to stand for something greater than talent and greater than beauty, and hence to be universally adored. The essential quality in Caroline was her youth. It aroused in the beholder the keenest, liveliest, and most exquisite sensation of pure joy, which is the rarest and finest of all sensations. Besides this, as I happen to know from private sources, this Caroline was a good-natured, well-bred, truthful, simple, kind, merry, and unaffected girl, and she smelled like a florist's shop, which is not always the case with goddesses.
Humphrey observed this phenomenon with a concentration he had hitherto reserved for sections of the obscurer glands mounted on microscope slides. As they left the theatre he turned to his host and hostess. "Do you by any chance happen to know that girl?" He saw the question surprised them, so he continued without waiting for an answer. "Or do you know anyone who knows her?"
"No, Humphrey. She lives in the great world. She's altogether beyond our class. She lives with people with the names of buildings and breakfast foods. And when she's not on the stage she's on yachts and polo fields and such like, and we wouldn't know even this if we didn't read the Sunday papers."
Humphrey was in no way dismayed by this answer. He knew very well it needs only two or three introductions to bridge the gap between oneself and anyone anywhere in the world. He therefore asked everyone he knew, stating his purpose very clearly, and before many weeks had passed he found himself on a certain terrace, looking over Long Island Sound, being curiously regarded by the namesakes of buildings and breakfast foods, and talking to Caroline Coates. He found her amazingly ignorant of the immense importance of recent researches into the functions of the ductless glands, and it was a keen pleasure to him to tell her of the great strides in human health and happiness and longevity that were promised by the new knowledge. You may imagine the effect of this gaunt, gauche, hollow-cheeked young man, in altogether the wrong sort of jacket, sitting among the well-groomed crowd, lecturing a popular idol of twenty-three on the effects of certain unsavoury juices upon horrible insane little girls, who wallowed in their own dung. Of course, she fell wildly, madly, head-over-heels in love with him, and before the month was out it was announced they were engaged to be married.
Certain buildings rocked a little; certain breakfast foods popped and crackled even more snappishly than usual. But in the main people felt that it showed what a fine girl Caroline was, and yet it was in no way a threat, because it couldn't possibly last. For example, what would happen when Humphrey went to Vienna, to work under the celebrated Vingleberg?
"I shall be there," said Humphrey, "for three years straight. And if I get out of that lab for forty-eight consecutive hours any time in those three years, it'll be because the place has burned down. I can't get back here to see you."