«We're old friends,» said Dick, «we've known you and Carrie the hell of a long time, you know.» Humphrey looked at Stella.
«Carrie's fallen in love,» said Stella.
Humphrey closed his eyes. He might have been asleep, or dead. These skull-faced men can look astonishingly dead at times.
However, after a few long seconds he opened them again. Dick was saying something.
«When?» asked Humphrey of Stella.
«Last month, Humphrey. And almost at once it was too late to write.»
«With whom?»
«He's quite a decent sort,» said Dick. «In fact, it's Brodie.»
«Alan Brodie the tennis champion,» said Stella.
«National Singles eight times,» said Dick. «The last six years in succession.»
«He talks like that because he is scared and miserable,» said Stella.
«Alan Brodie toured Europe the first year I was there,» said Humphrey. «He came to Vienna. There was some kind of fuss at his hotel. A mob of women scuffling. It doesn't often happen over there.»
«He's a popular idol,» said Stella.
«Do you mean like Carrie?»
«He's a beautiful creature, Humphrey. He gives people the same sort of thrill that Carrie does. And the two of them together … !»
«She must have changed a great deal.»
«Not really, Humphrey. I think she's realized what she's meant for.»
«She's not meant for that sort of thing at all,» said Humphrey, not loudly or emphatically, but with complete finality.
«Humphrey, you'll just have to wait till you see them together.»
«I can wait,» said Humphrey.
In New York it is seldom necessary to wait very long. Humphrey had a book to publish, and therefore a publisher, and therefore an invitation to lunch, and at a certain restaurant frequented by the people who are known to each other and to the gossip columnists. A woman for whose glands he would have paid a small fortune was sitting at the next table. Suddenly she uttered a sort of squeal. Then Humphrey, with a sensation that made of him a life-long opponent of electrocution, heard her utter the following words: «Oh, look! The lovers!»
Humphrey had no reason to turn his head. He saw other people looking in the direction of the door. He had time enough to observe, on faces horribly besmeared with success, a look of simple pleasure such as made even those faces seem quite attractive. Humphrey not only observed this, but reflected on it. «It must be a good thing,» he thought, «that can so transfigure faces like these.»
All this time the faces in question were turning, like searchlights converging on an unseen objective, as they followed Caroline and her Alan Brodie. Suddenly Humphrey found himself caught as it were in the full blaze, which meant she was close behind him. He turned, and they met.
Everything was very pleasant, good-humoured and gay. Caroline and Brodie sat down with Humphrey and his publisher; other people came to greet them and were induced to sit down also. Everyone talked a great deal except Humphrey, who was not expected to talk a great deal.
The truth is, Humphrey had a decision to make. He was prepared to believe this new impression of his, that Caroline's approaching marriage was a good thing. He wanted to believe it, as far at least as a man nearly insane with jealousy could be expected to. Indeed, as far as is consistent with that very human weakness, and with knowing deep down that the whole business was nothing but an imbecile, narcissistic delusion, it may be said he did believe it was a good thing, and that his impulse to kick it to pieces and drag Caroline out of it was barbarous, atavistic, and on no account to be indulged in.
Caroline helped him in this noble endeavour. Her every word and every look was exactly right for the occasion. She made no bones about asking the publisher to move so that she could sit next to Humphrey. She spoke to him with the utmost tenderness and concern. Her look appealed to him to understand. Her smile, and the glow about her, proclaimed that, even if he didn't understand, there are values and glories in life that must be held paramount. And when she looked at her lover it was perfectly plain what those glories were. «So be it!» thought Humphrey. «It's a good thing.» And he joined with the rest of the circle in watching the happy pair, and the light that was reflected on the faces of the others was reflected on his own, though no doubt in a broken sort of way.
There then ensued a divertissement such as often happens in restaurants frequented by celebrities. Sallow young men arrived with cameras and flash bulbs; Caroline and Alan were required to get together and to take first this pose and then that. The process was more elaborate than the usual snapping of pictures in a restaurant, partly because an important magazine was involved, partly because there was a great deal of by-play with the manager and with people at other tables. It was the sort of thing that would be an awful pain in the neck unless you like that sort of thing, in which case of course it could be very gratifying.
Caroline was flushed, smiling, and immensely gratified when she sat down again beside Humphrey. It is in such states of happy excitement that words pop out that are utterly different from what one really means, words that anyone but a cold-blooded scientist would have the decency to ignore. «Well?» said Caroline. «What do you think of us?» She stopped herself suddenly, and looked at Humphrey in blushing embarrassment, for such words are not fit to be heard by a psychoanalyst, much less by a forsaken lover.
«I think,» said Humphrey, «You're both charming, and I hope we'll be friends. Why not bring your young man around to see me?»
«We go off on Friday, you know,» said Caroline, still confused. «There's not a chance in the world before then.»
«But you will when you get back?»
«Of course. We'd love to. But it won't be for two months at least.»
«I can wait, »said Humphrey.
About a week before Alan and Caroline were due back from their honeymoon, Humphrey, who had been thinking a great deal while he waited, called up a man named Morgan. This was Albert Morgan, whose vocation it is to take the ambiguous and uncertain mutterings of scientists and transform them into clear, downright, and extremely thrilling articles for the weekly magazines. «Morgan,» said Humphrey, «It's now three months since you last pestered me to give you some private information about Vingleberg's experiments.»
Morgan explained why he had abandoned the attempt to get Humphrey to talk.
«If you think clams do that sort of thing,» said Humphrey, «I can understand why your articles are so extremely inaccurate. But, anyway, I'm not a clam, and to prove it I'm calling you to say I've just had a letter from Vingleberg. It concerns some tests we started just before I left. Now, listen; I shall tell you nothing that's in the least confidential, because I know damned well I'll see it in all the headlines tomorrow morning. But if you want to hear about twenty very carefully chosen words …»
«Hold it!» said Morgan. «I'll be right over.»
It was really remarkable what Morgan could do with twenty carefully chosen words. Or possibly Humphrey, being a guileless scientist, had been cozened into uttering twenty-five or even thirty. At all events the news broke, not in the headlines, it's true, but in very impressive articles on important pages, to the effect that stocky, balding, Viennese endocrinologist Vingleberg and Johns Hopkins' Humphrey Baxter had succeeded in isolating V.B. 282. And V.B. 282, it appeared, was neither more nor less than the glandular secretion that controls the aging of the tissues. And since we all have tissues, all aging, the promise in these paragraphs was seized on with avidity by all who read.
Meanwhile Caroline and Alan returned, and soon — very soon — they came round to Humphrey's apartment for a drink. He received them with the utmost cordiality, and asked them a thousand questions about themselves, all of which they answered fully and frankly, like people who had nothing to conceal. They were so anxious to give him all the information that might be of interest to him that neither of them observed his reactions very closely. Had they done so, they might have noticed that at certain answers, particularly from Caroline, his cruel and sensitive mouth tightened itself with that painful satisfaction with which a pathologist might regard the slide which tells him that his difficult diagnosis was right in every particular, and his best friend needs immediate surgery.