The large drawing-room overlooking the Hudson was filled almost to capacity with that strange mixture of humanity which Mrs. Pett chiefly affected. She prided herself on the Bohemian element in her parties, and had become during the past two years a human drag-net, scooping Genius from its hiding-place and bringing it into the open. At different spots in the room stood the six resident geniuses to whose presence in the home Mr. Pett had such strong objections, and in addition to these she had collected so many more of a like breed from the environs of Washington Square that the air was clamorous with the hoarse cries of futurist painters, esoteric Buddhists, vers libre poets, interior decorators, and stage reformers, sifted in among the more conventional members of society who had come to listen to them. Men with new religions drank tea with women with new hats. Apostles of Free Love expounded their doctrines to persons who had been practising them for years without realising it. All over the room throats were being strained and minds broadened.
Mr. Chester, standing near the door with Ann, eyed the assemblage with the genial contempt of a large dog for a voluble pack of small ones. He was a massive, weather-beaten man, who looked very like Ann in some ways and would have looked more like her but for the misfortune of having had some of his face clawed away by an irritable jaguar with whom he had had a difference some years back in the jungles of Peru.
"Do you like this sort of thing?" he asked.
"I don't mind it," said Ann.
"Well, I shall be very sorry to leave you, Ann, but I'm glad I'm pulling out of here this evening. Who are all these people?"
Ann surveyed the gathering.
"That's Ernest Wisden, the playwright, over there, talking to Lora Delane Porter, the feminist writer. That's Clara What's-her-name, the sculptor, with the bobbed hair. Next to her—"
Mr. Chester cut short the catalogue with a stifled yawn.
"Where's old Pete? Doesn't he come to these jamborees?"
Ann laughed.
"Poor uncle Peter! If he gets back from the office before these people leave, he will sneak up to his room and stay there till it's safe to come out. The last time I made him come to one of these parties he was pounced on by a woman who talked to him for an hour about the morality of Finance and seemed to think that millionaires were the scum of the earth."
"He never would stand up for himself." Mr. Chester's gaze hovered about the room, and paused. "Who's that fellow? I believe I've seen him before somewhere."
A constant eddying swirl was animating the multitude. Whenever the mass tended to congeal, something always seemed to stir it up again. This was due to the restless activity of Mrs. Pett, who held it to be the duty of a good hostess to keep her guests moving. From the moment when the room began to fill till the moment when it began to empty she did not cease to plough her way to and fro, in a manner equally reminiscent of a hawk swooping on chickens and an earnest collegian bucking the line. Her guests were as a result perpetually forming new ententes and combinations, finding themselves bumped about like those little moving figures which one sees in shop-windows on Broadway, which revolve on a metal disc until, urged by impact with another little figure, they scatter to regroup themselves elsewhere. It was a fascinating feature of Mrs. Pett's at-homes and one which assisted that mental broadening process already alluded to that one never knew, when listening to a discussion on the sincerity of Oscar Wilde, whether it would not suddenly change in the middle of a sentence to an argument on the inner meaning of the Russian Ballet.
Plunging now into a group dominated for the moment by an angular woman who was saying loud and penetrating things about the suffrage, Mrs. Pett had seized and removed a tall, blonde young man with a mild, vacuous face. For the past few minutes this young man had been sitting bolt upright on a chair with his hands on his knees, so exactly in the manner of an end-man at a minstrel show that one would hardly have been surprised had he burst into song or asked a conundrum.
Ann followed her father's gaze.
"Do you mean the man talking to aunt Nesta? There, they've gone over to speak to Willie Partridge. Do you mean that one?"
"Yes. Who is he?"
"Well, I like that!" said Ann. "Considering that you introduced him to us! That's Lord Wisbeach, who came to uncle Peter with a letter of introduction from you. You met him in Canada."
"I remember now. I ran across him in British Columbia. We camped together one night. I'd never seen him before and I didn't see him again. He said he wanted a letter to old Pete for some reason, so I scribbled him one in pencil on the back of an envelope. I've never met any one who played a better game of draw poker. He cleaned me out. There's a lot in that fellow, in spite of his looking like a musical comedy dude. He's clever."
Ann looked at him meditatively.
"It's odd that you should be discovering hidden virtues in Lord Wisbeach, father. I've been trying to make up my mind about him. He wants me to marry him."
"He does! I suppose a good many of these young fellows here want the same thing, don't they, Ann?" Mr. Chester looked at his daughter with interest. Her growing-up and becoming a beauty had always been a perplexity to him. He could never rid himself of the impression of her as a long-legged child in short skirts. "I suppose you're refusing them all the time?"
"Every day from ten to four, with an hour off for lunch. I keep regular office hours. Admission on presentation of visiting card."
"And how do you feel about this Lord Wisbeach?"
"I don't know," said Ann frankly. "He's very nice. And—what is more important—he's different. Most of the men I know are all turned out of the same mould. Lord Wisbeach—and one other man—are the only two I've met who might not be the brothers of all the rest."
"Who's the other?"
"A man I hardly know. I met him on board ship—"
Mr. Chester looked at his watch.
"It's up to you, Ann," he said. "There's one comfort in being your father—I don't mean that exactly; I mean that it is a comfort to me AS your father—to know that I need feel no paternal anxiety about you. I don't have to give you advice. You've not only got three times the sense that I have, but you're not the sort of girl who would take advice. You've always known just what you wanted ever since you were a kid. . . . Well, if you're going to take me down to the boat, we'd better be starting. Where's the car?"
"Waiting outside. Aren't you going to say good-bye to aunt Nesta?"
"Good God, no!" exclaimed Mr. Chester in honest concern. "What! Plunge into that pack of coyotes and fight my way through to her! I'd be torn to pieces by wild poets. Besides, it seems silly to make a fuss saying good-bye when I'm only going to be away a short time. I shan't go any further than Colombia this trip."
"You'll be able to run back for week-ends," said Ann.
She paused at the door to cast a fleeting glance over her shoulder at the fair-haired Lord Wisbeach, who was now in animated conversation with her aunt and Willie Partridge; then she followed her father down the stairs. She was a little thoughtful as she took her place at the wheel of her automobile. It was not often that her independent nature craved outside support, but she was half conscious of wishing at the present juncture that she possessed a somewhat less casual father. She would have liked to ask him to help her decide a problem which had been vexing her for nearly three weeks now, ever since Lord Wisbeach had asked her to marry him and she had promised to give him his answer on her return from England. She had been back in New York several days now, but she had not been able to make up her mind. This annoyed her, for she was a girl who liked swift decisiveness of thought and action both in others and in herself. She was fond of Mr. Chester in much the same unemotional, detached way that he was fond of her, but she was perfectly well aware of the futility of expecting counsel from him. She said good-bye to him at the boat, fussed over his comfort for awhile in a motherly way, and then drove slowly back. For the first time in her life she was feeling uncertain of herself. When she had left for England, she had practically made up her mind to accept Lord Wisbeach, and had only deferred actual acceptance of him because in her cool way she wished to re-examine the position at her leisure. Second thoughts had brought no revulsion of feeling. She had not wavered until her arrival in New York. Then, for some reason which baffled her, the idea of marrying Lord Wisbeach had become vaguely distasteful. And now she found herself fluctuating between this mood and her former one.