“Oh, I don’t know,” he murmured, with conscious inadequacy. And then, a feeling of obligation overcoming him, a fear of hurting Kit’s feelings, “It’s like this.… You know some of those African tribes have a peculiar marriage custom. You know what it is?…”
“I can’t say I do.”
“Every man-jack in the tribe lies with the bride—before the husband is allowed to have her. I daresay you’ve heard of it. What’s the idea behind it? It’s not very pretty.… A sort of communal business: as if the tribe were itself taking possession of the woman by defiling her; humbling the bridegroom and putting him in his place. It certainly ought to cure him of any fine romantic notions about love, and blast out of him any notion of exclusive proprietorship in his woman! Oughtn’t it? Assuming that African tribes have any romantic notions!… Just imagine what the bridegroom must feel about it.”
“I very much doubt if he feels a damned thing.”
“Maybe not, if he’s completely tribal-minded. But suppose he’s a little bit of an individualist—and after all, it’s exactly through such preliminary outcroppings of individualism that civilization has developed—and wants to indulge in his own unique reactions to the world or God or whatever you want to call it, in his own way, without any pawings and meddlings and bellowings from the herd. Suppose he has his own little vision of beauty, if you like, and doesn’t want it spat upon by the village fathers. He has this little secret something-or-other in his heart or soul, and it’s damned precious to him. What’s he going to feel about it then?”
Kit frowned, holding the palm of his hand against the top of the shaker. He was standing in a characteristic attitude, with one foot crossed over the other. His face was flushed, and he looked puzzled.
“You’re getting a little deep,” he said. “And yet I see what you mean. Sure, I see what you mean. It would be kind of nasty.… Have another?”
Tom held out his glass; Kit smiled and poured.
“Nasty is the word. And that’s what a bachelor supper is.”
“Don’t kid me!”
“No kidding. I mean it.”
Kit began to laugh—as if on the assumption that the whole thing was perhaps a rather amusing extravaganza—but then apparently thought better of it. He put the cocktail shaker on the mantelpiece beside a gilt-porcelain snuff-box. Then he rubbed his hand across his forehead.
“I had a couple of these before you came,” he said. “So I’m ahead of you. Life is damned funny.”
“The hell you say.”
“For God’s sake, Tom, you don’t mean you take all that seriously? Snap out of it. What the devil does it matter? Sometimes I really think you’re psychopathic.”
“Don’t make me tired. I thought you were intelligent enough to understand it. Or sensitive enough to feel it. My mistake.”
He moved to the table, to put down his glass, and felt his first step waver slightly. His second was firmer, and he felt that his wavering had been quite unobserved. Kit was in no state to observe. The curtains lifted inward again, undulating, and something in his mind lifted and undulated in the same fashion. It was April, and such things were suitable. It would have been a nice evening for a walk or drive with Gay. To Concord or Lexington. Past that little knoll where the peach trees were always first in bloom.… Odd, how difficult, not to say impossible, it had been to discuss all this with Kit. And it had been the same way with Gay. He had thought of telling her about it—his shrinking from the supper—his feeling of contamination in the very idea of it—he had even begun to choose the phrases for it; but then, all of a sudden, he had become tongue-tied. Even in the talking about it something precious would be lost. The whole affair was so delicately balanced, so emotionally precarious.…
“Look here,” said Kit suddenly. “I’m not such a fool as you seem to think. Do you know what? I believe I understand this damned thing perfectly. Perfectly. Now you listen to me.”
He came to the window beside Tom, and took Tom’s arm, swaying a little and smiling affectionately. With two fingers he lifted the spectacles on the bridge of his nose, and settled them again, his blue eyes remaining fixed on Tom’s.
“It’s like this. But I think we need one more before I can say it. Shall we have one more? Yes, let’s have one more.”
He flourished the shaker perfunctorily, poured from it, and came back with the two glasses.
“Now listen,” he said, wagging a finger. “It’s very, very simple, and it’s like this, and you being what you are, it’s all for the best in the best of all possible or potential worlds. In the first place—pardon me if I seem a little confused—it’s a very nice world, and it passes in the twinkling of an eye, and we’re gone, and so it doesn’t matter a hell of a lot, anyway. Here we are, all of a sudden, looking out of a window and listening to a couple of hundred sparrows—don’t they make the damnedest row you ever heard in your life?—and then all of a sudden here we aren’t. So I don’t see any good reason for getting into a stew about it. You can’t fool me—nobody looks after the sparrow when it falls. If it chooses to have a nervous breakdown over some wormy trifle, nobody is going to start a revolt of the angels for that, believe me; and nobody is going to be any the better or worse for it fifteen minutes later. And you may not know it, but you’re a sparrow. You’re a sentimental sparrow, my boy! You’ve got some fine notion of a romantic vision about love, and Gay, and God, and ideals, and I don’t know what-all; you’re in that kind of a pink emotional state when you can’t, simply can’t, look the facts in their dirty little faces. And that’s where we come in, my boy. It’s our job to wallop you where your ideals are tenderest. And why? Do you know why?…”
“I can’t say I do!”
“Well then, I’ll tell you. We’re doing it to save you from discovering too late that you’ve been nourishing a beautiful creampuff of an illusion. Along we come with the big stick, and belt you over the head for too much star-gazing; just in time to save you from falling into the ditch.… Selah.… Now doesn’t that sound to you like common sense?”
“Not a bit. But go ahead.”
“That’s all … that’s the whole story. All we do is tell you that Gay is a human being; that you’re both of you just plain godforsaken animals; and that the sooner you realize it, and begin living on that plane, the better chance you’ve got of not making a hash of your life.… It’s very simple. I’m surprised I didn’t think of it before. Just the same, I think I’m pretty intelligent!”
“Remarkably.”
“With which”—Kit said, grinning—“I suppose we’d better get going. It’s six-thirty already. I ordered two dozen cheap wine glasses, by the way—the sort you can smash without going bankrupt. That’s the part I always enjoy. Smashing the glasses. Now what do you suppose that symbol means? It looks kind of suspicious to me. If some fool analyst got hold of it—!”
He put his hat jauntily on the back of his head.
“Come on, idealist, and we’ll join the tribe.”
II.
The drive to the club had temporarily cleared Tom’s head. But when Kit pushed him into the private dining room, which was hot, and full of cigarette smoke, and already crowded with the assembled guests, he suddenly felt giddy again. A shout went up, he was at once surrounded by a howling mob of backslappers, the singers of “Mademoiselle from Armentières” broke away from the piano and charged him en masse, a potted palm tree was upset, and for no reason at all he found himself laughing, as if the gayety of the irresponsible crowd had abruptly infected him. He was pushed into his place at the head of the table, corks began popping, Kit was making a speech standing on a chair, and the waiters, somewhat flustered, were hurrying from glass to glass with napkined bottles.