Miss Stein returned to her companions to say, — Talk about how polite the English are supposed to be, he wouldn't even answer me. Just the same, I should think a thing like that would scratch. Wouldn't it? Wouldn't it?
There was a clanking sound from above, but no one turned to the balcony to see that the headpiece had been lifted from the suit of armor up there. No one, that is, except the sharply bearded sharp-eyed man at the other end of the room who, despite his attentive conversation, had been watching the activity aloft since it had begun.
The bearded young art critic was speaking in French, managing it with such urbanity, indeed, that his little friend (the one cheered on earlier as resembling an oeuf-dur-mayonnaise) told him later, with demure awe, that he had not been able to understand a word of it; no marvel of ignominy, really, for the harassed Lyonnais who was listening could not understand a word of it either, and attempted, at aspirate intervals, to swing things in his own direction with commentaries in a series of grotesque syllables which might, in Lyons, have passed for English by default.
This impressive bout drew the attention of someone who believed himself to be talking to an Egyptologist named Kuvetli, and (perhaps it was the fluttering of the plump hands over there, and the impassive mien before him) became so familiar as to draw a simile upon mimicry among the butterflies, citing, for his thesis, — The female of Papilio cynorta, in the Uganda. . while over his shoulder the Egyptologist sought a face he could not locate. Basil Valentine had, all this time, been holding a cloth-covered ice cube against his upper lip, raising it now and then to look at the chipped tooth inside, and staring at his image in the mirror of the medicine cabinet.
Someone banged on the door, as someone had been doing at impatient intervals for some time, a guest apparently unable to make the stairs for he had directed them above with some irritation at the second assault, and now he cried out, — All right, damn you. He dropped the cold pack into the sink, saw the swelling gone down somewhat, peeled up the lip for another look at the tooth and then drew it down firmly, catching his own eyes in the glass. And since the intimacies of catoptric communion were by now as strange to him as any others (he was always prepared for, and satisfied with what he saw in the glass, in those numerous but brief encounters when he hunched toward it, washing his hands, his face an established proposition, his mind busied elsewhere with still mutable concerns), he stood now reflecting his face more absorbed than that most dubious mirror-gazer of our acquaintance; and it took another attack on the door to sunder Basil Valentine from this conspiracy of chin and eyes, the straight nose and high bones which were his face. He turned, adjusting himself behind, under the ventless jacket, and before, at the weighted waist, and came out, without a look in either direction until he'd arrived among people.
He took some brandy immediately, and managed to avoid a conversation on whether the names of soft drinks spelled across the sky were desecrations of the House of God; a man who said, — In dthis kenntre no ouonne toks ovv dthe ouor becose ovv krissmess?. . and a young woman who said something about King George III which he hoped, vaguely, he had not understood aright, as he looked anxiously over the room.
— Et ce vieux moricaud. . où se cache-t-il?. .
— Because Mister Schmuck wants to have one made just like George the Third…
Valentine stopped beside a dark man who barely reached his shoulder, and before he'd noted the peaked sharkskin suit or the glazed eyes asked, — Where's Brown? Have you seen Mister Brown?
— I fear you too are at the wrong party? Perhaps. .
Basil Valentine moved quickly. He touched another elbow, — Have you seen Brown? Mister Brown?. .
— Men den himmelske rustning. . hey?
Then Valentine stopped short, staring more than half the length of the room at a stout fluttering figure, plucking the point of a black beard with one hand, disposing the other in riotous gestures on the air, and lor all his apparent weight, moving with admirable agility upon his toes. — Good God! Good God no! — Say, old man, where you been hiding, eh?. . Missing all the fun, what?
— What?
— Jolly old rascal, isn't he! sweating up there like a… mmp. Just came down for a bit more of this cognac, eh? Good heavens yes, have to keep up, don't you know.
— Brown's. . up there?
Some of the guests were leaving, with over-shoulder looks of last-minute anticipation, — We'd hate to miss anything. . Some had left. Some appeared rooted; and even those that continued to move did so with a buoyant vagueness, sustained on the flood of heat filling that vast room like a natural element. Thus Basil Valentine's eyes, like those in the tapestry vacant, remained attached to the capering figure with the black beard beyond simply because it moved with such mimetic extravagance: a spell which he might break in an instant, as he well knew, by summoning his gaze to the right, near the Christmas tree, where a conversation on Cheops' prophecies, or the improbability of a Fourth Dynasty mummy (—There were none, properly speaking, until the Eighteenth. .) was most certainly taking place. So much for his unbroken gaze; for now, in like manner, he was aware of sounds from the balcony above, scraping sounds, and the slight shocks of metal against metal, an affliction momentarily worse to whose relief the habit of intervention threatened to betray him, but he stood firm, giving the R.A.'s voice the same glazed attention his eyes gave the cavorting beard beyond, waiting, glamorized, for the shock which would break the spell. Even then, lapsing voices allowed the radio to penetrate with what sounded like dissonant caterwauling, (The music was Ravel, L'Enfant et les Sortileges.)
— Is he up there, you say. Good heavens yes, with all his. . mmmp. You'd think he wanted to climb into the thing, like that Don mmpht the Spanish fellow don't you know. Nice enough thing of its kind, I spose, but I mmp. . never been very partial to armor meself. And good heavens, eh? Hardly the sort of thing to be seen running about in these days, eh? atom bombs and all that sort of thing popping off everywhere, eh? Not much protection, I shouldn't wonder, mmpht. . like being roasted alive in a… I don't know what, eh? I say, hev you gut any more of thet Virginia about you? Smoking my brand, don't you know.
Basil Valentine's hand alerted, and he took out the packet of cigarettes as he continued to stare down the room.
— Lot of odd ducks kicking about this evening, eh? Oh yes, yes, thnks vry much.
— The armor? Basil Valentine said in a low tone, listening.
— Eh? Oh yes, rather a nice suit of its kind, I daresay, Italian, round about the fifteenth century looked like to me. Odd little fellows, the Italians, eh? I mean to say, small stature, don't you know, nothing Saxon about them at all, small-boned little fellows, fine Italian hand and all that sort of thing. Some of the more. . mmmp less decorous guests up there egging him on. A regular carnival, don't you know. Good heavens, I daresay they'd hev a devil of a time getting him into it, eh? He's hardly a mmpt Renaissance figger, eh? The R.A. paused to light his cigarette, and then as though bound from having accepted it to the donor, who showed no inclination to move, he continued. — Not quite the. . son metier, as that obnoxious little Frenchman says, eh? But then the French, eh? Good heavens. The French, don't you know. Can't do a thing with them. I mean to say, there's nothing I'd want to do with them, except mmmp. . never mind, eh? Hardly go about doing that sort of thing. Good heavens, no. Not these days. He paused again, and made a clucking sound with his lips before he raised his glass there. From above came a dull thumping sound, the heels of hands on metal, forcing it down, pounding among strictures of laughter, and Basil Valentine raised his fingertips to the vein in his temple.