The limousine picked them up and slid them away through the traffic.
“How far away in the West do you live?” asked Nancy, leaning back into her corner and yawning a little. “Not as far as California,” answered Kildare.
“Some place where there are trails to ride, or canoes and white water and log-jams and things worth while?”
“No. Just another big town.”
She nodded as if to say that she had expected as much. When her eyes glanced away from him again, he knew that he was forgotten.
“Shall I be spoiling a party? Shall I be breaking in on a lot of old friends?” he asked.
“It’s up to you,” she said indifferently. “If you can put up with the party, the party can put up with you. Isn’t that usually the way of it?”
It was worse than insolence, this insouciance. It stifled him above all with its unexpectedness, and he knew at once that she was not fully aware of what she had said. Sick people think chiefly of their own concerns.
She hardly spoke another word to him, and Kildare at every traffic stop found himself automatically searching the sidewalk crowd for the great shoulders and the strong, handsome face of Charles Herron; he was sure to find out about this broken promise. Then they were shooting up in a soundless, luxurious private elevator and walking into an apartment that made a point of spreading its elbows.
Harry Wendell came from a distance, calling out, making a gesture of triumph over Nancy.
“Everything is going to be beautiful now,” he said, “except that Liz Baker is here and already as tight as an owl.”
“That’s all right. Mr. Stevens is from the Far West where they know how to take care of the wild things. Show Liz to him, and he’ll control her.”
“I thank God for you, Nancy,” said Wendell. “I thank God for you and all your works. Come on and get a load of Liz, Stevens.”
The ballroom was as vaulted and almost as big as Grand Central Station. At one end of it a large orchestra was swinging industriously. Quantities of young America slithered here and there in couples, but Liz Baker, young and dark and beautiful, was draped over one end of a blue couch studying her blurred image in the polished floor.
“If that’s water,” said Liz, “I’m going to drown myself.”
“Here’s an old pal of yours from the Great West,” said Mr. Wendell. “He’ll help you make yourself at home. Give her a hand, John.”
“What Johnny are you?” asked Liz. “And how far West are you, and what are you West of? I’m so full of great open spaces that my head is spinning and I can’t find those mint juleps. Come on and help me find them, Johnny.”
She got up and shook herself. Her tousled hair sprang back into shape like untangling springs.
“I can’t walk, but I can dance,” said Liz.
They danced across shining acres until Liz heard the rattle of ice in cocktail shakers and the chime of glasses jingling on a tray.
“You can’t dance, but maybe you can walk,” said Liz. “Try to find that sound and bring me some of it. I don’t mean the music, sweet.”
He helped her toward the bartenders. He did not trouble about her because he knew that young Liz Baker already was beyond doctor’s care.
“Is this a silver dress I’m wearing, or am I frosted?” she asked.
“That’s a silver dress you’re wearing,” said Kildare.
“If I had something green in my hair, I’d look like a mint julep, but that’s not the way I feel. There’s more mint than there is julep about me, honey, if that means anything. Bartender, does that mean anything?”
“That means a whole heap,” said the bartender. “If you were to take and lay down with a lump of ice on the back of your neck, you’d feel a lot more like a mint julep than you do now. Here’s some mint for her,” said the bartender, offering a green bit of it to Kildare.
“That’s right, give him that sprig of mint,” said Liz. “That’s what he needs when he dances. There’s no sprig in him. Does that hurt your feelings, darling? Does it hurt him, bartender?”
“You can’t tell about a thinking man,” suggested the bartender.
“Why should he think? Why should he be as mean as all that?” asked Liz Baker. “Listen, Johnny, why do you want to go around, thinking all over the place? Honey, I don’t need you any more. I don’t need anyone when I’m this close to the cracked ice. Hey—somebody come and take Johnny. You don’t have to pay. I’ll give him away.”
Kildare drifted off. The rooms were filling. An endless chain of servants began to serve dinner from a great buffet. Alternate trays of drinks and food journeyed through the apartment. He found Wendell and said: “I’m sorry that I couldn’t handle Liz Baker.”
“What do you mean you couldn’t handle her? You’re wonderful,” declared the host. “Liz has to drop some place, and it’s best to have her over there near the service entrance…Where’s your drink?”
He dodged a drink. As a matter of fact it was easy for him to do as he pleased in such a crowd, so he kept drifting, passing into little pools and shallows of conversation now and then, and then moving on again so that he could keep Nancy Messenger in sight. She obviously was different from these people, and as she wandered about with an air of abstraction and a vague smile that kept them at arm’s length, they seemed glad to have her, but hardly to know what to do about her. It was equally obvious that for mysterious reasons she was glad to be in the place. Then, just after eleven, she almost disappeared from him in the midst of a group who were leaving. He managed to get into the elevator with them.
“I didn’t know it was time to go,” he said to Nancy.
“It isn’t,” answered Nancy. “It’s never time to go, unless you want to. You’re not going to have me on your conscience, are you?”
Then she forgot him again. They went to a night club, and on the way Nancy, with her usual indifference, introduced him only to one member of the group, a Charlotte Fothergill who was plump and pretty and equipped with an inextinguishable smile.
“Charlotte, this is a son of a friend of my father’s. He comes from out West,” said Nancy. “She’s a great horsewoman, John.”
“Those great big ranches out West are wonderful,” said Charlotte. “How many hundred square miles are there in your ranch, Mr. Stevens?”
“I haven’t a ranch,” said Kildare.
“I mean, the kind they have down in Texas,” said Charlotte Fothergill. “You ride for days and days and get lost. How many times have you been lost on your ranch, Johnny?”
“I haven’t a ranch,” said Kildare.
“I mean, not really lost, but not knowing where you are,” said Charlotte. “I was lost in a department store once. I had to buy my way out of the lingerie department, and before I got clear I had enough to last me the rest of my life. And then the styles all changed and there I was. It was frightful…Dingie, here’s a man after your own heart, with a thousand square miles of ranch down in Texas. Johnny, this is Hugh Dingwell. Dingie has a place down in the Tennessee Valley Authority, but he goes in for Grand Rapids furniture and that’s a pity, don’t you think?”
“Charlotte is just a little twisted,” said Dingwell, who was a tall young man with a pinched face and nervous lips. “I have a place down in Tennessee and most of my horses are out of the Rapidan line. You know—Rapidan, who got Rapid Waters, who got Rap Me—but what are you breeding in the way of horseflesh on your ranch?”
“I haven’t a ranch,” said Kildare.
“I know you fellows,” said Dingwell. “Anything less than a hundred thousand acres doesn’t count. I know a lot of fellows out Texas way that use the Irish Boy strain. If they’re not big enough to race, they’re big enough for polo, so there you are, and you can’t lose. Missionary came from out there. You know Missionary, don’t you?”