“Beautiful plan I’ve evolved, Whittaker,” he said, sitting down and sipping the cocktail that was waiting for him. “Ames is drunk, as you observed. Got over it a bit in talking with me, but will grow drunker presently. Very attractive girl with him—name of Ethel. I feel innocent sorrow for her. D’you mind if we all dine together? I propose to remove Ethel gently from Ames. Told you I’d find some one out here.”
Whittaker laughed. “Sure!” he said heartily. “That’s something like! We’ll help all we can, hey, Minnie?”
“Gee! Mr. Carroll, and I thought you was slow!” the girl exclaimed delightedly.
“My dear Minnie,” said Stacey, “of course you’ll find me slow. Here I am, Bill’s guest. I owe it to him to suppress all the evil desires you arouse in me. Besides, we’re Presbyterians in our family, have a pew in the church. I’d never feel the same again towards the choir if . . .” He finished his cocktail and gazed at her reproachfully over the glass, while she laughed.
They all three crossed the room to Ames, who presented them heavily to Ethel. He was no drunker than before, however,—perhaps even a little less drunk, and he entered the dining-room with dignified concentrated steadiness.
The table the head-waiter had reserved for Whittaker would only seat four comfortably. “I’m the outsider. I’ll sit here at the corner,” Stacey said firmly, and motioned the waiter to draw him up a chair close to Ethel’s. “You order, Whittaker, will you?”
The room was pandemonium, on account of the jazz band that was at one end and the cabaret performance that was everywhere. All conversations were necessarily shouted.
It occurred to Stacey that the age he lived in was devoted to noise, as a barbaric preventive of thought. No doubt it was right. What good had thought ever done the world? Here were the five of them, come out frankly in quest of food, drink, lights, noise, and sexual gratification. Nothing but animals, all five! Well, what of it? Clearly that was what the earth’s millions were all, in this glaring after-war illumination, revealed as seeking. The only difference among them was that some were more complicated and refined in their animalism than others. There wasn’t much complexity out here. So much the better! Strip off the last silken shreds of decoration! Leave the truth stark naked! The animal was all there was, and there was only so much, and no more, to the animal.
Thus Stacey mused, under cover of the hubbub, not perceiving that the fact of his musing denied its conclusion; not remarking that his own word was “quest”; not seeing that people were trying to be, and thus were not wholly, animals; certainly not seeing that this quest was as futile as any other.
How, indeed, could his thoughts fail to be superficial? They swam languidly on the surface waters of his mind. Beneath was a painful turmoil into which he struggled not to look.