Light-Fingered Gentry

by David Graham Phillips

Neva glanced at him with quick sympathetic interest. It was the first time he had happened to speak of his origin. "I always thought you were born abroad," said she.

"I think not," replied he. "I really don't know at exactly what point I broke into the world. Those things matter so little. Countries, governments, races—they mean nothing to me. I meet my fellow beings as individuals."

There he caught Neva studying him with an expression so curious that he paused. She forestalled his question by plunging into an animated talk about his lecture. He was well content to listen, enjoying now the surroundings and now the beauty of the woman beside him. Both were wonderfully soothing to him, filled him with innocent, virtuous thoughts, made him envy, and half delude himself into fancying he wished for himself, the joys of somnolescent, corpulent, middle-class life—the life obviously led by the people dwelling in these flower-embedded houses on either side of these shady streets. He sighed; Neva laughed. And he saw that she was laughing at him.

"Well, why not?" he demanded, knowing she understood his sigh. But before she could answer he was laughing at himself. "Still, I like it, for a change," said he. "And—" he was speaking now in an undertone—"with you I could be happy in such a place—always. Just with you; not if we let these stupid burghers in to fret me."

She laughed outright. "I understand you better than you understand yourself," said she. "Change and contrast are as necessary to you as air. If you had to live here, you would commit suicide or become commonplace.... And so should I."

"Not with a husband you loved and children you adored and a home you had created yourself. As the world expands, it contracts; as it contracts, it expands. From end to end the universe is not so vast as such a love."

Neva, coloring deeply and profoundly moved, leaned forward. "I'm sorry you're missing this," said she, lightly to Narcisse. "Boris is sentimentalizing about the vine-clad cottage with children clambering."

"It's about time you quit and came in to settle down," called Narcisse. "A few years more and you'll cease to be romantic. An old beau is ridiculous."

Boris gave Neva a triumphant look. "Narcisse votes yes," said he.

But they were arriving at the house. As the motor ran up the drive under the elms toward the gorgeous masses of forsythia about the entrance steps, Boris's eyes were so busy that he scarcely heard, while Neva explained that her father was too weak to withstand the excitement of visitors—"especially anyone distinguished. We're not telling him you're here. He would feel it his duty to exert himself."