Morrison continued, with a slight frown at the interruption, "America is simply emerging from the frontier condition of bareness, and it is only natural that one, or perhaps two generations must be sacrificed in order to attain a smooth mastery of an existence charged and enriched with possession." He gave the effect of quoting a paragraph from one of his lectures.
"Isn't the end of that 'transition,'" inquired Page, "usually simply that after one or two generations people grow dulled to everything but possession and fancy themselves worthily occupied when they spend their lives regulating and caring for their possessions. I hate," he cried with sudden intensity, "I hate the very sound of the word!"
"Does you great credit, I'm sure," said Morrison, with a faint irony, a hidden acrimony, pricking, for an instant, an ugly ear through his genial manner.
Ever since the day of the fire, since Page had become a more and more frequent visitor in Lydford and had seen more and more of Sylvia, she had derived a certain amount of decidedly bad-tasting amusement from the fact of Morrison's animosity to the other man. But this was going too far. She said instantly, "Do you know, I've just thought what it is you all remind me of—I mean Lydford, and the beautiful clothes, and nobody bothering about anything but tea and ideas and knowing the right people. I knew it made me think of something else, and now I know—it's a Henry James novel!"
Page took up her lead instantly, and said gravely, putting himself
beside her as another outsider: "Well, of course, that's their ideal.
That's what they try to be like—at least to talk like James people.
But it's not always easy. The vocabulary is so limited."
"Limited!" cried Mrs. Marshall-Smith. "There are more words in a Henry
James novel than in any dictionary!"
"Oh yes, words enough!" admitted Page, "but all about the same sort of thing. It reminds me of the seminarists in Rome, who have to use Latin for everything. They can manage predestination and vicarious atonement like a shot, but when it comes to ordering somebody to call them for the six-twenty train to Naples they're lost. Now, you can talk about your bric-à-brac in Henry-Jamesese, you can take away your neighbor's reputation by subtle suggestion, you can appreciate a fine deed of self-abnegation, if it's not too definite! I suppose a man could even make an attenuated sort of love in the lingo, but I'll be hanged if I see how anybody could order a loaf of bread,"
"One might do without bread, possibly?" suggested Morrison, pressing the tips of his beautiful fingers together.
"By Jove," cried Page, in hearty assent, "I've a notion that lots of times they do!"
This was getting nowhere. Mrs. Marshall-Smith put her hand to the helm, and addressed herself to Morrison with a plain reminder of the reason for the grotesqueness of his irritability. "Where's Molly keeping herself nowadays?" she inquired. "She hasn't come over with you, to tea, for ever so long. The pergola isn't itself without her sunny head."