Gwendolyn Saville-Sanders was busy getting people to do something about Santa Fé. Gwendolyn, unlike old Ruth, had been coming out here for only three years. Before the war did so many horrible things to it, she had spent her leisure and a lot more in Fiesole: before she was told about Fiesole it had been Switzerland. But Gwendolyn had begun to take up America in a serious manner. She was a little behind other people in doing it: many others had brought back treasures of Indian handicraft to their Eastern homes before she had seen the writing on the wall and hastened out to Art’s new headquarters. Now that she had found it, though, she was making the most of it. Gwendolyn was slow on the uptake, but thorough. Her three years of discovery had been swift and ferocious: already her collection of Navajo silver was the largest in America (not counting the museums) and her Chimayo blankets were famous. As for the tin candle-sconces, it was no less than wonderful, the number she had salvaged in the short time she had had.
No necessity here for Teddy to say, “Well, I don’t care, I like old Gwen.” One liked Gwen as a matter of course. As soon as she left a room, becomingly cheerful in farewell, one murmured, “Isn’t she marvelous?” or, “Isn’t she perfectly grand?” The thing that counted in this matter was that Gwendolyn should say after you yourself had left the room,
“I like that Teddy. He’s a nice boy.”
As yet she had not said it, at least Bob had not reported it. So Teddy sat down next to Ruth Lyons and listened.
She was steamed up about Fiesta.
“I think that we need something for the last night, to raise the curtain on the Ball,” she was saying. “I think that a bazaar might be the thing, or a play. Why don’t you write a play, Teddy?” Her voice, terrifyingly loud, rang out through the room and everyone turned to listen. That was what she wanted. “Write a play,” she insisted. “You bright young people! You can do it. Write a play and I’ll put it on in my garden.”
“Your wish is my command, old thing,” he said. Bob walked over and swung an arm around his shoulders, saying,
“That’s the right spirit, Teddy. We’ll all help.”
Gwen smiled and changed her mind. “Or a vaudeville. A vaudeville would be easier and we’d please more people. Ruth, you must tell Tommy to do the sets—we’ll get all the artists to do the sets. And the Native Element will be able to help. They’re so histrionic. The Indians and the Spaniards and all that. Is that settled? Good: I must go. Bob darling, pick out a committee. I must go. Where did I put my bag? It’s all settled then; a play. No, a vaudeville. I must go. Teddy, come to lunch tomorrow. Good-night, Ruth. Goodbye, everybody, I must simply fly.”
They all flew except Teddy and Philip and the stranger with the hat. They were going to dine, Bob said, and then play bridge. The stranger was a puzzled frightened woman from Austria who had come over to paint Indians. She was going on to Japan to paint cherry-blossoms. The Indians were an interlude between cherry-blossoms in Japan and chestnut blossoms in Paris. Teddy remembered seeing some of her work in the Modern Wing of the Museum; he had thought then for a few stormy moments that they had no business being there, and now, looking at her, he was sure of it. She was open-mouthed and passive under an onslaught of information. Bob loved to give information about his country.