It was a cosmopolitan gathering. All the arts and sciences and occupations, all the moral and immoral standards, and all the races and nationalities of New York were represented. A dancer from the Hindoo Kush, several would-be Fokines or Stravinskys, two or three imitation Oscar Wildes, Theodore Dreisers or Frank Harrises—these were sure to be there. Even the solid banker (or aspiring Pierpont Morgan), who kept a quiet flat and a lady in it, was an occasional visitor. No one was excluded who was piquant or picturesque.
Cornelia's specially privileged guests were a scanty handful. Among the men were Claude Fontaine, Robert Lloyd, Denman Page, and Harry Kelly, the "Harlem Gorilla." Soon after Janet's coming, Mark Pryor, immaculate and unobtrusive, joined the ultimate circle and began mysteriously to appear and to disappear.
Still fewer were the women admitted to the inner ring. Of these the chief were Lydia Dyson, the spectacular, and Charlotte Beecher, the industrious. The novelist came in silks, the heiress in calicos. Charlotte's cheap but natty working costume was looked upon among the Outlaws as an affectation. Her blouses and skirts gave Cornelia the horrors.
So did her marked preference for Robert Lloyd.
Janet had an idea that these evening visitors came chiefly to admire Cornelia or to be admired by her. She assumed that Cornelia was "the whole show." It was a pardonable assumption. Cornelia sat in a rocking chair in the central room and was feline, and languid, and observant, while the excitement eddied and swirled around her. To all appearances she held the reins of her party with the masterly skill of the Borax man who drives the celebrated twenty mule team.
Robert would have it that Cornelia was neither the star nor the manager of the nightly performance in Number Fifteen. According to him, the only management she displayed was in the skill with which she focused attention upon herself. The cadenced laugh, the sugary stab, the artful question—these were not the subtle devices of a clever hostess; they were merely the centripetal pulls of an egomaniac against the centrifugal interests of her guests.
Janet dismissed this explanation lightly and begged Robert not to analyze every joy until its very essence had been probed—and destroyed. She laughed at his attempt to convince her that these gay evenings of Cornelia's were a kind of renaissance. His theory was that the light of Cornelia's splendor had been getting dim of late, as it had got dim on several previous occasions. But the impact of a new partner against her, like the impact of an astral visitor against a dying sun, now as always gave her a new lease of brilliance.
In short, Robert asserted that it was the replacement of Mazie by Janet which had caused a tremendous revival of interest in Cornelia's flat. Everybody in the inner ring of the Outlaws or in the outer ring of the tenements, everybody indeed, that had any shadow of a claim to an entree, had come trooping in to sun themselves in the restored glory of Number Fifteen.
To most of Robert's remarks, Janet paid little attention. But she carefully treasured up one of them.
This was that never before had Claude Fontaine been such a constant visitor.