"Yes, I shall care," I growled, "but I'll do it if you don't mind my not dressing. I haven't a black suit to my name."
"Oh, that doesn't matter. Very informal, you know."
The motor was already buzzing in the driveway and he wasted little time over his eggs.
"Fix it for tomorrow night, will you, Roger?" he flung at me from the doorway as he slipped into his great coat. "Nothing elaborate, you know; just a sound soup, entrée, roast, salad and dessert. And for wines, the simplest, say sherry, champagne and perhaps some port."
"Shall you be back to luncheon?" I inquired.
"No; dinner, perhaps. G'by!" And he was down the steps and in the machine, which went roaring down the drive, cut-out wide, making the fair winter morning hideous with sound. I stood in the doorway watching, until only a cloud of blue vapor where the road went through into the trees remained to mark the exit of the Perfect Man.
I turned indoors with a sigh, habit directing me to the door of the study, where I paused, reminded of Jerry's final admonitions. Dinner—"nothing elaborate," with an entrée, salad, and wines to be got for two women, Jerry's beautiful decadent who loved nature and ornithology, and the "not very pretty" poor relation who didn't like men but could be "cheerful when she was expected to be." Damn her cheerfulness! It was inconsiderate of Jerry to set me to squiring middle-aged dames while he spooned with his Freudian miracle in the conservatory. Strindberg indeed! Schnitzler, too, in all probability! While I invented mid-Victorian platitudes for the prosaic, "not very pretty" Miss Gore—Bore! Bore—Gore! Bah!
I gave the necessary orders and went in to my work. I merely sat and stared at the half-written sheet of foolscap on the desk, unable to concentrate my thoughts. I am a most moderate man, a philosopher, I hope, and yet today I felt possessed, it seemed, of an insensate desire to burst forth into profanity—a fine attitude of mind for a contemplative morning! My whole world was turned suddenly upside down.
But out of chaos cosmos returned. I had given up the thought of work, but at last found satisfaction in a quiet analysis of Jerry's narration of the night before. What did one female or two or a dozen matter if Jerry was fundamentally sound? Sophistry might shake, blandishment bend, sex-affinity blight, but Jerry would stand like an oak, its young leaves among the stars, its roots deep in mother earth. Marcia Van Wyck, her black damask boudoirs, her tinted finger tips, her Freud, Strindberg and all the rest of her modern trash—there would come a day when Jerry would laugh at them!
I think I must have dozed in my chair, for I seemed to hear voices, and, opening my eyes, beheld Jerry in my Soorway, a laughing group in the hall behind him.