Harold Crumb showed great earnestness in the matter of macaroni. “In order to taste macaroni,” he assured Mr. Preemby, “it is necessary to fill the mouth absolutely full, good measure, pressed in and running over. To cut up macaroni with your fork as you are doing, is as awful as to cut an oyster. It—it devitalizes it.”
“I like it cut up,” said Mr. Preemby with unexpected firmness. And he cut up some more.
“Otherwise,” he said in a confidential aside to the silver-haired man, “I can’t help thinking it’s earthworms.”
“Exactly. Exactly,” said the silver-haired man.
Harold exemplified generously. His rampant face riding over a squirming mouthful of macaroni was like St. George and the Dragon on an English sovereign. He whistled as he ate. Long snakes of macaroni hung thoughtful for a moment and then, drawn by some incomprehensible fascination, fled into him. Teddy Winterton and one of the new-comers from the studio next door emulated him. Christina Alberta and Fay showed the furtive dexterity of the female. But Mr. Preemby was glad when macaroni was over, even though it raised the problem of eating an egg on spinach with a fork.
But he was not really troubled in his mind as a younger man might have been. He had the savoir-faire of middle-age. This restaurant dinner was on the whole a bright and agreeable experience for him. He liked even the corrosive taste of the Chianti. This Chianti you drank out of quite largish tumblers because it was almost as cheap and light as beer. It did not intoxicate, but it warmed the mind, and it cast a pleasant and convincing indistinctness over the universe so that the Tunbridges all became Tumbridges without any question, and the secret dreams and convictions of the heart became certain knowledge. Presently Mr. Preemby found himself able and willing to tell things and hint much more important things about his collections to the white-haired man and also to the dark, untidy girl who was sitting on his other side, and who came from the other studio and about whose name he had no idea, and presently to others; and when the bird came—it was a bird new to Mr. Preemby, and called, he gathered, rabbkey or turkit—most of the party was talking in the loud, confused, explosive way these young people affected about the lost Atlantis.
He had never spoken so freely before upon this topic. At home he had always been restrained by the late Mrs. Preemby’s genuine lack of interest. And even now he was not prepared for positive statements or for an encounter with sceptical arguments about that great lost continent of the Golden Age. Atlantis had been the scene and substance of his secret reveries for many years; he knew his knowledge of it was of a different order from common knowledge, more intuitive, mystical, profound. From the outset his manner was defensive, discreet and obscure, as of one willing but not permitted to speak.
How did he know that there had been this lost continent?
“H’rrmp,” he said with the faint smile of peculiar knowledge; “studied it for years.”
“What is the evidence?” asked the untidy young lady.