“You were terribly upset and I chatted a bit. That’s all. I don’t even know what I said, and I don’t believe you meant what you said.”
“Oh, I do.” Roberts nodded his head grimly. “Indeed I do. Look over there.” He motioned slightly in the direction of Martin and Deane who were speaking intimately with each other. “Do you see that, my love?” he went on contemptuously. “As catching as flypaper and as promiscuous. And yet I can’t help myself. The very way he looks at Deane puts arrows into me.” Suddenly Roberts’ eyes filled with tears, and half choking, he turned from the guests and from Ella, who was hovering nearby and who seemed frightfully amused. Instinctively, Drew stepped close to him, his protective shadow encircling the bent shoulders of his friend, hiding the quiet sob.
When Drew had gone to Roberts, Deane placed her hand on Martin’s for a moment, then withdrew it gently, without speaking.
“It was a kiss,” thought Martin. “She’s bringing me across the river.... A proud woman, with her hair like the lights of a ship.... A woman sheltered, but one inalienable to love.... I wish she’d smile again.... God help me! She’s on my trail like a hound! I might as well have spoken through a trumpet.” Turning toward her he said, “I really shouldn’t have come here. I feel out of place. But,” he hesitated, “I thought that it might be ... and it is,” he added shortly.
Deane started to touch him again, then stopped, for Martin looked so eager and shy that she became the same way.
“Damn it!” thought Martin. “What a trip!” ... “Well,” he said aloud, “it shouldn’t have been.”
Deane laughed softly. Martin could see the black diagonal stripes across her red kid slippers and this cabalistic signal took his thoughts back wantonly to the Church where so often as a child he had released his theological rut into the dark precipices of the Cathedral. Those fearfully sweet memories came sharply into his mind now and he remembered how the vast, swelling notes of the organ had lifted him up and rocked him into peacefulness. Nostalgia overcame him as he continued to gaze at the little red and black slippers. Then he grimly blocked these crevices of the mind which exude a flavor too ghastly even for the pith and stench of the undersoul, and he spoke again, this time without thought or conception.
“I mean,” he said, “that for a long time the parties I’ve gone to have been so apart from this sort of thing—that is, apart dimensionally. The people were plain and simple. There were rivers, mostly yellow, and bushes and trees to lend informality, and all the music came out of parrots. Once, along such a river-path, I met a man with a nose as broad as my fist. His dark skin had such heavy needlework upon it that it was beveled like tooled leather. His feet splayed like a water-creature’s. We couldn’t speak each other’s language, but we both understood food. It made us friends. We had mashed rice, water, and some kind of grape he’d brought out of the forest over his shoulder.” Martin stopped abruptly at Deane’s curious look.
“I’m sure there was that and more in the tropics, Martin,” she said deliberately. “There was the Right Honorable Lord Jesus stamping through the jungle.”
Martin, embarrassed and yet amused, looked steadily at Deane.