He rubbed his shining crown in bewildered thoughtfulness,—Clifford had to admire his art as an actor,—then again was smiling.
“Wish you’d join me after a while at supper, Clifford. Little party I’m giving Nina Cordova—got to cheer her up a bit, you understand. You know ‘Orange Blossoms’ is one God-awful flivver, and Nina, poor orphan-child, don’t know what to do. Gee, but it’s a rotten show, and what it didn’t do to kill itself Nina did for it: she sure is one musical-comedy prima donna that ought to be seen and not heard! And even at that, seen too oft, familiar with her face—oh, go ask the box-office man to finish the quotation. So I’m giving her this little party to boost her spirits—though why shouldn’t somebody be giving me a party to cheer me up for the twenty thousand United States of America dollars that dropped through the bottom of that show?” He gave a moan of mock self-sympathy. “Well, you’ll join us when the crowd blows in?”
“Thanks, but I’m waiting for a friend.”
“Break away if you can; be glad to have you.”
Clifford watched the strange little notable, behind whose light chatter he knew to be the cleverest legal brain of its sort in New York, cross to a small corner table, which was reserved for him every night and was known to the waiters here as “Mr. Loveman’s table.” He saw Loveman converse in turn with various people, and in a general way he understood; for at this table, during the play hours of the night, Loveman transacted many of the affairs too delicate to be brought to his office or his apartment. And he saw Loveman, while he chatted, gaze about upon those gathering for supper and dancing. There were people here whose family names were daily in the society and Wall Street columns—most of them here with no intent more reprehensible than the restless search for pleasure, which in this our present day has become public pleasure. Loveman smiled on them most kindly: as why shouldn’t he, thought Clifford, since many of them were working for him, though they guessed it not?
Loveman’s party now arrived and were seating themselves at a large table directly beside the dancing-floor. There were Jack Morton, his father, Nina Cordova, two other actresses, and half a dozen men and women of the smart young society set. Loveman was at his best, keeping his party in highest spirits: no man in New York was his superior as midnight host.
As Clifford watched the gay supper progress, he wondered what other of these guests the gay Loveman might be deftly drawing into some distant entanglement.
Presently some one took the chair opposite Clifford. It was Uncle George; and Uncle George gave him a slight wink of a lashless eye.
“While we’re on the subject, son,” the old man began, “I might remark that I put a bee in little Nina’s bonnet.”
“Just what have you got me here for?” demanded Clifford.