“We’ll be there,” he said and closed the door.
Olive looked back at his colourless dress, his shapely head and vanishing grave face with a frank wistfulness. “I don’t see why you should make such a point of annoying Gurdy. And why call this play silly when it’s so plainly good?... I’ve carefully refrained from asking you why you quarrelled with Gurdy. He behaves charmingly to you and keeps the peace.”
“Paying him back for being nasty about ‘Todgers Intrudes.’”
“But he’s not been nasty. He’s very sensibly given his opinion that it’s feeble. As it is.—The man’s taking us down Broadway. Loathsome sewer!”
The motor slowly passed toward Forty Second Street and across that jam. Olive saw lean and stolid Englishmen stalking in the harsh, dusty November wind that blew women along in the whirling similitude of rotted flowers. Margot got notice, here. There was a jerk of male heads from the curb. Empty faces turned to the girl’s brilliance in rose cloth. A tanned sailor flapped his white cap. Yet in the Marlett Smith library on Park Avenue Margot was prettily discreet for half an hour below Chinese panels, among gayer frocks where she lost colour, merged in a fluctuation of dress. On the way home her restraint snapped into a “Damn!”
“Very stiff,” said Olive, “One reads about the American informality. Tea at Sandringham is giddy beside this. But Mrs. Marlett Smith’s clever. Who were those twins in black velvet who so violently kissed you?”
“The Vaneens. Ambrosine and Gretchen. Knew them at school. They come out in December.—But what maddens me is this everlasting jabber about France! Some of those girls know Gurdy. Their brothers were at Saint Andrew’s with him. He seems to have made himself frightfully conspicuous about Paris.—No, I’m bored with Gurdy. If dad tries to make me marry him I’ll take poison and die to slow music. Such tosh! He made a gesture of enlisting—”
“You’re being silly,” Olive said, coldly hurt, “and I’m sick of the word, gesture. Pray, was the gesture of third rate artists and actors who wouldn’t leave their work anything madly glorious? I can understand a man conscious of great talent preferring to stick to his last. And I can understand a complete refusal to mix in the—abominable business. But I’ve no patience with dreary little wasters who shouted for blood and then took acetanilid to cheat the doctors. As for Gurdy’s military career he’s very quiet about it. I dislike this venom against Gurdy.”
Margot chuckled, “Perhaps I’m jealous,” and got down before the house. She opened the door with her latchkey and they entered a flow of minor music from the drawing room. Gurdy was playing. Mark leaned on the curve of the piano and his brown hands were deeply reflected in the black pool of its top.
“Listen to this, Olive. Nigger song Gurdy raked up for ‘Captain Salvador.’ Sing it, sonny. Don’t run off, Margot. Listen.” He caught the girl to him, held her cheek against his chin. A scent of mild sandal and cigarettes ebbed from the black hair into his nostrils. He was tired after the tense rehearsal and chilled from half an hour in the cold of the Walling. This moving warmth and scent was luxury. Mark shut his eyes. Gurdy chanted in plausible barytone.