He went away, leaving us to a blank silence, till Wanhope managed to say: “That inventive habit of mind is very curious. It would be interesting to know just how far it imposes on the inventor himself—how much he believes of his own fiction.”
“I don’t see,” Rulledge said, gloomily, “why they’re so long with my dinner.” Then he burst out: “I believe every word Halson said! If there’s any fake in the thing, it’s the fake that Minver owned to.”
[VII]
The Chick of the Easter Egg
The old fellow who told that story of dream-transference on a sleeping-car at Christmas-time was again at the club on Easter Eve. Halson had put him up for the winter, under the easy rule we had, and he had taken very naturally to the Turkish room for his after-dinner coffee and cigar. We all rather liked him, though it was Minver’s pose to be critical of the simple friendliness with which he made himself at home among us, and to feign a wish that there were fewer trains between Boston and New York, so that old Newton (that was his name) could have a better chance of staying away. But we noticed that Minver was always a willing listener to Newton’s talk, and that he sometimes hospitably offered to share his tobacco with the Bostonian. When brought to book for his inconsistency by Rulledge, he said he was merely welcoming the new blood, if not young blood, that Newton was infusing into our body, which had grown anaemic on Wanhope’s psychology and Rulledge’s romance; or, anyway, it was a change.
Newton now began by saying abruptly, in a fashion he had, “We used to hear a good deal in Boston about your Easter Parade here in New York. Do you still keep it up?”
No one else answering, Minver replied, presently, “I believe it is still going on. I understand that it’s composed mostly of milliners out to see one another’s new hats, and generous Jewesses who are willing to contribute the ‘dark and bright’ of the beauty in which they walk to the observance of an alien faith. It’s rather astonishing how the synagogue takes to the feasts of the church. If it were not for that, I don’t know what would become of Christmas.”
“What do you mean by their walking in beauty?” Rulledge asked over his shoulder.
“I shall never have the measure of your ignorance, Rulledge. You don’t even know Byron’s lines on Hebrew loveliness?
“‘She walks in beauty like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes.’”