by Thomas Wolfe
Her voice, as she talked, grew a trifle higher with its excitement, even at times a little shrill, her rosy, glowing little face was seen everywhere, blooming like a flower, one could see her bend forward eagerly and clap her hand to her ear as she strove to catch every word of what people were saying to her. And people smiled at her; almost as people smile who look at a happy and excited child, they looked after her and smiled.
And when new people would come up and speak to her she would turn with her rosy face fairly burning with excitement and earnestness. Her whole face would light up with a kind of bewildered and delighted surprise as she saw who her new guest was. One could hear her voice saying excitedly and in an almost confused tone:—“Oh, Steve! I didn’t see you! I didn’t know that you were here! I am so glad that you could come! And Mary—Did you bring her with you? Is she here too? Hah?—” And she would clap her hand up to her ear and bend forward with her rosy beaming face eagerly focused to hear all that was being said.
The whole party was in full blast now, moving wonderfully, miraculously, beautifully, in full swing, with a wonderful harmony, with spontaneous rhythm; people were moving in and out of rooms with glasses in their hands, people were leaning against walls talking to each other, splendid, distinguished looking men were leaning on the mantle engaged in the casual earnestness of debate, the seriousness of mutual interests, the informal conversation of old acquaintanceship and chance meeting, beautiful women with satiny backs were moving through the crowd with velvet undulance, the young people had gathered together in little parties of their own, spontaneously attracted by the crystalline magic of their youth.
Everywhere people were talking, laughing, debating, chattering, bending to fill glasses with long frosty drinks, moving around the loaded temptations of the dining table and the great buffet with that “choosey,” somewhat perturbed and doubtful look of people who would like to taste it all but know they can’t. And the clean, sweet, rosily and smiling maids were there to do their bidding, help them, urge them just to have a little more. It was wonderful, greeting one another, weaving back and forth in a celebrated pattern of white and black and gold and power and wealth and loveliness and food and drink.
And through it all, like the magnetic star, through it all like the thread of gold, the line of life, through all the wonder of this wealth of life, warmth, joy and gaiety together, through it all like some strange and lovely flower, bending and welcoming on its gracious stem, moved the flushed and rosy face, the dancing eye, the warm heart and the wise, the subtle, childlike, magic spirit that was Mrs. Jack.
She seemed to give a tongue to loveliness: to weave a magic thread into the labyrinth of movement and of sound. And to the pattern of this swarming web she seemed to give the combining purpose of her presence, the unifying magic of her one and single self. Here, in these rooms, between these walls, was now collected a good part of all the best in strength, in power, in talent and in beauty that the city could produce or that life could know. And all of it had been miraculously resumed, fused to a flower of life by the unique genius of a single spirit. And the result of that great fusion was—as it had always been solely and inimitably itself:—a party at Jack’s.
THE GUESTS ARRIVING
• • •
Mrs. Jack glanced happily through the crowded rooms. It was, she well knew, a notable assemblage of the best, the highest, and the fairest that the city had to offer. And others were arriving all the time. At this moment, in fact, Miss Lily Mandell arrived upon the arm of Mr. Lawrence Hirsch: the tall smoldering beauty swung undulant away along the hall to dispose of her wraps and schooled in power, close clipped hair groomed and faultless, the banker came into the room, wove greetings through the throng toward the focal centre of his rosy hostess, shook hands with her and kissed her lightly on one cheek saying with that cool irony of friendly humor that was a portion of the city style: “You haven’t looked so lovely, darling, since the days we used to dance the cancan together.”
The guests were now arriving in full force. Sometimes the elevator was so crowded with new arrivals that one group had hardly time to finish with greetings before the door would open and a new group would come in. Miss Roberta Heilprinn arrived with Mr. Robert Ahrens and made their greetings to their hostess: they were old friends of hers “in the theatre” and her greetings to them, while not more cordial or affectionate than to her other guests, were indefinably yet plainly more direct and casual: it was as if one of those masks—not of pretending, but of formal custom—which life imposes upon so many of the human relations, had been here sloughed off. It was here simply; “Oh, hello, Bertie—hello Bob:” the shade indefinable told everything: they were “show people”: they had “worked together.”
There were a good many “show people.” Roy Farley had now arrived accompanied by two young men from the Art Theatre where he was employed and by the Misses Hattie Warren and Bessie Lane, two grey-haired spinsters who were also directors of the theatre. Mr. Farley and his two young companions divested themselves of their light overcoats with graceful movements, gave them to the waiting maid and made their way into the crowded room to pay their duties to the hostess.
Old Jake Abramson came in with his sister, Irita; Stephen Hook, the novelist, arrived with his sister Mary. A moment later, Amy Van Leer, her beautiful head all sunning over with golden curls, arrived with a young Japanese, the sculptor, Nokamura, who had enjoyed a fashionable success the year before and had been for the nonce her lover, and with an immensely wealthy young Jew with a talent for music, who had written two of the songs of a current revue, and was her present one.
Many other people had filtered in, the place was crowded: there was Helen Reagan, a very beautiful woman with a Gibson face, touched by Irish freckles: she was the business manager of a repertory theatre, but it was rumored that her greatest talent lay in wangling large sums of money from infatuated millionaires for the support of her organization. One of these enamored Maecenases, a middle-aged plutocrat named Pendleton, was now with her. With proud and graceful carriage, and straight shoulders, slender, naked, hued like ivory, this beautiful woman moved along a miracle of cold seductiveness, in all the fragile cool intoxication of her beauty.
Saul Levenson came in with his wife, Virginia. He was one of the leaders of the modern theatre and one of its most eminent designers. He had been a friend of Mrs. Jack’s since childhood.
In addition to all these other more or less gifted, beautiful or distinguished people, most of whom had some connection with the arts, there were a number of the lesser fry—that is, people who had no great worldly renown, or any particular claim to distinction save that they were friends of Mrs. Jack.
There was her friend Agnes Wheeler and her husband. They were people who lived quietly in the country. Agnes Wheeler had been a girlhood friend of Mrs. Jack’s, had gone to school with her in childhood, had married a man who had died tragically and horribly after an agony of years of a cancer of the face which had finally eaten into his brain, and was now married again to a man who was dull and drab and unremarkable in every way. They had a small income and they lived modestly upon it.
There was also a lawyer named Roderick Hale and his wife. Hale wrote little verses which occasionally were published in newspaper columns and he had a wife who was interested in social service work. And there was also a young girl, a dancer at Irita Abramson’s Repertory Theatre, another girl who was the seamstress and the wardrobe woman there, and another girl of twenty, who was Mrs. Jack’s assistant in her own work.
It was a wholesome and admirable quality of her character that, as she had gone on in her profession and “up” in her career, as success, wealth, and renown had come to her and members of her family, she had not lost the sane and healthy practicality that was one of the essential elements of her life. She had not, as do so many people who achieve success or fame, lost her touch with life—with everyday life, the life about her, the life of the people with whom she worked, whom she worked for, who
worked for her, or whom she had known in her youth.
As a result, she was always in touch with the common heart of life—not only with the lives and interests of the wealthy or celebrated people that she knew, but with the lives and interests of her maids, her cook, the man who drove her car, the stage-hands at the theatre, the seamstresses and helpers, the painters and carpenters who built her sets for her, the electricians who lighted them, as well as with all the actors, actresses, directors and producers whose names were current in the daily press.
It was a wonderful, a saving quality. A celebrity herself, she had escaped the banal and stereotyped existence that so many celebrities achieve—a life that is no life at all, made up no more of life, but of just a kind of barren parliament of famous names, a compendium of famous stories, a collection of jokes and anecdotes and stories about famous people, eagerly to be lapped up at secondhand and passed about among the popular—but really just a counterfeit of life, empty dead and stale as hell.
She had escaped this. The line of life ran like a golden thread through this woman’s years from first to last. She remembered every living thing that she had touched. And nearly everything that she had touched had lived. She had known sorrow in her youth, insecurity and hardship in her youth, heart break, disillusion and poor people in her youth. And she remembered all of them. She had not forgotten her old friends; she had a talent rare in modern life for loyal and abiding friendships and most of the people that were here tonight, even the most celebrated ones, were people that she had known for many years, and her friendship with some of them went back to childhood.
Another childhood friend of Mrs. Jack’s was present. This was Margaret Ettinger: she had married a bad painter, and tonight she had brought her husband. And her husband, who was not only a bad painter but a bad man, too, had brought his mistress, a young buxom, and fullblown whore, with him. This group provided the most bizarre and unpleasantly disturbing touch to an otherwise distinguished gathering.
THE LOVER
• • •
And yet, someone was still lacking.
“Long, long into the night I lay,” thought Mrs. Jack. “Thinking about you all the time.”
For someone was still absent and she kept thinking of him—well, almost all the time. At least, so she would phrase it next day in her mind with that kind of temporal infatuation which a woman feels when she is thinking of her lover: “I keep thinking of you all the time. I do nothing but think of you all the time. When I wake up in the morning the first thing I think about is you. And then I think about my little Alma: the two people that I love the best in all the world. Did you ever try to tell a story? Once when I was a child I felt sure I had to tell a story. It kept growing in me, it was like an immense and golden dream. I thought it was the most wonderful story that anyone had ever told. I was sure that it would make me rich and famous. I felt I had the whole thing in me, it kept swelling up in me and seemed to fill me, soak me through and through with all its gold. And yet, when I began it all that I could think of was ‘Long, long into the night I lay thinking of how to tell my story.’ Wasn’t that wonderful? It seemed to me to be the most beautiful and perfect way to begin a story—but I could go no further. And now I know the end. ‘Long, long into the night I lay—thinking of you.’ I think about you all the time. You fill my life, my heart, my spirit and my being. I have an image that I go around with you inside me—here. I have you inside of me—and I keep thinking of you all the time. And that’s the story, ‘Long, long into the night I lay—thinking about you all the time.’ And that’s the story. Ah, dearest, that’s the story.”
And so this lovely and successful woman really felt—or thought she felt. Really, when she thought of him, she kept thinking she was “thinking of him all the time.” And on this crowded and this brilliant evening, he kept flashing through her mind. Or maybe he was really there, as someone we have known and loved is there—and really can’t be lost, no matter what we’re doing, what we’re thinking of—and so, in such a wise, we keep “thinking of them all the time.”
“I wonder where he is,” she thought. “Why doesn’t he come? If only he hasn’t been—” she looked quickly over the brilliant gathering with a troubled eye and thought impatiently—“If only he liked parties more! If only he enjoyed meeting people—going out in the evening—Oh well! He’s the way he is. It’s no use to change him. I wouldn’t have him any different. I think about him all the time!”
And then he arrived; a hurried but relieved survey told her that he was “all right.” He was a little too quick and a trifle more feverish than was his wont. Just the same, he was, as Esther had phrased it to herself, “all right.”
“If only my people—my friends—everyone I know—didn’t affect him so,” she thought. “Why is it, I wonder. Last night when he telephoned me he talked so strange! Nothing he said made any sense! What could have been wrong with him? Oh, well—it doesn’t matter now. He’s here. I love him!”
Her face warmed and softened, her pulse beat quicker, and she went to meet him. He greeted her half fondly and half truculently, with a mixture of diffidence and pugnacity, of arrogance and humility, of pride, of hope, of love, of suspicion, of eagerness, of doubt.
“Oh, hello, darling,” she said fondly. “I’m so glad you’re here at last. I was beginning to be afraid you were going to fail me after all.”
He had not really wanted to come to the party. From the moment she had first invited him he had objected. They had argued it back and forth for days, and at last she had beaten down his reasons and had exacted his promise. But last night he had paced the floor for hours in an agony of self-recrimination and indecision, and at last with desperate resolve he had telephoned her and had blunderingly awakened the whole household before he got her. But he had told her then that he had decided not to come and had repeated all his reasons. He only half-understood them himself, but they had to do with her world and his world, and his belief, which was more a matter of feeling than of clear thought, that he must keep his independence of the world she belonged to if he was to do his work. He was almost desperate as he tried to explain it all to her, because he couldn’t make her understand what he was driving at. She became a little desperate, too, in the end. First she was annoyed and told him for God’s sake to stop being such a fool about things that didn’t matter. Then she became hurt and angry, and reminded him of his promise.
“We’ve been over all of this a dozen times!” she said angrily, and there was also a tearful note in her voice. “You promised, George! And now everything’s arranged. It’s too late to change anything now. You can’t let me down like this!”
This appeal was too much for him. He knew, of course, that the party had not been planned for him and that no arrangements would be upset if he failed to appear. No one but Esther would even be aware of his absence. But he had given his promise to come, however reluctantly, and he saw that the only issue his arguments had raised in Esther’s mind was the simple one of whether he would keep his word. So once more, and finally, he had yielded. And now he was here, full of confusion, and wishing with all his heart that he was somewhere else—anywhere but here.
“I’m sure you’re going to have a good time,” Esther was saying to him in her eager way. “You’ll see!”—and she squeezed his hand. “There are lots of people I want you to meet. But you must be hungry. Better get yourself something to eat first. You’ll find lots of things you like. I planned them especially for you. Go in the dining room and help yourself. I’ll have to stay here a little while to welcome all these people.”
Mrs. Jack looked happily about her. Now they were all together—even to the one she loved.
George stood for a moment, scowling a little as he glanced about the room at the brilliant assemblage. In that attitude he cut a rather grotesque figure. The low brow with its frame of short black hair, the burning eyes, the small, packed features, the long arms dangling to the knees, and the curved paws gave him an appearance more si
mian than usual in his not-too-well-fitting dinner jacket. People looked at him and stared, then turned away indifferently and resumed their conversations.
“So,” he thought with somewhat truculent self-consciousness, “these are her fine friends that she’s been telling me about! I might have known it!” he muttered to himself, without knowing at all what it was he might have known. The very poise and assurance of all these sleek and wealthy faces made him fear a fancied slight where none was offered or intended. “Well, here they are! I’ll show them!” he growled,—but God knows what he meant by that.
It was, he knew, a distinguished gathering. It included brilliant men and beautiful women. But as he looked them over, he saw unmistakably that it also included some who wore another hue. That fellow there, for instance, with his pasty face and rolling eyes and mincing ways and hips that he wiggled as he walked—could there be any doubt at all that he was a member of nature’s other sex? And that woman, with her mannish haircut and angular lines and hard enameled face, holding hands over there in the corner with that rather pretty young girl—a nymphomaniac, surely. His eye took in Krock, standing a little apart there with his wife and his mistress. He saw Mr. Jack moving among his guests, and suddenly with a rush of shame he thought of himself. Who was he to feel so superior to these others? Did they not all know who he was and why he was here?
