George Webber had helped himself generously to the sumptuous feast so temptingly laid out in the dining-room, and now, his hunger sated, he had been standing for a few minutes in the doorway surveying the brilliant scene in the great living-room. He was trying to make up his mind whether to plunge boldly in and find somebody to talk to, or whether to put off the ordeal a little longer by lingering over the food. He thought with regret that there were still a few dishes that he had not even tasted. He had already eaten so much, however, that he knew he could not make a convincing show of taking more, so there seemed to be nothing for it but to screw up his courage and make the best of the situation.
He had just reached this conclusion, with a feeling of “Now you’re in for it!”— when he caught a glimpse of Stephen Hook, whom he knew and liked, and with a great sense of relief he started towards him. Hook was leaning on the mantel, talking with a handsome woman. He saw George coming and extended his soft, plump hand sideways, saying casually:
“Oh. How are you? . . . Look.” His tone, as always when he did something that was prompted by the generous and sensitive warmth of his spirit, was deliberately indifferent and masked with an air of heavy boredom. “Have you a telephone? I was trying to get you the other day. Can’t you come and have lunch with me some time?”
As a matter of fact, this idea had never occurred to him until that moment. Webber knew that he had thought of it in an instant reflex of sympathy to put him at his ease, to make him feel less desperately shipwrecked in these glittering, sophisticated tides, to give him something “to hold on to”. Ever since he had first met Hook and had seen his desperate shyness and the naked terror in his eyes, he had understood the kind of man he was. He had never been deceived by the show of aloof weariness or the elaborately mannered speech. Beneath these disguises he had felt the integrity, the generosity, the nobility, the aspiration in the man’s tortured soul. So, now, with profound gratitude, he reached out and shook his hand, feeling as he did so like a bewildered swimmer seizing on the one thing that could sustain him in these disturbing and unfathomed currents which were edged somehow with menace. He stammered out a hasty greeting, said he would be delighted to go to lunch with him some time — any time — any time at all; and he took a place beside Hook as though he meant to stay there for the rest of the evening.
Hook talked to him a little while in his casual way and introduced the woman. George tried to engage her in conversation, but, instead of answering his remarks, she just looked at him coolly and said nothing. Embarrassed by this behaviour, George looked round him as if searching for someone, and in a final effort to say something, to give some show of ease and purpose which he did not feel, he blurted out:
“Have — have you seen Esther anywhere about?”
As he said the words he knew how stiff and clumsy they sounded, and how absurd, too, for Mrs. Jack, as anyone could see, was standing talking to some of the guests not ten feet away. And the woman, as if she had been waiting for just such an opening, now answered him at once. Turning to him with a bright, superior smile, she said with cool unfriendliness:
“About? Yes, I think you’ll find her about — just about there,” nodding in the direction of Mrs. Jack.
It was not a very witty remark. To George it seemed almost as stupid as his own words had been. He knew, too, that the unfriendliness behind it was impersonal — just the mark of fashion, a willingness to sacrifice manners to the chance of making a smart retort. Why, then, did his face now flush with anger? Why did he double up his fist and turn upon the trivial and smiling creature with such smouldering menace that it seemed he was about to commit a physical assault upon her?
In the very instant that he assumed this belligerent attitude he realised that he was acting like a baffled clodhopper, and this consciousness made him feel ten times the yokel that he looked. He tried to think of telling words with which to answer her, but his mind was paralysed and he was conscious only of the burning sensation in his face and neck. He knew that his ill-fitting coat was sticking out round his collar, that he was cutting a sorry figure, and that the woman —“That damned bitch!” he muttered to himself — was laughing at him. So, defeated and discomfited utterly, not so much by the woman as by his own ineptitude, he turned and stalked away, hating himself, the party, and, most of all, his folly in coming.
Well, he hadn’t wanted to come! That was Esther’s doing! She was responsible for this! It was all her fault! Full of confusion and irrational anger at everything and everybody, he backed himself against the wall on the opposite side of the room and stood there clenching and unclenching his fists and glaring round him.
But the violence and the injustice of his feelings soon began to have a calming and sobering effect upon him. Then he saw the absurdity of the whole episode, and began to laugh and mock inwardly at himself.
“So this is why you didn’t want to come!” he thought scornfully. “You were afraid some silly fool of an ill-bred woman would make an inane remark that would prick your delicate hide! God, what a fool you are! Esther was right!”
But had she been right, really? He had made such an issue of it with his talk about the work he had to do as a novelist, and how he had to keep clear of her world in order to do it. Was all that just a way of rationalising his sense of social inadequacy? Had he gone to such lengths of theorising merely to spare his tender ego the ridicule and humiliation of such a scene as he had just precipitated?
No, that was not the answer. There was more to it than that. By now he had cooled off enough to be able to look at himself objectively, and all at once he realised that he had never got clear in his own mind what he had meant when he had talked to Esther about her world and his world. He had used the phrases as symbols of something real, something important that he had felt instinctively but had never put into words. And that’s why he hadn’t been able to make her understand. Well, what was it? What had he been afraid of? It wasn’t only that he didn’t like big parties and knew himself to be unschooled in the social graces that such occasions demanded. That was a part of it — yes. But it was only a part — the smallest part, the petty, personal part. There was something else — something impersonal, something much bigger than himself, something that mattered greatly to him and that would not be denied. What was it now? Better face it and try to get it straight.
Completely cool now, and fascinated by the inner problem which the ridiculous little incident had brought into sharp focus, he began to look about him at the people in the room. He watched their faces closely and tried to penetrate behind the social masks they wore, probably, boring, searching as for some clue that might lead him to an answer to his riddle. It was, he knew, a distinguished gathering. It included brilliant, successful men and beautiful women. They were among the best and highest that the city had to offer. But as he looked them over with an alert eye and with all his sensitivities keenly awakened by his present purpose, he saw that there were some among them who wore quite another hue.
That fellow there, for instance! With his pasty face and rolling eyes and mincing ways, and hips that wiggled suggestively as he walked — could there be any doubt at all that he was a member of nature’s other sex? Webber knew that people of this fellow’s type and gender were privileged personalities, the species being regarded tenderly as a cross between a lap-dog and a clown. Almost every fashionable hostess considered them essential functionaries at smart gatherings like this. Why was it, George wondered. Was it something in the spirit of the times that had let the homosexual usurp the place and privilege of a hunch-backed jester of an old king’s court, his deformity become a thing of open jest and ribaldry? However it had come about, the thing itself was indubitable. The mincing airs and graces of such a fellow, his antics and his gibes, the spicy sting of his feminine and envenomed wit, were the exact counterparts of the malicious quips of ancient clowns. So, now. As this simpering fellow minced along, the powdered whiteness of his parchment face held languidly to one side, the weary eyes half-closed and heavy-lidded, he would pause from time to time to wave with a maidenly gesture of his wrist at various people of his acquaintance in different parts of the big room, saying as he did so:
“Oh, hello! . . . There you are! . . . You must come over!”
The effect of all this was so irresistible that the ladies shrieked with laughter, and the gentlemen spluttered and guffawed.
And that woman over there in the corner, the one with the mannish haircut and angular lines and hard, enamelled face, holding the hand of that rather pretty and embarrassed young girl — a nymphomaniac if ever he saw one.
At the sound of the splintered phrases: “I mean! . . . You............