CHAPTER II
THE POCKET VENUS

"HOW do you like my hat?" said Fanny to Sylvia. Since the dinner a week had gone. The two girls were in Irving Place.

Irving Place is south of Gramercy Park. To the west are the multiple atrocities of Union Square, to the east are the nameless shames of Third avenue. Between the two Irving Place lies, a survival of the peace of old New York. At the lower end are the encroaching menaces of trade, but at the upper end, from which you enter Gramercy Park, there is a quiet, pervasive and almost provincial. It was here that Sylvia Waldron lived.

People take a house for six months or an apartment for a year and call it a home. That is a base use for a sacred word. A home is a place in which you are born, in which your people die and your progeny emerge. A home predicates the present, but particularly the past and with it the future. Any other variety of residence may be agreeable or the reverse, but it is not a home.

In Irving Place there are homes. Among them was the house in which Sylvia Waldron lived. It had been in her family for sixty years. In London a tenure such as that is common. In New York it is phenomenal.

To Sylvia the phenomenon was a matter of course. What amazed her were the migrations of others. Of Fanny, for instance. Each autumn Sylvia would say to her, "Where are you to be?" And Fanny, who at the time might be lodged in a hotel, or camping with a relative, or visiting at Tuxedo, or stopping in Westchester, never could tell. But by December the girl and her mother would find quarters somewhere and there remain until that acrobat, summer, turned handsprings into town and frightened them off.

Summer had not yet come. But May had and, with it, an eager glitter, skies of silk, all the caresses and surrenders of spring.

The season was becoming to Fanny. She fitted in it. She was a young Venus in Paris clothes – Aphrodite a maiden, touched up by Doucet. In her manner was a charm quite incandescent. In her voice were intonations that conveyed the sensation of a kiss. Her eyes were very loquacious. She could, when she chose, flood them with languors. She could, too, charge them with rebuke. You never knew, though, just what she would do. But you always did know what Sylvia would not.

Sylvia suggested the immateriality that the painters of long ago gave to certain figures which they wished to represent as floating from the canvas into space. You felt that her mind was clean as wholesome fruit, that her speech could no more weary than could a star, that her heart, like her house, was a home. She detained, but Fanny allured.

In spite of which or perhaps precisely because of their sheer dissimilarity the two girls were friends. But association weaves mysterious ties. It unites people who otherwise would come to blows. Fanny and Sylvia had been brought up together. The mesh woven in younger days was about them still, and on this particular noon in May they made a picture which, while contrasting, was charmful.

"You really like my hat?"

The hat was gray. The girl's dress was gray. The skirt was of the variety known as trotabout. The whole thing was severely plain, yet astonishingly smart. Sylvia was also in street dress. The latter was black.

They were in the parlor. For in New York there are still parlors. And why not? A parlor – or parloir – is a talking-place. Yet in this instance not a gay place. It was spacious, sombre, severe.

"And now," said Fanny, after the hat had been properly praised, "tell me when it is to be?"

"When is what to be?"

"You and Arthur?"

"Next autumn."

"I shall send a fish knife," said Fanny, savorously. "A fish knife always looks so big and costs so little. Though if I could I would give you a diamond crown."

"Give me your promise to be bridesmaid, and you will have given me what I want from you most."

"But what am I to wear? And oh, Sylvia, how am I to get it? I don't dare any more to so much as look in on Annette, or Juliette, or Marguerite. There are streets into which I can no longer go. I told Loftus that, and he said – so sympathetically too – 'Ah, is it memories that prevent you?' 'Rubbish,' I told him, 'it's bills.'"

"Fanny! How could you? He might have offered to pay them."

"If he had only offered to owe them!" Fanny laughed as she spoke and patted her perfect skirt.

"But he has other fish to fry. Do you know the other day I saw him – "

But what Fanny had seen was never told, or at least not then. Annandale was invading the parlor.

"Conquering hero!" cried Fanny. "I am here congratulating Sylvia."

"I congratulate myself that you are. I have a motor at the door, and I propose to take you both to Sherry's, afterward, if you like, to the races. There you may congratulate me."

"What is this about Sherry's?" Again the parlor was invaded. This time by Sylvia's mother. She had bright cheeks, bright eyes, bright hair. In her voice was indulgence, in her manner ease. She gave a hand to Fanny, the other to Annandale.

"In my day," she resumed, "girls did not go lunching without someone to look after them."

"They certainly did not go to Sherry's," said Annandale. "There was no Sherry's to go to. But why won't you come with us?"

"Thank you, Arthur. It is not because Fanny or Sylvia needs looking after. But when I was their age anything of the sort would have been thought so common. Yet then, what was common at that time seems to have been accepted since. Now, there is a chance to call me old-fashioned."

"I can do better than that," said Annandale, "I can call you grande dame."

"Yes," Fanny threw in, "and that, don't you think, is so superior to being merely – ahem – demned grand."

"Why, Fanny!" And Mrs. Waldron, at once amused at the jest and startled at the expression, shook her finger at her.

But Annandale hastened to her rescue. "Fanny is quite right, Mrs. Waldron. You meet women nowadays whose grandfathers, if they had any, were paving the streets while your own were governing the country and who, just because they happen to be beastly rich, put on airs that would be comical in an empress. Now, won't you change your mind and come with us? At Sherry's there are always some choice selections on view."

"You are not very tempting, Arthur. But if the girls think otherwise, take them. And don't forget. You dine with us tonight."

Thereat, presently, after a scurry through sunshine and streets, Sherry's was reached.

There Annandale wanted to order a châteaubriand. The girls rebelled. A maitre d'hôtel suggested melons and a suprème with a bombe to follow.

Annandale turned to him severely. "Ferdinand, I object to your telling me what you want me to eat."

"Let me order," said Sylvia. "Fanny, what would you like?"

"Cucumbers, asparagus, strawberries."

"Chicken?"

Fanny nodded.

"Yes," said Annandale to the chastened waiter, "order that and some moselle, and I want a Scotch and soda. There's Orr," he interrupted himself to announce. "I wonder what he is doing uptown? And there's Loftus."

At the mention of Orr, Fanny, who had been eying an adjacent gown, evinced no interest. But at the mention of Loftus she glanced about the room.

It was large, high-ceiled, peopled with actresses and men-about-town, smart women and stupid boys, young girls and old beaux. From a balcony there dripped the twang of mandolins. In the air was the savor of pineapple, the smell of orris, the odor of food and flowers.

On entering Sylvia had stopped to say a word at one table, Fanny had loitered at another. Then in their trip to a table already reserved, a trip conducted by the maitre d'hôtel whom Annandale had rebuked, murmurs trailed after them, the echo of their names, observations profoundly analytical. "That's Fanny Price, the great beauty." "That's Miss Waldron, who is engaged to Arthur Annandale." "That is Annandale there" – the usual subtleties of the small people of a big city. Now, at the entrance, Orr and Loftus appeared.

"Shall I ask them to join us?" Annandale asked.

"Yes, do," said Fanny. "I like Mr. Orr so much."

But Loftus, who, with his hands in his pockets, a monocle in his eye, had been looking about with an air of great contempt for everybody, already with Orr was approaching. On reaching the table very little urging was required to induce them to sit, and, when seated they were, Loftus was next to Fanny.

"What are you doing uptown at this hour?" Annandale asked Orr, who had got between Loftus and Sylvia. "I thought you lawyers were all so infernally busy."

"Everybody ought to be," Orr replied. "Although an anarchist who had managed to get himself locked up, and whom I succeeded in getting out, confided to me that only imbeciles work. By way of exchange I had to confide to him that it is only imbeciles that do not."

"Now that," said Annandale, who had never done a stroke of work in his life, "is what I call a very dangerous theory."

"A theory that is not dangerous," Orr retorted, "can hardly be called a theory at all."

With superior tact Sylvia intervened. "But what is anarchy, Melanchthon? Socialism I know about, but anarchy – ?"

"To put it vulgarly, I drink and you pay."

"But suppose I am an anarchist?"

"Then Sherry pays."

"But supposing he is an anarchist?"

"Then there is a row. And there will be one. The country is drifting that way. It will, I think, be bloody, but I think, too, it will be brief. Anarchists, you know, maintain that of all prejudices capital and matrimony are the stupidest. What they demand is the free circulation of money and women. As a nation, we are great at entertaining, but we will never entertain that."

"Why, then, did you not let the beggar rot where he was?" Annandale swiftly and severely inquired.

"Oh, you know, if I had not got him out someone else would have, and I thought it better that the circulation of money should proceed directly from his pocket to mine."

"You haven't any stupid prejudices yourself, that's clear," said Annandale, helping himself as he spoke to more Scotch. "Sylvia," he continued, "if I am ever up for murder I will retain Melanchthon Orr."

Orr laughed. "That retainer will never reach me. You would not hurt a fly."

"Wouldn't I?" And Annandale assumed an expression of great ferocity. "You don't know me. I can imagine circumstances in which I could wade in gore. By the way, I have ordered a revolver."

"What!"

"Yes, a burglar got in my place the night before last and woke me up. If he comes back and wakes me up again I'll blow his head off."

Sylvia looked at him much as she might at a boastful child. "Yes, yes, Arthur, but please don't take so much of that whisky."

"I think I will have a drop of it, if I may," said Loftus, who meanwhile had been talking to Fanny. In a moment he turned to her anew.

"Where are you going this summer?"

"To Narragansett. It is cool and cheap. Why don't you come?"

"It is such a beastly hole."

"Well, perhaps. But do you think you would think so if I were there?"

"That would rather depend on how you treated me."

"You mean, don't you, that it would rather depend on how I let you treat me?" Fanny, as she spoke, looked Loftus in the eyes and made a face at him.

That face, Loftus, after a momentary interlude with knife and fork, tried to mimic. "If a chap gave you the chance you would drive him to the devil."

On Fanny's lips a smile bubbled. She shook her pretty head. "No, not half so far. Not even so far as the other end of Fifth avenue, where I saw you trying to scrape acquaintance with that girl. Apropos. You might tell me. How are matters progressing? Has the castle capitulated?"

"I haven't an idea what you are talking about."

"That's right. Assume a virtue though you have it not. It's a good plan."

"It does not appear to be yours."

"Appearances may be deceptive."

"And even may not be."

Sylvia interrupted them. "What are you two quarreling about?"

"Mr. Loftus does not like my hat. Don't you like it, Mr. Orr?"

"I like everything about you, everything, from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet."

"There!" exclaimed Fanny. "That is the way I like to have a man talk."

"It is dreadfully difficult," Loftus threw in.

"You seem to find it so," Fanny threw back.

Sylvia raised a finger. "Mr. Loftus, if you do not stop quarreling with Fanny I will make you come and sit by me."

"If I am to look upon that as a punishment, Miss Waldron," Loftus with negligent gallantry replied, "what would you have me regard as a reward?"

"Arthur! Arthur!" Fanny cried. "Did you hear that? This man is making up to Sylvia."

But Annandale did not seem in the least alarmed. He was looking about for Ferdinand. "Here," he began, when at last the waiter appeared. "You neglect us shamefully. We want some more moselle and more Scotch."

"None for me," said Loftus rising. "I have an appointment."

"Appointment," Fanny announced, "is very good English for rendezvous."

"And taisez-vous, mademoiselle, is very good French for I wish it were with yourself."

"I have not a doubt of it."

"Fanny!" Sylvia objected. "You are impossible."

"Yes," Fanny indolently replied. "Yet then, to be impossible and seem the reverse is the proper caper for a debutante. Heigho! I wish girls smoked here. I would give a little of my small change for a cigarette. Are you really off, Royal. Well, my love to the lady."