Part 44 (1/2)
”I hope they're not too artistic to keep their rooms warm,” said Aileen, as they drove from her house where Gora and Alexina had dined, down to the Club of the Seven Arts. ”I have smoked so much, intending to prove in public how really virtuous a society girl is, in contrast to Bohemia, that I'm nearly frozen.”
”Keep your wrap on,” said Alexina. ”Who cares? I have always been wild to get into real Bohemian circles, meet authors and artists. We do lead the most provincial life. All circles should overlap--the best of all, anyhow. That is the way I would remold society if I were rich and powerful--”
”Good heavens Alex, you are not idealizing this crowd we are going to meet to-night? They're just a lot of second and third raters--”
”What do you know about them?”
”I keep my feet on the ground and my head out of the clouds. I know more or less what it must be. Besides, the last time I was in New York I was taken several times to the restaurants and studios of Greenwich Village. I could only convey my opinion of it in many swear words. This must be a sort of chromo of it.... Gora, are you as wildly excited as Alex is? I know she is because her spine is rigid; and she is probably colder than I am.”
”Well, anyhow,” said Alexina defiantly, ”it will be something I never saw before.”
”It will, darling. Well. Gora, what do you antic.i.p.ate?”
Gora laughed. ”I wonder? I don't think I've thought much about it. The circ.u.mstances of my life have developed the habit of switching off my imagination except when I am at my desk. I've also formed the habit of taking things as they come. I'll manage to extract something from this, one way or another.”
III
The car stopped before a narrow house in the rebuilt portion of the city. The door was opened immediately and the three guests of honor, apparently very late, as a large room beyond the vestibule appeared to be crowded, were marshaled up a narrow stair into a dressing-room under the eaves.
”Looks like the loft of a barn,” grumbled Aileen. There was no attendant to hear. ”Well, I'm not going to leave my cloak, for several reasons--only one of which is that if this room is a sample my ill-covered bones will rattle together downstairs.”
She wore a gown of black chiffon with a green jade necklace and a band of green in her fas.h.i.+onably done fair hair. Alexina's gown was a soft white satin that fitted closely and made her look very tall and slim and round, the corsage trimmed with the only color she ever wore. Her hair was done in a cla.s.sic knot and held with a comb--a present from Aileen--designed from periwinkles and green leaves and sparkling dew-drops.
Gora shook out the skirt of her only evening-gown, a well-made black satin, very severe, but always relieved by a flower of some sort.
To-night she wore a poinsettia, whose peculiarly vivid red brought out the warm browns of her skin and hair. She had a superb neck and shoulders and bust, and the skin of her body was a delicate honey color that melted imperceptibly into the deeper tones of her throat and face.
”Alexina,” she said, ”let us perish but exhibit all our points. Your arms and hands were modeled for some untraced Greek ancestress and born again. Your neck is almost as good as mine, if not quite so solid....”
She had a spot of crimson on her high cheek bones and admitted to the discerning Aileen that she was the least bit excited. After all, the keenest brains of San Francisco might be down in that long raftered room they had glimpsed, and in any case she was about to be judged by a new standard.
”Oh, don't let that worry you,” Aileen began.
A door at the end of the room opened abruptly and a small woman came forward almost panting. ”I just ran up those stairs,” she cried. ”But I was bound to be the first. I used to go to school with your mother down on Bush Street--dear Minnie Morrison!”
She was a woman of fifty or sixty, with a nose like an inflamed b.u.t.ton, eyes that watered freely, and a shabby black hat somewhat on one side.
”But my mother never went to school in San Francisco,” said Gora stiffly, and eyeing this first precipitate member of the intellectual world with profound disfavor.
”Oh, yes, she did. We were the most intimate friends. To think that dear Minnie's daughter--”
”Her name was not Minnie Morrison--”
”Oh, yes, it was--”
”Don't mind her so much, Gora dear.” Aileen did not trouble to lower her voice. ”She's drunk. Let's go down.”
Another woman entered the same door almost as hastily, but she was a stately and rather handsome woman of forty, who gave the intruder such a withering look from her serene blue eyes that the unrefined member of the Seven Arts slunk out and could be heard stumbling down the stairs.
”I followed as soon as some one told me that Miss Skeers had come up here,” she said apologetically. ”She is not always herself, poor thing.