But he could not stir them. It was a dinner without
a soul. For no reason that was clear to Babbitt,
heaviness was over them and they spoke laboriously
and unwillingly.
He concentrated on Lucille McKelvey, carefully not
looking at her blanched lovely shoulder and the tawny
silken bared which supported her frock.
“I suppose you’ll be going to Europe pretty
soon again, won’t you?” he invited.
“I’d like awfully to run over to Rome
for a few weeks.”
“I suppose you see a lot of pictures and music
and curios and everything there.”
“No, what I really go for is: there’s
a little trattoria on the Via della Scrofa where you
get the best fettuccine in the world.”
“Oh, I—Yes. That must be nice
to try that. Yes.”
At a quarter to ten McKelvey discovered with profound
regret that his wife had a headache. He said
blithely, as Babbitt helped him with his coat, “We
must lunch together some time, and talk over the old
days.”
When the others had labored out, at half-past ten,
Babbitt turned to his wife, pleading, “Charley
said he had a corking time and we must lunch—said
they wanted to have us up to the house for dinner before
long.”
She achieved, “Oh, it’s just been one
of those quiet evenings that are often so much more
enjoyable than noisy parties where everybody talks
at once and doesn’t really settle down to-nice
quiet enjoyment.”
But from his cot on the sleeping-porch he heard her
weeping, slowly, without hope.
For a month they watched the social columns, and waited
for a return dinner-invitation.
As the hosts of Sir Gerald Doak, the McKelveys were
headlined all the week after the Babbitts’ dinner.
Zenith ardently received Sir Gerald (who had come
to America to buy coal). The newspapers interviewed
him on prohibition, Ireland, unemployment, naval aviation,
the rate of exchange, tea-drinking versus whisky-drinking,
the psychology of American women, and daily life as
lived by English county families. Sir Gerald
seemed to have heard of all those topics. The
McKelveys gave him a Singhalese dinner, and Miss Elnora
Pearl Bates, society editor of the Advocate-Times,
rose to her highest lark-note. Babbitt read aloud
at breakfast-table:
’Twixt the original and Oriental decorations,
the strange and delicious food, and the personalities
both of the distinguished guests, the charming hostess
and the noted host, never has Zenith seen a more recherche
affair than the Ceylon dinner-dance given last evening
by Mr. and Mrs. Charles McKelvey to Sir Gerald Doak.
Methought as we—fortunate one!—were
privileged to view that fairy and foreign scene, nothing
at Monte Carlo or the choicest ambassadorial sets
of foreign capitals could be more lovely. It
is not for nothing that Zenith is in matters social
rapidly becoming known as the choosiest inland city
in the country.
