Yesterday This Day's Madness did prepare: To-morrow's Silence, Triumph, or Despair. Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why. Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where. --Omar Kháyyám.
It is always, under the best of conditions, uncertain how a dinner-party will "go off." People are not unlike the ingredients of a salad-dressing. The smoothness of the dressing depends upon a mysterious chemical affinity that is recognized by the salad-maker but never wholly understood. All the arts are closely related to each other. A dinner-party, a salad-dressing or an epic poem demands creative effort, and is successful in so far as its creator has made an effective fusion of its separate parts.
Caroline had been inclined to believe that her fame as a dinner-giver was no more than her due. She had reached an altitude as a triumphant hostess from which she could make experiments of a more or less interesting kind. She enjoyed bringing together around our board seemingly antagonistic social molecules to see if they would fuse. She had planned to-night's dinner much as a chemist prepares his materials for a novel combination. Edgerton and Mrs. Edgerton, Van Tromp and Miss Van Tromp formed the basis for an experiment that might produce either a perfume or an explosion.
What the result would have been had Caroline's effort not been hampered by a soul-transposition that made many things awkward to us that were unobserved by our guests, I cannot say. A large portion of the function, especially its earlier stages, is a blur and a buzz in my memory. It had been like this from the first, whenever I had come into the butler's sphere of influence. Van Tromp and Edgerton were not especially terrifying. I knew their limitations. But Jones impressed me as a mystery, concealing in a wooden exterior most frightful possibilities for mischief. I did not fully recover my self-control, if such it could be called, until after the fish had been served. By that time, the situation in the dining-room was about as follows:
Caroline, playing the rôle of host, was doing nicely, but was, I feared, inclined to over-act the part a bit. Little Van Tromp, a blue-eyed, insignificant-looking man, with a tender mustache, pointed blond beard and too much hair on his head, was lowspirited and inclined to wander in his talk. He would glance at my corsage, and then cast a reproachful, languishing glance at Caroline's eyes, into which I found it possible, now and then, to throw an expression of coquetry that revived the poet's drooping spirits for a time. Mrs. Edgerton, a handsome mondaine, was always self-poised, animated and self-satisfied. Miss Van Tromp, unlike her sister, Mrs. Taunton, was petite, vivacious and rather pretty, but somewhat in awe of her brother's genius. Edgerton was a typical New Yorker of the prosperous type, possessing blood, breeding and a pleasing exterior.
Mrs. Edgerton thought that I looked somewhat fagged.
"I've had such a busy day, don't you know--ah--my dear," I exclaimed, glancing at my face across the table, and flushing at the gleam of merriment that Caroline flashed at me from my eyes.
"You and Mrs. Edgerton really do too much," commented Edgerton, politely. "We are apt to underestimate a woman's cares and burdens, Reggie," he added, addressing Caroline.
"Indeed we are," Caroline asserted, readily, in my deep voice. "I'm inclined to think, Edgerton," she continued, giving a splendid imitation of my most impressive manner, "that we do scant justice to our wives, while we are forever harping upon our own importance."
"Hear! hear!" cried little Van Tromp, playfully. I manfully resisted an inclination to hurl a wine-glass at his too picturesque head.
Mrs. Edgerton smiled at me. "What has happened to Mr. Stevens, Caroline?" she cried, jocosely. "Unless my memory is at fault, I have heard him say that you and I are 'long on leisure and short on work.'"
"An epigram!" piped the poet, rolling his eyes in exaggerated rapture.
"Did I ever make that remark?" I heard my voice asking in surprise. "I'm afraid, Mrs. Edgerton, that you have misrepresented the source of what Mr. Van Tromp has mistaken for an epigram. It sounds to me, who never said it, more like a Wall street bull."
"I can't bear that," I ventured, in Caroline's merriest tones, and Miss Van Tromp giggled.
"The point at issue, as I understand it," began Edgerton, genially, "is whether Reggie is making a confession. Did you cry 'Peccavi!' old man?"
"You are as great a sinner in this matter as I am," answered Caroline, seriously, looking at Edgerton. "How often have I heard you complain of overwork, my dear fellow! They were saying at the club this afternoon that you seldom reached there before four o'clock."
A flush came into Edgerton's face, and Mrs. Edgerton laughed aloud.
"Betrayed! betrayed!" she exclaimed, gleefully. "Reggie has deserted you, hubbie dear."
"This is absolutely shocking!" cried Miss Van Tromp. "I shall never marry."
"Let us change the subject," I suggested, suppressing a shudder as Jones glided past me. "We have become a horrible warning to our two unmarried guests--ah--Reginald."
"I am not easily frightened, Mrs. Stevens," the poet dared to say, looking at me courageously.
"Discretion is the better part of bachelorhood," I retorted, and Van Romeo collapsed at once.
"I am so excited at the prospect of meeting Yamama," said Mrs. Edgerton, presently. "He says such wonderful things!"
"And does 'em, too," I murmured, under my breath, and flashing a glance at my smiling face across the table.
"What does he say?" asked Miss Van Tromp, with youthful curiosity.
"Oh, I can't begin to tell you," protested Mrs. Edgerton, and then began: "He says that poetry suffices; that he cannot understand why prose was invented."
"Hear! hear!" cried little Van Tromp, with enthusiasm.
"He abhors egotism. Intellectual self-satisfaction is hideous, he says."
"He ought to know," I exclaimed, and Caroline had the audacity to laugh.
"Go on, Mrs. Edgerton," cried the Van Tromps with one voice.
"Yamama tells us that our Western world is not only self-satisfied, but ignorant. We are contented with half-truths. Science makes a discovery, as it imagines, and, behold! it is something that the East has known for ages."
"But how about the famine in India?" asked Edgerton, argumentatively. "If they know so much, these Eastern wise men, why don't they make grain grow in a dry season? They are great frauds, eh, Reggie?"
"I don't agree with you, Edgerton," I heard my voice in answer. "You fail to get their point of view."
"Betrayed again, Edgerton," laughed the poet.
"What's their point of view?" grumbled Edgerton, casting a glance of surprise at Caroline.
"If you believed in reincarnation," exclaimed my wife, in my somewhat overbearing manner, "you would look upon death as merely a stepping-stone to a higher existence. A famine, don't you see, helps a large number of souls up the spiral."
"Mr. Stevens has become a theosophist," cried Mrs. Edgerton, in exaggerated amazement.
"How perfectly lovely," commented Miss Van Tromp, somewhat irrelevantly. I saw Jones pouring wine at the poet's corner, and I thought that his hand trembled. I'm sure that my voice was unsteady as I remarked:
"But--ah--Reginald, what about snakes and--ah--frogs? Starvation is bad enough, but you aren't going up a spiral if you are changed into something that squirms and crawls."
"It's not like climbing a ladder," answered my voice, authoritatively. "You may go down, now and then, but as the ages pass the general trend is upward."
"It's awfully interesting," reflected Miss Van Tromp, aloud. "But how is it done?"
"It isn't done!" exclaimed Edgerton, almost angrily, "it's only half-baked. Of all the absurd nonsense that is talked this Oriental mysticism is the worst. That's why I was glad to get this man Yamama to come here this evening. I want to prove to Mrs. Edgerton that he's just about as significant as a Bab ballad."
"Do you think that Yamama will be inclined to do--ah--stunts, Mr. Edgerton?" I faltered, catching the butler's eye, and wondering why Caroline's toes got cold so easily.
"What do you mean by stunts, my dear?" Caroline asked, using my voice, rather sternly. "Yamama, I imagine, would not understand the word. He is not here to play tricks."
"What is he here for--ah--my dear?" I asked, in a falsetto that was too shrill to be good form. Mrs. Edgerton looked annoyed, and Edgerton said, half-apologetically:
"Really, Mrs. Stevens, I thought that you would be glad to have Yamama come to us to-night. Frankly, I wanted to make a closer study of the man, and your husband assured me that it would be pleasing to you to have him here."
"Don't think me inhospitable and ungrateful, Mr. Edgerton," I began in Caroline's smoothest manner. "I shall enjoy meeting Yamama, of course. But do you really think that a man who prefers poetry to prose can be trusted?"
Van Tromp gasped and glanced furtively at Caroline. The latter raised her wine-glass, smiled at me gaily, and I heard my voice crying:
"Here's to you, my dear, good as you are!"
"What are you staring at, Jones?" I asked, angrily, turning sharply toward the butler. He continued his task of serving the course without noticing my reproof. My wife and guests were gazing at me in surprise.
"A toast! A toast!" cried little Van Tromp, almost hysterically.
Edgerton laughed aloud. "Let us drink to the mysterious East," he suggested, like one who bore an olive branch in his hand.
"To the secrets of the Orient and Yamama!" amended Caroline, showing my teeth to me in a cruel smile.
"Yamama! Yamama!" murmured my guests.
As we sipped our wine, I glanced at Jones. There was a flush on his phlegmatic face, but he appeared to be paying no attention to anything but his duties.