house around eleven. I gathered she preferred we didn’t meet at her house, even though we’d have to pass it going from my place in P Street to Linthicum Hall in O—Beall Street cutting a wedge-shaped section, as it does, from Wisconsin Avenue to 29th.
Steve Donaldson was the first to come. He looked remarkably well in tails and white tie, said something noncommittal about the weather, admitted he thought Lowell was being pretty dramatic about it when I asked him how the Nashes were making out with the passing of Senator McGilvray, and kept looking at his watch and moving about the room. I watched him with considerable interest, after a couple more desultory attempts at conversation had quietly died on my hands. When the doorbell rang he came to life, and slumped again when it was only Colonel Primrose.
As for myself, I was surprised at how glad I was to see the short, grey-haired, somewhat rotund figure of Sergeant Buck’s chief in the door, with Lilac’s polished face shining over his shoulder like a full black moon.
“It’s grand to see you—how are you? Do you know Mr. Donaldson?”
The two men shook hands. Colonel Primrose, who has a slightly stiff neck from stopping a bullet in the Argonne, cocked his head down and looked up with his bright parrot eyes. “Randall Nash was speaking of you this evening,” he said.
But Steve Donaldson was listening to Lilac opening the door again. I doubt if he even heard what Colonel Primrose said. I saw the quick change in his face when Iris came in and his eyes detected before mine did the too bright quality of her greeting.
“It’s nice of you to go along with us.” She toned to him after she’d spoken to me and Colonel Primrose. “Mac put his foot down. He said if Lowell stood him up again he’d join the Foreign Legion, so she had to go with him.”
She toned back to me.
“I hope I’m not terribly late; I was waiting for Randall. He went out and hadn’t got back yet. Angie’s mother got up and went out to a party last night, and today they took her to the Emergency Hospital. I think she’s very sick. I thought maybe Lowell ought to stand by, but Randall said her holiday had been ruined already by her dog’s dying, and her mother was probably just putting on anyway, just to spoil Christmas for everybody.”
She shrugged unhappily.
“Result is, Lowell doesn’t know her mother’s ill again.— Not that she’d care very much.”
She bit her lower lip suddenly. “Oh what am I saying! I didn’t mean that—please forgive me!”
Colonel Primrose’s thumb on the trigger of the soda syphon released its pressure sharply. He cocked his head down and looked around at her with intent sparkling black eyes. Then he pressed the trigger again. The charged water swirled into the amber whisky in the tall glass.
The Christmas Assembly, perhaps I should explain, is a traditional Georgetown function, dating from pre-Revolutionary days. The youth and beauty of the Colonies danced at it, George Washington attended it in a tavern in Bridge Street, Dolly Madison and her husband danced at it before the British burned Washington in 1814, the belles of the Forties flirted there. It was discontinued during the Civil War and revived under the gas lights in the smilax-wreathed hall that Mr. Linthicum built in l878 for the education of poor white boys of Georgetown. There are still two gas standards in the corners of the little gallery, but they aren’t lighted now, and the gallery is used chiefly for a surreptitious drink out of a bottle—paper cups for ladies—by a generation very alien, somehow, to the shining-pated old gentlemen with their ladies who sit along the wall under the evergreens downstairs, watching the strange gait of the modern dance.
Iris and I pushed through the mob on the staircase into the ladies’ room, and then back through the corridor into the gallery. It was empty for the moment except for a young man already finding it difficult to move.
Steve Donaldson was the first to come. He looked remarkably well in tails and white tie, said something noncommittal about the weather, admitted he thought Lowell was being pretty dramatic about it when I asked him how the Nashes were making out with the passing of Senator McGilvray, and kept looking at his watch and moving about the room. I watched him with considerable interest, after a couple more desultory attempts at conversation had quietly died on my hands. When the doorbell rang he came to life, and slumped again when it was only Colonel Primrose.
As for myself, I was surprised at how glad I was to see the short, grey-haired, somewhat rotund figure of Sergeant Buck’s chief in the door, with Lilac’s polished face shining over his shoulder like a full black moon.
“It’s grand to see you—how are you? Do you know Mr. Donaldson?”
The two men shook hands. Colonel Primrose, who has a slightly stiff neck from stopping a bullet in the Argonne, cocked his head down and looked up with his bright parrot eyes. “Randall Nash was speaking of you this evening,” he said.
But Steve Donaldson was listening to Lilac opening the door again. I doubt if he even heard what Colonel Primrose said. I saw the quick change in his face when Iris came in and his eyes detected before mine did the too bright quality of her greeting.
“It’s nice of you to go along with us.” She toned to him after she’d spoken to me and Colonel Primrose. “Mac put his foot down. He said if Lowell stood him up again he’d join the Foreign Legion, so she had to go with him.”
She toned back to me.
“I hope I’m not terribly late; I was waiting for Randall. He went out and hadn’t got back yet. Angie’s mother got up and went out to a party last night, and today they took her to the Emergency Hospital. I think she’s very sick. I thought maybe Lowell ought to stand by, but Randall said her holiday had been ruined already by her dog’s dying, and her mother was probably just putting on anyway, just to spoil Christmas for everybody.”
She shrugged unhappily.
“Result is, Lowell doesn’t know her mother’s ill again.— Not that she’d care very much.”
She bit her lower lip suddenly. “Oh what am I saying! I didn’t mean that—please forgive me!”
Colonel Primrose’s thumb on the trigger of the soda syphon released its pressure sharply. He cocked his head down and looked around at her with intent sparkling black eyes. Then he pressed the trigger again. The charged water swirled into the amber whisky in the tall glass.
The Christmas Assembly, perhaps I should explain, is a traditional Georgetown function, dating from pre-Revolutionary days. The youth and beauty of the Colonies danced at it, George Washington attended it in a tavern in Bridge Street, Dolly Madison and her husband danced at it before the British burned Washington in 1814, the belles of the Forties flirted there. It was discontinued during the Civil War and revived under the gas lights in the smilax-wreathed hall that Mr. Linthicum built in l878 for the education of poor white boys of Georgetown. There are still two gas standards in the corners of the little gallery, but they aren’t lighted now, and the gallery is used chiefly for a surreptitious drink out of a bottle—paper cups for ladies—by a generation very alien, somehow, to the shining-pated old gentlemen with their ladies who sit along the wall under the evergreens downstairs, watching the strange gait of the modern dance.
Iris and I pushed through the mob on the staircase into the ladies’ room, and then back through the corridor into the gallery. It was empty for the moment except for a young man already finding it difficult to move.
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