Presumably he talked to Miss Moeller about something usual--the snow or the party or Owen Johnson's novels. Presumably Miss Moeller had eyes to look into and ba.n.a.lities to look away from. Presumably there was something in the room besides people and talk and rugs hung over the bookcases. But Carl never knew. He was looking for Ruth. He did not see her.

Within ten minutes he had manoeuvered himself free of Miss Moeller and was searching for Ruth, his nerves quivering amazingly with the fear that she might already have gone.

How would he ever find her? He could scarce ask the hostess, "Say, where's Ruth?"

She was nowhere in the fog of people in the big room.... If he could find even Olive....

Strolling, nodding to perfectly strange people who agreeably nodded back under the mistaken impression that they were glad to see him, he systematically checked up all the groups. Ruth was not among the punch-table devotees, who were being humorous and amorous over cigarettes; not among the Caustic Wits exclusively a.s.sembled in a corner; not among the shy sisters aligned on the davenport and wondering why they had come; not in the general maelstrom in the center of the room.

He stopped calmly to greet the hostess again, remarking, "You look so beautifully sophisticated to-night," and listened suavely to her fluttering remarks. He was the picture of the cynical cityman who has to be nowhere at no especial time. But he was not cynical. He had to find Ruth!

He escaped and, between the main room and the dining-room, penetrated a small den filled with witty young men, old stories, cigarette-smoke, and siphons. Then he charged into the dining-room, where there were candles and plate much like silver--and Ruth and Olive at the farther end.

CHAPTER XXVIII

He wanted to run forward, take their hands, cry, "At last!" He seemed to hear his voice wording it. But, not glancing at them again, he established himself on a chair by the doorway between the two rooms.

It was safe to watch the two girls in this Babel, where words swarmed and battled everywhere in the air. Ruth was in a brown velvet frock whose golden tones harmonized with her brown hair. She was being enthusiastically talked at by a man to whom she listened with a courteously amused curiosity. Carl could fancy her nudging Olive, who sat beside her on the Jacobean settee and was attended by another talking-man. Carl told Ruth (though she did not know that he was telling her) that she had no right to be "so blasted New-Yorkishly superior and condescending," but he admitted that she was scarcely to blame, for the man made kindergarten gestures and emitted conversation like air from an exploded tire.

The important thing was that he heard the man call her "Miss Winslow."

"Great! Got her name--Ruth Winslow!"

Watching the man's lips (occasionally trying to find an excuse for eavesdropping, and giving up the quest because there was no excuse), he discovered that Ruth was being honored with a thrilling account of aviation. The talking-man, it appeared, knew a great deal about the subject. Carl heard through a rift in the cloud of words that the man had once actually flown, as a pa.s.senger with Henry Odell! For five minutes on end, judging by the motions with which he steered a monoplane through perilous abysses, the reckless spirit kept flying (as a pa.s.senger). Ruth Winslow was obviously getting bored, and the man showed no signs of volplaning as yet. Olive's man departed, and Olive was also listening to the parlor aviator, who was unable to see that a terrific fight was being waged by the hands of the two girls in the s.p.a.ce down between them. It was won by Ruth's hand, which got a death-grip on Olive's thumb, and held it, to Olive's agony, while both girls sat up straight and beamed propriety.

Carl walked over and, smoothly ignoring the pocket entertainer, said: "So glad to see you, Miss Winslow. I think this is my dance?"

"Y-yes?" from Miss Winslow, while the entertainer drifted off into the flotsam of the party. Olive went to join a group about the hostess, who had just come in to stir up mirth and jocund merriment in the dining-room, as it had settled down into a lower state of exhilaration than the canons of talk-parties require.

Said Carl to Ruth, "Not that there's any dancing, but I felt you'd get dizzy if you climbed any higher in that aeroplane."

Ruth tried to look haughty, but her dark lashes went up and her unexpected blue eyes grinned at him boyishly.

"Gee! she's clever!" Carl was thinking. Since, to date, her only remark had been "Y-yes?" he may have been premature.

"That was a bully strangle hold you got on Miss Olive's hand, Miss Winslow."

"You saw our hands?"

"Perhaps.... Tell me a good way to express how superior you and I are to this fool party and its noise. Isn't it a fool party?"

"I'm afraid it really is."

"What's the purpose of it, anyway? Do the people have to come here and breathe this air, I wonder? I asked several people that, and I'm afraid they think I'm crazy."

"But you are here? Do you come to Mrs. Salisbury's often?"

"Never been before. Never seen a person here in my life before--except you and Miss Olive. Came on a bet. Chap bet I wouldn't dare come without being invited. I came. Bowed to the hostess and told her I was so sorry my play-rehearsals made me late, and she was _so_ glad I could come, _after all_--you know. She's never seen me in her life."

"Oh? Are you a dramatist?"

"I was--in the other room. But I was a doctor out in the hall and a sculptor on the stairs, so I'm getting sort of confused myself--as confused as you are, trying to remember who I am, Miss Winslow. You really don't remember me at all? Tea at--wasn't it at the Vanderbilt?

or the Plaza?"

"Oh yes, that must have been----I was trying to remember----"

Carl grinned. "The chap who introduced me to you called me 'Mr.

Um-m-m,' because he didn't remember my name, either. So you've never heard it. It happens to be Ericson.... I'm on a mission. Serious one.

I'm planning to go out and buy a medium-sized bomb and blow up this bunch. I suspect there's poets around."

"I do too," sighed Ruth. "I understand that Mrs. Salisbury always has seven lawyers and nineteen advertising men and a dentist and a poet and an explorer at her affairs. Are you the poet or the explorer?"

"I'm the dentist. I think----You don't happen to have done any authoring, do you?"

"Well, nothing except an epic poyem on Jonah and the Whale, which I wrote at the age of seven. Most of it consisted of a conversation between them, while Jonah was in the Whale's stomach, which I think showed agility on the part of the Whale."

"Then maybe it's safe to say what I think of authors--and more or less of poets and painters and so on. One time I was in charge of some mechanical investigations, and a lot of writers used to come around looking for what they called 'copy.' That's where I first got my grouch on them, and I've never really got over it; and coming here to-night and hearing the littery talk I've been thinking how these authors have a sort of an admiration trust. They make authors the heroes of their stories and so on, and so they make people think that writing is sacred. I'm so sick of reading novels about how young Bill, as had a pure white soul, came to New York and had an 'orrible time till his great novel was accepted. Authors seem to think they're the only ones that have ideals. Now I'm in the automobile business, and I help to make people get out into the country--bet a lot more of them get out because of motoring than because of reading poetry about spring. But if I claimed a temperament because I introduce the motorist's soul to the daisy, every one would die laughing."

"But don't you think that art is the--oh, the object of civilization and that sort of thing?"

"I do _not_! Honestly, Miss Winslow, I think it would be a good stunt to get along without any art at all for a generation, and see what we miss. We probably need dance music, but I doubt if we need opera.

Funny how the world always praises its opera-singers so much and pays 'em so well and then starves its shoemakers, and yet it needs good shoes so much more than it needs opera--or war or fiction. I'd like to see all the shoemakers get together and refuse to make any more shoes till people promised to write reviews about them, like all these book-reviews. Then just as soon as people's shoes began to wear out they'd come right around, and you'd read about the new masterpieces of Mr. Regal and Mr. Walkover and Mr. Stetson."

"Yes! I can imagine it. 'This laced boot is one of the most vital and gripping and wholesome shoes of the season.' And probably all the young shoemakers would sit around cafes, looking quizzical and artistic. But don't you think your theory is dangerous, Mr. Ericson?

You give me an excuse for being content with being a commonplace Upper-West-Sider. And aren't authors better than commonplaceness?

You're so serious that I almost suspect you of having started to be an author yourself."

"Really not. As a matter of fact, I'm the kiddy in patched overalls you used to play with when you kept house in the willows."

"Oh, of course! In the Forest of Arden! And you had a toad that you traded for my hair-ribbon."

"And we ate bread and milk out of blue bowls!"

"Oh yes!" she agreed, "blue bowls with bunny-rabbits painted on them."

"And giants and a six-cylinder castle, with warders and a donjon keep.

And Jack the Giant-killer. But certainly bunnies."

"Do you really like bunnies?" Her voice caressed the word.

"I like them so much that when I think of them I know that there's one thing worse than having a cut-rate literary salon, and that's to be too respectable----"

"Too Upper-West-Side!"