He saw that in an age of universal bobbing, when no Fran would have dared be so eccentric, Mrs. Cortright kept her hair long, parted simply and not too neatly. And he saw again the lovely hands moving like white cats among the cups of taffy-colored majolica.
She did not talk, this time, of diplomats and Riviera villas and painting. She said:
“Tell me—Really, I’m not impertinent; I ask myself the same thing, and perhaps I’m looking for an answer for myself. What do you find in Europe? Why do you stay on?”
“Well, it’s kind of hard to say.” He sipped his iced tea, appreciative of the thin tart taste against his tongue. “Oh, I guess—Well, to be absolutely frank, it’s because of my wife. I’ve enjoyed coming abroad. I’ve learned a lot of things—not only about pictures and all that, but in my own line—I’m a motor manufacturer, if you remember. For instance, I went to the Rolls-Royce works in England, and it was a perfect revelation to me, the way they were willing to lose money by going on having things like polishing done by hand instead of by machinery, as we’d do them, because they felt they were better done by hand. But—oh, I can understand how the artists that hang around places like Florence, and that don’t care whether the government is monarchial or communist as long as the tea and the sunsets are good, can be perfectly content to stay there for years. But me—I’m getting restless at being so much of an outsider. I feel like the small boy that’s never consulted about where the picnic will be held. I suppose I’m awfully lowbrow not to care for any more galleries and ruins but—oh, I want to go home and make something! Even if it’s only a hen-coop!”
“But couldn’t you make that here? In England, for example?”
“No. I’d feel the English chickens wouldn’t understand my speaking American, and probably go and die on me.”
“Then you don’t want to stay? Why do you?”
“Oh, well, my wife still feels—”
Swiftly, as though she were covering a blunder, Mrs. Cortright murmured, “And of course she is lovely. I remember her with such pleasure. She must be an enchanting person to wander with. … And please don’t feel that I’m one of those idiots who regard painting as superior to manufacturing—I neither regard it as inferior, as do your Chambers of Commerce who think that all artists are useless unless they’re doing pictures for stocking advertisements, nor do I regard it as superior, as do all the supercilious lady yearners who suppose that a business man with clean nails invariably prefers golf to Beethoven.”
It was not brilliant talk, nor did it dazzle Sam by novelty. In both Europe and America he had encountered all the theories about modern businessmen: that they were the kings and only creators in the industrial age: that they were dull and hideous despots. He had hacked out his own conclusion: that they were about like other people, as assorted as cobblers, labor leaders, Javanese dancers, throat specialists, whalers, minor canons, or asparagus-growers. Yet in the talk of Edith Cortright there was a sympathy, an apparent respect for him, a suggestion that she had seen many curious lands and known many curious people, which inspirited him. Incredulously, he found himself trying to outline his philosophy of life for her; more incredulously, found himself willing to admit that he hadn’t any. She nodded, as in like confession.
He urged: “I’ve enjoyed talking with you. Look here: Would I be rude if I asked you to go for a gondola ride, now it’s getting cooler, and possibly dine with me on the Lido this evening, if you’re free? I’ve been, uh—kind of lonely.”
“I should be glad to, but I can’t. You see my friends here are mostly the rather stuffy, frightfully proper, very sweet old Italian family sort who haven’t yet got over being shocked by Colleoni. I’m afraid I couldn’t go out in a gondola with you unless I were chaperoned—bedragoned—which would be a frightful bore. But won’t you come here to dinner tomorrow evening—eight-thirty, black tie?”
“Be pleased to. Eight-thirty. … But why do you stay in Europe?”
“Oh … I suppose America terrifies me. I feel insecure there. I feel everybody watching me, and criticizing me unless I’m buzzing about Doing Something Important—uplifting the cinema or studying Einstein or winning bridge championships or breeding Schnauzers or something. And there’s no privacy, and I’m an extravagant woman when it comes to the luxury of privacy.”
“But look here! In America you could certainly go gondoling—well, motoring—as you liked. Here you have to be chaperoned to avoid criticism!”
“Only with one class—the formal people that I’ve chosen (wisely or foolishly) to live with. My grocer and my dentist and my neighbor on the floor below (amiable-looking person—I rather fancy he’s a gambler)—they don’t feel privileged to help me conduct my affairs, or rather, they wouldn’t if I were so adventurous as to be conducting any! At home, they would. It’s only in Europe that you can have the joy of anonymity, of being lost in the crowd, of being yourself, of having the dignity of privacy!”
“You try New York! Get lost enough there!”
“Oh, but New York—Self-conscious playing at internationalism! Russian Jews in London clothes going to Italian restaurants with Greek waiters and African music! One hundred percent mongrels! No wonder Americans flee back home to Sussex or Somerset! And never, day or night or dawn, any escape from the sound of the Elevated! New York—no. But I am sure that there is still a sturdy, native America—and not Puritanical, either, any more than Lincoln or Franklin were Puritanical—that you know. But tell me (to get away from my lost, expatriate, awfully unoriented
