Meekins was happy in finding an opponent who gave him opportunity to show the discovery he had made, even though the thing he had discovered had been in existence several thousands of years. Mimi had sat without speaking, glad to see Jimmie aroused from his habitual complacency, glad to hear Meekins confirm and make more concrete some of her own vague dissatisfaction.
“It seems to me you’ve both left out the worst thing of all in our civilization,” she remarked. They turned to her, apologetically. They had been so absorbed in the contest of opinions, they had almost forgotten her.
“All the things you’ve mentioned as faults of this civilization of ours aren’t so terrible in themselves. In time we might see them and take steps to rectify them. But the terrible thing to me is that though we’ve developed machines for giving us comfort we’ve devised at the same time machines for destruction in war, and that will wipe us all out and leave our civilization just an empty, deserted thing for them to discover a few thousand years from now—just like we’re digging up Tutankhamen’s tomb now—”
“I was reading a book by a man named Stoddard the other day—” Jimmie interrupted her, but Meekins snorted him into silence.
“Stoddard—a professional Cassandra—taking fake biology and distorted history—milking gullible buyers of books for fat royalties!” Meekins half-shouted, forgetting social amenities in his anger. Jimmie flushed a deep brick-red and relapsed into a moody silence. “But Mrs. Forrester’s right,” Meekins went on, “They are tearing down all they’ve built and they’re creating new instruments of destruction that’ll wipe out faster than industrialism can produce.”
“There was a story in the Times last week,” Mimi interjected, glad to find support for her statement, though she loyally resented Meekins’ abrupt discourtesy towards Jimmie, “telling of the invention of a new electric ray so powerful it can wipe out every living thing, even to blades of grass, within a radius of twenty miles. A man presses a little button—zip!—and everything’s dead. Soon they’ll make it fifty miles, then a hundred, then a thousand—”
“Oh, come on,” Jimmie pleaded. “It’s too nice a night to be so doleful—let’s go to a cabaret.” …
To Mimi’s surprise Meekins proved an excellent dancer and a jovial companion, even Jimmie laughing with reluctance at his witticisms. When they returned home and were preparing for bed, she commented on Meekins’ joviality. “Humph! About as funny as a baby breaking its leg,” was Jimmie’s comment. Mimi knew he was thinking of the way in which Meekins had stuck to his contentions, which, she was aware from experience, had not been altogether pleasing to Jimmie. All of us hate to hear unpleasant truths, she thought forgivingly. “He’s just the sort of damn fool who’d shout ‘Three cheers for the Ku Klux Klan!’ at a Knights of Columbus picnic!” was Jimmie’s final verdict as he turned out the light and climbed into bed. …
XXII
Mimi and Jimmie dutifully made their way to the Crosby home. As their car worked its way up the Avenue through the throngs of Jewish clothing workers that poured from the cross streets south of Madison Square, Jimmie recited, with an airy wave of his hand at the homegoing toilers:
“How odd
Of God
To choose
The Jews.”
He looked at Mimi, expecting the hoped-for smile at his cleverness, but she continued to gaze at the throngs of work-deadened, stoop-shouldered men and women, the chattering groups of younger people dressed in brave but unsuccessful imitations of their sisters who were strolling the same avenue a mile or two northward. She watched the swirling eddies of humans, swept this way and that from curb to building line, rushing to subway kiosk or surface car, going homeward to close-packed apartments to sleep until time to begin another day of work. Mimi did not breathe freely until the car had swept on past the Waldorf and east to Park Avenue. But the sad, weary faces remained with her.
They were not surprised to find that Mrs. Crosby had run true to form when she had written: “We’re having only a few people to meet Wu Hseh-Chuan.” As was her custom, the word “few” meant the same thing as a “crowd” to most people. And Mimi, with a smile at Jimmie, noticed that Mrs. Crosby had shown her usual lack of tact in selecting her guests. It was a heterogeneous assemblage—“she must have written the names of every person she ever met, put them in a hat, and then pulled out the first forty,” was Jimmie’s whispered comment. Mimi saw seven or eight of Mr. Crosby’s business associates whom Mimi had met. There were two elderly couples, dressed properly, but obviously ill at ease and uncomfortable, who Mimi learned were relatives from Iowa of Mrs. Crosby.
At the other extreme from these unsophisticated folks were several representatives of the stage, at the moment “at leisure.” Mimi had heard from Jimmie of Mr. Crosby’s recently acquired interest in the theatre. Jimmie had told the story with much archness and numerous elaborately meaningful winks—“Horace hints he may put some money into a show or two, said a man ‘ought to have other interests besides his business.’ I’d like to know what her name is and what she looks like,” Jimmie had ended his story. Between the guests from Iowa and those from Broadway ranged representatives of various groups such as can be gathered only in a city like New York. And off in one corner, surveying with wise, calm and inscrutable eyes the throng of vivaciously chatting individuals, stood the man Mimi rightly guessed to be the guest of honour, listening to Horace Crosby, who was talking with unusual volubleness.
“So glad you came, Mimi dear,” Mrs. Crosby came up and whispered, patting Mimi’s arm quickly. “I told Horace he oughtn’t expect me to entertain this Chinaman—Chinks always give me the creeps—but he would have
