Mimi smiled sympathetically at the fat, nervous old woman. She smiled briefly and pityingly when Mrs. Crosby had ambled off to greet some incoming guests. Japanese waiters to make a Chinese feel at home, she amusedly thought. Poor old dear, she does mean well. The phrase brought back to her mind the washerwoman they had had years ago in Atlanta, whose most damning verdict ran: “He means well but he do so po’.” That was Mrs. Crosby, the Holy Behemoth, all over.
“Mimi, my dear, those orchids look, compared to their wearer, like scrub cabbages!” a voice said softly as she stood waiting for Jimmie to finish talking with a friend. Without turning, she knew it was Bert Bellamy.
“That sounds nice—even if it is a bit silly,” she smiled. Bellamy smiled in return. He was used to such receptions from Mimi of his phrases, which ordinarily gained at least gratitude from others to whom he made them. Bellamy was short and rotund, his face cherubic and ruddy like that of a healthy child. Always faultlessly dressed, one somehow felt that he kept at his bachelor apartments a barber, a tailor, a manicurist and a haberdasher, all constantly busy. Bellamy, Senior, had made untold amounts through the stockyards he owned in Chicago and Kansas City, but Bellamy, Junior, shuddered when some uncouth person tactlessly brought up the subject of the origin of the Bellamy millions.
He ostensibly was a writer, but beyond certain vague and delightfully cryptic hints that someday his major opus would make the world sit up and take notice, no one could definitely tell what he did beyond assiduous application to his beloved avocation of being a bon-vivant, a Chesterfieldian and immaculate man of the world. Once he had confided to Mimi that he was “the modern Mr. Pepys” but he had mentioned that self-bestowed title no more when she had, with gentle mockery, assured him that if the possession of all the latest gossip was the most valuable asset towards that role, then he was undoubtedly the man for it.
For Bert Bellamy went everywhere, knew everybody and, to him most fascinating, he knew everything about everybody. He had with admirably masked intentions sought to suggest to Mimi that he would enjoy taking her to dine some evening when Jimmie made infrequent business trips. When Mimi, seeing his hidden meaning, had only laughed gently and told him she did not make a practice of dining out when her husband was away, he had recognized at once that his efforts there were futile ones. So he had returned her laugh, called her a “little mid-Victorian,” and let the subject drop, never to be brought up again. Thereafter they had been friends of a sort. For he was amusing and often relieved the boredom of stupid dinners and parties by his scandalous dissection of the lives of the others present.
“Tell me, Bert, who are all these people?” she asked him.
“The Holy Behemoth alone knows and I doubt if she knows them all! She’s certainly outdone herself tonight!” he exclaimed as they stood looking over the crowd.
“There’s Miss Gloria Russell acting literary—no, not that one—the girl in the pink dress with the teeth sticking out like a circular awning over a window. She reads the Times Book Review every Sunday—and if you haven’t read the books yourself, you’ll believe she’s read every book that’s ever been published. My, how that gal can quote Dante and Homer and Housman—she must have a bookshelf of Bartletts! She’s hoping some man will seduce her but she’s had no luck yet—”
Mimi laughed.
“Why so bitter? She rebuff you, Bert?” she inquired, mockingly.
“Lord, no! I’m no saint but I have got taste. … There’s old Mrs. Crane that Bob Carroll married for her money, looking miserable as usual when Bob talks to that Scott flapper—if he doesn’t watch out he’ll be out of a home and back at work again. The old lady’s nobody’s fool—but, gosh, what’d she expect when she went cradle-snatching?”
“Mr. Pepys, who’s the stunning-looking girl dressed in red who’s just come in?” Mimi inquired. The Carroll-Scott affair was of long standing and she knew all about it. Bert is forgetful, she thought, he’s made the same statement about Mrs. Carroll a dozen times. And the girl who had just entered was a beauty.
“Whew!” Bert exclaimed when he saw the girl Mimi asked about. “Fat Horace has got more nerve than I thought. She is the reason Horace developed so suddenly a keen interest in the dram-mer. Peach, isn’t she?” he asked admiringly, as the newcomer sauntered gracefully across the room and greeted Mrs. Crosby. “Her name’s Dolores d’Aubigny—though I’ve heard she was christened Mary Mason. She’s going to be in the Broadway Futilities next season—and you know what that means.”
Mimi looked at Bert Bellamy inquiringly but he was watching the girl, who apparently was remaining near Mrs. Crosby much longer than was absolutely necessary. Mimi looked at Mr. Crosby, who had stopped talking to his guest. She fancied there was a shrewd appraisal of the relative merits of his wife, fat and ungainly and too heavily rouged and powdered, and of her who called herself Dolores d’Aubigny, slim and graceful and beautiful. As she looked, the girl with marked casualness glanced briefly at Horace and then slowly walked away from Mrs. Crosby. A flood of pity for the bungling, ludicrous old woman welled in Mimi’s heart. But the object of her pity was wholly unaware of the little drama being enacted of which she was one of the principals.
“… and she’ll cost Horace a pretty penny
