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Noxon is home long ago and scared or shocked to death. We must fly!" They flew, angry, both of them, at having to hurry back to school and a withering reprimand, as if they were still mere brats. Gradually the car began to refuse the call for haste. Its speed sickened, gasped, died. Jim swore quite informally, and raged: "I told that infernal hound to fill the tank. He forgot! The gas is gone."
She insisted so strongly that Kedzie did not dare refuse, though she had vowed never to step inside the grounds where she had made her Newport debut as a hired nymph. Charity tried to escape by alleging a journey to New York, but Mrs. Noxon browbeat her into staying. Charity did not know that Strathdene was invited till she saw him come in with the crowd. Neither did Kedzie. Old Mrs.
People dressed themselves as costlily as they could, for hours beforehand then spent a half-hour or more fuming in a carriage-and-motor tangle waiting to arrive at the entrance, while the heat sweat all the starch out of themselves and their clothes. A constant flood poured in upon Mrs. Noxon, or tried to find her at the receiving-post. She was usually not there.
Charity was lunching at the Ritz-Carlton with Mrs. Noxon when she saw Jim Dyckman come in with his mother. Mrs. Noxon left Charity and went over to speak to Mrs. Dyckman. So Charity beckoned Jim over and urged him to accept the job of impresario. He protested, but she pleaded for his help at least on an errand or two.
She remembered Newport, the Noxon home. She tried to picture a bedroom there. She saw a palace of the best moving-picture period. She remembered the first moving picture she had seen in New York, and contrasted the Anita Adair of that adventure with the Anita Adair of this. She recalled that girl locking her door against the swell husband, and the poor but honest lover with the revolver.
Peter, I'm in an awful mess with this movie stunt. I can get plenty of people to pose for the camera, but I can't find a man to manage the business end of it. I was lunching with Mrs. Noxon at the Ritz to-day. I called your friend Jim Dyckman over from another table and begged him to take the job. But he refused flatly, the lazy brute. Don't you think you could take it on? I wish you would.
There is hardly anything our eyes bring us that is more hideous than known disloyalty successfully masquerading as fidelity. The Judas kiss is not to be surpassed in human detestation. With almost all the world in uniform, Newport welcomed the sight of one of her own men returned even from what was rather a siesta than a campaign, and old Mrs. Noxon insisted on giving a big party for Jim.
Jim's room was big for a yacht, but the yacht was narrow, built for speed. Thirty-six miles an hour its turbines could shoot it through the sea. It had to be narrow. We can't have everything especially on yachts. Jim was barefoot, standing in his pajamas at a port-hole and trying to see the Noxon home, imagining Charity there.
Noxon may have invited him for spite against Kedzie or just as an international courtesy to the most distinguished foreigner in town. She introduced Jim and the Marquess, saying, "You great warriors should know each other." Jim felt sheepish because he had been to no war and Strathdene felt sheepish because Jim was so much taller than he.
And Charity Coe Cheever was chattering flippantly with a group of the dispersing audience, while her heart was in throes of dismay at her own feelings and Jim Dyckman's. The scene was like one of the overcrowded tapestries of the Middle Ages. At the top was the Noxon palace, majestic, serene, self-confident in the correctness of its architecture and not afraid even of the ocean outspread below.
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