I’ve been putting up with his engaging deviltries for a long time now.
“I don’t know whether he’s back or not,” I said. I didn’t know he was out of town for that matter, and since he also has a real gift for finding the most likely girls in the most unlikely places, he was the last person I knew to hurry back to a party anywhere. “And it wasn’t Marge who told me anyway,” I said.
“Well, don’t breathe it. And that woman, my dear . . . have you seen her? She’s ominous, truly. Every prominent man who married the girl next door ought to be allowed one tablet of cyanide in case he comes to Washington some day. And Rufus Brent’s ravishing.”
“I thought she was nice,” I said.
“I’ve never heard you so malicious, Grace. I’m ashamed of you.”
“Are her sons coming?” I asked. “They look better than Archie Seaton to me.”
That was deliberate. You may recall from the beauty shop what a couple of presentable sons will do to make their mother worth knowing in Washington.
She brightened instantly. “Darling, I didn’t know they had any sons. The daughter’s all I’ve heard about.” She raised her brows. No doubt she’d seen the picture too. “Ham Vair says she’s really quite shocking.”
“Ham Vair?”
She looked at me quickly. “Grace, you know I wouldn’t have asked him if I hadn’t had to. I just couldn’t leave him out, dear. And he’s the only other person I told the party was for the Brents . . . so it has to be him or Marge or the Brents themselves who told you. I told him so he wouldn’t have to be embarrassed——”
“Did you tell the Brents? Or is it all right to embarrass them?”
She did have the grace to laugh a little. “How could I, darling? No, I’m afraid his name never got on the list I sent them.” She looked worried nevertheless. “Do help me, won’t you? I’m afraid he’s coming, . . . he really hasn’t any manners, you know. I do hope he wears a coat and tie—you should have seen him in the newsreel the other day. But he’ll be in the Senate next year as sure as you’re born. That’s why I had to ask him. My husband’s livid, he thinks Ham’s a real menace.”
“So do I,” I said.
“So does everybody, darling, but it’s better to have a menace for a friend than for a menace.” She laughed at that, as she’d done before, I gathered. “It’s simply a fact of life, dear. You’d be surprised the people who think he’s going a lot farther than the Senate. You’d be appalled at the support he’s gathering even among the kind of people we know.—Do help me, won’t you? Old Washington impresses the pants off him, just now. Unless he decides to be homespun and very rude. . . .”
I hadn’t realized up to that point what a successful menace Ham Vair had become so quick. Congressmen are socially a dime a dozen in Washington. A senator is something else again, especially a young and handsome senator who isn’t married. If this woman, with the ex-Wall Street husband she had, felt Vair had to be stayed with flagons of Scotch and placated with martinis and shrimp on toothpicks, it meant a great deal. Especially if after the jockeying she must have done to snare the Brents for their first social appearance, she’d risk offending them not to offend Ham Vair. It was disturbing. I wondered whether I shouldn’t call Mrs. Brent up and warn her Vair was going to be there, or get Marjorie Seaton to do it for me. Still, Mr. Brent would hardly choose a garden party to kill off a rattlesnake—or would he?—and anyway, I decided there was no use for Mrs. Brent to worry herself into a state of collapse before the ordeal began. It was going to be ordeal enough even without Vair. Too many people feel that way about cyanide and great men’s wives in Washington.
And if Congressman Vair felt any embarrassment about coming to the party for the man he’d accused in that morning’s paper of “battening on defense contracts while our sons are being killed in Korea,” he was managing to conceal it, when I saw him. And he hadn’t come in home-spun. In comparison with him, all the men there, from the justices and the Cabinet straight down the Capital hierarchy, looked like fugitives from the Try-It-On-And-Take-It Barrel at the Jostle Mart on Wisconsin Avenue. He had on a white raw silk suit, gleaming like mother-of-pearl in the late afternoon sunshine, that must have cost three times the price of the decent banker’s-grey worn by his host, whom he was just shaking hands with and clapping on the back when I got there. I glanced down at the receiving line, in front of a lattice that had the loveliest shower of white wisteria on it I’ve ever seen. The day itself was as lovely, one of those perfect things Washington comes up with in May to seduce you into forgetting what stinkers it’s going to hand out in June, July and August. It was cool, clear and brilliant as blue crystal. The Brents were shaking hands with one of the Cabinet and his wife and daughter, and if they were aware of Hamilton Vair they weren’t showing it from where I stood.
They could hardly not have been, however for Ham Vair was obviously just waiting for the proper moment to do something or other in the most spectacular manner he could achieve. He made no move to go down to them, but stayed where he was at the top of the garden, nobody except his unfortunate host anywhere near him. Nobody could miss him there, in his pearly shining new silk suit, spotting his friends with a fine flourish of his hand and what I believe is called the big hello. His blond Nordic countenance shone, and so nobody could miss the true and real flavor of the situation, he’d give an occasional big wink too. It was a kind of cynically arrogant clowning that was clearly embarrassing to everybody but Hamilton Vair. He reminded me of a cocky too-big boy in short pants about to write a bad word on the frosting of his sister’s birthday cake.
As I stood there, I heard a man’s voice behind me. It wasn’t the first man’s voice I’d ever heard, nor was the name, as he spoke it at the gate there, a name that had any meaning to me, so I’d automatically turn, as if for example a man’s voice had said “Marshall Tito,” or “Mr. Lucky Luciano.” And it wasn’t the voice itself, pleasant as it was, casual, a little too cultivated possibly but not offensively so. I suppose I’d like now to be able to say that what did make me turn, as Ham Vair did too, so that both of us looked around at the same moment, was a profound and far-seeing intuition. But whatever intuitions I have I’d left home that day.
“Mr. Forbes Allerdyce. I’m a friend of Mrs. Brent’s. She arranged for me to come.”
I thought, if I thought at all, that Vair had turned because of that. It was reasonable he’d take a dim view of any friend of the Rufus Brents. Mr. Forbes Allerdyce was tall, with crisp sun-bleached brown hair, cut like my sons’ and Archie Seaton’s, good-looking but not sleekly handsome, and his spectacles gave him a kind of air that if not scholarly was thoughtful anyway. He was certainly at home in the world around him.
“I don’t believe I’ve met my host,” he said. “Which is he?”
“Right over there, sir.” The attendant whose job was obviously to look out for the unknown and uninvited had reacted with instant decorum.
I was glad there was another friend of the Brents’, besides me, to help absorb the shock of Ham Vair. My hostess would be glad too, I thought, as I saw her look around, and saw the signal of distress she was hoisting with her arched brows. She wanted to break up the line before Vair got to it, but it was far too pointed a thing to do. She was stuck and she knew it, and I didn’t doubt she was wishing she’d settled for the lion and left the jackal at home.
“Lovely day, isn’t it?” Mr. Forbes Allerdyce was there at my side. I hadn’t realized it till he spoke. He smiled at me. “I’m a stranger here” he said. “Who is the lily of the field in white
