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 silk? Or is there a gents’ fashion show in conjunction?”
He was glancing toward the wide open space on the upper lawn.
“That’s Hamilton Vair,” I said.
The smile went off his face. “Oh,” he said, a little stiffly. He caught himself then and smiled again. “That’s not to be construed as a criticism of my host at all.” He laughed apologetically, but there was nothing he could have said that would have made me feel more warmly toward him.
“I think I’ll go on down,” I said. I’d intended to wait and follow Vair, but there was an emptying in front of the receiving line just then. Mr. Allerdyce still stood there, looking over at Vair as if a gleaming mother-of-pearl silk suit was something he didn’t often see. It was certainly in contrast with the grey flannels he had on, admirably cut and admirably worn, that with his suntan and whole casual easiness suggested a winter on a yacht in the Bahamas rather than in Washington, D.C. But I was down the garden then.
“—Darling, you know Mr. Brent, don’t you? This is Mrs. Latham, Mr. Brent.”
As I looked up at Rufus Brent and felt his warm cordial handclasp, I had the feeling that I had known him, for a long time. It’s the sort of thing that makes a woman describe a man as ravishing, I expect. Actually, he was ugly as sin. His nose certainly had a mole on it, if not a wart as advertised by Hamilton Vair. So did his chin, which also looked as if it had been chopped off square before it got altogether out of hand. His nose had been formed with no pattern to go by and stuck between two deep furrows slanting down to the corners of his wide mouth, and his dark hazel eyes were shrewd and alive and wonderfully twinkling and kind under a pair of shaggy black-and-grey brows. He was a big man, a little stoop-shouldered, with a slight but comfortable embonpoint and a watch chain across it.
I am glad I did not call Colonel Primrose and tell him. . . . That flashed into my mind, and with it an extraordinary sense of relief. To try to mind this man’s business for him would have been an impertinence as brazen as Hamilton Vair’s. And I don’t mean that he didn’t look perfectly capable of killing somebody. You didn’t have to look twice to see that under all the charm and wisdom of that Gothic ugly face there was something as hard as a keg of old nails. It made me wonder if Ham Vair had any realization of how foolhardy his arrogance was, against the experience and reserved power of the man he was getting ready to insult, if he could. And it seemed to me that Mr. Rufus Brent had an air of cool and watchful waiting. He looked altogether to me like nobody it was wise to push too far.
“—Lena tells me you’re an old friend of hers, Mrs. Latham.”
I caught the quick appeal she flashed at me.
“Yes, indeed,” I said. “It’s so nice to see her again.”
She had on another print dress, a sort of teal-blue like Sergeant Buck’s Sunday suit, but beautifully cut so she didn’t look as lumpy as she did in the purple blotches she wore to my house. Her hat, trimmed with French lilacs, was a pretty hat, but it had slipped like the pink one, so she looked a little dizzy, with her carrot-red hair. She held my hand almost as if she needed actual physical support, the tension that must have been mounting all the time she’d stood there, waiting for Hamilton Vair to approach her husband, a really quite desperate kind of thing. I felt again the strange quality she had, that made her so different from the assured and lacquered women around her. It was a kind of spiritual thing, almost mystical, as she turned that extraordinary sweetness on and off like a far-away light in some lonely sea deep within herself. I could see why she believed in miracles.
I was aware then of a sudden silence, sharp and almost breathless, for an instant, over the garden, and I didn’t have to look to know that it was Hamilton Vair’s moment. Mrs. Brent’s hand dropped mine.
“Hamilton, how nice of you to come!”
My friend was a lady born and a hostess bred.
“You know Mr. Rufus Brent, I believe? Mr. Vair, Mr. Brent.”
Hamilton Vair moved a step toward Rufus Brent, evil glee shining in his face. Mr. Brent seemed to grow bigger. Without seeming to change at all, his face suddenly reminded me, in a very different way, of the granite quality of Sergeant Buck’s. He bowed slightly.
“Mr. Vair and I have met,” he said. “How do you do sir? This is my wife Mrs. Brent, Mr. Vair.”
“How do you do, Mr. Vair?”
Her voice carried a long way in the silence.