The Beauty and the Bolshevist | Page 5

boat for Newport and reached Newport the thing to do was to get off the boat.
It had been a wonderful night on the Sound, and Ben had not been to bed, partly because, applying late on a Friday evening, he had not been able to get a room, but partly because the moon and the southerly breeze and the silver shores of Long Island and the red and white lighthouses had been too beautiful to leave. Besides, he had wanted to think out carefully what he was going to say to his brother.
To separate a man from the woman he loves, however unwisely, has some of the same disadvantages as offering a bribe--one respects the other person less in proportion as one succeeds. What, Ben said to himself, could he urge against a girl he did not know? Yet, on the other hand, if he had known her, his objections would have seemed regrettably personal. Either way, it was difficult to know what to say. He wondered what Cord had said, and smiled to think that here was one object for which he and Cord were co-operating--only Cord would never believe it. That was one trouble with capitalists--they always thought themselves so damned desirable. And Ben did not stop to inquire how it was that capitalists had gained this impression.
On the pier he looked about for David, but there was no David. Of course the boy had overslept, or hadn't received his telegram--Ben said this to himself, but somehow the vision of David comfortably asleep in a luxurious bed in the Cords's house irritated him.
His meditations were broken in upon by a negro boy with an open hack, who volunteered to "take him up for fifty cents." It sounded reasonable. Ben got in and they moved slowly down the narrow pier, the horses' hoofs clumping lazily on the wooden pavement. Turning past the alley of Thames Street, still alight at three o'clock in the morning, Ben stopped at the suggestion of his driver and left his bag at a hotel, and then they went on up the hill, past the tower of the Skeleton in Armor, past old houses with tall, pillared porticoes, reminiscent of the days when the South patronized Newport, and turned into Bellevue Avenue--past shops with names familiar to Fifth Avenue, past a villa with bright-eyed owls on the gateposts, past many large, silent houses and walled gardens.
The air was very cool, and now and then the scent of some flowering bush trailed like a visible cloud across their path. Then suddenly the whole avenue was full of little red lights, like the garden in "Faust" when Mephistopheles performs his magic on it. Here and there the huge headlights of a car shone on the roadway, magnifying every rut in the asphalt, and bringing out strange, vivid shades in the grass and the hydrangea bushes. They were passing a frowning palace set on a piece of velvet turf as small as a pocket handkerchief--so small that the lighted windows were plainly visible from the road.
"Stop," said Ben to his driver. He had suddenly realized how long it must be before he could rouse the Cord household.
He paid his driver, got out, and made his way up the driveway toward the house. Groups of chauffeurs were standing about their cars--vigorous, smartly dressed men, young for the most part. Ben wondered if it were possible that they were content with the present arrangement, and whether their wives and children were not stifling in the city at that very moment. He caught a sentence here and there as he passed. "And, believe me," one was saying, "as soon as he got into the box he did not do a thing to that fellar from Tiverton--" Ben's footsteps lagged a little. He was a baseball fan. He almost forgave the chauffeurs for being content. They seemed to him human beings, after all.
He approached the house, and, walking past a narrow, unroofed piazza, he found himself opposite a long window. He looked straight into the ballroom. The ball was a fancy ball--the best of the season. It was called a Balkan Ball, which gave all the guests the opportunity of dressing pretty much as they pleased. The wood of the long paneled room was golden, and softened the light from the crystal appliques along the wall, and set off the bright dresses of the dancers as a gold bowl sets off the colors of fruit.
Every now and then people stepped out on the piazza, and as they did they became audible to Ben for a few seconds. First, two middle-aged men, solid, bronzed, laughing rather wickedly together. Ben drew back, afraid of what he might overhear, but it turned out to be no very guilty secret. "My dear fellow," one was saying,