"May I have a little more of the blanquette, if I won't be considered
a glutton?" asked Mr. Marsh now. "I've sent to the city for an
invaluable factotum of mine to come and look out for us here, and when
he comes, I hope you'll give him the recipe."
The little boys clattered back and began to eat again, in haste with
frequent demands for their mother to tell them what time it was. In
spite of this precaution, the clock advanced so relentlessly that they
were obliged to set off, the three of them, before dessert was eaten,
with an apple in one hand and a cookie in the other.
The two men leaned back in their chairs with long breaths, which Marise
interpreted as relief. "Strenuous, three of them at once, aren't they?"
she said. "A New York friend of mine always says she can take the
vibration-cure, only by listening to family talk at our table."
"What's the vibration-cure?" asked Mr. Welles seriously.
"Oh, I don't know!" confessed Marise. "I'm too busy to keep up with
the latest fads in cures as Eugenia does. You may meet her there this
summer, by the way. She usually spends a part of the summer with us. She
is a very old school-friend of mine."
"French or Vermont incarnation?" inquired Marsh casually. "May I smoke?
Won't you have a cigarette, yourself?"
"Oh, French!" Marise was immensely amused, and then, remembering that
the joke was not apparent, "If you'd ever seen her, even for a moment,
you'd know why I laugh. She is the embodiment of sophisticated
cosmopolitanism, an expert on all sorts of esoteric, aesthetic and
philosophic matters, book-binding, historic lace, the Vedanta creed,
Chinese porcelains, Provençal poetry, Persian shawls . . ."
"What nationality is she, herself?" inquired Mr. Welles with some
curiosity.
Marise laughed. "She was born in Arkansas, and brought up in Minnesota,
what did you suppose? No European could ever take culture so seriously.
You know how any convert always has a thousand times more fervor than
the fatigued members of the faith who were born to it."
"Like Henry James, perhaps?" suggested Marsh.
"Yes, I always envied Henry James the conviction he seems to have had,
all his life, that Europeans are a good deal more unlike other people
than I ever found them. It may be obtuseness on my part, but I never
could see that people who lived in the Basses-Pyrénées are any more
cultivated or had any broader horizons than people who live in the Green
Mountains. My own experience is that when you actually live with people,
day after day, year after year, you find about the same range of
possibilities in any group of them. But I never advance this theory to
Eugenia, who would be horrified to know that I find a strong family
likeness between her New York circle and my neighbors here."