You—the Expressionist!” And he paused, racked terribly again by soundless laughter—“The Greeks—the Russians—Oh how we love in Spain!—and fantasy—why, Goddam my soul to hell, but it’s delightful!” he fairly screamed, and then pointing a trembling finger at several in succession he yelled: “You?—And you?—And you?—What the hell do you know about anything?… Ibsen—Chekov—the Celtic Dawn—Bosh!” he snarled, “Food! Food! Food!—you Goddam fools!… That’s all that matters.” He picked up a morsel of his untouched bread and hurled it savagely upon the table—“Food! Food!—Ask Cram—he knows…. Now,” he said, panting for breath and pointing a trembling finger at Miss Potter—“Now,” he panted, “I want to tell you something.”
“Oh… Mr…. Ten… Eyck,” the old woman faltered in a tone of astonished reproach, “I… never… believed it possible… you could—”
Her voice trailed off helplessly, and she looked at him. And Ten Eyck, suddenly brought to himself by the bulging stare of that good old creature fixed on him with wounded disbelief, suddenly laughed again, shrilly and hysterically, thrust his fingers through his hair, looked about him at the other people whose eyes were fixed on him in a stare of focal horror, and said in a confused, uncertain tone: “Well, I don’t know—I’m always—I guess I said something that—oh, damn it, what’s the use?” and with a desperate, stricken laugh, he slumped suddenly into his chair, craned convulsively at his collar, and seizing a decanter before him poured out a glass of wine with trembling haste and gulped it down.
Meanwhile, all around the table people began to talk with that kind of feverish eagerness that follows a catastrophe of this sort, and Hunt resumed his arguments, but this time in a much quieter tone and with a kind of jeering courtesy, accompanying his remarks from time to time with a heavy sarcasm directed toward Ten Eyck—“If I may say so—since, of course, Mr. Ten Eyck considers me a swine”—or—“if you will pardon such a remark from a swine like me”—or—“as Mr. Ten Eyck has told you I am nothing but a swine,” and so on.
The upshot of it was that Ten Eyck gulped down glass after glass of the strong wine, which raced instantly through his frail starved body like a flame.
He got disgracefully drunk, sang snatches of bawdy songs, screamed with maudlin laughter, and began to pound enthusiastically on the table, shaking his
