Ladies' man: imported model

LLOYD MORRIS

A young foreigner fills an American social lack only to discover that he lacks something American

Two or three times a week you will find him lunching at the Colony restaurant. In the tiny, congested foyer he is as inevitable as the Choultse paintings, the aquarium of goldfish, and the model of the Tour Eiffel which tops the telephone booths. But he is far more decorative: that is why you notice him. He is tall, slim, very fair. His clothes are admirably tailored. He carries a gold-headed stick. His eyes are his best feature; more expressive but less alert than those of American men. Sensitive, you feel, and probably intelligent—and you wonder why he seems a trifle uncertain, a trifle insecure.

As he leaves his hat and stick with the coat-room attendant, his glance penetrates the small group of people before him; it is a thoughtful glance, alert and a shade too eager. You feel somehow that it matters a little too much to him whether he finds anyone to whom he can bow. He is waiting for a lady. . . .

At tea-time you are apt to find him in the scented twilight, lamp-lit by Yamanaka, of a cocktail party on Park Avenue. Sometimes he is playing thp piano, and one or two women drift toward him as romantically as petals in a shallow stream, each of them convinced that he is playing to her alone. Only the men are suddenly bored. Sometimes he is standing, curiously remote, at a window, looking out at the evening sky . . . but when a lovely creature, as plaintive and delicate as a lace valentine, pauses beside him he talks to her, not about cocktail parties or evening skies, but about herself. This is a very important secret of his charm.

At night, after the theatre, you will see him perhaps at the Embassy Club. He will be waiting for a lady. . . .

This is his pleasure, for he is a gentleman. But it is likewise his profession, for he is employed by Condit, Niles and Company, investment brokers. In four years he has been customer's man in three houses. His qualifications are obvious. "He's so romantic looking," murmurs Miss Gregg to Miss Miller as their fingers fly among the switchboard plugs. "Yeah, dearie? Well, maybe he is," Miss Miller retorts. "But he'll never get on. No pep, no push. For all he's so high-hat, I'll bet the Chink collects nothing but his laundry. He won't get on. It's funny, but them foreigners don't."

For the past four years Boris Sergine has been striving to adapt himself to America. He is ambitious. He wants success, security, an established position. He wants the leisure, luxury, and grace which surrounded him in childhood, which the Sergines, from the days of Peter the Great, had possessed.

Within three months of his arrival in New York Boris found himself possessed of an extensive acquaintance and few vacant evenings. In the beginning he was enchanted. Solitude had ceased to exist for him, and he believed that he had found friends. The future stretched before him glamorous; success awaited him in a fabulous land.

He accepted as an American custom the fact that only women extended invitations to him. In America, apparently, no husband ever telephoned to ask, "Doing anything tomorrow night? Well, why not come over and dine with us?" And it was strange, also, but almost incomprehensible, that he was never asked to join the groups of men who stand about at parties. If he ventured to join one, he noticed that the conversation suddenly died down. Not that the men weren't amiable. They were. He resented their facile amiability, with its slight flavor of patronage. "What are you doing these days, Sergine? Wall Street? Condit, Niles, eh? Oh yes, lady clients, of course.... Meet 'em at parties, don't you?" And a brisk young broker would grin and turn away. It didn't console Boris to reflect that the brisk young broker was in many ways his inferior. It only made things worse.

And gradually he became aware of a subtle difference between the women's attitude to him and their attitude to the young American men whom he knew. It was a distinction so subtle, so intangible, that for a long time he suspected himself of perceiving something non-existent. For the women were always gracious to him. They adopted a tone of easy camaraderie which he found delightful, which gave him the illusion of warmth. They enjoyed dancing with him, sitting beside him at dinner, flirting with him in a frivolous, inconclusive fashion. They accepted his invitations to luncheon and tea, and included him in the crowd when going to the Embassy or the Casino. But—as he came slowly to understand—they did not take him seriously.

Whenever he attempted to express his devotion to a woman in terms more autnentic than the light, extravagant gestures to which, from him, she was accustomed, there was immediately a new reticence in her manner, an evasiveness that almost amounted to fear. What was it, he wondered, that these women suspected him of? He was neither a bounder nor a fortune-hunter. His motives were as honest, as unremarkable as Ralph Gibson's or Jimmy Telfair's or Walter Milbank's . . . all dull, dependable young Americans who couldn't talk about anything except sports or the market, who couldn't seem to understand even the simplest reactions of a woman. And yet. . . .

"What do you see in Jimmy and Walter?" Boris asked Mary Leland. "Well," she began, and paused. "You see, Boris, they're not very decorative or amusing, but one feels that they're going to be successful—men of power. And the quality of success seems to be—" she finished a little lamely, avoiding his puzzled gaze—"very important to American women. . . ." "Hélas, mademoiselle," he replied with a wry smile, "mon seul vice est que je ne suis pas riche"

And yet, when Condit, Niles and Company had taken him on at a salary of one hundred dollars a week, Boris had considered himself as already well on the way to wealth. He rented a two-room flat in Fifty-Third Street east of Madison: it was cheap, because there was a speak-easy in the basement. He replenished his wardrobe. He began to frequent the Colony and Pierre's, to send flowers from the better shops. After one month he was surprised to find himself somewhat in debt. Every month, now, he is similarly surprised. Not infrequently there are distressing interviews with the laundryman, the colored maid who tidies up his flat, the Jew who presses his suits, the Greek who resoles his boots. Trivial debts. No one is more than twenty-five dollars; nevertheless they are embarrassing, for he is never able to wipe them all out, to make a fresh start. The monthly rent absorbs a week's salary, and every week his entertaining runs at least to sixty dollars. Meanwhile his excellently tailored suits are showing wear, his shoes begin to look scuffed, his neckties are a trifle ragged and must be adjusted with great care. He is painfully conscious of this, but there isn't much to be done about it. If lady clients are to be deftly manipulated in and out of securities, they must be entertained at luncheon. Luncheon for two at the Colony costs ten dollars. And his job depends upon the number of ladies (he has given up all hope of securing men clients) whom he can persuade to entrust their business to Condit, Niles and Company.

They are grateful for his interest, these charming women with their pearls, their shadowed eyes, their shadowed eagerness. They are so grateful that they ask him to tea, to dinner, to parties . . . and he finds it undeniably pleasant to be young, attractive, popular, to be familiar with luxury, to be liked because he is such an amiable and useful young man. Useful? He has learned to be useful. It means being ready to fill in at dinner parties at the last moment, willing to take a hand at bridge when required, to talk vividly to pale dowagers at tea, to decorate the stag line at dances, to be the cavalier of superannuated ladies over week-ends. It means being, in any circumstances, adaptable to the tastes of people more fortunate than himself; being invariably agreeable, imperturbably charming.

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What it also means—and less happily—is, each night, an agonizing inspection of the dress-shirt he has worn the night before—can he possibly make it do again? What it means, when there are tables of bridge after dinner, is that he must still be charming and casual, although his eye desperately follows his hostess and in his heart he prays that she may put him at a table with three of the poorer players. His reason for this is economic and excusable; for if it is not necessarily a calamity not to win any money it is, for him, a definite tragedy to lose even twenty dollars.

But he has a good time, on the whole; and it is only infrequently that he permits himself to reflect how curious it is that the gratitude of his charming clients should prove to be another chain upon the progress of his ambition.

Sometimes, in his more sombre moments, a tide of discontent overwhelms him. How is he to get on in the American way? When will the future become as certain for him as for Telfair, Milbank, and the rest? Down in the office, as he knows, he is working under a handicap; they are not. He must always combat, and apparently never vanquish, a prejudice; a disbelief in his capacity to succeed. He is expected not to get ahead; success is predicted for the others. Why not for him? Instinctively, he feels trapped. Hasn't he already had jobs in four houses, only to be released when his social connections have been thoroughly exploited? How does one take the first step on the road to success?

Marriage, perhaps. In more optimistic moments, Boris dreams about marrying an American heiress. Why not? In the days of Tsar Alexander II a Sergine married a Restorov to recoup the depleted family exchequer. Why not, indeed? At intervals Boris asks himself this question. Then, very sensibly, he runs over the list of possible candidates and selects one. He tries to inaugurate a courtship. But it never proceeds beyond a mild flirtation; good-humoured and tolerant on the girl's part, eager but not confident on his. Madge Norris, who has become his most intimate friend, watches these tentative gestures with amusement and dismay. She herself was the object of the first. She knows that they will never come to anything, and that they always leave Boris still further immersed in debts. Once, at a large dance at Mrs. Cortland Partridge's, Boris embarrassed her by requesting a candid diagnosis. "Why is it?" he asked naively, "that no American girl ever falls in love with me? You like me a lot, Madge, but you wouldn't marry me. And with the others, it's always the same. Why?" She smiled, and resolved to spare him. What profit for him in learning the truth? "I suppose," she lied, "it's because you're too attractive, Boris. You'd become a problem. We try never to marry our problems."

Later that evening, in a corner of the ball-room, Madge Norris met him again. They stood talking for a moment, and Mrs. Stuart Harrison joined them. "Of course you're coming to our dance on the sixteenth," she said to Madge. "I'm positively counting on you. And you, Mr. Sergine, you will come too, of course?" Boris bowed and accepted, as Stuart Harrison came up to them. Madge saw that Harrison had had too much champagne to be amusing, and drew Boris away. Just behind them was a screen, and beyond it a comfortable lounge. She sank down on it. "Give me a cigarette, Boris," she commanded. "Pm dead tired." As Boris fumbled for his case there came, quite distinctly, from beyond the screen, Harrison's deep voice. "Why the devil," he grumbled, "did you have to ask that Russian? I hate these gigolos, Nora." And then, conciliatingly, Mrs. Harrison's voice, replying, "Don't be absurd, Stu! Everyone asks them. After all, we must have extra men. Nobody ever takes them seriously. They're merely anonymous and harmless, and very useful at large parlies . . . like the caterer's men. . . ."

Boris's hand, extending his lighter, trembled violently. Madge bent over the lighter, to avoid seeing his face.