NEW YEAR'S EVE
329
"Spontaneity," said Grant, recognizing with laughter this des–
cription of his character, "strangers bring spontaneity to a party."
The argument continued thus, full of abstractions, but motivated
nonetheless by a conflict which was founded upon two different feel–
ings about life. And as they argued and as they irritated each other,
elsewhere in other boxes of the great city old conflicts were renewed
and new ones quickly engendered. Grant's wife, Martha Landis,
quietly quarreled with her mother-in-law upon the telephone. Frances
Harris, Arthur's wife, became more and more angry because Arthur
had not come home on time.
"He is holding a theoretical conversation somewhere," she said
to herself.
Meantime Shenandoah was visited by his friend Nicholas O'Neil,
who was unhappy and who suffered from a cold, the outcome perhaps
of the fact that this was his birthday, or the outcome of his depression
that he was twenty-five years of age and not yet famous. Nicholas
and Shenandoah had become annoyed with each other, arguing
about the merits of a poem. Nicholas in his annoyance and depression
declared sullenly that he did not want to go to Grant's party. He
said this repeatedly, although the prospect of being at home with his
family during the New Year evening was unbearable.
And meanwhile Grant Landis returned from the office to his
apartment and found his wife Martha pale with annoyance because
of her mother-in-law's remarks, remarks which were made unknow–
ingly to a successful rival who had scored an overwhelming victory.
Hearing Martha's version of these remarks, Grant became very angry
with
his
mother, an anger in which the thirty-six years of his life
were revived. Thinking of these remarks, Grant became more and
more angry until his anger was such that he might have still been
unmarried.
During the soft afternoon, a light rain began to fall. The weather
was not cold and shining, as it should have been for the winter holi–
day. The weather was boring and gray. Nevertheless in the streets
of the first capital of the world, the capital of the accessibility to
experience, there was some gaiety, leftover gaiety from the Christmas
holiday. Christmas trees shone with a toytown brilliance in apartment
house windows, as evening slipped down. Few human beings looked
at the trees, however, and fewer were aware of them, for they had
been present for more than a week.
And at the same time Wilhelmina Gold argued with her parents
