how they had baited police and witnesses alike in their journey south. Frank was certainly the most contemporary of the distinguished gentlemen, a wisecracking American with a Hollywood sheen, and a penchant for teasing Reuben mercilessly about his early exploits and tousling Stuart,s hair. He called them the Wonder Puppies, and would have baited them into a race in the forest if Margon had not laid down the law.
Sergei was a brilliant scholar, with white hair, bushy white eyebrows, and clever, amused blue eyes. He had a voice somewhat like Thibault,s, deep and resonant, and even a bit crackling. And he went into a delightful tirade about the brilliant and prophetic Teilhard de Chardin with Laura and Reuben, having a love of abstract theology and philosophy that surpassed theirs.
It was impossible to guess the age of any of these men, really, Reuben felt; and it was clearly not polite to ask. "How long have you been roaming the planet?" just did not seem an acceptable question, especially from what Frank persisted in calling a pup or a cub.
Any number of times, over lunch or dinner, or whilst gathered just for talking at the breakfast room table, two or more of these men would lapse into another tongue, apparently forgetting themselves, and it was always exciting to Reuben to hear those rapid confidential riffs that Reuben couldn,t relate to any language he,d ever heard.
Margon and Felix frequently spoke a different tongue when they were alone. He,d overheard them without meaning to. And he had been tempted to ask if they all shared a common language, but that seemed - like asking their ages, or places of birth, or asking about the secret writing in Felix,s diaries and letters - to be intrusive, something that was not done.
Stuart and Reuben both wanted to know who had introduced the term "Morphenkinder," or "Morphengift," and what other terms there had been, or might be now. But they figured this information and a great deal more would come in time.
People broke into sometime pairs. Reuben spent most of his time either with Laura or with Felix. And Laura loved Felix as well. Stuart adored Margon and never wanted to be separated from him. In fact, Stuart seemed to have fallen in love with Margon. Frank often went off with Sergei. And only Thibault seemed a genuine loner, or a man equally at home with any of the group. There developed a sympathy between Thibault and Laura. They all adored Laura, but Thibault enjoyed her company especially, and went walking in the woods with her, or on errands, or sometimes watched a film with her in the afternoons.
Reuben,s entire family, as well as Celeste and Mort Keller, and Dr. Cutler, came north for Thanksgiving, joining Reuben, Laura, Stuart, and the distinguished gentlemen, and it was the greatest party the house had seen so far, and the most inescapable proof of the truth of Margon,s maxim, that one must live in both worlds - the world of the human and the world of the beast - if one was to survive.
Frank surprised Reuben and his family by playing the piano with spectacular skill after dinner, making a run at the Satie compositions that Reuben so loved and moving on into Chopin and other romantic compositions of his own.
Even Jim, who had been morose and withdrawn all evening, was drawn into conversation with Frank. And finally Jim played a composition he had written long ago, before the seminary, to accompany a poem by Rilke.
This was a painful moment for Reuben, sitting there in the music room on the small gilded music chair, listening to Jim lose himself in that brief, dark, melancholy melody, so like Satie, meditative, slow, and eloquent of pain.
Only Reuben knew what Jim knew. And Jim alone of all the guests and the family knew who the distinguished gentlemen were and what had happened to Stuart, and what had become of Reuben.
They did not talk, Reuben and Jim, all during that Thanksgiving Day or evening. There was just that moment in the candle-lighted music room when Jim had played that mournful music. And Reuben felt the shame of having done a terrible cruelty to Jim with his secrets and did not know what to do. There would come a time in the future when he would again meet with Jim to discuss all that had happened. But this was something he couldn,t face right now. It was something he did not want right now.