CHAPTER II
Mrs. Finnegan moved on the first of April. Claire, having by this time decided that she was more or less committed to her new life, got track of a Miss Proll, a middle-aged seamstress, who went out by the day, to come and occupy the little hall bedroom, so that Mrs. Robson was no longer alone in the house nights.
Claire had been ten days at the Café Ithaca and the experiment was losing its strangeness. There had been very little piano-playing to do. The new rooms at the rear of the saloon were an experiment that the regular patrons of the café had not yet accepted enthusiastically, and the looked-for patronage from the bastard American bohemianism was still a matter of hope and conjecture. The regular diners clung rather shyly to their old quarters opposite the bar, and Claire had to be content with making a long-range estimate of them. But she grew more and more friendly with Jimmy, and even Lycurgus got beyond the point of clasping his right hand over his heart every time he approached her.
Obviously the Café Ithaca was not one of the ordinary Greek cafés that vice-crusaders railed against. Claire discovered this quite early. To a superficial observer the Ithaca was nothing more nor less than an American saloon, and, as such, was too well established an institution to merit sensational disclosures. But it was the cafés in which the men of the quarter gather to drink coffee, and almond or cherry soda, and to listen to "outlandish" music, that aroused the suspicion of Puritans. To their line of reasoning Greeks who drank in saloons were frankly immoral; those who hid behind a screen of sweetened coffee and innocuous syrups were immoral in a subtle and dangerous way that challenged all the resources of virtue. As a matter of fact, the spectacle of full-grown men indulging in any pleasure so innocent as coffee-drinking without being coerced into it was quite too much of an affront for those who won virtue only at the point of battle. Indeed, even Claire had something of this same distrust as she nightly passed these masculine forgathering places and caught glimpses through the unscreened windows of men dancing together between tables with strange solemnity. She, too, had her suspicions, very much in the manner of an adult who finds an unexplainable childish silence cause for distrust. Her training and her own experiences had confirmed her in the faith that males either singly or in groups were not to be lightly regarded. But she was willing to concede one point which most of the others left out—she was not sure that she saw any essential differences between these swarthy males who found grenadine syrup or coffee to their taste and the less vivid masculine bipeds who pretended that ice-cream and layer cake was an exciting experience. And she remembered having seen the same sidelong glances directed at the young women serving refreshments at a church social that she saw nightly cast at the waitresses who placed little cups of sweetened coffee upon the cold marble-topped tables of the Greek cafés.
It was in her midnight walks through the quarter that Claire got the rush of sudden new lights and values. Alone on the streets after twelve o'clock was a new experience, but any timidity was swallowed up in the sense of personal freedom which she seemed to achieve. She could have boarded a car almost from the Ithaca's doors, and, by transferring, arrived at her Clay Street flat without taking more than a dozen steps; but on the first night she had overlooked this possibility and the habit of walking up to Market Street became fixed. In this brief flight she saw not only men, but men of every conceivable stamp and condition. And it struck her how unified these masculine types were, how little they differed in the mass from men that previously she had seen detached, or superficially divided, from their kind by the varied intrusions of women. It seemed to her now that the other sex presented a solid front which womankind was always attempting to break through, and retreating sooner or later, according to the vigor of the masculine defense. For she had a sudden conviction that each woman battled singly and alone, but that men somehow braced themselves collectively for the struggle. Men were not really ever vanquished—a solitary man falling by the wayside did not spell defeat for the main body. But women—somehow women were always routed, routed as a whole because they insisted on playing the game in solitary aloofness. She found men presenting this same unbroken front to all the tilts of fortune and women as consistently attempting to hold every trick of fate at bay single-handed. But what she could not determine was the relative values of these contrasting attitudes, which was the more soul-stirring performance.
At the beginning of the second week of Claire's new life, a handful of the Café Ithaca's regular patrons, wishing to indulge in a little celebration, ordered a table laid in the new dining-room. This broke the ice, and there followed no end of dinners and banquets and evening suppers. But so far the patrons were confined to residents of the Greek quarter, and it puzzled Claire to discover that there were never by any chance women present. She questioned Jimmy about this.
"Greek women stay home," he replied, emphatically.
Claire had begun by playing simple and sprightly things on the piano. The patrons responded by applauding her politely, but she could see that they were really not finding her offerings entertaining. When the wheezy orchestrion started up with Greek airs they were much more alert and appreciative. She gave an ear to these melodies, and one night she surprised a company of diners by picking out the national anthem on the piano. The result was unexpected. She was bombarded by a shower of silver coins—mostly half-dollar pieces. She rose in her seat, bowing her thanks for the applause, while Jimmy scrambled after the coins and Lycurgus came forward with his hand over his heart. She drew back with a gesture of instinctive refusal as Jimmy poured the money upon the keyboard of the piano. But she ended by accepting it—there seemed nothing else to do.
After this she mastered other Greek airs. She learned in time all the slow, melancholy melodies that never failed to set the feet of dancers shuffling. And upon the tiny hardwood floor that had been laid in the hope of luring rag-time patrons to the Café Ithaca there was nightly a handful of men moving with graceful precision in the steps of their ancient folk-dances. Jimmy, smiling his satisfaction at Claire, would lean over the piano and say:
"Look, Miss Robson! Now they are dancing an old shepherd dance. They have danced it so in my part of the country for the last thousand years. It is a dance of greeting. The two men have not seen each other for five years."
Thus it was with everything—symbols running through the every-day experiences of these people like a thread of gold through the woof and warp of some drab garment. They were a people not only living in a past, but carrying this past with them as they stormed the outposts of modern life, and for all their naïve Christian piety, which they seemed to practise with a comfortable emotional fervor, they had retained the courage to meet the deposed gods of another day with a friendly and affectionate smile. They still danced the old pagan dances on feast-days of the saints, and ranged pictures of the gods side by side with the holy icons of the church.
Claire was in a mood to appreciate all these strange experiences; they removed her so completely from all the soul-crushing memories that were ever struggling to fasten themselves upon her. And every night when the street-car crossed over to the south side of the city she shed her cares like one dropping a dripping coat upon the threshold of a warm room. Between the hours of six and twelve she gathered courage from forgetfulness. But, although she had entered more or less gracefully into the demands of this new life, there were times when the clutch of custom still laid its hand upon her. For one thing, she could never quite get used to her Sunday night appearance at the café. This setting of Sunday as a day different and apart was too much of an instinct to be lightly dismissed. It had been one of Mrs. Robson's pet hobbies.
"Why should I go to the theater or dance on Sunday?" Claire remembered hearing her mother argue time and again with Mrs. Finnegan. "I can do those things any other day in the week."
Claire had a feeling that her mother's convictions upon this matter had become largely a question of good form rather than of religious belief. She knew in her own case that she could find no logic with which to bolster her emphatic distaste for this café life on Sunday night, and yet it was only another proof of the inflexibility of custom.
There were times, too, when she would halt before the swinging doors of the Café Ithaca, incapable of realizing that she, Claire Robson, was a café entertainer in the Greek quarter. At these moments she could not imagine anything more removed from the hopes or even the fears which she had held for her future. In her glimpses into life with Stillman and Lily Condor, from the lofty vantage-ground of prejudice, she had looked down upon these women who sang or danced or played their way into the torpid affections of an eating and drinking public. Once at the conclusion of an indifferent concert, Stillman had whirled Claire and Mrs. Condor and Edington out to one of the beach resorts. Claire had been struck by all the tawdry gaiety of that evening, the flagging spirits of the dancers reinforced by sloppy highballs, the rattle and bang of the "jazz" orchestra, the rapacious horde of entertainers moving from table to table, wrestling dimes and quarters and half-dollars from the open-handed assembly. She recalled the contemptuous way in which the silver gratuities were flung at what seemed to Claire these professional fawners.
Her impulse to refuse the money that had been hurled at her on that night when she had essayed the Greek national anthem carried the sting of memories with it. But there was something open-hearted and childlike about this latter performance that robbed it of unpleasantness.
She was looking forward with more or less trepidation to the day when the San Francisco public in its search for a new sensation would swoop down upon the Café Ithaca. In a flash she saw all the beach-resort atmosphere duplicated—the wine-blowsy dancers, the loose-jointed music, the shower of small change falling significantly at the feet of red-lipped entertainers. Already she had received a preliminary warning of its approach from Nellie Whitehead.
"Don't be surprised, Robson, if you see me and Billy Holmes skate into your joint some night. Billy knows a young Greek doctor. He promised to blow himself for a dinner in our honor any time we say the word. You'd better bone up on your rag-time. We don't know any Greek shepherd dances."
Claire took the hint and "boned up" on her rag-time—or, rather, began for the first time in her life really to attempt to play it. And one night, true to her word, Nellie Whitehead came. Early in the evening a table had been set for four, and Lycurgus had gone to the flower-stands in front of Lotta's fountain and bought pink and white carnations for a centerpiece. Claire had wondered at the reason for all this special preparation, but she made no inquiries. Nellie Whitehead breezed in at about seven without any escort.
"Why don't they have a decent sign out? I almost went by the place," she railed, as she released Claire from a hearty embrace. "The men will be here in a minute. But I came on ahead for a chat. It's that doctor I was telling you about ... he's giving the feed. He isn't a Greek at all ... he's a Serbian or something. But, good Lord! What's the difference? They all look alike to me. Only, this one seems more human ... his hair doesn't fuzz out as much as some of them.... The fourth place? Why, that's been set for you!... You can't spare the time? Now, don't you worry, little one; it's all been arranged. This doctor fellow has some kind of a pull with the management. If he wants the head entertainer to dine with him, all he has to do is to say so."
"A Serbian!" Claire found herself mentally exclaiming. "Can it be possible that...."
And true to the commonplace and thoroughly unexplainable thing called "chance" it was possible. For when Billy Holmes arrived at seven-thirty with his Serbian friend, Dr. George Danilo, Claire felt herself scarcely surprised, although for a moment she grew suddenly cold.
Claire had never met Billy Holmes, but she knew him by sight—a bluff, genial, open-handed man with hair thinning about the temples and a rather swaggering walk. He was just the proper foil for Danilo's thick-haired, beetle-browed, red-lipped personality.
After the first chill of surprise, Claire somehow recovered herself. She wondered whether Danilo remembered that tense moment six months ago when he had pulled his audience out of a slough of indifference by fixing his passionate gaze upon her. She had an impulse to ask, but there was something vaguely disturbing about him. Was she fascinated, or repelled, or overwhelmed? She gave it up. But sitting opposite him, so close that she could have touched his hand if she had dared, she grew to feel that when he smiled nothing else really mattered. It was plain that Lycurgus was his abject slave.
As the dinner progressed, Claire found that she was to be relieved of her post at the piano by the continuous rumblings of the orchestrion. Between courses, Nellie Whitehead and Billy Holmes danced, while Claire and the doctor talked—that is, she let him talk—about himself and his work and his native land. It was this last topic that flamed him most completely. Claire listened parted-lipped as he poured out the history of Serbia's wrongs. He pictured his country ravaged, broken, desolate, buffeted like a shuttlecock between the rackets of fate. His own people were scattered like chaff. His mother—he merely raised his hand at the mention of her name and let it fall again.
Boldly, with swift, sure strokes, he gave her glimpses of far-flung horizons, community griefs, national sorrows, the bleeding of people en masse. She had experienced something of this before, six months ago, when he had harangued the Second Presbyterian Church into grudging applause, but now, to-night, he was within reach, warm and personal and palpitant.
"I am going back ... in the fall ... to ... to...."
He stopped, fumbling for the proper word, as one not to the language born sometimes does.
She felt a great courage sweep over her. She wanted him to remember.
"Yes," she cried, "I know! To a blood-red dawn! You are going back to a blood-red dawn!"
How he smiled! "Ah," escaped him. "Then you remembered, too!... You were the only one at first in the whole room who listened.... I had never spoken to quite such a crowd before.... I saw you twice ... after. Once you were dancing. The second time you were alone ... in a doorway.... But to-night, here.... I was not prepared to find you here and so...."
She was both pleased and annoyed. Why had she not waited for him to spur her memory?
Presently Lycurgus brought champagne. It appeared that this was a very special date, although every one had forgotten it except the Greek.
"A year ago ... thank you ... thank you ... a year ago is the war for America."
"A year ago since we went into the war!" exclaimed some one. "Can it be possible?"
There followed toasts to Greece, and Serbia, and America, and President Wilson, and finally to Danilo.
"That Danilo," Lycurgus informed the party—"that Danilo—he saved my life. Now he can have everything I own. If I were dead, nothing would be of any use. So now I give him everything ... you understand?—everything!"
Claire stared—she was not yet accustomed to the Oriental extravagances which crept so naturally into the speech of Lycurgus.
Altogether it was a happy time, in spite of the shadow of world-wide tragedy that lay in wait just beyond the truant light of personal cheer.
"You've made a hit, Robson!" Nellie Whitehead assured her at the conclusion of the evening. "But how in Heaven's name could you listen to all that Serbia stuff?... Dope about the little, old U.S.A. is good enough for me.... But say, he isn't so bad-looking. If I didn't have Billy on my staff I do believe...." She finished with a wink and gave Claire a playful shove.
On her way home that night Claire said to herself, "I'll have to look up some books on Serbia at the library."