CHAPTER III
Two days after Nellie Whitehead's invasion of the Café Ithaca a group of insurance special agents came for dinner. There were six of them in the party and they were accompanied by as many women. Calling loudly for Lycurgus, the spokesman of the party explained their wishes:
"The same kind of a feed that you gave our friend Holmes the other night, and all the fancy drinks.... You know us!"
Mr. Lycurgus bowed deeply and began to scurry about. Claire started a tune on the piano.
"Oh, none of that sad stuff!" called out one of the party. "Give us a little jazz!"
Claire obeyed to the best of her ability. They scrambled up and began to dance. Appetizers were brought.... They downed them greedily and called for more.
"Give us another dance while we're waiting," they demanded of Claire.
She sat at her post all evening, grinding out tunes. The party continued to eat and drink and dance until long past eleven o'clock. As they were leaving one of the men threw Claire a dollar. It would have been quite as easy for him to have walked over and laid it on the piano. But he threw it at her instead and Claire remembered again the beach resorts and the contemptuously flung bits of silver.
"She's a rotten jazz-player at that!" she heard one of the women say as the party opened the side door and disappeared, followed by the bobbing figure of Lycurgus.
Jimmy was in great spirits.
"This is the life—eh, Miss Robson? I cleaned up nearly two dollars. These countrymen of yours—they spend the money! Now we shall see plenty of good times."
For two or three days a reaction set in and Jimmy was disconsolate. As for Claire, she found herself welcoming the return to the simpler life of the quarter. Already she was resenting the intrusion of the outside world. But Saturday night another crop of San Franciscans in search of novelty made the acquaintance of the Café Ithaca, and after that there was no stemming the tide.
Gradually the Greek patrons retired to their former positions in the old barroom, the Greek tunes on the orchestrion were discarded for popular successes from the vaudeville houses, and the thin line of men dancing symbolically upon the maple floor as Claire played for them became almost a memory.
Mr. Lycurgus began to talk about hiring entertainers, enlarging the dancing-space, getting in an orchestra. Claire figured on dismissal. She knew that as a rag-time performer she was not a success, and her only wonder was that Lycurgus did not let her go at once. She voiced her fears to Jimmy one day.
"Oh, you should worry!" was Jimmy's comment as he flicked a fly with his towel. "The boss he likes you!"
Claire smiled. She was becoming accustomed to these naïve and simple explanations of conduct. Lycurgus liked her and therefore he would continue to retain her. The question of ability was secondary. Lycurgus liked her because she asked him questions about his native land and listened when he answered, because she had learned the Greek anthem on the piano, because she had played peasant dances for his countrymen. The Greek patrons liked her for the same reason, and it was no longer a novelty for her to see Jimmy coming toward her with slices of sesame seed and honey, or a bit of sugar-dusted pastry for her delight, the gift of one of the diners on the other side of the green curtains.
She had heard in former days such slighting references to the morality of foreigners in general that she was surprised to find how contemptuously some of these Greek patrons of the Café Ithaca referred to American women. There was no mistaking the quality of the smiles which they threw after the spectacle of men who permitted their wives to indulge in public dancing.
"In my country," Jimmy had explained to her, "we do not even touch a woman's hand when we dance with her. We give her the end of our handkerchief instead of our fingers."
And another time he said:
"What is the matter with American mothers, Miss Robson? Last night my wife found a boy and girl sitting on our door-steps long after ten o'clock. She opened the door and said to them, 'Have you no home?' It is like that all over. Young girls go about like men. I do not think that is right!"
Claire found herself blushing, and at once she remembered the eager social-settlement worker who had pleaded before the Home Missionary Society for funds "to help these wards of the nation to a keener appreciation of our institutions." She wondered what the effect would be if Jimmy were to address this organization.
One night, exhausted by six hours of continuous playing for a hilarious crowd of Americans, Claire crept into one of the coffee-houses and sat down. She was really too tired to go home, and, besides, she had a sudden desire for contrasts while the atmosphere which her own kind had brought to the Greek quarter was already fresh. The appearance of a woman in the coffee-house, other than the waitresses, was unusual, but Claire was surprised to find only the most casual of glances directed her way. A man waited on her. She ordered Turkish coffee. On a raised platform an orchestra was performing; in the clear space just below a half-dozen men were dancing one of the folk-dances Claire was beginning to know so well. The music had the sad, minor quality of highland music the world over, and in addition there was an Oriental strain which recalled certain themes that Rimsky-Korsokov had captured and woven into the Scheherazade suite. On the ochestrion at the Café Ithaca these tunes had been more or less clipped of their wild freedom—adapted to the scale of another set of musical conventions, and Claire had sensed their novelty, but not their lack of precise musical form. Even to-night Claire thought not only the music, but the way in which it was presented, quite outlandish, but as she sat sipping her sweetened coffee the notes and the rhythm gradually assumed a coherence, and unconsciously her own feet began to tap the floor.
She looked about the room. It was crowded and the air was thick with cigarette smoke and the odd, pungent aroma from the Oriental water-pipes. Claire had studied Greek history in her high-school days, and she had always held a classical picture of Greek life—flowing garments, marble courtyards, gods and goddesses made flesh. It came to her sharply, as she sat in the coffee-house, that the real flavor had a distinct tang of the Orient and that the picture spread before her was more suggestive of the Arabian Nights than anything else she could call to mind. She tried to fancy the men about her clothed in soft silks, with jeweled turbans on their heads and slippers curving into sharp points. One of the musicians began to sing in a low, monotonous, whining voice, striking the strings of his zither-like instrument with long, graceful strokes. A girl bearing a tray of grenadine syrup and a box of cigars passed her table. This girl had features extraordinarily regular, and her skin was very clear and firm and provocative. Claire could see that she was a favorite and that she left a vague unrest in her wake.
"This," flashed through her mind, "is the danger that they speak of. This is the sort of thing that makes these coffee-houses...."
Abruptly she stopped the course of her thoughts. The memory of Flint's office suddenly recurred. She pictured this girl in a business environment.
"It would be the same!" she finished to herself, shrugging as she did so.
And she became aware that the girl was something of a danger herself, in a fascinating, ruthless, primitive way—a trap set by nature for inscrutable ends. She thought of herself, and a company of pallid, crushed women who passed milestone after milestone with the lagging footsteps that would never know either victory or defeat—a company of wan, pallid women who went on and on without even the respite of an occasional falling by the wayside, women sacrificing everything, even life itself, to the arid joy of standards fixed and immovable.... The girl emptied her tray and passed Claire again. This time she swaggered consciously as if she realized the measure that another of her kind was taking. Claire felt a sudden envy for all the instinctive courage back of the challenge which this palpitating creature was throwing out. She leaned forward to the next table and said to a man sitting there:
"This girl who has just passed ... is she Greek?"
The man rolled a cigarette insolently, and said in almost the precise words of Jimmy:
"Greek? I should say not! Greek women stay home!"
He looked squarely at Claire as he said it, and she rose at once.
"They should thank God that they have a home to stay in," she said, passionately.
The man stared, shrugged, and laughed. Claire went out into the street. She did not know why she had spoken. The words had risen to her lips like a cry of pain at the pressure of relentless fingers against a new-found wound. Until this moment Claire had always fancied that she had a home. Now she knew that it took something more than a refuge, walled in from the elements, to rise to such a dignity. And in a flash she felt that this mysterious and indefinable something was the lattice upon which the tendrils of a woman's soul climbed toward the light. It was possible, of course, to push forward over the ramparts of life without this aid, but it took all the vigor of a wild unfolding of the spirit.... She remembered very few flashes of beauty in her mother's life, but those few were the blossoming of efforts to create a home for her child, a shield from the wind and weather to only the shallow vision, but something infinitely more when the surface of things was scratched. Mrs. Robson's spirit had climbed the lattice of her sacrifice, but it was not possible for Claire to follow; like all children, she had outgrown the narrow confines that had served her mother's need.
The night was clear and beautiful, touched with the mystery of spring. Claire fancied that the crowds surging up and down Third Street seemed more restless, more full of desire, more vaguely hopeful of wresting soul-stirring experiences from life. There were many uniforms in the crush, and men wearing them stood out clearly, striking a note of youth at once vibrant and pathetic. But the older men seemed touched with a faded resignation, like spent pilgrims who see the glistening spires of some holy city in a far distance which they never can hope to attain. And somehow Claire's youth rose up and went out to meet the vision which these weary souls so poignantly glimpsed. She longed herself for these far-flung, golden-topped, opulent duties swimming in the purple twilight of remoteness. She was tired of the drabness and clutter of crowded foregrounds. Ah, how easy it would be to take up a march with the ugly highways of effort veiled by the softness of a slanting sun!
She was hurrying across Mission Street when she felt an arm laid gently upon her shoulder. She turned—Danilo stood behind her, smiling.
"Ah, you are late!" he said.
"I was too tired to go home at once," she admitted. "I dropped into one of the coffee-houses to see the sights."
He stepped back to the curb. She followed him. "I have my car half-way up the block," he explained to her. "I walked to the corner to get cigarettes. Which way do you go?"
She told him.
"I will take you home, then. I am going in that direction myself. I am to look in on a patient at the Stanford Court apartments."
"At the Stanford Court apartments?" Claire was conscious that her tone betrayed a surprise bordering on incredulity.
He smiled back at her indulgently as he led the way to his car. "A man who got caught in an automobile smash-up early this evening. I was on the spot and he has asked me to finish the matter. He is rich, so I am very attentive." He laughed, showing his white teeth. "I am taking him out something to make him sleep, otherwise he will have a bad night."
Claire forced her interest to the point of inquiring, "Was he seriously hurt?"
"Oh, not at all! He rode into a street-car and got a nasty blow—on the head. But, of course, one can never tell. He is a countryman of yours. Perhaps you have heard of him. His name is Stillman."
Claire did not reply. She was surprised into silence. She had fancied that the Greek quarter would close the door on any vistas of her former life.
"I understand that he made a million dollars last week by a trick of fortune," Danilo went on vivaciously. "Shares in a copper-mine ... or something quite as wonderful.... I must interest him in the cause."
"The cause?... What cause?" Claire inquired.
"Why—why, the Serbian cause, of course! You do not mean to tell me that you have forgotten our talk already?"
They had reached the car, and Danilo lifted Claire in.
"No, I haven't forgotten. As a matter of fact, I've been intending to look up some books on Serbia."
His eyes were glowing. "No!... Did you, really? I tell you—I shall bring you some books to-morrow."
"If you only would!... Yes, I'm sure that would be very kind of you."