CHAPTER XVI.
It was Saturday night at La Ria’s. John Fenton and Richard Stoughton were seated side by side near one end of the room, awaiting with true La Rian patience the coming of the soup. No one who is in a hurry ever goes to La Ria’s on Saturday night. Impatience is sacrilege in that Bohemian republic that lies under the sidewalk on a down-town street, and draws into its charming boundaries many of the brightest men and most attractive women in the city. La Ria’s is both a pleasure and a protest. The pleasure is on the surface, the protest is underneath. The former is what the true La Rian feels, the latter is what he thinks. His presence on Saturday evening in that famous restaurant proves his unwillingness to permit the New World’s metropolis to become nothing but a colorless aggregation of very wealthy and very poor citizens. La Ria’s furnishes an outlet both to the rich and poor for the inherent fondness in men and women for the picturesque and unconventional.
There is nothing attractive in this low-ceilinged room, blue with cigarette-smoke even before the soup is served; but if you ask the loyal La Rian if he would have the “historic banquet-hall”—as an enthusiastic reporter once called it—changed in any important particular, he would look at you in scorn. Raise the ceiling, decorate the walls, put in mirrors and gilding and rugs and a costly service, and the broken-hearted La Rians would file sorrowfully out into the night, bewailing the moment when money had thrown its fatal blight over the one spot in the city where the millionnaire sinks into insignificance when he comes to dine with the poet and the artist and the journalist, and where, once a week at least, there is “a feast of reason and a flow of soul.”
“There is a fascination about this sort of thing that is irresistible,” whispered Richard to John Fenton, as he sipped his claret after the dinner had been fairly started and gazed around him in delight. He was still young enough and sufficiently unsophisticated to enjoy the glamour of his surroundings without looking beneath the surface, and seeing there the life-tragedies that the actors in the scene before him concealed under the mask of gayety. His eye caught the smiling glance of a dark-haired girl, with classically regular features and a delicately shaped hand, who raised her wine-glass as she returned his smile and seemed to pledge his health with the utmost goodfellowship. She sat at a table half-way down the room, and had been laughing and chatting with several men wearing Van Dyke beards, one of whom, Richard learned later, was a famous painter of perfectly innocuous landscapes—a man who looked like Mephistopheles, but said his prayers before retiring.
“Be careful, Richard,” remarked Fenton good-naturedly; “she’s a beautiful girl, but very dangerous.”
The young man glanced up at his friend laughingly.
“You brought me here, John. You are responsible for the consequences.”
“Am I my brother’s keeper?” asked the elder man solemnly. “You are old enough, Richard, to take care of yourself, I suppose. I wash my hands of the whole affair.”
As the dinner progressed, Richard felt an intoxication that had no foundation in wine; for he was not fond of alcoholic stimulants, and drank very sparingly. There was a strange exhilaration in his surroundings that gave him a novel sensation. Of the hundred and more men and women in the room he knew little or nothing; but he could see that among them were those of both sexes whose faces and bearing indicated refinement and high birth. That there were others whose origin was questionable, and who carried with them the stamp of vulgarity, did not alter, but emphasized, the fact that the noble blood of Bohemia was represented before his gaze. After a time he gave up generalizing about his companions, and found his attention concentrated on the girl who had smilingly touched her glass to him. By the time the cheese and coffee had come he was obliged to admit that she possessed the most fascinating face he had yet seen, and that there was something in the glance of her dark eyes more intoxicating than any cordial he had ever sipped. As he lighted a cigarette, and leaned back in his chair to listen to the songs and speeches that Fenton had told him would follow the dessert, he found himself reproaching his own fickleness, but more than ever determined to make the acquaintance of the jolie Bohemienne.
“Wine, women, and song!” exclaimed a dignified but genial-looking man, arising at the farther end of the room, as if to crystallize in one effort the scattered elements of goodfellowship begotten by the modest but very eatable dinner, “and the greatest of these is”— He paused, as if waiting for a reply.
“Wine,” cried a few; “women,” shouted many; and a solitary voice said “song.”
Turning instantly to the reckless individual who had declared in favor of song, the toast-master called upon him by name to arise and vindicate his position. Blushing more with annoyance than modesty, a young man stood up and broke the silence that followed by chanting in a pleasing but untrained voice a ballad of Rudyard Kipling, set to music by the singer. A round of applause followed, and the ice was broken. Songs and stories followed each other in rapid succession.
“It’s great!” exclaimed Richard in Fenton’s ear; and again he raised his glass to the dark-haired girl, who was puffing a cigarette in a nonchalant way and smiling cordially, now and again, as she caught Richard’s eye.
The toast-master arose, and, putting up his hand for silence, said with simple eloquence,—
“The priests and ministers, the bishops and strolling preachers, have through the ages called themselves ‘divines;’ and, lo! they stand aside, and we, the moderns, give that title in our heart of hearts to the poets, the dramatists, the weavers of tales that touch the soul, the wonder-workers in words and thoughts who have wrought that glorious temple we call literature. Homer and Plato and Horace and Shakespeare and Goethe,—these are the true ‘divines;’ these are the inspired and anointed teachers who, making no demands for our reverence and awe, find all the generations bending the knee before them.”
He paused for breath, and a round of applause drove the tobacco-smoke against the ceiling.
“With this introduction,” he went on, “I will present an old friend of yours, who has written a poem that he has modestly informed me is ‘simply great.’”
A shout of laughter greeted this sally, as a tall, slim man with gray hair and a youthful cast of countenance arose. That he was well known and thoroughly liked was proved by the applause that welcomed him.
He stood at the end of the table at which Richard’s inamorata was seated; and, as he recited the following poem, he indicated by look and gesture that the dark-haired girl had been its inspiration—by-play that amused his hearers, but filled Richard with a jealousy that was as pronounced as it was unreasonable.
“I call this little effort to amuse you,” said the poet, “Prince Spaghetti’s Vengeance.”
Then he recited, with a good deal of elocutionary cleverness, the following lines:—
“Not where garish lights are gleaming,
Not in brilliant banquet-hall,
Not where waiters, silent, solemn,
Make the gaudy grandeur pall;
Not where wine is so expensive
That your very thirst seems crime,
And to ‘wet your whistle’ often
Is a recklessness sublime;
But for us a quiet corner
In a side-street, down a stair,
Vive Bohème and Vive La Ria!
Who would be a millionnaire?
Here are brains, served up en bon mot,
Here’s spaghetti, piping hot;
Here’s a crowd of jolly fellows,
Well contented with their lot.
Mayhap, as the feast progresses,
And the wine flows with the wit,
Visions come, and fancy whispers
’Tis a palace where we sit.
’Tis the palace Macaroni,
Built in ages long ago
By a count of many titles,
Where the waves of Tiber flow.
How we got there doesn’t matter.
Maraschino? Yes—a drop.
Thanks! a little bit of cognac?
Just a trifle, on the top.
And the palace by the Tiber,
Where we dine to-night in state,
Here it was Count Macaroni
Met his most heart-rending fate.
’Twas when Rome was in a ferment,
As she used to be at times—
Strange how black that ancient city
Is with undiscovered crimes—
Then it was that Macaroni
Princess Gorgonzola met—
Yes, methinks your face is like her,
Seen beyond this cigarette.
Gorgonzola, she was charming,
Black-eyed maiden, ripe to fall
In the arms of Love, if mother
Let her get beyond her call.
Macaroni, Gorgonzola,
They were such a handsome pair
That in strolling by the Tiber
E’en the boatmen had to stare.
Well, where am I? In La Ria’s?
No; Saint Peter knows I’m not.
Just another sip of cognac?
Thanks—it reached the very spot.
Well, the Count and Gorgonzola
By a villain were pursued,
Prince Spaghetti was his title—
Scion of an evil brood.
Prince Spaghetti loved the maiden
In a weird and wicked way,
And he swore that Macaroni
Must forswear the light of day.
Thus he mixed a potent poison
In a glass of ruby wine—
Yes, I’ll light one more perfecto—
Gad, I think the earth is mine!
One more little sip of cognac?
Thanks, I cannot say thee nay;
Well—where was I? Oh, Spaghetti
Macaroni meant to slay.
Did I kill him? Say, my fair one,
You with Gorgonzola’s eyes,
Did I make him drink the poison?
Answer—you who were the prize.
Well, the tale is nearly ended—
Strange that I should live to-night,
Dining in La Ria’s with you.
Thanks! that cognac’s out of sight.”
A roar of delight rewarded the poet’s effort; and he reseated himself smilingly, while the dark-eyed maiden at his table—who, by the way, went by the name of “Gorgonzola” ever after—raised her liqueur glass, and drank gratefully to the genius who had done what he could to immortalize her beauty.
The hour was growing late, and the jolly diners had begun to disperse. Fenton was engaged in a discussion of the single-tax theory with an English newspaper correspondent on his left, when Richard noticed with regret that his inamorata and her friends, the artists, had arisen to take their departure. It was time for decisive action; and impulsively he fumbled in his cardcase, found his pencil in time to write his address on one of his paste-boards, and had resumed a position of becoming dignity before the gay group, making for the entrance, had reached his table. As the girl passed him, smiling down at him with her dancing black eyes, he handed the card to her. It was all over in a moment, and Richard found himself practically alone. The room seemed utterly deserted after her departure.
“Well, young light-o’-love,” remarked Fenton, as they strolled homeward, “have you had a pleasant evening?”
“Delightful, John,” answered the youth. Then he said earnestly,—
“John, at what age do you think that it is possible for a man to fall honestly and thoroughly in love?”
“Not until after he is forty, my boy,” answered Fenton gravely. “Don’t take yourself or anybody else too seriously, Richard, until you have reached middle life.”
“That’s not the doctrine you preached to me some months ago, John Fenton,” said Richard thoughtfully.
“I know you better now, my dear fellow,” returned Fenton, adding to himself, “and myself too.”