“Oh, do! Oh, do, please! But don’t forget that we are to have supper together. I insist on supper.”
And Audrey thought: “How agreeable he is! How kind-hearted! He hasn’t got any ‘career’ to worry about, and I adore him, and he’s as simple as knitting.”
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE IMMINENT DRIVE
“Oh!” cried Miss Thompkins. “You can see it from here. It’s funny how unreal it seems, isn’t it?”
She pointed at one of the large white-curtained windows of the restaurant, through which was visible a round column covered with advertisements of theatres, music-halls, and concert-halls, printed in many colours and announcing superlative delights. Names famous wherever pleasure is understood gave to their variegated posters a pleasant air of distinguished familiarity—names of theatres such as “Variétés,” “Vaudeville,” “Châtelet,” “Théâtre Français,” “Folies-Bergère,” and names of persons such as “Sarah Bernhardt,” “Huegenet,” “Le Bargy,” “Litvinne,” “Lavallière.” But the name in the largest type—dark crimson letters on rose paper—the name dominating all the rest, was the name of Musa. The ingenuous stranger to Paris was compelled to think that as an artist Musa was far more important than anybody else. Along the length of all the principal boulevards, and in many of the lesser streets, the ingenuous stranger encountered, at regular distances of a couple of hundred yards or so, one of these columns planted on the kerb; and all the scores of them bore exactly the same legend; they all spoke of nothing but blissful diversions, and they all put Musa ahead of anybody else in the world of the stage and the platform. Sarah Bernhardt herself, dark blue upon pale, was a trifle compared to Musa on the columns. And it had been so for days. Other posters were changed daily—changed by mysterious hands before even bread-girls were afoot with their yards of bread—but the space given to Musa repeated always the same tidings, namely that Musa ("the great violinist") was to give an orchestral concert at the Salle Xavier, assisted by the Xavier orchestra, on Thursday, September 24, at 9 P.M. Particulars of the programme followed.
Paris was being familiarised with Musa. His four letters looked down upon the fever of the thoroughfares; they were perused by tens of thousands of sitters in cafés and in front of cafés; they caught the eye of men and women fleeing from the wrath to come in taxicabs; they competed successfully with newspaper placards; and on that Thursday—for the Thursday in question had already run more than half its course—they had so entered into the sub-conscious brain of Paris that no habitué of the streets, whatever his ignorant indifference to the art of music, could have failed to reply with knowledge, on hearing Musa mentioned, “Oh, yes!” implying that he was fully acquainted with the existence of the said Musa.
Tommy was right: there did seem to be a certain unreality about the thing, yet it was utterly real.
All the women turned to glance at the name through the window, and some of them murmured sympathetic and interested exclamations and bright hopes. There were five women: Miss Thompkins, Miss Nickall, Madame Piriac, Miss Ingate and Audrey. And there was one man—Mr. Gilman. And the six were seated at a round table in the historic Parisian restaurant. Mr. Gilman had the air triumphant, and he was entitled to it. The supreme moment of his triumph had come. Having given a luncheon to these ladies, he had just asked, with due high negligence, for the bill. If there was one matter in which Mr. Gilman was a truly great expert, it was the matter of giving a meal in a restaurant. He knew how to dress for such an affair—with strict conventionality but a touch of devil-may-care youthfulness in the necktie. He knew how to choose the restaurant; he had about half a dozen in his répertoire—all of the first order and for the most part combining the exclusive with the amusing—entirely different in kind from the pandemonium where Audrey had eaten on the night of her first arrival in Paris; he knew how to get the best out of head-waiters and waiters, who in these restaurants were not head-waiters and waiters but worldly priests and acolytes; his profound knowledge of cookery sprang from a genuine interest in his stomach, and he could compose a menu in a fashion to command the respect of head-waiters and to excite the envy of musicians composing a sonata; he had the wit to look in early and see to the flowers; above all he was aware what women liked in the way of wine, and since this was never what he liked in the way of wine, he would always command a half-bottle of the extra dry for himself, but would have it manipulated with such discretion that not a guest could notice it. He paid lavishly and willingly, convinced by hard experience that the best is inestimable, but he felt too that the best was really quite cheap, for he knew that there were imperfectly educated people in the world who thought nothing of paying the price of a good meal for a mere engraving or a bit of china. Withal, he never expected his guests truly to appreciate the marvels he offered them. They could not, or very rarely. Their twittering ecstatic praise, which was without understanding, sufficed for him, though sometimes he would give gentle diffident instruction. This trait in him was very attractive, proving the genuineness of his modesty.