You could not so much as approach it were it not first explained to you what you ought to do. You must pass through a tobacconist’s, which from the street looks like any other tobacconist’s, after which you traverse a yard, which looks like any other yard, except that it is bounded by a wall in which there is a small and unobtrusive door. Beside the small and unobtrusive door there hangs a bell-rope, of the ancient 213 kind suggesting the convent or the Orient. The bell-rope pulls a bell; the bell clangs overhead; the door is opened cautiously by a Hindoo lad, or, as some say, a mulatto boy dressed as a Hindoo. If you are with a friend of the institution you will be admitted without more inspection; but should you be a stranger there will be a scrutiny of your passports. Assuming, however, that you go in, you will find a small courtyard, in which at last The Hindoo Lantern hangs mystic, suggestive, in oriental iron-work, and panels of colored glass.
Having passed beneath this symbol you will enter an antechamber rich in the magic of the East. In a reverent obscurity you will find Buddha on the right, Vishnu on the left, with flowers set before the one, while incense burns before the other. Somewhere in the darkness an Oriental woman will be seated on the ground, twanging on a sarabar, and now and then crooning a chant of invitation to come and share in darksome rites. You will thus be “worked up” to a sense of the mysterious before you pass the third gate of privilege into the shrine itself.
Here you will discover the large empty oval of floor, surrounded by little tables for segregation and refreshment, with which the past ten years have made us familiar. The place will be buzzing with the hum of voices, merry with duologues of laughter, and steaming with tobacco smoke. A jazz-band will strike up, coughing out the nauseated, retching intervals so stimulating to our feet, and two by two, in driblets, streamlets, and lastly in a volume, the guests will take the floor.
In the way of “steps” all the latest will be on exhibition. You will see the cow-trot, the rabbit-jump, the broom-stick, the washerwoman’s dip. Everyone who is anyone will be here, if not on one night then on another, in a jovial fraternity steeped in the spirit of democracy. Revelry will be sustained on lemonade and a resinous astringent known locally as beer, while a sense of doing the forbidden will be in the air. For commercial reasons it will be needful to keep it in the air, since in the proceedings themselves there will be nothing more occult, or more inciting to iniquity, than a kindergarten game.
Hither Mr. Gorry Larrabin had brought Mademoiselle Odette Coucoul, to teach her the new dances. As a matter of fact, he had just led her back to their little table, inconspicuously placed in the front row, after putting her through the paces of the camel-step. Mademoiselle had found it entrancing, so much more novel in the motion than the antiquated valses she had danced in France. Mr. Larrabin had retreated like a camel walking backwards, while she had advanced like a camel going forwards. The art was in lifting the foot quite high, throwing it slightly backwards, and setting it down with a delicate deliberation, while you craned the neck before you with a shake of the Adam’s apple. To incite you to produce this effect the jazz-band urged you onward with a sob, a gulp, a moan, an effect of strangulation, till finally it tore up the seat of your being as if you had been suddenly struck sea-sick.
“Mon Dieu, but it is lofely,” mademoiselle gurgled, laughing in her breathlessness. “It is terr-i-bul to call 215 no one a camel—un chameau—in France; but here am I a—chameau!”
Gorry took this with puzzled amusement. “What’s the matter with calling anyone a camel? I don’t see any harm in that.”
Mademoiselle hid her face in confusion. “Oh, but it is terr-i-bul, terr-i-bul! It is almost so worse as to call no one a—how you say zat word in Eenglish?—a cow, n’est ce pas?—une vache—and zat is the most bad name what you can call no one.”
Looking across the room Gorry was struck with an idea. “Well, there’s a—what d’ye call it—a vashe—over there. See that guy with the girl with the cream-colored hair—fella with a big black mustache, like a brigand in a play? There’s a vashe all-righty; and yet I’ve got to keep in with him.”