The Blood Red Dawn

by Charles Caldwell Dobie

It appeared that two prominent members of the Greek colony were to be married on the following Sunday night, and there was to be a feast at the Café Ithaca. Claire had not been near her old haunts since the night when she had dismissed herself. There had been really no excuse. Danilo had brought her the money due from Lycurgus for the half-week she had served him. At first she had an impulse to ask Danilo to excuse her. She did not feel sure that she cared to see the Ithaca again, and she was equally undecided about the wedding. But in the end she made up her mind to go. At the last moment Danilo was called out suddenly to a sick-bed. This meant that they were late for the ceremony at the church. But they arrived in time to see the bride and groom making their triumphal exit from the altar. The air was musky and warm with incense and burning candles, and for all its cheapness the church assumed a blue-veiled atmosphere of mystery for the occasion. Outside, the steps were thronged with the curious, and, instead of hastening coyly to the waiting taxicab, the bride graciously stood for a moment in the doorway so that all the beauty-hungry mob below her could catch a satisfying glimpse of her young loveliness. There was a simple and generous pride about this little by-play that made it very charming to Claire.

Danilo and Claire swung on a passing car and arrived at the Ithaca almost with the bridal party. A pushing, eager mob of children blocked the side entrance and even spilled over into the banquet-hall upon the heels of the bride. The room was arranged as it had been for the St. George's Day celebration and the public was excluded. Lycurgus, catching sight of Claire, came forward with his old sweeping manner, murmuring his clipped congratulations. Doris, spying her from a far corner, rushed up with an impulsive kiss. It seemed as if everybody was ready to sink all animosities and feuds before the glamour of Claire's new estate.

The feast began. Claire looked about; many of the seats were not taken. She remarked the fact to Danilo.

"Oh, they will fill up presently," he replied.

And it turned out that the wedding-supper was not a matter of cool calculation—so many places for so many guests—but that the feast was spread beyond the known partakers.

"Suppose some of the guests should bring their friends?" Claire inquired of Danilo. "One must look to that. It would not do to turn any away."

A feast then was a feast, a thing to be eaten, it did not matter so much by whom; indeed, strangers were better than no guests at all. There was something biblical about it, and Claire thought at once of the parable in the New Testament which began:

"A certain rich man made a great supper...." And ended: "Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled."

"This," thought Claire, "is the real hospitality ... the real democracy."

And it struck her forcibly that for the first time in her life she sensed in a flash the meaning of equality and fraternity. In a Greek restaurant, at a celebration of one of the sacraments of autocracy and authority, she had come upon the underlying principles that she had been taught to murmur mechanically since childhood.