“Ah, you theenk!...” He leaped again to his feet and extended his hand across the table to Bert, who took it and shook hands rather embarrassedly.
“I am Jacques,” said the young man. “We must to know one another. You are named—ah, Monsieur Bert.... Monsieur Ken-dall. Ha!... All my friends there, regard. Messieurs Bert and Ken-dall—my frien’s.... My frien’s—Messieurs Bert and Ken-dall. Now we are acquaint’, is it not? So.... You see that yo’ng man who spill soup on his coat. He is Monsieur Robert, great comedian at the Comédie Française. Oui, he make the first prize at the Académie one year ago.... That other, with the hair so.... He is espagnol.... Oui. Also an actor, but not a comedian. He does so.” Jacques illustrated by scowling horribly in imitation of the tragic method. “He also make the first prize at the Académie before two year.... They are ver’ clever.” Both young men so described got to their feet and came across to shake hands. “Those others,” continued Jacques, in full voice, “are jus’ boys an’ girl. You onderstand? Not anybody.... That one who look so jealous at hees girl—he make the dress for ladies. Oui. He have much money, but no brains.” At this mot everybody shouted with laughter, and the girl who accompanied the maker of dresses disentangled herself from him and came across to sit down by Kendall, putting her cheek up to him.
“She wants you should kees,” said Jacques, and Kendall shamefacedly planted a hurried kiss on her cheek. “And now you shall see—thees yo’ng man with her, he is ver’ jealous. Perhaps he shall beat her w’en they arrive at home.... Oui....”
Kendall proffered a cigarette to Jacques, and then extended his case toward the young actors across the aisle. They were real American cigarettes, one of which will do more to carry you into the good graces of a poilu than many bottles of vin ordinaire. Both young men came across, not too eagerly, and helped themselves. Monsieur Robert, the younger, and a very handsome, boyish, pleasing young man, seated himself in the chair the dressmaker’s companion had just vacated. He understood a word of English, but dared not venture an attempt to speak it; however, he was exceedingly cordial in French. Kendall managed to understand most that he said. It was a very laughable, but somewhat risqué, account of a conversation he had essayed with an Englishwoman during a recent engagement in London, carried on through the agency of a dictionary. Purely through accident the young man’s finger had pointed to a certain word when it should have been directed to quite another—with the result that he received a sound box on the ear. He told the thing with such boyish delight, and with such naïve joy in the outraged prudery of the Englishwoman, that Kendall laughed as he had laughed at nothing for months. This pleased the young actor. If Kendall had been diplomatically angling for Monsieur Robert’s friendship, he could not have contrived better.
Suddenly he remembered Andree. “You must know a famous actor,” she had commanded him. Andree desired the good offices of an actor in her effort to enter the Académie—and this young gentleman had carried off the first prize in that national institution but a year before.... He regarded Monsieur Robert with new interest.
While Kendall and Monsieur Robert made merry, if difficult, conversational progress, Bert was instructing Jacques in colloquial American in a manner to which his rather grotesque sense of humor was peculiarly adapted. “If you meet a lady,” he was saying, “and she bids you good afternoon, the thing to say, if you want to be really polite, is, ‘Go jump in the lake.’ Of course you don’t say this to a lady the first time you meet her, because it is rather friendly, but possibly the second time. Do you understand?”
“But surely.... Go jump in the lake.... Ah, it has a sound, has it not? I like that.” He stood up, placed his hand on his heart and bowed to Bert profoundly. “Ah, madame,” he said, in honeyed tones, “you should go to jump in the lake.... Is it so you say it? It is a phrase. I shall remember it. And what does one say if—”
Kendall lost the next lesson, for Monsieur Robert arose and shook hands warmly. “I hope you shall dine here often,” he said. “Me, I always dine here.... So we shall become better acquainted.”
Others of the company took their departure to their theaters or with their actor companions, or to write their criticisms, and as they went out, laughing and jostling, each stopped at the table of the Americans to shake hands and to say good evening. It was all very genial and companionable—a sort of family affair—but very un-American and droll.
Kendall and Bert took their departure soon afterward. The evening was rather hot, but they determined to walk home, a distance of a couple of miles. As they were passing the Hôtel Wagram, Kendall glanced inside and saw, standing just within the lobby, the Miss Knox who had been his playmate on the voyage across the Atlantic.