"Why didn't you tell me about it before?" she pouted. "I'm game! Let's float in there to-night and see the animals feed."
So they went down to the Latin Quarter together.
Bohemia has been variously described. Since Henri Murger's time, the definition has changed retrogressively, until now, what is commonly called Bohemia is a place where one is told, "This is Liberty Hall!"—and one is forced to drink beer whether one likes it or not, where not to like spaghetti is a crime. Not such was the little coterie of artists, writers and amateurs, who dined together every night at Fulda's restaurant.
In San Francisco is recruited a perennial crop of such petty soldiers of fortune. Here art receives scant recompense, and as soon as one gets one's head above water and begins to be recognized, existence is unendurable in a place where genius has no field for action. The artist, the writer or the musician must fly East to the great market-place, New York, or to the great forcing-bed, Paris, to bloom or fade, to live or die in competition with others in his field.
So the little artistic colonies shrink with defections or increase with the accession of hitherto unknown aspirants. Many go and never return. A few come back to breathe again the stimulating air of California, to see with new eyes its fresh, vivid color, its poetry, its romance. To have gone East and to have returned without abject failure is here, in the eyes of the vulgar, Art's patent of nobility. Of those who have been content to linger peaceably in the land of the lotus, some are earls without coronets, but one and all share a fierce, hot, passionate love of the soil. San Francisco has become a fetish, a cult. Under its blue skies and driving fogs is bred the most ardent loyalty in these United States. San Francisco is most magnificently herself of any American city, and San Franciscans, in consequence, are themselves with an abounding perfervid sincerity. Faults they have, lurid, pungent, staccato, but hypocrisy is not of them. That vice is never necessary.
The party that gathered nightly at Fulda's was as remote from the world as if it had been ensconced on a desert island. It was unconscious, unaffected, sufficient to itself. Men and girls had come and gone since it had formed, but the nucleal circle was always complete. Death and desertions were unacknowledged—else the gloom would have shut down and the wine, the red wine of the country, would have tasted salt with tears. There had been tragedies and comedies played out in that group, there were names spoken in whispers sometimes, there were silent toasts drunk; but if sentiment was there, it was disguised as folly. Life still thrilled in song. Youth was not yet dead. Art was long and exigent.
It was their custom, after dinner, to adjourn to Champoreau's for café noir, served in the French style. In this large, bare saloon, with sanded floor, with its bar and billiard table, foreign as France, almost always deserted at this hour save by their company, the genial patron smiled at their gaiety, as he prepared the long glasses of coffee. To-night, there were six at the round table.
Maxim, an artist unhailed as yet from the East, was, of all, the most obviously picturesque, with a fierce mustached face and a shock of black hair springing in a wild mass from his head to draggle in stringy locks below his eyes, or, with a sudden leonine shake, to be thrown back when he bellowed forth in song. He had been in Paris and knew the airs and argot of the most desperate studies. His laughter was like the roar of a convivial lion.
Dougal, with a dog-like face and tow hair, so ugly as to be refreshing, full of common sense and kindness, with a huge mouth full of little cramped teeth and a smile that drew and compelled and captured like a charm—he sat next. Good nature and loyalty dwelt in his narrow blue eyes. His slow, labored speech was seldom smothered, even in the wit that enveloped it.
Most masculine and imperative of all, was Benton, with his blur of blue-black hair, fine tangled threads, his melting, deep blue eyes, shadowy with fatigue, lighted with vagrant dreams or shot with brisk fires of passion. His hands were strong and he had an air of suppressed power.