Of the Café and its inhabitants, and of its paramount significance in the life of our time, Gaveston had already heard much, and read more. Monty Wytham, most rusé of the Mongoons, had lowered his voice in speaking of it one night in far-away Wallace. Bold must the spirit be, and heedless of bourgeois condemnation, to actually affront so perilous a haunt after dark!
But Gaveston, though alone, was undismayed. Undeceived, true Londoner that he was, by the golden word
NICHOLS
emblazoned above the portal, he gave a determined push to the fateful revolving door. As its well-oiled sweep threw him into the fantastical lobby within, he reflected how often these very panels had revolved before the push of hands famous the world over for their cunning over marble and bronze, for the eloquent pens they wielded, for their intricate mastery of brush and easel, and of hands celebrated alas! only for their own manicured and expensive selves. How often indeed! But now it had known a new revolution! And he laughed at the unspoken quip as he walked towards the smoke-room.
Gaveston pushed open the innermost swing-door, fully realizing that this was perhaps his most crucial entry since that first evening in Mongo’s room, and for a moment he stood there, not indeed in any uncertainty, but in conscious appraisal of the spectacle that met his eyes.
A spectacle indeed!
For lo! athwart a score of rococo mirrored walls the dazzling lights answered each other in optical strophe and antistrophe. Incredible perspectives of painted ceiling with moulded garlands of gold, were upheld by bowed, silent caryatides, about whose bare gilded breasts hovered voluptuously the dim blue smoke of scented cigarettes that rose incense-like from the worshippers of pleasure below. From the thronged marble tables rose the heady, deadly fumes of wine and drugs—a mad clinking of glasses—a fierce rattling of hypodermic syringes—a Babel of tongues—wild hectic laughter—an undercurrent of whispers of dark intrigue and nameless insinuation—and there was a stall where French novels were openly for sale.…
“La Bohème!” he said instinctively to himself. But here reality had surely out-Murgered Puccini or Balfe.
From one plush-covered seat, where half-a-dozen picturesque figures sat, men and women jowl by cheek, he caught the wildest of foreign oaths.
“Certes!”