CHAPTER XII
THE QUEEREST YARN IN THE WORLD
The way the story leaked out was this: A young Irishman from Sligo, as he blushingly admitted, whose face was a passport of honesty stamped by nature herself, had served two customers over the bar of the old chop-house across the street from the opera-house. To him they were just two throats athirst; nothing more. They ordered drinks, and this first attracted his attention, for they agreed on cognac. Now, brandy after dinner is not an unusual drink, but this pair had asked for a large glass. Old brandy was given them, and such huge swallows followed that the bartender was compelled by his conscience to ring up one dollar for the two drinks. It was paid, and another round commanded, as if the two men were hurried, as indeed they were, for it was during an entr'acte at the opera that they had slipped out for liquid refreshments. Against the bar of the establishment a dozen or more humans were ranged, and the noise was deafening, but not so great as to prevent the Irishman from catching scraps of the conversation dropped by the brandy-drinkers. Their talk went something like this, and, although Michael had little schooling, his memory was excellent, and, being a decent chap, there is no need to impeach the veracity of his report.
The taller man, neither young, neither old, and, like his friend, without a grey hair, burst out laughing after the disappearance of the second cognac. "I say, old pal, who was it wrote that brandy was for heroes? Kipling? What?" The other man, stockily built, foreign-looking, answered in a contemptuous tone ("sneering-like," as my informant put it):
"Where's your memory? Gone to rack and ruin like your ideals, I suppose! Kipling! What do such youngsters know? Doctor Johnson or Walter Savage Landor was the originator of the lying epigram; after them Byron gobbled it up, as he gobbled up most of the good things of his generation, and after him, the deluge of this mediocre century. When I told Byron this, at Milan, I think it was, he vowed me an ass. Now, it was Doctor Johnson."
"Cheer up, it's not so bad. I remember once at Paris, or was it Vienna, you said the same thing about——" and here followed a strange name.
"And, anyhow, you are mixing dates; Landor followed Byron, please, but I suppose he said it first. I told Metternich of your bon-mot, and, egad! he laughed, did that old parchment face. As for Bonaparte, upstart and charlatan, he was too selfish to smile at anybody's wit but his own, and little he had. Do you remember the Congress of Vienna?"
"Do I—1815?"
"Some such year. Or was it in 1750 when we saw Casanova at Venice? Well—" At this point the alarm-signal went off, and the mob went over to the opera. The young bartender's heart was beating so fast that it "leapt up in his bosom," as he described it. Two middle-aged men talking of a century ago as calmly as if they had spoken of yesterday flustered him a bit. He heard the dates. He noticed the perfectly natural manner in which events were mentioned. There was no mystification. For the first time in his life Michael was sorry the between-act pause was so short, and he longed for the next one, though fatigued from the labours of the last. Would these gentlemen return for more cognac? In an hour they came back with the crowd, again drank old five-star brandy, and gossiped about a lot of incomprehensible things that had evidently taken place in the sixteenth or seventeenth century; at least, Michael overheard them disputing dates, and one of them bet the other that the big fire in London occurred in 1666, and referred the question to Mr. Peppers, or Peps—some such name.
"Ah, poor old Pepys," sighed the dark man; "if he had only taken better care of himself he might have been with us to-day instead of mouldering in his grave."