“I shall wish to remain here for some time?” I said. “Probably the entire—” I hesitated; considering the hour I scarcely knew whether to say “evening” or “morning.” At last I said “night” as a compromise.
The bearded person seemed doubtful.
“There will be a great demand later,” he said. “To oblige Monsieur is of course our desire, but.... Ah, merci, Monsieur, I will see that Monsieur is not disturbed.”
The reason for his change of heart was the universal one in restaurants. He put the reason in his pocket and summoned a waiter to take my order.
I gave the order, a modest one, which dropped me a mile or two in the waiter's estimation. However, after a glance at my fellow-diners at nearby tables, I achieved a partial uplift by ordering a bottle of extremely expensive wine. I had had the idea that, being in France, the home of champagne, that beverage would be cheap or, at least, moderately priced. But in L'Abbaye the idea seemed to be erroneous.
The wine was brought immediately; the supper was somewhat delayed. I did not care. I had not come there to eat—or to drink, either, for that matter. I had come—I scarcely knew why I had come. That Frances Morley would be singing in a place like this I did not believe. This was the sort of “abbey” that A. Carleton Heathcroft would be most likely to visit, that was true, but that he had seen her here was most improbable. The coincidence of the “abbey” name would not have brought me there, of itself. Herbert Bayliss had given me to understand, although he had not said it, that she was not singing in a church and he had found the idea of her being where she was “awful.” It was because of what he had said that I had come, as a sort of last chance, a forlorn hope. Of course she would not be here, a hired singer in a Paris night restaurant; that was impossible.
How impossible it was likely to be I realized more fully during the next hour. There was nothing particularly “awful” about L'Abbaye of itself—at first, nor, perhaps, even later; at least the awfulness was well covered. The program of entertainment was awful enough, if deadly mediocrity is awful. A big darkey, dressed in a suit which reminded me of the “end man” at an old-time minstrel show, sang “My Alabama Coon,” accompanying himself, more or less intimately, on the banjo. I could have heard the same thing, better done, at a ten cent theater in the States, where this chap had doubtless served an apprenticeship. However, the audience, which was growing larger every minute, seemed to find the bellowing enjoyable and applauded loudly. Then a feminine person did a Castilian dance between the tables. I was ready to declare a second war with Spain when she had finished. Then there was an orchestral interval, during which the tables filled.
The impossibility of Frances singing in a place like this became more certain each minute, to my mind. I called the waiter.
“Does Mademoiselle Juno sing here this evening?” I asked, in my lame French.
He shook his head. “Non, Monsieur,” he answered, absently, and hastened on with the bottle he was carrying.