The Strollers Part 36

Course follows course; entree, releve, ragout, Ambrosial sauces, pungent, after luscious soup.

The landlord spurs his guests to fresh attack, With frica.s.see, rechauffe and omelets; A toothsome feast that Apicius would fain have served, While wine, divine, new zeal in all begets.

Who is this host, my Muse, pray say?

Who but that prodigal, Tortier!

"There, my dear," concluded Straws, "those feet are pretty wobbly to walk, but flattery moves on lame legs faster than truth will travel on two good ones. Besides, I haven't time to polish them properly, or the mess in the frying-pan will spoil. Better spoil the poem than the contents of the flesh pots! Now if--dear me, Celestina, if you haven't let the coffee pot boil over!"

"Oh, Monsieur," cried the child, almost weeping again. "I forgot to watch it! I just couldn't while you were writing poetry."

"The excuse more than condones the offense," continued the other. "But as I was about to say, you take this poem to Monsieur Tortier, make your prettiest bow and courtesy--let me see you make a courtesy."

The girl bowed as dainty as a little d.u.c.h.ess.

"That should melt a heart of stone in itself," commented Straws. "But Tortier's is flint! After that charming bow, you will give him my compliments; Mr. Straws' compliments, remember; and, would he be kind enough just to glance over this poem which Mr. Straws, with much mental effort, has prepared, and which, if it be acceptable to Monsieur Tortier, will appear in Mr. Straws' famous and much-talked-of column in the paper?"

"Oh, Monsieur, I can't remember all that!" said the girl.

"Do it your own way then. Besides, it will be better than mine."

With the poem hugged to her breast, the child fairly flew out of the room, leaving Straws a prey to conflicting emotions. He experienced in those moments of suspense all the doubts and fears of the nestling bard or the tadpole litterateur, awaiting the pleasure and sentence of the august editor or the puissant publisher. Tortier had been suddenly exalted to the judge's lofty pedestal. Would he forthwith be an imperial autocrat; turn tyrant or Thersites; or become critic, one of "those graminivorous animals which gain subsistence by gorging upon buds and leaves of the young shrubs of the forest, robbing them of their verdure and r.e.t.a.r.ding their progress to maturity"?

Straws' anxiety was trouble's labor lost. Celestina appeared, the glad messenger of success, and now, as she came dancing into the room, bore in her arms the fruits of victory which she laid before the poet with sparkling eyes and laughing lips.

"So the poem was accepted?" murmured Straws. "Discerning Tortier!

Excellent dilettante! Let him henceforth be known as a man of taste!"

Here the poet critically examined the bottle. "Nothing vapid, thin or characterless there!" he added, holding it before the blaze in the grate. "Positively I'll dedicate my forthcoming book to him. 'To that worshipful master and patron, the tasteful Tortier!' What did he say, Celestina, when you tendered him the poem?"

"At first he frowned and then he looked thoughtful. And then he gave me some orange syrup. And then--O, I don't want to say!" A look of unutterable concern displacing the happiness on her features.

"Say on, my dear!" cried Straws.

"He--he said he--he didn't think much of it as--O, I can't tell you; I can't! I can't!"

"Celestina," said the poet sternly, "tell me at once. I command you."

"He said he didn't think much of it as poetry, but that people would read it and come to his _cafe_ and--O dear, O dear!"

"Beast! Brute! Parvenu! But there, don't cry, my dear. We have much to be thankful for--we have the bottle."

"Oh, yes," she said with conviction, and brightening a bit. "We have the bottle." And as she spoke, "pop" it went, and Celestina laughed.

"May I set your table?" she asked.

"After your inestimable service to me, my dear, I find it impossible to refuse," he replied gravely.

"How good you are!" she remarked, placing a rather soiled cloth, which she found somewhere, over a battered trunk.

"I try not to be, but I can't help it!" answered the poet modestly.

"No; that's it; you can't help it!" she returned, moving lightly around the room, emptying the contents of the frying-pan--now an aromatic jumble--on to a cracked blue platter, and setting knife and fork, and a plate, also blue, before him! "And may I wait on you, too?"

"Well, as a special favor--" He paused, appearing to ponder deeply and darkly.

Her eyes were bent upon his face with mute appeal, her suspense so great she stood stock-still in the middle of the floor, frying-pan in hand.

"Yes; you may wait on me," he said finally, after perplexed and weighty rumination.

At that her little feet fairly twinkled, but her hand was ever so careful as she took the coffee pot from the fire and put it near the blue plate. A gla.s.s--how well she knew where everything was!--she found in some mysterious corner and, sitting down on the floor, cross-legged like a little Turk, a mere mite almost lost in the semi-obscurity of the room, she polished it a.s.siduously upon the corner of the table cloth until it shone free from specks of dust; all the time humming very lightly like a bird, or a housewife whose heart is in her work. A strange song, a curious bit of melody that seemed to spring from some dark past and to presage a future, equally sunless.

"Your supper is ready, Monsieur," she said, rising.

"And I am ready for it. Why, how nicely the table looks! Really, when we both grow up, I think we should take a silver ship and sail to some silver sh.o.r.e and live together there forever and evermore. How would you like it?"

Celestina's lips were mute, but her eyes were full of rapturous response, and then became suddenly shy, as though afraid of their own happiness.

"May I pour your wine?" she asked, with downcast lashes.

"Can you manage it and not spill a drop? Remember Cratinus wept and died of grief seeing his wine--no doubt, this same vintage--spilt!"

But Straws was not called upon to emulate this cla.s.sic example. The feat of filling his gla.s.s was deftly accomplished, and a moment later the poet raised it with, "'Drink to me only with thine eyes!'" An appropriate sentiment for Celestina who had nothing else to drink to him with. "Won't you have some of this--what shall I call it?--hash, stew or ration?"

"Oh, I've had my supper," she answered.

"How fortunate for you, my dear! It isn't exactly a company bill of fare! But everything is what I call snug and cozy. Here we are high up in the world--right under the roof--all by ourselves, with n.o.body to disturb us--"

A heavy footfall without; rap, rap, rap, on the door; no timid, faltering knock, but a firm application of somebody's knuckles!

"It's that Jack-in-the-box Frenchman," muttered the writer. "Go to the devil!" he called out.

The door opened.

"You have an original way of receiving visitors!" drawled a languid voice, and the glance of the surprised poet fell upon Edward Mauville.

"Really, I don't know whether to come in or not," continued the latter at the threshold.

"I beg your pardon," murmured Straws. "I thought it was a--"

"Creditor?" suggested Mauville, with an amused smile. "I know the cla.s.s. Don't apologize! I am intruding. Quite a family party!" he went on, his gaze resting upon Celestina and the interrupted repast.

With his elegant attire, satin waistcoat and fine ruffles, he seemed out of place in the attic nook of the Muse; a lordling who had wandered by mistake into the wrong room. But he bore himself with the easy a.s.surance of a man who could adapt himself to any surroundings; even to Calliope's shabby boudoir!

"My dear," remarked the disconcerted bard, "get a chair for Mr.

Mauville. Or--I beg your pardon--would you mind sitting on the bed?

Won't you have some wine? Celestina, bring another gla.s.s."

But the girl only stood and stared at the dark, courtly being who thus unexpectedly had burst in upon them.

"There isn't any more," she finally managed to say. "You've got the only gla.s.s there is, please!"

"Dear me; dear me!" exclaimed Straws. "How gla.s.ses do get broken! I have so few occasions to use them, too, for I don't very often have visitors."

"You are surprised to see me?" continued Mauville, pleasantly, seating himself on the edge of the bed. "Go on with your supper. You don't mind my smoking while you eat?"