Who Cares? Part 8

"I like it," said Joan.

The hall was alive with people, laughing and talking, and the walls with the rather bold designs of the posters. A band, which made up in vim and go what it lacked in numbers, was playing a selection from "The Chocolate Soldier." The place was full of the smell of garlic and cigarette smoke and coffee. There was a certain dramatic animation among the waiters, characteristically Latin. Few of the diners wore evening clothes. The walls were refreshingly free from the hideous gold decorations of the average hotel.

Men stared at Joan with undisguised interest and approbation. Her virginity was like the breath of spring in the room. Women looked after Palgrave in the same way. Into that semi-Bohemianism he struck a rather surprising note, like the sudden advent of caviar and champagne upon a table of beer and pickles.

They were given a table near the wall by the window, far too close to other tables for complete comfort. Waiters were required to be gymnasts to slide between them and avoid an accident. Palgrave ordered without any hesitation, like a newspaper man finding his way through a daily paper.

"How do you like it?" he said.

Joan looked about her. Mostly the tables were occupied by a man and a woman, but at a few were four and six of both in equal numbers, and here and there parties of men. At one or two, women with eccentric heads sat together in curious garments which had the appearance of being made at home on the spur of the moment. They smoked between mouthfuls and laughed without restraint. Some of the men wore longish hair and the double tie of those who wish to be mistaken for dramatists. Others affected a poetic disarrangement of collar, and fantastic beards. There were others who had wandered over the border of middle age and who were bald and strangely adipose, with mackerel eyes and unpleasant mouths. They were with young girls, gaudily but shabbily dressed, shopgirls perhaps, or artists' models or stenographers, who in dull and sordid lives grappled any chance to obtain a square meal, even if it had to be accessory to such companionship. The minority of men present was made up of honest, clean, commonplace citizens who were there for a good dinner in surroundings that offered a certain stimulus to the imagination.

"Who are they all?" asked Joan, beating time with a finger to the lilting tune which the little band had just begun, with obvious enjoyment. "Adventurers, mostly, I imagine," replied Palgrave, not unpleased to play Baedeker to a girl who was becoming more and more attractive to him. "I mean people who live by their wits--writers, ill.u.s.trators, actors, newspaper men, with a smattering of Wall Street brokers seeking a little mild diversion as we are, and foreigners to whom this place has a sentimental interest because it reminds them of home. Sophisticated children, most of them, optimists with moments of hideous pessimism, enthusiasts at various stages of Parna.s.sus, the peak of which is lighted with a huge dollar sign. A friendly, kindly lot, hard-working and temperamental, with some brilliance and a rather high level of cleverness--slaves of the magazine, probably, and therefore not able to throw stones farther into the future than the end of the month. This is not a country in which literature and art can ever grow big; the cost of living is too high. The modern Chatterton detests garrets and must drive something with an engine in it, whatever the name it goes by."

There was one electrical moment during the next hour which shook the complacency of every one in the larger room and forced the thoughts, even of those who deliberately turned their backs to the drama of Europe, out across the waters which they fondly and fatuously hoped cut off the United States from ever being singed by the blaze. The little band was playing one of those rather feeble descriptive pieces which begin with soft, peaceful music with the suggestion of the life of a farmyard, and the sound of church bells, swing into the approach of armed men with shrill bugle calls, become chaotic with the rush of fearful women and children, and the commencement of heavy artillery, and wind up with the broad triumphant strains of a national anthem. It happened, naturally enough, that the particular national anthem chosen by the energetic and patriotic man who led the band at the piano was "The Ma.r.s.eillaise."

The incessant chatter and laughter went on as usual. The music had no more effect upon the closely filled room than a hackneyed ragtime.

Suddenly, as the first few notes of that immortal air rang out, a little old white-haired man, dining in a corner with a much-bosomed, elderly woman, sprang to his feet and in a voice vibrating with the fervor of emotion screamed "Vive la France--vive la patrie!" again and again.

Instantly, from here and there, other men, stout and middle-aged, lifted out of their chairs by this intense and beautiful burst of feeling, joined in that old heart-cry, and for two or three shattering minutes the air was rent with hoa.r.s.e shouts of "Vive Joffre," "Vive la France," "Vive la patrie," to the louder and louder undercurrent of music. Indifference, complacency, neutrality, gave way. There was a general uprising and uproar; and America, as represented by that olla podrida of the professions, including the one which is the oldest in the world, paid homage and tribute and yelled sympathy to those few Frenchmen among them whose pa.s.sionate love of country found almost hysterical vent at the sound of the hymn which had stirred all France to a height of bravery and sacrifice never before reached in the history of nations.

There were one or two hisses and several scoffing laughs, but these were instantly drowned by vigorous hand-clapping. The next moment the room resumed its normal appearance.

When Palgrave, who had been surprised to find himself on his feet, sat down again, he saw that Joan's lips were trembling and that there were tears in her eyes. He gave a little laugh, but before he could say any thing, her hand was on his arm. "No, don't," she said. "Let it go without a single word. It was too good for sarcasm."

"Oddly enough, I had no sarcasm ready," replied Palgrave. "When our time comes, I wonder whether we shall have an eightieth part of that enthusiasm for our little old tune. What do you think?"

"Our time? What time?"

"The time when we have to get into this melee or become the pariah dog among countries. I don't profess to any knowledge of international affairs, but any fool can see that our sham neutrality will be the most costly piece of political blundering ever perpetrated in history. Here we are in 1915. The war's nine months old. For every day we stand aside we shall eventually pay a year's bill."

"That's all too deep for me," said Joan. "And anyway, I shan't be asked to pay anything. What shall we do now?"

"What would you like to do? Go on to the Ritz and dance?" He had a sudden desire to hold this girl in his arms.

"Why not? I'm on the verge of getting fed up with this place. Let's give civilization a turn."

"I think so." He beckoned to his waiter. "The check," he said. "Sharp's the word, please."

The Crystal Room was not content with one band. Even musicians must sometimes pause for breath, and anything like a break in the jangle and noise might bring depression to the diners who had crowded in to dance.

As soon, therefore, as the left band was exhausted, the one on the right sprang in with renewed and feverish energy. Whatever melody there might have been in the incessant ragtime and fox trots was lost beneath the bang and clang of drum and cymbals, to which had been added other more ingenious ear tortures in the shape of rattles and whistles.

Broken-collared men and faded women struggled for elbow room like a ma.s.s of flies caught on sticky paper. There was something both heathenish and pathetic in the whole thing. The place was reekingly hot.

"Come on," said Joan, her blood stirred by the movement and sound.

Palgrave held her close and edged his way into the crowd between pointed bare elbows and tightly clasped hands.

"They call this dancing!" he said.

"What do you call it?"

"A bullfight in Hades." And he laughed and put his cheek against her hair and held her young slim body against his own. What did he care what it was or where they were? He had all the excuse that he needed to get the sense and scent of her. His utter distaste of being bruised and b.u.mped, and of adding himself to a heterogeneous collection of people with no more individuality than sheep, who followed each other from place to place in flocks after the manner of sheep, left him. This girl was something more than a young, naive creature from the country, childishly keen to do everything and go everywhere at fever heat--something more than the very epitome of triumphant youth as clean and sweet as apple blossoms, with whom to flirt and pose as being the blase man of the world, the Mr. Know-All of civilization, a wild flower in a hot house. Attracted at once by her exquisite coloring and delicious profile, and amused by her imperative manner and intolerant point of view, he had now begun to be piqued and intrigued by her insurgent way of treating marriage and of ignoring her husband--by her a.s.sumption of s.e.xlessness and the fact that she was unmoved by his compliments and looked at him with eyes in which there was no remote suggestion of physical interest.

And it was this att.i.tude, new to him hitherto on his easy way, that began to challenge him, to stir in him a desire to bring her down to his own level, to make her fall in love and become what he called human. He had given her several evenings, and had put himself out to cater to her eager demand to see life and burn the night away in crowds and noise. He had treated her, this young, new thing, as he was in the habit of treating any beautiful woman with whom he was on the verge of an affair and who realized the art of give and take. But more than ever she conveyed the impression of s.e.x detachment to which he was wholly unaccustomed. He might have been any inarticulate lad of her own age, useful as a companion, to be ordered to fetch and carry, dance or walk, go or come. At that moment there was no woman in the city for whom he would undergo the boredom and the bruising and the dementia of such a place as the one to which she had drawn him. He was not a provincial who imagined that it was the smart thing to attend this dull orgy and struggle on a polished floor packed as in a sardine tin. Years ago he had outgrown cabaret mania and recovered from the fascination of syncopation. And yet here he was, once more, against all his fastidiousness, playing the out-of-town lad to a girl who took everything and gave nothing in return. It was absurd, fantastic. He was Gilbert Palgrave, the man who picked and chose, for whose attentions many women would give their ears, who stood in satirical aloofness from the general ruck; and as he held Joan in his arms and made sporadic efforts to dance whenever there was a few inches of room in which to do so, using all his ingenuity to dodge the menace of the elbows and feet of people who pushed and forced as though they were in a subway crush, he told himself that he would make it his business from that moment onward to lay siege to Joan, apply to her all his well-proved gifts of attraction and eventually make her pay his price for services rendered.

He had just arrived at this cold-blooded determination when, to his complete astonishment and annoyance, a strong, muscular form thrust itself roughly between himself and Joan and swept her away.

III

"Marty!" cried Joan.

There was a curious glint in Martin's gray eyes, like the flash of steel in front of a window. His jaw was set, and his face strangely white.

"You said you were going to bed."

"I was going to bed, Marty dear."

"What are you doing here, then?"

"I changed my mind, old boy, and went out to dinner."

"Chucked me in favor of Palgrave."

"No, I didn't."

"What then?"

"He rang up after you'd gone; and going to bed like an old crock seemed silly and feeble, and so I dressed and went out."

"Why with that rotter Palgrave?"

"Why not? And why rotter?"

"You don't answer my question!"

"Have I got to answer your question?"

"You're my wife, although you don't seem to know it; and I object to Pargrave."

"I can't help that, Marty. I like him, you see, and humble little person as I am, I can't be expected to turn my back on every one except the men you choose for me."

"I don't choose any men for you. I want you for myself."

"Dear old Marty, but you've got me forever!"

"No, I haven't. You're less mine now than you were when I only saw you in dreams. But all the same you're my wife, and I tell you now, you sha'n't be handled by a man like Palgrave."