“You do that like a hen,” said Fred.
“It tastes like a sunset!”
“No—no—that’s where you’re all wrong. It’s an Aurora Borealis.”
“Not at all—it’s the grenadine I refer to—the grenadine gives it a kind of glow—if you know what I mean—I’ll compromise with you by calling it an Alpenglow.”
“That’s better. That’s not so bad. Because it’s cold, you know—but it has a fire in it like the light in a moonstone.
“Yes. I feel it. By gosh, it’s good. There’s an enormous cabbage rose opening in my belly—with deep, crimson petals.”
“Yes, it certainly gets you forrader,” sighed Fred. “Bill will be furious when he hears we’ve been having Hop Toads. It was his discovery. By the same token, we ought to move. Bill will be waiting.”
They rose, they climbed the stairs, they pushed through the glass revolving doors, they crossed the white street, and descended the match-strewn stairs into Jacot’s. It was another such room as they had just left, with a bar in one corner. Most of the tables were marble-topped and bare; but one or two were covered with tablecloths, and at one of these Bill Caffrey was sitting, with his chin sunk in his hands. He watched their approach without change of expression.
“Hail,” he said.
“Hail,” said Fred.
“Hail.”
“We’ve been having Hop Toads,” said Fred.
“Confound it! Why didn’t I think of that?… My imagination couldn’t get any farther than a Lone Tree.”
“Tubby’s a bachelor.”
“Ah, indeed.”
“His wife’s gone away—left him flat.”
“Do tell.”
“And so he’s breaking out; going to get riotously drunk, like the time when he slept in the ash barrel.”
“Nothing of the sort. Just because I suggested a modest bottle of Burgundy—”
He beamed, he felt himself beaming, as he left the sentence hanging in air; Fred and Bill grinned sympathetically; and all three gave themselves to the business of ordering. Freshwater-fattened oysters from Poppennessett. Mock turtle soup. Filet mignon with mushrooms and fried egg-plant. Ice-cream—pistachio—and coffee. And two bottles of Beaune. Yes, sir, and again, yes, sir, said the waiter; making solemn notes, as if for a ritual; and in the pauses could be heard the bartender, who was cracking ice with the handle of a chisel. The bloated Poppennessett. The watery bivalve. And the imprisoned sunlight of the Beaune. Musing of these delights, already in his thought so vivid and intense, the Professor again felt suddenly and inexplicably happy. Life was like this—the gloominess of a huge sooty railway station on a winter’s night, the forlorn clanging of locomotive bells, the scurrying of sodden commuters, and then this marvelous translation to another world. A world of soiled mosaic floors, bottles of scarlet-capped Burgundy, brass spittoons (florid survival of a barbarous age), and the magnificent bar, with its baroque richness of gilt and mirrors, and its shelves of many-colored bottles, upheld by brown dryads of carved wood. What luxury! What comfort! What freedom! And the joy of sitting with cynical Fred and the impassive, morosely subtle Bill.
“You know,” said Bill, “I really like English oysters better than American ones.”
“Oh, come,” said Fred.
“Yes. And the Dutch, too. They have a more frankly marine taste—seaweedy and salt, like those slippery blistered kelpy things that you pop with your fingernails. These great things—good Lord, you might as well be biting bags full of water.”
“Anglomania,” said the Professor.
“Yes. And have you noticed his tweed suit?” murmured Fred. “Oh! And that reminds me.”
The waiter put down the soup and poured the Burgundy. They lifted the thin goblets, all three, sniffed appreciatively, and simultaneously drank.
“That reminds you of what,” said Bill, somberly.
“Tubby! We must get him to tell his story.”
“What story?”
“The one on the ship. Coming back last winter.”
“By George, yes!” said the Professor. “Let’s have it, Bill.”
Bill permitted himself the tiniest of guarded smiles, then again tasted his Burgundy. He frowned at his soup. Perplexed and pleased, and a little embarrassed also.
“No,” he said. “I really couldn’t. Not at the point of the gun, like this. Maybe some other time.”
Fred smiled—slowly and charmingly.
“Isn’t he skillful? This is his way of beating up our interest.”
“Not at all. I’d just as lief tell it—but the trouble is, you’re both of you in the wrong state of mind for it.”
“How come?” said the Professor.
“Because you’re both expecting something—well, scandalous. This isn’t that sort of thing at all.”
“No?”
“No.… There are plenty of episodes of this kind, as you know, that delight one just because they are scandalous and strange. Like that tale Frisky Speare told us, of his exploit on the train to New York. All amusing enough, too. But this isn’t like that—and I’m not like that either.”
“Ho ho,” said Fred, dryly.”
“Ho ho,” said Bill. “I’m not. I’m neither polygamous nor promiscuous, and I’m not the sort that women throw themselves at. That’s one thing that made this thing surprising. The other thing that made something—to my mind—extraordinarily lovely of it, was its spiritual intensity.”
The Professor crunched a small slippery mushroom, wiped his lips, and drank a full rich mouthful of Burgundy. Spiritual intensity. Just the kind of thing Bill would be going in for. Just the kind of guard—defense—he would erect about his indiscretions. Honest? Dishonest? Honest! One had only to look at his compressed lips, downturned with melancholy, and the level serious gray eyes, to recognize in Bill the contemplative stillness of spirit which would, precisely, make a distinction of this kind. One could imagine him, in the very midst of the most sordid of adventures, sitting perfectly quiet, thus, in the act of extracting its spiritual beauty. And then rising, hat in hand, and departing, with this beauty among his permanent possessions.
“It sounds all the better,” said the Professor.
“It was all the better.… I should preface the story by saying that on the ship with me, when we sailed from Cherbourg, were a New York newspaper man whom I knew slightly, a friend of his, and a young graduate student who worked with me three years ago. I ran into them after the adventure had started, and their presence—they were always sitting in the smoking room—gave a queer and delightful contrapuntal quality to the adventure itself. If I’d run into them before the adventure started, the adventure would probably never have happened at all. For in that case I’d have arranged to sit at their table the first night, and I wouldn’t have met Lovely.”
“Lovely?” Fred’s voice was just faintly ironical.
“Lovely. That’s what I called her. I never called her anything else; in fact, for several days I didn’t know her name.”
He paused, stared down at the tablecloth, shifted a spoon beside his plate, and raised his half-filled glass.
“She and her mother sat at my table on the first night, you see, before the regular places had been assigned. I was there first—and then she came, a little bit flustered, and sat down opposite. I’d seen her half an hour before on the deck—just a glimpse—but enough to see that she was one of the loveliest beings my eyes had ever fallen upon. An astonishingly beautiful girl, about twenty-five.”
“Of course,” murmured Fred.
“Don’t be snooty. She was. And the minute—the minute—she looked at me, across the table, I could see that something extraordinary was going to happen. Her eyes had that astonished brilliance that only happens when one recognizes—as one does only once or twice in a lifetime—what the newspapers used to call a soul-mate. I was electrified. I’m not used to being looked at in that fashion. I’m a sober God-fearing old citizen, as you both know, not at all given to flirtation—but the minute she looked at me like that I began to feel subtly transfigured myself. I felt my own eyes opening wider, and a light in my face to which I’m not in the least accustomed.”