The colonel dug an elbow into his ribs with ribald camaraderie.
35
Somehow, the next day, he was too lackadaisical about the engage.. ment even to send his perfunctory regrets in time, and so before he knew it, it was evening, the appointment had become confirmed if only by default, and it was too late to extricate himself from it without being guilty of the grossest rudeness, which would not have been the case had he canceled it a few hours earlier.
He'd lain down on his bed, fully dressed, late in the afternoon for a short nap, and when he awoke the time set was already imminent, and there was nothing left to do now but fulfill the engagement.
He sighed and grimaced privately to his mirror, but then commenced the necessary preparations nonetheless, stirring his brush vigorously within his thick crockery mug until foam swelled up and beaded driblets of it ran down the sides. He could remain a half-hour, he promised himself, as a token of participation, then arrange to have himself called away by one of the waiters with a decoy message, and leave. Making sure to pay his share of the entertainment before he did, so they wouldn't think that the motive. They would be offended, he supposed, but less than if he were not to appear at all.
Fortified by this intention, shaved and cleanly shirted, he shrugged on his coat, thumbed open his money-fold to see that it was sufficiently well filled, and glumly set forth. No celebrant ever started out with poorer grace or longer face to join what was meant to be a pleasure party. He was swearing softly under his breath as he closed the door of his room behind him: at the overgregarious colonel for inveigling him into this; at the unknown he was expected to pay Court to for the mere fact that she was a woman and so could force him into a position where he was obliged to; and at himself, first and foremost, for not having had the bluntness to refuse point-blank the night before when the invitation had first been put to him.
Some vapid, simpering heifer; everyone's leavings. He could imagine the colonel's taste in women, judging by the man himself.
A ten-minute walk, in this caustic frame of mind, and unmellowed to the very end by the spangled brocade of starred sky hanging over him, had brought him to his destination.
The Grotto was a long, narrow., cabinlike, single-story structure, flimsy and unprepossessing on the outside like many another ephemeral holiday resort catering-place. Gas and oil light rayed forth from every crack and seam of it, tinted rose and blue by some peculiarity of shading on the inside. The interior, due to some depression in the ground, was somewhat lower than the walks outside, so that he had to descend a short flight of entry steps once he had been bowed in by the colored door-flunkey. The main dining room itself, seen from their top, was a disordered litter of white-clothed table Xops, heads studding them in circular formation, and each one set with a rose or blue-shaded table lamp, an innovation borrowed from Europe, which dimmed the glare, usual in such places, to a twilight softness and created a suggestion of illicit revelry and clandestine romance. It gave the.place the appearance of a field of blinking fireflies.
A pompous dining steward, with wide-spreading frizzed sideburns, clasping a bill-of-fare slantwise like a painter holding a palette, greeted him at the foot of the stairs.
"Are you alone, sir? May I show you to a table?"
"No, I was to join a party," Durand said. "Colonel Worth and friends. In one of the private booths. Which way are they?"
"Oh, straight to the back, sir. At the far end of the room. You are expected. They are in the first one on the right."
He made his way down the long central lane of clearance to the rear, like someone wresting his way through a brawl, auditory and olfactory, if not combative. Through cellular entities or zones of disparate food odors, that remained isolated, each in its little nucleus, refusing to mingle; now lobster, now charcoaled steak, now soggy linen and spilled wine. Through dismembered snatches of conversation and laughter that likewise remained compartmentalized, each within its own little circular area.
"When he's with me he says one thing, and when he's with the next girl he says another. Oh, I've heard all about you, never you mind !"
"--an administration that's the ruination of this country! And I don't care who hears me, I'm entitled to my opinion!"
"--and now I come to the best part of the story. This is the part that will delight you--"
At the back, the room narrowed to a single serving passage leading to the kitchen. Lining each side of this, however, were openings leading into the little private alcoves or dining nooks Worth had mentioned. All alike discreetly curtained-off from view, although otherwise they were doorless. The nearest one on either side, however, was not strictly parallel to the passage but placed slantwise to it, cutting off the corner.
As he fixed his eyes upon the one to the right, marking that for his eventual destination, though still a little distance short of it, with the last bank of tables projecting somewhat between, the protective curtain gashed back at one side and a waiter came out backward, in the act of withdrawal but lingering a moment half-in halfout to allow the completion of some instruction being given him. He held the curtain, for that moment, away from the wall in a sort of diamond-shaped aperture, with one hand.
Durand's foot, striking ground, never moved on again, never took him a space nearer.
It was as if a cameo of purest line, of clearest design, were in that opening, held there for Durand to see, a cameo of dazzling clarity, presented against a dark velvet mounting.
On one side, fluctuating with utterance of orders to the waiter, was a slice of the lumpy profile of the colonel. At the other, facing back toward him, was a slice of the smooth-turned profile of an unknown, dark of hair and dark of eye.
Midway between the two, facing outward, bust-length, white as alabaster, dazzling as marble, regal as a diminutive Juno, beautiful as a blonde Venus or the Helen of the Trojans, were the face and throat and bared shoulders and half-bared bosom that he would never forget, that he could never forget, brought as if by magic transmutation back from out his dreams into the living substance again.
Julia.
He could even see the light on her hair, in moving golden sheen. Even see the passing glint, as of crystal, as her eyes moved.
Julia, the killer. The destroyer of his heart.
That she failed to see him out there was incredible. All but the pupils of her eyes alone were bearing straight toward him. They must have been deflected, unnoticeable at that distance, toward one or the other of her table companions, to miss striking him.
The waiter dropped his restraining hand, the curtainside swept to the wall, the cameo was blotted out.
He stood there as stunned, as blasted, as robbed of his powers of motion, as though that white, searing glimpse--there, then gone again--had been a flash of lightning which had struck too close and fused him to the ground. All its effects lacked was to cause him to fall flat in front of everybody, then and there.
Then a waiter, hurrying obliviously by, jarred against him, and that set him into motion at last; as one ball strikes another on a billiard table, starting it off.
He was going back the other way, the way he'd come, now, unsteadily, jostling into tables and the backs of chairs that lined his route, past momentarily upturned, questioning faces, past a blurred succession of table lamps like worthless beacons that only confused and failed to guide him straight through their midst.
He reached the other end of the raucous place, and the same steward as before came solicitously to his side.
"Did you fail to find your party, sir?"
"I--I've changed my mind." He took out his money-fold, crushed an incredible ten-dollar bill into the man's hand. "I haven't been here asking for them. You didn't see me."
He stumbled up the steps and out, lurching as though he'd filled himself with wine in those few minutes. Wine of hate, ferment of the grapes of wrath.