CHAPTER XIII
The Russian Ballet opened with what was called on the program, "A ballet comi-dramatic by Warslav Nijinsky, entitled 'Till Eulenspiegel.'" It would have been more to the point to have scheduled it as a pantomime; at least, such a course would have proved somewhat illuminating to an audience a little in the dark concerning the nature of the entertainment to be set before it. San Francisco, schooled in the memory of hectic opera seasons with their inevitable pirouetting, tarlatan-skirted ballets, had come to the performance with a rather set notion as to what it had a right to expect. True, barefoot dancers by the score had swept in upon the town, and it had been ravished by the combined charms of Pavlova and Mordkin, but all of these novelties at least had ministered to an unsophisticated desire to see the principals starred in big type on the program and constantly in the limelight. Therefore when the curtain fell upon a ballet that was neither danced nor postured, and with the leading dancer of the troupe remaining in the picture instead of an arresting and flamboyant spot upon it, there was little wonder that the applause was at once perfunctory and puzzled.
Neither the dancers nor their new art was any novelty to Ned Stillman. He had seen both in Paris, and again in New York. But he had to confess that this third view was proving the most enjoyable of all, and he was amused and a trifle supercilious at the air of frank disapproval throughout the audience. Indeed, he became so interested in analyzing his fellow-townsmen's attitude that momentarily he forgot his box party was a challenge to any and all who cared to interest themselves in discovering his guests.
So far he had not been conscious of a single pair of opera-glasses turned their way and he began to feel at once cheated, but, if the truth were told, a trifle relieved. He knew almost as soon as he had committed to the venture that it was cheap and in bad taste, and yet he could not bring himself to the point of acknowledging his mistake. He had an uncomfortable feeling also that Claire Robson was facing the ordeal of a box with silent heroism, not that she was a woman vulgar enough to dread a conspicuous position in itself, but because she had an instinctive sense of what was fitting. He had not mentioned a box party when he had first asked her. He merely had said:
"How would you like a night off Friday?"
"A night off? I'm scheduled for a turn with Mrs. Condor."
"Well, and if she should be willing to let you go?"
She had assented eagerly, and when he mentioned the Russian Ballet she gave a cry of delight.
"Edington and his sister, Mrs. Forsythe, are going, too," he explained, rather hastily. "I.... I got a box this morning."
"A box?" Her voice had risen dubiously.
"There's nothing else left that is decent," he had lied to her.
But he saw that she was far from happy at the prospect, although she was too proud to voice any further protests.
Curiously enough, even Phil Edington had demurred.
"A box? What's the big idea? Why don't you get some seats in the orchestra?... Oh, I don't care a rap! Do as you want, but I thought that perhaps...."
At that point he had begun to grow irritated; he decided obstinately that his guests would either go in a box or remain at home.
Well, they had come in a box, and the audience appeared to be ignoring them. He had expected something more brilliant in the way of an assembly, but the house was dressed, on the whole, rather illy for the occasion, as San Francisco audiences quite often are. To begin with, the Valencia Theater was out of the beaten path, and a heavy rain was falling. This had the effect of making the prudent and frugal, who were denied the comfort of either limousines or taxis, decide on street costume instead of evening fripperies. Only the very smartest people could afford to ignore the elements, and even these were obliged to withstand the chill of a draughty playhouse by snuggling close into their opera cloaks and thus concealing the bare throats and flashing jewels that a more comfortable environment might have disclosed. On the whole, he was disappointed. One of his reasons for deciding upon a box was to give Claire the treat of a scintillating audience seen from a perfect vantage-point. But he had forgotten that his native town rarely dazzled the spectators except for grand opera at staggering prices, and even then there were always plenty of recalcitrant males in their business suits to spoil the picture. San Francisco had not yet reached the point where its men consciously and as a whole dressed for the occasion; there was still the sneer of effeminacy directed at those who insisted on taking seriously the matter of suitable raiment.
To-night Claire had made an effort at extreme simplicity. She was in severe black, open slightly at the throat, and a large artificial pink rose added a single note of color. Having no jewels, she wore none, and her hair fell away from her brow in a grace utterly natural and charming. He had always thought of her hair vaguely as dark—to-night, standing just behind her where the light searched out its half-tones, he discovered glinting bits that ran all the way from burnished copper to shining gold. During the first number she sat slightly forward, intent on letting no detail escape. When the curtain fell upon the whimsical Till dangling from a gibbet in the medieval market-place, Stillman leaned forward and said:
"What do you think of it?"
He did not realize how much it meant to have her strike just the proper note, until his heart bounded with satisfaction at her frank and unstudied answer:
"I really don't know, Mr. Stillman. It's so different. You see, I was looking for something more...."
She stopped suddenly as if it occurred to her that, after all, she could not say precisely just what she had been looking for. "But it's tremendously interesting, of course," she hastened to add.
He glowed even at her eagerness to make him understand that she was finding her very indecision a joy.
"Yes, it was the same with me ... at first," he reassured her. "I've seen this all before, you know ... abroad and in New York. Not precisely this act, but something along the same lines."
"I almost missed placing Nijinsky," she hesitated. "It was all rather mystical and vague.... And those subdued lights.... I wish I could see it all again, now that I've caught my breath. It ... it rather...."
"Dazzles one," supplemented Stillman, leaning nearer and nearer.
A tremor ran through her and he realized with a start that his breath was falling heavily upon her bare neck. He drew back. Mrs. Forsythe had stopped in a casual survey of the house to fix upon an object of interest. She dropped the glasses into her lap as she turned toward Stillman:
"Who can that be, down there in the lower box, staring so at us?" she asked, indicating the position with an exaggerated glance.
Stillman stood up.
"The man with the bald head?" he heard Claire volunteer. "Why, that is Mr. Flint—Mr. Sawyer Flint."
"Why, yes, of course," he caught Mrs. Forsythe drawling in a tone of self-confessed stupidity. "Anybody ought to know him."
"Or his wife," broke in Edington. "One can't miss her.... Now, she's getting the habit. I declare everybody seems to be interested. I guess it's you, Miss Robson. You must be the attraction."
"The orchestra has come back," Stillman announced, deliberately. "What's next?"
"'Papillons,' a ballet in one act," Edington called out, reading from his program.
"Music by Robert Schumann," supplemented Mrs. Forsythe.
"Ah, now we shall see the wonderful Bolm!" Stillman said to Claire. "They say he's the finest pantomimist on the stage." She turned slightly toward him with a movement of appeal. "What is it?" he whispered.
"Just Flint," she answered, grasping his wrist in a swift, backward gesture. "He keeps on staring."
"What? Shall we change places?"
"No. That would be too.... It's no matter. What did you say the star's name was?... There, the curtain is going up!"
Stillman fell back, but as he did so he took a sweeping survey of the lower box. Flint was still staring, and his wife was doing a great deal of vehement talking and head-shaking to the other women sharing their hospitality.
"Papillons" proved more in the conventional manner and it was charmingly danced by a score of pretty girls in early-eighteenth-century costume, and wonderfully acted by Bolm in the character of Pierrot. The audience warmed unmistakably at this number, and, the draughts somewhat subsiding, a few venturesome ladies decided to shed their wraps. Chatter became more general and less controversial; the house began to look about, taking note of itself, assuming the critical airs of a peacock staring at its own reflection. Opera-glasses circled the occupants of the boxes, and Stillman tried to single out all those who let their gaze linger an insolent length of time upon his party. But the occupants of Flint's box kept casting furtive glances in Claire's direction, and Flint himself continued to look up every now and then, reaching for the glasses, which always seemed in his wife's possession, every time he did so. Stillman felt his anger rising. He knew that Claire was annoyed, but she had recovered her poise and began to talk enthusiastically about the second number.
"I understood that better." She smiled at Stillman. "I know the music, too. That always helps a great deal, don't you think?... What a tragic face Bolm has! I thought his gesture of remorse at having broken the butterfly's wing wonderfully expressive. Didn't you? The costumes were quaint and lovely. Oh, I can't tell you how glad I am that I came!"
"La Princesse Enchantée," a duet featuring Nijinsky, came next, and a gorgeous spectacle entitled "Cleopatra" concluded the performance. By this time the audience had recovered its good-nature and it poured forth into the violent shower with much animation and no end of laughter. Stillman had ordered his car for eleven o'clock, but through some mischance it was at least fifteen minutes late in appearing. This meant that his party stood huddled in a little group by the box-office railing, and every one who passed gave them either casual or pointed glances. Claire, lacking a suitable wrap, looked rather disconsolate and dowdy in a long black ulster. Stillman felt annoyed. As luck would have it, the Flints were for some reason in the same predicament. They had swept bravely past to their intended swift departure, only to find the call for their car unanswered, and had fallen back on the opposite side of the foyer. Over the sea of faces the two groups stood and unconsciously glared at one another—at least Stillman glared for his party, and Flint, sensing his friend's antagonism, returned the compliment with added insolence.
Stillman's car came first.
Mrs. Forsythe, starting on ahead with Edington, called a gay farewell across the now empty entrance-way to Mrs. Flint. The latter responded with freezing politeness. Stillman gave Claire his arm. Flint broke into a laugh and turned with a shrug to his wife.
Stillman heard the laugh and stopped short. He released Claire's arm and left her standing almost in the drip of the awnings as he turned and walked rapidly toward Flint.
"Will you be good enough to quit staring?" he said distinctly. "Your attentions to my party have been extremely annoying all evening."
Flint looked at first stunned, then rather frightened. Stillman was conscious that Edington had come up to him and was pulling at his coat sleeve.
Mrs. Forsythe and Claire were just stepping into the machine when the two men followed. Stillman took his place beside Claire and he felt the trembling pressure of her body as he reached over and slammed the door. Mrs. Forsythe made no comment.... It was Edington who broke the silence.
"That Russian stuff may be art," he broke out, "but I'll take a George M. Cohan rag-time revue any day!"
Stillman's brush with Flint was only the beginning of a series of misadventures. At the Café Chantant it happened that the Flint table was next to the Stillman party. Flint had recovered his bravado and he ordered another table in unmistakable tones. It followed that every one in the room turned their attention to the late-comers, and it was not long after Flint had been escorted in triumph to a remote location that Stillman became aware how many eyes were being turned at him and Claire Robson.
Presently Lily Condor sang, accompanied by Miss Menzies. Stillman knew that she had sighted them with her usual keen eye, but he also saw that she was determined to ignore Claire's friendly glances. When she finished she swept from the improvised platform and walked deliberately past Stillman, seating herself at the table which the Flints had deserted. Miss Menzies followed. Claire, turning after them with a wistful look of recognition, bowed to Lily Condor as she took her seat. The lady stared coldly ahead and beckoned a waiter. Claire blushed.
"What do you suppose," she said in a low voice to Stillman. "Are you quite sure it was all right ... my deserting Mrs. Condor to-night? Perhaps I ought to have rung her up myself. But you said...."
Stillman ordered wine. Edington chattered flippantly. Dancing commenced. Stillman pushed back his chair and said to Claire:
"Shall we begin?"
She rose in answer, and they swung into a one-step. He could feel her trembling under the glances which he realized were coming from every part of the room. What was she imagining, he wondered. As they circled about for the second time, Stillman became conscious that some one was walking across the floor in a deliberate attempt to waylay them. He stopped. Mrs. Ffinch-Brown stood before them. She had a deceitfully sweet smile on her lips and her small eyes were full of malicious determination.
"My dear Mr. Stillman ... will you excuse me?" she said. "I want a word with Claire ... about something important. Otherwise I shouldn't have interrupted. You'll understand."
He released Claire and she went to the edge of the dancing-space. Mrs. Ffinch-Brown turned her back upon Stillman, but Claire's face was unscreened from his gaze. Whatever Mrs. Ffinch-Brown was saying, Claire made no reply. The younger woman paled a trifle, Stillman thought, but otherwise she gave no sign. She returned to Stillman and they finished the dance. As he held her hand, he could feel her pulse beating with something more than the exertion of dancing.
Edington had been taking a turn himself with his sister.
"Did you know," he volunteered by way of conversation, "that there had been a devil of a row among the women running this show? Sis says that she understands they almost pulled one another's hair in committee over some performer that Mrs. Flint didn't think desirable. That woman and her prejudices are a scream! I'll bet it was some pretty girl caught making eyes at the old man. Well, here's looking at you!"
They all lifted their glasses. Claire's hand trembled.
After that things grew more and more confused. He was wondering what Mrs. Ffinch-Brown had found to say to her niece, and staring at Claire, when she leaned over toward him with a gesture of apology and said:
"I don't want to break up your party, Mr. Stillman, but really I think I must be going. My mother, you know.... She wasn't so well to-day. It doesn't seem right for me to stay here enjoying myself ... under the circumstances."
It had ended in their all leaving, Mrs. Forsythe pleading boredom and Edington insisting that he had planned to get home fairly early to go over his draft questionnaire.
"When you see me again, Miss Robson, it's just possible that I'll be a very grand party in uniform," Edington had announced, lightly, as they rose from the table.
In the coat-room he said to Stillman:
"You ought to go slow, Ned.... That Miss Robson is a nice girl."
"Slow? What do you mean?"
"Just what I say.... She's a nice girl, I tell you—a damned nice girl!"
Stillman smiled disagreeably.... He remembered a time when he would have resented Edington's cryptic insinuations, but now he merely smiled, a wide smile, which a betraying mirror duplicated unpleasantly. At the departure of Edington and his sister he turned to Claire significantly:
"Are you really ready to go home?"
She turned a very candid gaze upon him. "No, I can't say that I am."
"Where shall it be, then?"
"Anywhere," she answered, almost passionately. "Anywhere at all."
"Let's go to Tait's ... first!"
She assented indifferently, and presently Tait's was an accomplished pilgrimage. They had chosen to go up-stairs to the Pavo Real. At this hour there was still a fair crush going through the motions of dancing upon a crowded floor and the scene assaulted Stillman's perceptions with a suggestion of flashy squalor. It seemed an impossible place in which to indulge a mood, but he suffered the steward to find them a small table in a far corner. He ordered a Bénédictine and brandy for himself, Claire compromised on a crème de menthe, frappéed. The pale green of this last rather innocuous drink shone out like a bit of liquid jade against the black of Claire's gown as she bent over for a momentary sip. To Stillman there had always been a heavy-lidded suggestion about the stilly-green beauty of jade, a beauty glamorous with the Orient, white-heated as noon and as cold as the yellow glances of the moon. And, sitting there, he remembered the family tradition of a Stillman in the days when the first ships had come from China, their holds bursting with strange treasures and the haunting odors of sandalwood, a Stillman who brought a slave-girl back to affront and shock the staid provincials of his native town.... Presently the green liquid was gone and only the cool, white trickle of melting ice remained in the tiny glass opposite his. Claire moved this symbol of spent delights to one side.
"I suppose you know," she said, calmly, "why I left the Palace Hotel to-night."
He was not sure.
"My aunt asked me to leave.... She was very polite about it ... and very cutting. It appears I'm not quite their sort."
"No?" Stillman found himself laughing uneasily. "How gratified you must be!"
She put out a hand across the table, laying it lightly on his arm.
"Listen. It's really nothing to be flippant about.... Not that I care, in a way. But really, you know, you should have told me about—about that little arrangement with Mrs. Condor."
"Ah, then they dragged that in, too!" escaped him. "Your aunt must be a rapid talker!"
"Oh, it doesn't take long to cover the ground when one female relation decides to be nasty to another.... And, then, I'm not quite a fool—now.... Understand, I'm not blaming you ... but it would have been fairer if I had known."
He leaned forward eagerly. "Would you, in that case, have...."
"It's possible," she broke in suddenly. "Of course I've suspected something from the first ... and ... well, as a matter of fact...." She shrugged and reached again for her frappé, sliding a cherry from the crumpled straw, drooping over the glass's rim, toward her mouth. Stillman found the gesture charming, but he was not sure whether her answer suited him or not. Of course, she had seen through and accepted the transparencies of his first business ruse. But she also had subtly urged its justification. In this case.... In other words, she might accept gratuities under pressure! He felt that he was narrowing his spiritual eyes as he watched her cutting the bright red of the cherry with her white lips.
"And then," she went on, suddenly, touching the soft ice in the glass before her with a shrinking finger, "aside from everything else, what you planned to-night was stupid.... How could you have imagined that I cared."
"That you cared!" He felt that he was laughing with sneering bitterness. "Do you always think of yourself? How about me? What if I cared? It's possible, you know—just possible!"
She brought her hands suddenly up in a movement of clasped defense. He hung on her reply with white-lipped eagerness.
"Possible?..." she echoed. "They say anything is possible, but ... somehow men...."
She threw him a glance of thinly veiled mockery. His tension relaxed. She had merely parried the blow and he felt disappointed.
"I realize now," she went on, "what a frightful nuisance I've been.... The first time we met.... I was in trouble then, I remember. That sort of thing grows to be a habit.... You meant it for the best, of course, but this time you pushed me in pretty far ... I mean into your debt. I wish I knew how I could repay you."
"I'm willing to accept a deferred payment," he chaffed. "I'll take your note.... I'm very patient at waiting."
She looked at him clearly, almost too clearly, as if in one flashing moment she saw behind the mask of his banter.... He began to wonder ... had he hoped to have her flinch, recoil, or was this cool calm more acceptable?
"I see," she was saying, "you're determined to plunge me in deeper and deeper, until one day ... well, one day I'll be a bankrupt, won't I?"
He leaned across the trivial width of the table and he put two burning hands upon her icy-cold fingers. "Ah, but think how rich I shall be!"
She said nothing. She did not even draw back from his scorching touch. But this time she lowered her eyes, twisting in her left hand the crumpled straw divested of its gaudy sweetmeat.... She was a tired woman, he could see that plainly—a tired woman ... considering. And he was not even moved to pity.
"Come," he said, roughly. "Let's get out of this ghastly hole."
She rose with a fluttering movement that gave him the impression of a trapped bird. They made their way out in silence. A great primitive eagerness struck down every acquired virtue within him. He put his hand at her elbow and held it tight. He felt that she had clenched her fist.
In the doorway she shrank back suddenly as he stood waiting to lift her into the flaming yellow taxi answering their call. He retraced his steps.
"What.... Are you ill?"
"No ... for the moment I thought I saw.... Really it's of no consequence!"
He narrowed his eyes upon her. She was lying ... it was of consequence! He felt very ugly.... A man had just brushed past and now he stood with a finger upon the elevator bell, waiting.
Claire darted out and gained the taxi.... Stillman followed. As he swung open the door for her he felt her almost leap into its depths. Once inside, she faced him, barring the eagerness of his entrance with a defiant arm.
"Go away!" she cried, in a sudden terror. "Go away! Can't you see?... It's all over, I tell you!"
"All over?" He squared himself doggedly.
"Yes," she said, thickly. "Go away.... You had better go ... to ... to your wife!"
He fell back as if she had given him a sharp push. His hat had fallen to the ground. He stooped to pick it up. He heard the door slam and saw the taxi shoot forward into the sadly glamorous beauty of the night.... He was alone!
He strode back into the café entrance. The man was still waiting before the door of the tardy elevator. Stillman went up and put an insinuating hand upon his shoulder. The man turned.
"Oh, I beg your pardon," Stillman stammered. "I thought you were.... I see I am mistaken. Pray forgive me!"
A flash of white teeth answered Stillman's apology. The door of the elevator opened. The stranger entered.
Stillman turned away. Where had he seen that face before? Where?... Oh yes, the Serbian who had....
He felt cold.... The whole thing was absurd. Yet, she had seen some one who.... He lit a cigarette.... Suddenly he laughed a smothered, choking, unpleasant laugh.
He decided to go home.
Book II
CHAPTER I
"It ain't exactly what you would call a society job, Robson, but it will pay the milkman and the baker, and that's something."
Nellie Whitehead kicked off a shoe that she had unbuttoned, resting her unshod foot upon a chair as she sighed with luxurious satisfaction.
Claire Robson began to draw down the shades. A cold March rain was falling outside and Claire felt that her shabby living-room seemed less bleak with the night shut out. For the past three weeks Nellie Whitehead had been the only point of contact with the outside world and Claire had grown to listen eagerly for the three quick rings at the door-bell which announced her solitary visitor. There was something about Nellie Whitehead which usually revived Claire's drooping spirits to an extraordinary degree, but to-night she felt no reaction to the slightly acrid optimism of her friend.
"A job?" Claire questioned, increduously, seating herself. "I'm ready for anything in reason. Only.... Well, the truth is, the Finnegans are moving. I heard about it to-day. I'll have to hire some one to look after mother, and...." Her hands lifted and dropped in hopeless resignation.
"It ain't an office job," pursued Miss Whitehead; "it's playing the piano. You know that little friend I told you about who sings at Tait's?... Well, she had an offer to sing in the same place. But of course she's in pretty soft where she is."
Nellie Whitehead was not given to indirectness, and Claire had a feeling that for some reason her friend was finding it advisable to lead up to her project rather cautiously.
"I'm ready for anything," she repeated.
Nellie Whitehead settled back comfortably. "I suppose I might just as well quit beating around the bush. You see, it isn't such a snap for the real professional ... otherwise it wouldn't be going begging. It's ... it's in a Greek café on Third Street."
A Greek café on Third Street! Claire Robson stared in amazement at her friend. For a moment she had a feeling that Nellie Whitehead must be joking. Claire Robson had heard of such places. Professional reformers always found them a perennial source of exploitation when the vice crop in other quarters failed, and every now and then the newspapers discovered, to their horror, that young and tender girls were being hired to serve Turkish coffee and almond syrup to the patrons of the Greek coffee-houses. Indeed, Claire had once listened to an eager young woman describe for the young people's section of the Home Missionary Society all the pitfalls to the weaker sex which lurked in this godless section of the community where men drank thick coffee and smoked cigarettes and even kissed pretty girls on provocation. Claire had never been prone to pass snap judgment, but the very word Greek had an outlandish sound, and it seemed quite possible that everything that had been said about the evils of the Greek quarter must have some basis. Even the term Greek labor which she chanced upon again and again in the daily news was full of sinister suggestion. And she had a flashing picture of this café in search of a pianist crowded with heavily-booted, sweating humanity fresh from construction-camps and fields.
"Well ... I don't know," she finally faltered. "I fancy they won't find my playing to their taste."
Nellie Whitehead sat up challengingly. "You mean you don't find playing in a Greek café to your taste.... As a matter of fact, I'm not keen about suggesting such a thing to you. But lots of girls make a living that way, and even if they don't move in select circles they're pretty human."
"Oh, it isn't the café side of it," Claire protested; "it's the ... the...."
"The Greek side of it, eh? Well, as a matter of fact, Robson, I guess a Greek café ain't any worse than what my little friend calls 'one of them gilded vice-cages....' And even at that, any girl who lasted six weeks in the private office of Sawyer Flint, Esquire, has run up against as much fancy roller-skating as she's apt to. If you managed to keep your balance on a slippery floor like that, I guess you'll be good for a spin on the asphalt pavement any day in the week. It may be a little bit rougher, but it ain't a bit more dangerous. In fact, I shouldn't wonder whether there wasn't a good deal more elbow room."
Nellie Whitehead leaned back again and closed her eyes. Claire was silent. There was no logical answer to her friend's shrewd estimate, but prejudice dies hard and Claire was still in the bondage of a vague distrust for the unknown.
"Good Lord! I know how you feel!" Miss Whitehead went on with a sudden genial air of understanding. "I remember when I had my first Italian dinner at Lombardi's. I thought the man who invited me had a grudge against my appetite. Honest, in those days if you mentioned spaghetti most folks thought you were talking about a deadly disease. And now...." Nellie Whitehead finished with an eloquent and descriptive sweep of hands.
Claire put a thoughtful finger to her lips and was silent. After all, what did it matter where she worked or what she did? She felt a dangerous indifference, a negative contempt for life.
"I guess you're right," she said, finally, with a sudden hardening of voice that made Nellie Whitehead look up quickly. "One can get accustomed to almost anything. Where did you say the café was?"
Claire went next morning before nine o'clock to look up the Greek café on Third Street. It was a raw, blustering, traditional March day, and she pulled her shabby cloak about her in a vain attempt to shut out a chill which seemed somehow to be clutching at her very heart. It was years since she had ventured south of Market, and she was surprised to find its old atmosphere quite vanished. She remembered the section of the town beyond Mission Street as a squalid mass of tumbledown houses out of which issued a perennial stream of shawl-cloaked women carrying empty white pitchers to the nearest corner grocery and retracing their steps with the pitchers half hidden in the folds of the aforesaid shawls, from which dripped betraying flecks of foam. Third Street was now by no means an opulent thoroughfare, but it had the virtue of a certain cheap newness. The frowsy women were no more. It was undeniably a street of men, stretching out in a succession of lodging-houses, saloons, and cheap eating-places. Past Howard Street the Greek coffee-houses began. Claire looked in at them curiously. In the drowse of morning they seemed very lifeless and still. She noted, as she passed, the prim rows of marble-topped tables with their old-fashioned call-bells for signaling the waiter, the window-plants turning sickly green faces toward the sun, the line of Oriental water-pipes setting in their racks over the coffee-shelves. One café seemed very much like another, and in spite of the extreme simplicity of their equipment they contrived to shed an air fascinating and strange.
Claire hurried on, eager to be through with the suspense of this plunge into bizarre life which she could not realize would ever be her portion. She was carrying the whole thing through in a spirit of bravado, and she was conscious that her hopes leaned unmistakably toward finding the position filled or her qualifications not up to the mark. Her glimpses into the coffee-houses led her to expect that the café she was in search of might be some such place. She was surprised then to come upon a totally different institution in the shape of what appeared to be a saloon as she halted before the number that corresponded to the address on the card she was carrying. Café Ithaca—she read the sign twice before venturing through the swinging doors.
A long mahogany-colored bar ran the full length of the room; small tables fully set for a meal filled the rest of the floor space. Claire decided at once upon retreat. But suddenly at the back of the room a green curtain parted and a man came toward her. He had a pale, round face and a mass of black hair that reminded Claire of pictures of John the Baptist.
"I am looking for the proprietor," Claire began, desperately.
The man brought his right hand toward his heart, letting his head fall in salutation. Claire took courage.
"I understand ... it seems you are looking for a pianist." The man stared and bowed again. "To play.... Do you understand ... I play?" She began instinctively to make the proper descriptive motions with her fingers.
"Ah, yes! Thank you ... thank you!" The man continued to keep his hand over his heart and to bow deeply.
The sound of hammering floated from the space screened by the green curtains. The man called to some one. A waiter appeared. The two conversed long and volubly. Finally the waiter, turning to Claire, said, in excellent English:
"Mr. Lycurgus does not understand very well. What is it you want?"
"I hear he is looking for a pianist," Claire returned.
"Oh yes. In the back ... the piano is there."
The three passed through the screened opening and Claire found herself in a huge room still in the process of being put into shape as a café in the American fashion.
"Mr. Lycurgus," the waiter explained to Claire, "is fixing up a swell place here. He bought a piano yesterday. After a while, when he gets a permit, we shall have dancing. We want now somebody to play ... from six o'clock to twelve."
Claire sat down to the piano. It was new and had a good tone. She ran over a simple negro melody. The proprietor smiled and bowed again. "Thank you! Thank you!" he kept repeating. Then he and the waiter began to talk again. Claire waited.... She had to admit that the prospects were not so terrible. And she rather liked Mr. Lycurgus with his sweeping and naïve bows and his thick clustering black hair.
Finally the waiter turned to her and said:
"Do you sing?"
"Yes ... a little." And she made good her words with a sentimental trifle that her mother had taught her years ago.
The waiter and the proprietor talked again.
"He thinks you will do, and he will pay you twenty dollars a week," the waiter finally announced.
Claire rose from the piano stool.
"Thank you ... thank you!" said the proprietor.
"Thank you," replied Claire, at a loss for anything better to say.
"Can you begin to-night?"
Claire hesitated. "Yes," she answered.
And as she said it she had a feeling that she suddenly had been transported miles from all the familiar scenes and faces that had previously made up her life.
She returned to the café promptly at six o'clock. But on this first night there was really nothing to do. The carpenters were still busily laying a tiny hardwood dancing-floor and a smell of fresh paint enveloped everything. Claire contented herself with sitting idly at the piano and peering through the green-curtained entrance into the saloon. The situation was still an extraordinary one for her and she had not yet grasped it. The tables in the saloon proper were crowded with diners, all men, and a huge orchestrion was grinding out strange and unfamiliar melodies. She was not near enough to get any estimate of the diners as individuals, but she had to confess that the composite impression they made was far from unpleasant. They ate frankly and with despatch as men in groups, undisturbed by feminine companionship, do the world over. She noticed two things particularly—they all had extraordinary thick black hair and their white teeth flashed pleasantly when they smiled.
At eight o'clock the proprietor came in and stood before her. The waiter was behind him. Mr. Lycurgus in halting English was inviting her to have something to eat. She was not hungry, but she decided to see what sort of cheer the Café Ithaca provided.
The waiter cleared away some tools which the workmen had scattered on a side-table and began to lay the cloth. Claire sat down and Mr. Lycurgus took a place opposite her. Anchovies and ripe olives with a bitter but fascinating taste came first, followed by a delicious soup flavored with lemon. Claire began to feel hungry. The waiter explained the ingredients of the soup to her as she was finishing the last mouthful.
"Chicken broth and the white of egg with paste and a dash of lemon," he announced. Then he set a huge portion of boiled lamb before her, stewed up with rice and lettuce leaves. It was plain that they were providing something extra in the way of fare for her.
Mr. Lycurgus, who had eaten earlier in the evening, seemed to be keeping her company from a sense of naïve and charming hospitality. Claire tried to think of what to say to him. Finally she hit upon a subject.
"What part of Greece do you come from?" she asked.
He was uncertain as to her question, but the waiter translated it quickly. Mr. Lycurgus began to talk. Claire did not understand one-half of what he was saying, but she was conscious that she had struck the proper note. He had come from Athens, he explained to her, and immediately he launched into lyrical praise of his native city. Claire assumed an air of interest, asked more questions. The waiter brought salad, and fried chicken, and a curd cheese, and finally a cup of thick Turkish coffee. Mr. Lycurgus was called outside to join some patrons in a drink. He left Claire with his hand upon his heart and his head thrown forward in a suggestion of perfect surrender that was almost Oriental. The waiter also grew friendly. It appeared that he came from the mountain districts of Greece—from shepherd stock. He described the Greek mountains to her.
"Birds and flowers and sweet smells!" he told her. He had been a bootblack in New York, at first. But he liked San Francisco better. He talked about America and democracy.
"We Greeks, you understand, we come from a free people." And he began to revive the glories of ancient Greece. It was plain to Claire that these people were living in retrospection, harking back to a racial past very much in the fashion of her mother trying to gather warmth from the memory of a former opulence.
Claire rose from the table, amazed at the extent of the meal which she had been tempted to eat. But it had all been so frank and friendly and lacking any savor of condescension. She did not make the mistake of fancying that just this thing would be a regular occurrence, but there was a certain beauty about the humanness of this welcome that had been given her, as if the rite of breaking bread had suddenly made her a part of a large family.
Since there was nothing to do, she left early, at ten o'clock. The waiter followed her to the door.
"In a day or two things will be different," he assured her.
"What is your name?" she asked.
"Demetrio—the same as Jimmy." He threw back his head, smiling.
She said good night and started off. Third Street was crowded. There was scarcely a woman in sight. Men, men everywhere. And yet she felt not the slightest fear. All evening she had felt detached, remote, cut off from the past, as one is cut off from a familiar view by a sharp turn in the road. But as she swung into Market Street and crossed over to the north side again the chill of reality swept over her. She was coming back to familiar scenes, familiar problems, familiar griefs. She began to think about her mother's hopeless condition, the fact that Mrs. Finnegan was preparing to move away.
"She's tired of having mother on her hands so often," flashed through Claire's mind. "She's moving to get out of it gracefully. Why did I permit such a thing?"
Her cheeks burned with the shame of it. She would have to talk to Nellie Whitehead about getting some one to come in and sit with her mother at night. Nellie Whitehead would know of somebody; she always was equal to any emergency.... She needed to have her shoes resoled, and her gloves were in a dreadful state. Well, fortunately, she would not have to keep up much of an appearance now. Twenty dollars a week—eighty dollars a month—she began to lay out plans for its expenditure. She owed two months to the butcher, and even the grocery bill had been long overdue. And there was Nellie Whitehead—she should have paid Nellie back. But there seemed always to have been something else more pressing. She thought all these things out swiftly, darting from one subject to another in a feverish anxiety to fill her mind with food for impersonal thought.
When she got home she found a letter awaiting her. It bore a special-delivery stamp and the envelope was in Stillman's handwriting. She felt suddenly weak and she sat down.... She sat staring at the envelope a long time before she gathered courage to open it. When she did, a thin blue slip of paper fluttered out. It was a check for twenty dollars, payment for the last week she had spent in Stillman's service. There was no other word from him, just this brief symbol of what his decision was in regard to her.
She rose to her feet. She did not move, she stood staring ahead....
Presently she heard her mother call. She started guiltily.
"What am I wasting time here for?" she asked herself, with a strange fierceness. She saw Stillman's blue check lying on the table. She caught it up and tore it into bits.
Her mother's voice sounded again, this time querulously.
Claire Robson pushed her sagging hair from her forehead and went into her mother's room.
CHAPTER II
Mrs. Finnegan moved on the first of April. Claire, having by this time decided that she was more or less committed to her new life, got track of a Miss Proll, a middle-aged seamstress, who went out by the day, to come and occupy the little hall bedroom, so that Mrs. Robson was no longer alone in the house nights.
Claire had been ten days at the Café Ithaca and the experiment was losing its strangeness. There had been very little piano-playing to do. The new rooms at the rear of the saloon were an experiment that the regular patrons of the café had not yet accepted enthusiastically, and the looked-for patronage from the bastard American bohemianism was still a matter of hope and conjecture. The regular diners clung rather shyly to their old quarters opposite the bar, and Claire had to be content with making a long-range estimate of them. But she grew more and more friendly with Jimmy, and even Lycurgus got beyond the point of clasping his right hand over his heart every time he approached her.
Obviously the Café Ithaca was not one of the ordinary Greek cafés that vice-crusaders railed against. Claire discovered this quite early. To a superficial observer the Ithaca was nothing more nor less than an American saloon, and, as such, was too well established an institution to merit sensational disclosures. But it was the cafés in which the men of the quarter gather to drink coffee, and almond or cherry soda, and to listen to "outlandish" music, that aroused the suspicion of Puritans. To their line of reasoning Greeks who drank in saloons were frankly immoral; those who hid behind a screen of sweetened coffee and innocuous syrups were immoral in a subtle and dangerous way that challenged all the resources of virtue. As a matter of fact, the spectacle of full-grown men indulging in any pleasure so innocent as coffee-drinking without being coerced into it was quite too much of an affront for those who won virtue only at the point of battle. Indeed, even Claire had something of this same distrust as she nightly passed these masculine forgathering places and caught glimpses through the unscreened windows of men dancing together between tables with strange solemnity. She, too, had her suspicions, very much in the manner of an adult who finds an unexplainable childish silence cause for distrust. Her training and her own experiences had confirmed her in the faith that males either singly or in groups were not to be lightly regarded. But she was willing to concede one point which most of the others left out—she was not sure that she saw any essential differences between these swarthy males who found grenadine syrup or coffee to their taste and the less vivid masculine bipeds who pretended that ice-cream and layer cake was an exciting experience. And she remembered having seen the same sidelong glances directed at the young women serving refreshments at a church social that she saw nightly cast at the waitresses who placed little cups of sweetened coffee upon the cold marble-topped tables of the Greek cafés.
It was in her midnight walks through the quarter that Claire got the rush of sudden new lights and values. Alone on the streets after twelve o'clock was a new experience, but any timidity was swallowed up in the sense of personal freedom which she seemed to achieve. She could have boarded a car almost from the Ithaca's doors, and, by transferring, arrived at her Clay Street flat without taking more than a dozen steps; but on the first night she had overlooked this possibility and the habit of walking up to Market Street became fixed. In this brief flight she saw not only men, but men of every conceivable stamp and condition. And it struck her how unified these masculine types were, how little they differed in the mass from men that previously she had seen detached, or superficially divided, from their kind by the varied intrusions of women. It seemed to her now that the other sex presented a solid front which womankind was always attempting to break through, and retreating sooner or later, according to the vigor of the masculine defense. For she had a sudden conviction that each woman battled singly and alone, but that men somehow braced themselves collectively for the struggle. Men were not really ever vanquished—a solitary man falling by the wayside did not spell defeat for the main body. But women—somehow women were always routed, routed as a whole because they insisted on playing the game in solitary aloofness. She found men presenting this same unbroken front to all the tilts of fortune and women as consistently attempting to hold every trick of fate at bay single-handed. But what she could not determine was the relative values of these contrasting attitudes, which was the more soul-stirring performance.
At the beginning of the second week of Claire's new life, a handful of the Café Ithaca's regular patrons, wishing to indulge in a little celebration, ordered a table laid in the new dining-room. This broke the ice, and there followed no end of dinners and banquets and evening suppers. But so far the patrons were confined to residents of the Greek quarter, and it puzzled Claire to discover that there were never by any chance women present. She questioned Jimmy about this.
"Greek women stay home," he replied, emphatically.
Claire had begun by playing simple and sprightly things on the piano. The patrons responded by applauding her politely, but she could see that they were really not finding her offerings entertaining. When the wheezy orchestrion started up with Greek airs they were much more alert and appreciative. She gave an ear to these melodies, and one night she surprised a company of diners by picking out the national anthem on the piano. The result was unexpected. She was bombarded by a shower of silver coins—mostly half-dollar pieces. She rose in her seat, bowing her thanks for the applause, while Jimmy scrambled after the coins and Lycurgus came forward with his hand over his heart. She drew back with a gesture of instinctive refusal as Jimmy poured the money upon the keyboard of the piano. But she ended by accepting it—there seemed nothing else to do.
After this she mastered other Greek airs. She learned in time all the slow, melancholy melodies that never failed to set the feet of dancers shuffling. And upon the tiny hardwood floor that had been laid in the hope of luring rag-time patrons to the Café Ithaca there was nightly a handful of men moving with graceful precision in the steps of their ancient folk-dances. Jimmy, smiling his satisfaction at Claire, would lean over the piano and say:
"Look, Miss Robson! Now they are dancing an old shepherd dance. They have danced it so in my part of the country for the last thousand years. It is a dance of greeting. The two men have not seen each other for five years."
Thus it was with everything—symbols running through the every-day experiences of these people like a thread of gold through the woof and warp of some drab garment. They were a people not only living in a past, but carrying this past with them as they stormed the outposts of modern life, and for all their naïve Christian piety, which they seemed to practise with a comfortable emotional fervor, they had retained the courage to meet the deposed gods of another day with a friendly and affectionate smile. They still danced the old pagan dances on feast-days of the saints, and ranged pictures of the gods side by side with the holy icons of the church.
Claire was in a mood to appreciate all these strange experiences; they removed her so completely from all the soul-crushing memories that were ever struggling to fasten themselves upon her. And every night when the street-car crossed over to the south side of the city she shed her cares like one dropping a dripping coat upon the threshold of a warm room. Between the hours of six and twelve she gathered courage from forgetfulness. But, although she had entered more or less gracefully into the demands of this new life, there were times when the clutch of custom still laid its hand upon her. For one thing, she could never quite get used to her Sunday night appearance at the café. This setting of Sunday as a day different and apart was too much of an instinct to be lightly dismissed. It had been one of Mrs. Robson's pet hobbies.
"Why should I go to the theater or dance on Sunday?" Claire remembered hearing her mother argue time and again with Mrs. Finnegan. "I can do those things any other day in the week."
Claire had a feeling that her mother's convictions upon this matter had become largely a question of good form rather than of religious belief. She knew in her own case that she could find no logic with which to bolster her emphatic distaste for this café life on Sunday night, and yet it was only another proof of the inflexibility of custom.
There were times, too, when she would halt before the swinging doors of the Café Ithaca, incapable of realizing that she, Claire Robson, was a café entertainer in the Greek quarter. At these moments she could not imagine anything more removed from the hopes or even the fears which she had held for her future. In her glimpses into life with Stillman and Lily Condor, from the lofty vantage-ground of prejudice, she had looked down upon these women who sang or danced or played their way into the torpid affections of an eating and drinking public. Once at the conclusion of an indifferent concert, Stillman had whirled Claire and Mrs. Condor and Edington out to one of the beach resorts. Claire had been struck by all the tawdry gaiety of that evening, the flagging spirits of the dancers reinforced by sloppy highballs, the rattle and bang of the "jazz" orchestra, the rapacious horde of entertainers moving from table to table, wrestling dimes and quarters and half-dollars from the open-handed assembly. She recalled the contemptuous way in which the silver gratuities were flung at what seemed to Claire these professional fawners.
Her impulse to refuse the money that had been hurled at her on that night when she had essayed the Greek national anthem carried the sting of memories with it. But there was something open-hearted and childlike about this latter performance that robbed it of unpleasantness.
She was looking forward with more or less trepidation to the day when the San Francisco public in its search for a new sensation would swoop down upon the Café Ithaca. In a flash she saw all the beach-resort atmosphere duplicated—the wine-blowsy dancers, the loose-jointed music, the shower of small change falling significantly at the feet of red-lipped entertainers. Already she had received a preliminary warning of its approach from Nellie Whitehead.
"Don't be surprised, Robson, if you see me and Billy Holmes skate into your joint some night. Billy knows a young Greek doctor. He promised to blow himself for a dinner in our honor any time we say the word. You'd better bone up on your rag-time. We don't know any Greek shepherd dances."
Claire took the hint and "boned up" on her rag-time—or, rather, began for the first time in her life really to attempt to play it. And one night, true to her word, Nellie Whitehead came. Early in the evening a table had been set for four, and Lycurgus had gone to the flower-stands in front of Lotta's fountain and bought pink and white carnations for a centerpiece. Claire had wondered at the reason for all this special preparation, but she made no inquiries. Nellie Whitehead breezed in at about seven without any escort.
"Why don't they have a decent sign out? I almost went by the place," she railed, as she released Claire from a hearty embrace. "The men will be here in a minute. But I came on ahead for a chat. It's that doctor I was telling you about ... he's giving the feed. He isn't a Greek at all ... he's a Serbian or something. But, good Lord! What's the difference? They all look alike to me. Only, this one seems more human ... his hair doesn't fuzz out as much as some of them.... The fourth place? Why, that's been set for you!... You can't spare the time? Now, don't you worry, little one; it's all been arranged. This doctor fellow has some kind of a pull with the management. If he wants the head entertainer to dine with him, all he has to do is to say so."
"A Serbian!" Claire found herself mentally exclaiming. "Can it be possible that...."
And true to the commonplace and thoroughly unexplainable thing called "chance" it was possible. For when Billy Holmes arrived at seven-thirty with his Serbian friend, Dr. George Danilo, Claire felt herself scarcely surprised, although for a moment she grew suddenly cold.
Claire had never met Billy Holmes, but she knew him by sight—a bluff, genial, open-handed man with hair thinning about the temples and a rather swaggering walk. He was just the proper foil for Danilo's thick-haired, beetle-browed, red-lipped personality.
After the first chill of surprise, Claire somehow recovered herself. She wondered whether Danilo remembered that tense moment six months ago when he had pulled his audience out of a slough of indifference by fixing his passionate gaze upon her. She had an impulse to ask, but there was something vaguely disturbing about him. Was she fascinated, or repelled, or overwhelmed? She gave it up. But sitting opposite him, so close that she could have touched his hand if she had dared, she grew to feel that when he smiled nothing else really mattered. It was plain that Lycurgus was his abject slave.
As the dinner progressed, Claire found that she was to be relieved of her post at the piano by the continuous rumblings of the orchestrion. Between courses, Nellie Whitehead and Billy Holmes danced, while Claire and the doctor talked—that is, she let him talk—about himself and his work and his native land. It was this last topic that flamed him most completely. Claire listened parted-lipped as he poured out the history of Serbia's wrongs. He pictured his country ravaged, broken, desolate, buffeted like a shuttlecock between the rackets of fate. His own people were scattered like chaff. His mother—he merely raised his hand at the mention of her name and let it fall again.
Boldly, with swift, sure strokes, he gave her glimpses of far-flung horizons, community griefs, national sorrows, the bleeding of people en masse. She had experienced something of this before, six months ago, when he had harangued the Second Presbyterian Church into grudging applause, but now, to-night, he was within reach, warm and personal and palpitant.
"I am going back ... in the fall ... to ... to...."
He stopped, fumbling for the proper word, as one not to the language born sometimes does.
She felt a great courage sweep over her. She wanted him to remember.
"Yes," she cried, "I know! To a blood-red dawn! You are going back to a blood-red dawn!"
How he smiled! "Ah," escaped him. "Then you remembered, too!... You were the only one at first in the whole room who listened.... I had never spoken to quite such a crowd before.... I saw you twice ... after. Once you were dancing. The second time you were alone ... in a doorway.... But to-night, here.... I was not prepared to find you here and so...."
She was both pleased and annoyed. Why had she not waited for him to spur her memory?
Presently Lycurgus brought champagne. It appeared that this was a very special date, although every one had forgotten it except the Greek.
"A year ago ... thank you ... thank you ... a year ago is the war for America."
"A year ago since we went into the war!" exclaimed some one. "Can it be possible?"
There followed toasts to Greece, and Serbia, and America, and President Wilson, and finally to Danilo.
"That Danilo," Lycurgus informed the party—"that Danilo—he saved my life. Now he can have everything I own. If I were dead, nothing would be of any use. So now I give him everything ... you understand?—everything!"
Claire stared—she was not yet accustomed to the Oriental extravagances which crept so naturally into the speech of Lycurgus.
Altogether it was a happy time, in spite of the shadow of world-wide tragedy that lay in wait just beyond the truant light of personal cheer.
"You've made a hit, Robson!" Nellie Whitehead assured her at the conclusion of the evening. "But how in Heaven's name could you listen to all that Serbia stuff?... Dope about the little, old U.S.A. is good enough for me.... But say, he isn't so bad-looking. If I didn't have Billy on my staff I do believe...." She finished with a wink and gave Claire a playful shove.
On her way home that night Claire said to herself, "I'll have to look up some books on Serbia at the library."