A strange stillness hung over the restaurant; it was one of those rare
moments when the orchestra was not discoursing the strains of the
Ice-cream Sailor waltz.
"Did I ever tell you," asked Clovis of his friend, "the tragedy of
music at mealtimes?
"It was a gala evening at the Grand Sybaris Hotel, and a special dinner
was being served in the Amethyst dining-hall. The Amethyst dining-hall
had almost a European reputation, especially with that section of
Europe which is historically identified with the Jordan Valley. Its
cooking was beyond reproach, and its orchestra was sufficiently highly
salaried to be above criticism. Thither came in shoals the intensely
musical and the almost intensely musical, who are very many, and in
still greater numbers the merely musical, who know how Tchaikowsky's
name is pronounced and can recognize several of Chopin's nocturnes if
you give them due warning; these eat in the nervous, detached manner of
roebuck feeding in the open, and keep anxious ears cocked towards the
orchestra for the first hint of a recognizable melody.
"'Ah, yes, Pagliacci,' they murmur, as the opening strains follow hot
upon the soup, and if no contradiction is forthcoming from any
better-informed quarter they break forth into subdued humming by way of
supplementing the efforts of the musicians. Sometimes the melody
starts on level terms with the soup, in which case the banqueters
contrive somehow to hum between the spoonfuls; the facial expression of
enthusiasts who are punctuating potage St. Germain with Pagliacci is
not beautiful, but it should be seen by those who are bent on observing
all sides of life. One cannot discount the unpleasant things of this
world merely by looking the other way.
"In addition to the aforementioned types the restaurant was patronized
by a fair sprinkling of the absolutely nonmusical; their presence in
the dining-hall could only be explained on the supposition that they
had come there to dine.
"The earlier stages of the dinner had worn off. The wine lists had
been consulted, by some with the blank embarrassment of a schoolboy
suddenly called on to locate a Minor Prophet in the tangled hinterland
of the Old Testament, by others with the severe scrutiny which suggests
that they have visited most of the higher-priced wines in their own
homes and probed their family weaknesses. The diners who chose their
wine in the latter fashion always gave their orders in a penetrating
voice, with a plentiful garnishing of stage directions. By insisting
on having your bottle pointing to the north when the cork is being
drawn, and calling the waiter Max, you may induce an impression on your
guests which hours of laboured boasting might be powerless to achieve.
For this purpose, however, the guests must be chosen as carefully as
the wine.
"Standing aside from the revellers in the shadow of a massive pillar
was an interested spectator who was assuredly of the feast, and yet not
in it. Monsieur Aristide Saucourt was the CHEF of the Grand Sybaris
Hotel, and if he had an equal in his profession he had never
acknowledged the fact. In his own domain he was a potentate, hedged
around with the cold brutality that Genius expects rather than excuses
in her children; he never forgave, and those who served him were
careful that there should be little to forgive. In the outer world,
the world which devoured his creations, he was an influence; how
profound or how shallow an influence he never attempted to guess. It
is the penalty and the safeguard of genius that it computes itself by
troy weight in a world that measures by vulgar hundredweights.
"Once in a way the great man would be seized with a desire to watch the
effect of his master-efforts, just as the guiding brain of Krupp's
might wish at a supreme moment to intrude into the firing line of an
artillery duel. And such an occasion was the present. For the first
time in the history of the Grand Sybaris Hotel, he was presenting to
its guests the dish which he had brought to that pitch of perfection
which almost amounts to scandal. Canetons à la mode d'Amblève. In
thin gilt lettering on the creamy white of the menu how little those
words conveyed to the bulk of the imperfectly educated diners. And yet
how much specialized effort had been lavished, how much carefully
treasured lore had been ungarnered, before those six words could be
written. In the Department of Deux-Sèvres ducklings had lived peculiar
and beautiful lives and died in the odour of satiety to furnish the
main theme of the dish; champignons, which even a purist for Saxon
English would have hesitated to address as mushrooms, had contributed
their languorous atrophied bodies to the garnishing, and a sauce
devised in the twilight reign of the Fifteenth Louis had been summoned
back from the imperishable past to take its part in the wonderful
confection. Thus far had human effort laboured to achieve the desired
result; the rest had been left to human genius--the genius of Aristide
Saucourt.
"And now the moment had arrived for the serving of the great dish, the
dish which world-weary Grand Dukes and market-obsessed money magnates
counted among their happiest memories. And at the same moment
something else happened. The leader of the highly salaried orchestra
placed his violin caressingly against his chin, lowered his eyelids,
and floated into a sea of melody.
"'Hark!' said most of the diners, 'he is playing "The Chaplet."'
"They knew it was 'The Chaplet' because they had heard it played at
luncheon and afternoon tea, and at supper the night before, and had not
had time to forget.
"'Yes, he is playing "The Chaplet,"' they reassured one another. The
general voice was unanimous on the subject. The orchestra had already
played it eleven times that day, four times by desire and seven times
from force of habit, but the familiar strains were greeted with the
rapture due to a revelation. A murmur of much humming rose from half
the tables in the room, and some of the more overwrought listeners laid
down knife and fork in order to be able to burst in with loud clappings
at the earliest permissible moment.
"And the Canetons à la mode d'Amblève? In stupefied, sickened wonder
Aristide watched them grow cold in total neglect, or suffer the almost
worse indignity of perfunctory pecking and listless munching while the
banqueters lavished their approval and applause on the music-makers.
Calves' liver and bacon, with parsley sauce, could hardly have figured
more ignominiously in the evening's entertainment. And while the
master of culinary art leaned back against the sheltering pillar,
choking with a horrible brain-searing rage that could find no outlet
for its agony, the orchestra leader was bowing his acknowledgments of
the hand-clappings that rose in a storm around him. Turning to his
colleagues he nodded the signal for an encore. But before the violin
had been lifted anew into position there came from the shadow of the
pillar an explosive negative.
"'Noh! Noh! You do not play thot again!'
"The musician turned in furious astonishment. Had he taken warning
from the look in the other man's eyes he might have acted differently.
But the admiring plaudits were ringing in his ears, and he snarled out
sharply, 'That is for me to decide.'
"'Noh! You play thot never again,' shouted the CHEF, and the next
moment he had flung himself violently upon the loathed being who had
supplanted him in the world's esteem. A large metal tureen, filled to
the brim with steaming soup, had just been placed on a side table in
readiness for a late party of diners; before the waiting staff or the
guests had time to realize what was happening, Aristide had dragged his
struggling victim up to the table and plunged his head deep down into
the almost boiling contents of the tureen. At the further end of the
room the diners were still spasmodically applauding in view of an
encore.
"Whether the leader of the orchestra died from drowning by soup, or
from the shock to his professional vanity, or was scalded to death, the
doctors were never wholly able to agree. Monsieur Aristide Saucourt,
who now lives in complete retirement, always inclined to the drowning
theory."