“Now, what the mischief am I to do for half an hour,” mused Clifford,
staring out of the blank window, both hands in his pockets, an empty pipe
between his teeth. There was a vacancy in his stomach that bothered him,
and the more he thought about it, the more it hurt. The canary birds were
revelling in bird-seed; he eyed them enviously for a while, then walked
up and down whistling. Every time he passed the big gilded cage he could
hear the birds cracking and splitting the seeds, and the noise of the
feast irritated him.
His neighbour on the floor above was singing away with heart and soul
about bull-rings and toreadors, banging joyously upon the Basque drum or
snapping and clicking the castanets.
“Dear! Dear!” he thought, “my neighbour is really very gay. She must have
moved in to-day. I—I wonder what she’s like!”
He listened, sitting close to his dying fire. After a moment he heard her
cross the room and open the piano again.
“Dear! Dear!” he said to himself, “what a musical young lady! Probably an
embryo actress from the Conservatoire;—or—or—”
The piano began; it was scales this time. For an hour he sat huddled
before the cold ashes, listening to the five-fingered acrobatic
exercises, alternately yawning with hunger and cursing Elliott. When six
o’clock struck from the concierge’s lodge he stood up, gazing dismally
out into the night.
Suddenly he heard the scrape of feet outside, and he hurried to his door
and opened it.
Through the lighted hallway a figure shuffled, carrying a large tray
covered with a white napkin. It was a waiter from the Café Rose-Croix
and Clifford knew him.
“Bon soir, Monsieur Clifford,” he said doubtfully.
“Good evening, Placide, Placide,—er—is that little banquet for me? Oh,
it’s all right! I suppose Monsieur Elliott paid for it—”
“But, Monsieur,” said the waiter, “this dinner is for a lady.”
“What’s that?” said Clifford sharply. Then he buttonholed Placide and
hauled him inside the studio.
“Who is the lady? The one upstairs?”
“Yes—Mademoiselle Plessis—she awaits her dinner—let me go, Monsieur
Clifford,” pleaded Placide.
“Oh, I’m not going to play tricks on you,” said Clifford, “here! hold
on!—if you move I’ll tip the tray. Now all I want you to do is—is—er—dear
me!”
The odour of a nicely browned fowl disturbed his thoughts; his mind
wandered with his eyes. Placide gaped at him. He knew Clifford and he
dreaded him. “Here you!” said that young gentleman, removing his eyes
from the fowl with an effort, “do you think that because I do you the
honour of conversing with you that I wish to rob you? Do I look like a
man to interfere with a lady’s dinner? Placide, you know me?”
“I do, Monsieur,” replied the waiter despondently.
“Then listen! I am going to make you my confidant! Think of that,
Placide!”
The waiter looked at him obliquely and did not appear to appreciate the
honour in store.
“Placide!”
“Monsieur!”
“I am in love!”
“Doubtless—if it is Monsieur’s pleasure—”
“Silence! Idiot! I am about to bestow gifts; I am about to—”
“The chicken, Monsieur, is becoming cold—”
“I am,” repeated Clifford majestically, “about to offer two
dozen—twenty-four—canary birds to my adored. You may ask; what is that to
you—”
“I do,” began Placide.
“Silence! Pig! These twenty-four canaries are to be carried to her
by—think of it, Placide!—by you!”
Placide rolled his eyes, big with anguish. The chicken exhaled a
delicious aroma.
Clifford drew in a long breath of the fragrance. Then he lifted the
enormous gilt cage, and placed it in Placide’s hands. “Go upstairs and
take these cursed birds with the compliments of Foxhall Clifford, artist,
American, 70 rue Bara, first floor, door on the right.”
“But—but my tray—”
“Imbecile! Do you think I’m going to eat your tray? Come back for it
and—tell me what the lady says.”
Placide shuffled sullenly to the door; Clifford opened it.
“My tray—” began the unwilling waiter.
“Placide,” said Clifford, “I have not dined—er—re—cently and my temper is
uncertain. You are discreet. I wish to dine. Do you understand?”
Placide smirked.
“Then use your wits—and when I have ten francs—well—hasten, my good
Placide.”
When the waiter had gone, Clifford tiptoed over to the tray and sniffed
at the napkin.
“Dear! Dear!” he said, “what a wonderful congregation of perfumes. Now if
she doesn’t shut the door on Placide’s nose—I—I hope—I delicately hope
that I may receive my reward.”
He paced to and fro, whistling, but never taking his eyes from the tray.
After a few minutes he heard Placide’s slippered tread on the stairs, and
hastened to admit him.
“The young lady says,” began Placide, lifting the tray, “—the young lady
says that Monsieur is too amiable—”
Clifford’s heart sank.
“And,” pursued Placide with dreary deliberation, edging toward the
staircase, “the young lady says that she hopes to see you”—
“When?” blurted out Clifford.
“Some day,” grinned Placide, and escaped up the stairway, sneering,
triumphant.
The blow staggered Clifford for a moment—but only for a moment. Before
Placide had descended again, Clifford was changing his clothes; before
Placide had passed the lodge-gate, Clifford had fastened a white neck-tie
under a spotless collar. Then he tied a bit of crimson silk tightly
around his forehead, inserted two feathers from a duster in the fillet
where they waved like the plumes of a Sioux War-chief; and ten minutes
later, radiant, patent-leathered, but starved, he rang gaily at the door
of the studio overhead.
When Claire Plessis opened the door, Clifford bowed profoundly and
skipped in, introducing himself with joyous abandon.
“It is the custom,” he said, bowing again and again with something of
an Oriental salaam, “it is the custom in America—in far distant, sunny
America,—to call at once upon distinguished strangers who come to
lodge in the building. Therefore, Mademoiselle,”—and although he spoke
French flawlessly he brutalised it now to suit his purpose,—“therefore,
Mademoiselle,”—He salaamed again, rapidly and said:
“How! How! How!”
“Monsieur,” faltered the girl, not knowing whether to laugh or call for
assistance,—“Monsieur, I am honoured—pray be—be seated.”
“Mademoiselle—it is too much honour!”
“Monsieur—”
They bowed again, and Clifford sank into a chair, his duster plumes
nodding on his head.
The girl regarded him with undisguised amazement. She saw his eyes
rolling toward the white-covered table and thought, “Oh dear, what shall
I do with this foreign savage who sends me canary birds by the gross and
who skips like a dancing dervish?”
“Monsieur,” she stammered.
“How! How! How!” grunted Clifford absently, sniffing the tablecloth.
“Nothing—nothing, Monsieur,” she said hastily; “I wish to thank you for
the birds—”
“We eat them in America,” he said, and chattered his teeth.
“Like—like chickens?”
“What are chickens?”
She laughed and looked at the uncarved fowl on the table.
“Is that a chicken?” asked Clifford in his most awful French. “Is it good
to eat?”
“If you would do me the honour to accept my hospitality, Monsieur, you
could prove it for yourself,” she said laughing, and a little more at
ease. “I have not yet dined,—I am quite alone—”
Clifford accepted, rising with oriental languor, and bowed magnificently.
He led her to her place, seated her, drew up a chair opposite, and smiled
upon her. His feathers bobbed with every movement.
“Now of course, I must carve,” she said, striving hard to repress an
hysterical laugh; for Clifford, desiring to play his part of a foreign
savage to perfection, was doing impossible things with his knife and fork.
“If she finds me out,” he was thinking, “it will not be very gay for me.”
So he showed his teeth and muttered and salaamed occasionally, while
the girl bowed to him over her slender glass of claret and helped him
to more and more and more until the suffocating desire to laugh brought
tears to her eyes.
“In America it is etiquette to eat until there is nothing left—at least I
have read that in books,” she ventured.
“It is,” said Clifford, uncorking another bottle.
“You seem to like chicken,” she said.
“Ah,” he replied, “wait until you try my canary birds!”
“But,” she cried, “I am not going to eat them!”
Their eyes met across the table. He felt that he was going to laugh; he
looked into her big grey eyes. Her dark-fringed lashes were trembling
too; on each cheek a dimple deepened; between her scarlet lips the white
teeth parted; then she sank back, her hands flung helplessly into her
lap, and, looking into each other’s eyes, they burst into ringing peals
of laughter.
Three times she dried the tears in her eyes, and, leaning forward,
attempted to speak, but when her eyes met his again, she threw back her
pretty head and laughed until the colour deepened to her throat. And so
they sat there, trying to speak, but shrieking with laughter, until the
glasses and bottles clinked and vibrated and the window panes sang again.
At last she murmured, “For shame, Monsieur! I—I ought to be very
angry,—but I laugh—oh dear! oh! dear! I laugh and I should be furious!
Fie! You play the foreigner—the—the untutored one who never saw
chicken—oh dear! oh dear!—”
She rose, drying her eyes again on a dainty pocket handkerchief.
“Shame on you! How dared you come to my room and—oh dear—and tell me you
eat canary birds—and walk like a dancing dervish, and do such things with
your knife, and—what is your name?—mine is Claire.”
* * * * *
When, three hours later, he rose to go, he had told her all,—the whole
wretched truth, and she had watched him with curious grey eyes, now
brimming with laughter, now exquisite in their sympathy. She forgave
him—not easily—but when he removed the feathers from his headdress and
said he was sorry, she held out her hand to him with brilliant eyes and
grave lips.
“So—you are forgiven,—not because you deserve it. Here in the Quarter
we are like the leaves in the Luxembourg; we bud with the promise of
summer,—we unfold, we nestle and whisper together,—we grow gorgeous and
brilliant,—then we fall. Let us live in friendship while we may,—we of
the Latin Quarter. I forgive you, mon ami.”