What a hole to dine in on Christmas Eve! Such waiters--such
guests--such food--such wine!
I believe the proprietor owned three such establishments, each, in a
triumph of irony, called "Arcadia." The very linen of the waiters
drooped disconsolately, and the whole place reeked of cabbage and wet
umbrellas. My spirits, which had risen momentarily from their classic
depths, sank like the sands of an egg-timer.
"My dear fellow," I said, "you can't mean to dine here?"
An oily waiter ambled up to us and wrung his hands in a paroxysm of
welcome.
"Your tabil, Meester Norman," he said in some nondescript foreign
dialect, "iss ready."
Good heavens! The Blower of Bubbles had even ordered dinner in advance!
With the feelings of an unwilling martyr, I followed my friend and his
escort past tawdry millinery saleswomen, dining in state with their
knights-errant of the haberdashery stores; by a table where a woman was
gazing admiringly at a man with a face as expressionless as a pumpkin;
through a lane of chattering, laughing, rasping denizens of the London
that is neither West End nor East End--of people whose clothes, faces,
and voices merged into a positive debauch of mediocrity.
When we were seated and had ordered something from the waiter, I turned
to Basil Norman for an explanation.
"What is it?" I asked. "An affair with a seamstress, or are you just
looking for 'copy'?"
He laughed and lit a cigarette.
"Pest," he said, "this is a caprice of mine, a tit-bit for my vanity.
You would have chosen the 'Trocadero' or the 'Ritz,' with all the
tyranny of Olympian and largessed waiters with whom it is impossible to
attain the least pretence of equality. I prefer 'Arcadia,' where I am
something of a patron saint, and am even consulted by the proprietor."
"You play to humble audiences."
"Quietly, Pest--the proprietor might hear you. He is a very Magog for
dignity, I assure you, in spite of his asthma."
"I gather, then, that you are a regular diner here?"
"Hardly that. But I am a little more consistent than most of his
patrons. To be candid"--he leaned towards me as if it were a secret of
the first magnitude--"it's his cook."
"His what?"
"His cook. Really, I'm afraid he's hardly first class."
"I am certain of it."
"He would have made an admirable medieval Jesuit, but, as a matter of
fact, I wonder Steinburg----"
"The proprietor?"
"Yes. I don't know why he keeps him on. He says the fellow has a couple
of blind children, and if he were dismissed under a cloud he would have
trouble in securing employment. But that's not business. The fellow's
an ass, isn't he?"
Whereupon his face beamed with delight, and his gray eyes twinkled like
diamonds. My comment on the matter was stifled by the arrival of
_hors-d'oeuvre_. I had no idea that one tray could hold such a variety
of unpalatable things. At the table next to us a woman laughed
boisterously, her shoulders, which were fat and formless, vibrating
like blanc-mange.
"Ah!" said Basil Norman; "Klotz has arrived."
He indicated a low platform, where a dingy pianist, pimply of
countenance and long of hair, was strumming the barbaric discords that
always accompany the tuning of stringed instruments. A violinist, with
his back towards us, was strangling his instrument into submission;
while a cellist, possessed of enormous eyebrows and a superb immobility
of pasty-facial expressionlessness, sat by his cello as though he had
been lured there under false pretenses, and had no intention of taking
any part in the proceedings--unless forced to do so by a writ of
habeas-corpus. A fourth musician, who seemed all shirt and collar, blew
fitfully into a flute, as if he realized it was an irrelevant thing,
and was trying to rouse it to a sense of responsibility.
"Which," I asked, "is Klotz?"
As I spoke the violinist turned about and caught my host's eye. They
both bowed--Norman cordially; the musician, I thought, with restraint.
The fellow stood out as a man apart from his accomplices; his high
forehead and dreamy eyes were those of an artist, though a receding
chin robbed his face of strength. He was the type one sees so
often--able to touch, but never grasp, the cup of success.
"Klotz," said Norman, "is superb. He has the touch of the artist about
him. His tone is not always good, and sometimes he scratches; but when
he is at his best he does big things. So many people can perform at
music--just as so many write at words--but Klotz plays with color. His
art has all the charm of a day in April. He will caress a phrase
according to his mood, like a mother crooning to her child. To know how
to hesitate before a note in a melody, as a worshiper hesitates at the
entrance to a shrine, is Art, and an Art that cannot be taught.
"It is so with painters, writers, musicians--they must have that sense
of color, that instinct that brings each subtle nuance of expression
into being."