After Ulick had given his hat and stick to the garderobe he walked
through the café to the dining room on the University Place side.
Martin's was his favourite rendezvous. The cuisine, the cellar, the
service, were the best in town. Ulick lived at the Maison Felicé, but
liked a change of menu and venue. He was known at Martin's and was
soon taken to a window table when, astonished, he noted his immediate
neighbor. She held out her hand: "Such coincidences do occur, outside
of novels," she said. He sank into a seat facing her. "May I?" he
begged. She nodded. Mona was fond of good things to eat. At home if the
cook had served stewed potato-peelings her parents would have meekly
swallowed them. They had little appetite for food or drink, none at
all for the finer shades of cookery for the gentle art of the gourmet.
Mona went daily into the kitchen and conspired in company with the
cook; therefore, she occasionally ate something that had flavour. But
when she was hard-pressed by artistic hunger, as she called it, she
walked down the Avenue to 9th Street, there turned eastward and reached
Martin's, always in a famished condition.
"You haven't ordered, have you, Miss Milton?" asked Ulick. She shook
her head, negatively. He beckoned to the captain of the dining-room and
after some whispering a waiter was instructed. No wine was commanded,
neither drank wine. Vichy Celestins and wonderful coffee with cream
made their appearance in company with French rolls and butter, followed
by a variation on the theme of eggs--oeufs à la Martin--then a filet
de sole au gratin--and a Chateaubriand steak with a Salade Russe--good
heavens, mused the girl, he has a master-palate. It was true. Ulick,
despite his fondness for mince pie and Philadelphia scrapple, could
not endure the national cuisine. We are barbarians compared with the
French, he openly asserted, who know how to eat, drink and think.
"And now my dear Miss Milton, I shall apologise for my rudeness. I
never asked you if you expected anyone, but took for granted that my
company would be agreeable. I ask your pardon. How are you, and how is
your very good brother? Dear old Milt." She was all animation.
"I'm glad you like Milt. I adore him. What a pity he is going to be a
priest." Ulick looked surprised. She coloured. "I mean," she pursued,
"he should have picked out a more liberal profession."
"Religion is so narrowing,"--"Religion is an ensemble of scruples that
impede the faculty of reason," he interrupted in sing-song tones. "Who
said that?" she quickly asked. "I think the learned Professor Salomon
Reinach." "You are right but your quotation is incorrect." For the
third time that morning he was surprised. A blue-stocking, a theologian
in petticoats; perhaps an agnostic. Yet she didn't seem "modern" or of
the over-cultured type. "What Reinach wrote is this: 'Religion is a
sum of scruples which impede the free exercise of our faculties.'" She
pronounced this little speech as if such definitions were the daily
bread of her discourse. "Aren't those eggs delicious?" he asked. He was
nettled. He wished to change the tide of conversation. She assented and
smiled at him with such a mischievous smile, both a challenge and a
conciliation, that he laughed. She laughed, and she extended her hand
to him. He took it. The incident became a memory.
Her hands were not small; shapely and capable, they were white and
carefully tended. He had made a study of the hand. Why shouldn't
he? A pianist, a writer, who hated the type-machine, believing that
only with the pen, the stylus, could a man create prose and poetry;
all the rest is commercial. Yet the hands of Mona were not what he
called the hands of an artist. Their forms were largely-moulded, the
fingers, charged with character; the tips were not spatula-shaped.
His curiosity was aroused. They awaited the fish. "Let me look at the
palm of your left hand," he pleaded. She showed it without coquetry.
He noted the deeply graven and long life-line, but the abnormal
development of the Venus-hill caused him to ejaculate: "Dio mio! you
must have an affectionate disposition." She said without a suspicion of
mock-modesty: "I love children," and then they attacked the sole. He
couldn't help admiring her forthright manner. A candid girl. Therefore
a good girl. And how interesting. She thought: If he doesn't like my
plain speaking he isn't the man for me. Love me, love my doll, she
whimsically concluded. If the secrets of a maiden's and youth's souls
could be spilled on the table, as salt is sometimes spilled, many a
marriage made in heaven or hell would never be consummated. For ten
minutes their teeth were busy.
She didn't smoke because in those days ladies were not supposed to
know the taste of cigarettes. There are minor drawbacks in every age.
She saw his long, nervous fingers with their suggestion of finesse, of
power, saw the oval face and the clear-cut features--his profile made
her dream of the profiles of decadent emperors of the Lower Empire;
saw that his nose and brow modulated in the Napoleonic way, a common
enough trait throughout the Midi of France; saw his sensual lips, and
simply loved the kindly glance of his heavily-lidded blue eyes; blue of
a penetrating, celestial intensity. His vitality was concentrated in
his eyes, which were always speculative, seldom tender. Ulick, thou art
a jewel! she murmured, and thereafter to herself named him Jewel. (As
had Easter, before her).
He saw, what he had with clairvoyance called an interesting girl. He
didn't say pretty or beautiful; sympathetic, would be a more truthful
ascription. His experienced glance roved over her face and figure. He
measured, as would an architect, the latent powers of strength and
resistance in her muscular conformation. Not a skinny bird, anyhow, he
said with a sigh of relief. He is undressing me now, she thought. If
he were, it was not in a salacious spirit. Voluptuary as he was, Ulick
didn't feel a spark of erotic emotion for his companion. His admiration
for her was sexually disinterested. She hasn't the pull of sex like
Easter, yet I don't know--she is not awakened.
"Sir critic, when you have made all the specifications, registered the
shortcomings, won't you please say something? I'm dying to hear about
myself. Milt has told me of your ambitions. I wonder, though, that you
should have left Paris for this noisy Tophet of a New York." It was his
turn to color. The damned girl seemed to know exactly the nature of the
stew simmering in his mental laboratory. But no young man of spirit
needs a second invitation to talk about himself, his ways, his days,
his mighty ambitions. He broke loose and at once she was swirled along
on the swift crest of his eloquence.
He told her of his family, of his Parisian life, of his distinguished
friends, of Jena, Weimar, Liszt and Nietzsche. He explained why he
had selected New York as the best vantage-ground, the best waiting
spot from which to wage war with his future public. He spoke of his
music. He spoke of his physical strength. She interrupted to inquire
why he, Paris-born, neither smoked nor drank. Surely not because of
puritanical reasons. He violently demurred; then in an indiscreet burst
of confidence he related the reason why Goethe didn't use tobacco;
he didn't mince words; she understood, but didn't blush, as another
girl might have done. Tobacco, he ingenuously declared, attenuates
the virile quality of a man, wine is also dangerous no matter what
the poets sing. Yes, but what will-power is yours, she commented. He
expanded his chest and straightway stared into her eager eyes. Then it
was, for the first time since they met, each looked another way. They
had both seen things not set down every day on the human slate. She
felt positively uncomfortable, and he said to himself: Steady old chap
is the mot d'ordre. She is Milt's sister!
"I write about the stage because I can no longer endure listening to
music. I tried my hand at musical criticism when I first landed. Now,
as the curtain goes up at the opera, I have a queer feeling in the
pit of my stomach. I call it aesthetic nausea. To hear over and over
again the same old arias, the same bad singing, and then the stale
phrases that we are compelled to write after each performance--phew!
What a waste of time, what a re-chewing of banal ideas. And then,
the receptive frame of mind; always listening to other men's ideas,
or the lack of them. Again I say--what a sheer waste of time for any
one who wishes to be individual, to create, no matter how slight the
performance." He paused for lack of wind. "Go on," she urged. "The
theatres are pretty bad, but at least you are dealing with actuality.
Once in a while a play comes along by Ibsen, and then you are in
contact with the stuff of life. Music is technical, emotional as it may
be; but just try to write of it in terms of emotion and your pathos
is soon bathos. Pictures are easier to handle because they resemble
something in the world. Music does not. It is dug out of our subliminal
self, brought to the surface of our consciousness by the composer's
art--self-explorer is a truer title than composer, who as a matter of
fact decomposes his soul-states, distils his most precious essence into
tone. But I fear I bore you--Miss Mona." "Go on," she commanded.
"Well there isn't much further to go on, I am glad for your sake. I
soon abandoned music, which I love all the better for not being forced
to write about it. I felt strange at the opera house, I didn't become
closely acquainted with my colleagues, so I was glad when the "Clarion"
gave me the berth of dramatic critic. Now I can fight every day with
erudite William Winter--Lord! how that little man can write English--
over the Ibsen problem. Wagner is accepted here, yet a more original
thinker, Henrik Ibsen, is slighted, is even called immoral, he the most
moral of dramatists. Let's go for a ride," he exclaimed, "a beautiful
day wasted over sterile aesthetics. What do you say--Miss Mona?"
(That's twice he called me Mona!) She consented. The prospect of a trip
through the park sitting next to this lively young man pleased her. "We
shan't take a cab. I like a hansom better. Don't you love the good old
English hansom with the slightly shabby but always sympathetic driver
wearing a battered silk hat tipped on the side of his disreputable
skull? Besides Miss Mona--a hansom is Cupid's chariot. Let's go." When
Ulick started in earnest he was irresistible. He hailed a hansom. They
hopped in. To the park!