It was Saturday night at La Ria’s. John Fenton and Richard Stoughton
were seated side by side near one end of the room, awaiting with true
La Rian patience the coming of the soup. No one who is in a hurry ever
goes to La Ria’s on Saturday night. Impatience is sacrilege in that
Bohemian republic that lies under the sidewalk on a down-town street,
and draws into its charming boundaries many of the brightest men and
most attractive women in the city. La Ria’s is both a pleasure and a
protest. The pleasure is on the surface, the protest is underneath. The
former is what the true La Rian feels, the latter is what he thinks.
His presence on Saturday evening in that famous restaurant proves his
unwillingness to permit the New World’s metropolis to become nothing
but a colorless aggregation of very wealthy and very poor citizens. La
Ria’s furnishes an outlet both to the rich and poor for the inherent
fondness in men and women for the picturesque and unconventional.
There is nothing attractive in this low-ceilinged room, blue with
cigarette-smoke even before the soup is served; but if you ask the
loyal La Rian if he would have the “historic banquet-hall”--as an
enthusiastic reporter once called it--changed in any important
particular, he would look at you in scorn. Raise the ceiling, decorate
the walls, put in mirrors and gilding and rugs and a costly service,
and the broken-hearted La Rians would file sorrowfully out into the
night, bewailing the moment when money had thrown its fatal blight
over the one spot in the city where the millionnaire sinks into
insignificance when he comes to dine with the poet and the artist and
the journalist, and where, once a week at least, there is “a feast of
reason and a flow of soul.”
“There is a fascination about this sort of thing that is irresistible,”
whispered Richard to John Fenton, as he sipped his claret after the
dinner had been fairly started and gazed around him in delight. He
was still young enough and sufficiently unsophisticated to enjoy the
glamour of his surroundings without looking beneath the surface, and
seeing there the life-tragedies that the actors in the scene before
him concealed under the mask of gayety. His eye caught the smiling
glance of a dark-haired girl, with classically regular features and a
delicately shaped hand, who raised her wine-glass as she returned his
smile and seemed to pledge his health with the utmost goodfellowship.
She sat at a table half-way down the room, and had been laughing
and chatting with several men wearing Van Dyke beards, one of whom,
Richard learned later, was a famous painter of perfectly innocuous
landscapes--a man who looked like Mephistopheles, but said his prayers
before retiring.
“Be careful, Richard,” remarked Fenton good-naturedly; “she’s a
beautiful girl, but very dangerous.”
The young man glanced up at his friend laughingly.
“You brought me here, John. You are responsible for the consequences.”
“Am I my brother’s keeper?” asked the elder man solemnly. “You are old
enough, Richard, to take care of yourself, I suppose. I wash my hands
of the whole affair.”
As the dinner progressed, Richard felt an intoxication that had no
foundation in wine; for he was not fond of alcoholic stimulants,
and drank very sparingly. There was a strange exhilaration in his
surroundings that gave him a novel sensation. Of the hundred and
more men and women in the room he knew little or nothing; but he
could see that among them were those of both sexes whose faces and
bearing indicated refinement and high birth. That there were others
whose origin was questionable, and who carried with them the stamp of
vulgarity, did not alter, but emphasized, the fact that the noble blood
of Bohemia was represented before his gaze. After a time he gave up
generalizing about his companions, and found his attention concentrated
on the girl who had smilingly touched her glass to him. By the time
the cheese and coffee had come he was obliged to admit that she
possessed the most fascinating face he had yet seen, and that there
was something in the glance of her dark eyes more intoxicating than
any cordial he had ever sipped. As he lighted a cigarette, and leaned
back in his chair to listen to the songs and speeches that Fenton had
told him would follow the dessert, he found himself reproaching his own
fickleness, but more than ever determined to make the acquaintance of
the _jolie Bohemienne_.
“Wine, women, and song!” exclaimed a dignified but genial-looking man,
arising at the farther end of the room, as if to crystallize in one
effort the scattered elements of goodfellowship begotten by the modest
but very eatable dinner, “and the greatest of these is”-- He paused, as
if waiting for a reply.
“Wine,” cried a few; “women,” shouted many; and a solitary voice said
“song.”
Turning instantly to the reckless individual who had declared in
favor of song, the toast-master called upon him by name to arise and
vindicate his position. Blushing more with annoyance than modesty, a
young man stood up and broke the silence that followed by chanting
in a pleasing but untrained voice a ballad of Rudyard Kipling, set to
music by the singer. A round of applause followed, and the ice was
broken. Songs and stories followed each other in rapid succession.
“It’s great!” exclaimed Richard in Fenton’s ear; and again he raised
his glass to the dark-haired girl, who was puffing a cigarette in a
nonchalant way and smiling cordially, now and again, as she caught
Richard’s eye.
The toast-master arose, and, putting up his hand for silence, said with
simple eloquence,--
“The priests and ministers, the bishops and strolling preachers, have
through the ages called themselves ‘divines;’ and, lo! they stand
aside, and we, the moderns, give that title in our heart of hearts to
the poets, the dramatists, the weavers of tales that touch the soul,
the wonder-workers in words and thoughts who have wrought that glorious
temple we call literature. Homer and Plato and Horace and Shakespeare
and Goethe,--these are the true ‘divines;’ these are the inspired and
anointed teachers who, making no demands for our reverence and awe,
find all the generations bending the knee before them.”
He paused for breath, and a round of applause drove the tobacco-smoke
against the ceiling.
“With this introduction,” he went on, “I will present an old friend
of yours, who has written a poem that he has modestly informed me is
‘simply great.’”
A shout of laughter greeted this sally, as a tall, slim man with gray
hair and a youthful cast of countenance arose. That he was well known
and thoroughly liked was proved by the applause that welcomed him.
He stood at the end of the table at which Richard’s inamorata was
seated; and, as he recited the following poem, he indicated by look and
gesture that the dark-haired girl had been its inspiration--by-play
that amused his hearers, but filled Richard with a jealousy that was as
pronounced as it was unreasonable.
“I call this little effort to amuse you,” said the poet, “Prince
Spaghetti’s Vengeance.”
Then he recited, with a good deal of elocutionary cleverness, the
following lines:--
“Not where garish lights are gleaming,
Not in brilliant banquet-hall,
Not where waiters, silent, solemn,
Make the gaudy grandeur pall;
Not where wine is so expensive
That your very thirst seems crime,
And to ‘wet your whistle’ often
Is a recklessness sublime;
But for us a quiet corner
In a side-street, down a stair,
_Vive Bohème_ and _Vive La Ria_!
Who would be a millionnaire?
Here are brains, served up _en bon mot_,
Here’s spaghetti, piping hot;
Here’s a crowd of jolly fellows,
Well contented with their lot.
Mayhap, as the feast progresses,
And the wine flows with the wit,
Visions come, and fancy whispers
’Tis a palace where we sit.
’Tis the palace Macaroni,
Built in ages long ago
By a count of many titles,
Where the waves of Tiber flow.
How we got there doesn’t matter.
Maraschino? Yes--a drop.
Thanks! a little bit of cognac?
Just a trifle, on the top.
And the palace by the Tiber,
Where we dine to-night in state,
Here it was Count Macaroni
Met his most heart-rending fate.
’Twas when Rome was in a ferment,
As she used to be at times--
Strange how black that ancient city
Is with undiscovered crimes--
Then it was that Macaroni
Princess Gorgonzola met--
Yes, methinks your face is like her,
Seen beyond this cigarette.
Gorgonzola, she was charming,
Black-eyed maiden, ripe to fall
In the arms of Love, if mother
Let her get beyond her call.
Macaroni, Gorgonzola,
They were such a handsome pair
That in strolling by the Tiber
E’en the boatmen had to stare.
Well, where am I? In La Ria’s?
No; Saint Peter knows I’m not.
Just another sip of cognac?
Thanks--it reached the very spot.
Well, the Count and Gorgonzola
By a villain were pursued,
Prince Spaghetti was his title--
Scion of an evil brood.
Prince Spaghetti loved the maiden
In a weird and wicked way,
And he swore that Macaroni
Must forswear the light of day.
Thus he mixed a potent poison
In a glass of ruby wine--
Yes, I’ll light one more perfecto--
Gad, I think the earth is mine!
One more little sip of cognac?
Thanks, I cannot say thee nay;
Well--where was I? Oh, Spaghetti
Macaroni meant to slay.
Did I kill him? Say, my fair one,
You with Gorgonzola’s eyes,
Did I make him drink the poison?
Answer--you who were the prize.
Well, the tale is nearly ended--
Strange that I should live to-night,
Dining in La Ria’s with you.
Thanks! that cognac’s out of sight.”
A roar of delight rewarded the poet’s effort; and he reseated himself
smilingly, while the dark-eyed maiden at his table--who, by the way,
went by the name of “Gorgonzola” ever after--raised her _liqueur_
glass, and drank gratefully to the genius who had done what he could to
immortalize her beauty.
The hour was growing late, and the jolly diners had begun to disperse.
Fenton was engaged in a discussion of the single-tax theory with an
English newspaper correspondent on his left, when Richard noticed with
regret that his inamorata and her friends, the artists, had arisen to
take their departure. It was time for decisive action; and impulsively
he fumbled in his cardcase, found his pencil in time to write his
address on one of his paste-boards, and had resumed a position of
becoming dignity before the gay group, making for the entrance, had
reached his table. As the girl passed him, smiling down at him with
her dancing black eyes, he handed the card to her. It was all over in
a moment, and Richard found himself practically alone. The room seemed
utterly deserted after her departure.
“Well, young light-o’-love,” remarked Fenton, as they strolled
homeward, “have you had a pleasant evening?”
“Delightful, John,” answered the youth. Then he said earnestly,--
“John, at what age do you think that it is possible for a man to fall
honestly and thoroughly in love?”
“Not until after he is forty, my boy,” answered Fenton gravely. “Don’t
take yourself or anybody else too seriously, Richard, until you have
reached middle life.”
“That’s not the doctrine you preached to me some months ago, John
Fenton,” said Richard thoughtfully.
“I know you better now, my dear fellow,” returned Fenton, adding to
himself, “and myself too.”