“When, then?” she asked, her voice faintly shaded with disappointment.
He realized that he had just answered no to some question she had
asked him.
“Oh, sometime.”
“Don’t you--care?”
A rather pathetic poignancy in her question brought his eyes back to
her.
“As soon as possible, dear,” he replied with surprising tenderness.
“In two months--in June.”
“So soon?” Her delightful excitement quite took her breath away.
“Oh, yes, I think we’d better say June. No use waiting.”
Olive began to pretend that two months was really too short a time for
her to make preparations. Wasn’t he a bad boy! Wasn’t he impatient,
though! Well, she’d show him he mustn’t be too quick with _her_.
Indeed he was so sudden she didn’t exactly know whether she ought to
marry him at all.
“June,” he repeated sternly.
Olive sighed and smiled and drank her coffee, her little finger lifted
high above the others in true refined fashion. A stray thought came to
Merlin that he would like to buy five rings and throw at it.
“By gosh!” he exclaimed aloud. Soon he _would_ be putting rings
on one of her fingers.
His eyes swung sharply to the right. The party of four had become so
riotous that the head-waiter had approached and spoken to them.
Caroline was arguing with this head-waiter in a raised voice, a voice
so clear and young that it seemed as though the whole restaurant would
listen--the whole restaurant except Olive Masters, self-absorbed in
her new secret.
“How do you do?” Caroline was saying. “Probably the handsomest
head-waiter in captivity. Too much noise? Very unfortunate.
Something’ll have to be done about it. Gerald”--she addressed the man
on her right--“the head-waiter says there’s too much noise. Appeals to
us to have it stopped. What’ll I say?”
“Sh!” remonstrated Gerald, with laughter. “Sh!” and Merlin heard him
add in an undertone: “All the bourgeoisie will be aroused. This is
where the floorwalkers learn French.”
Caroline sat up straight in sudden alertness.
“Where’s a floorwalker?” she cried. “Show me a floorwalker.” This
seemed to amuse the party, for they all, including Caroline, burst
into renewed laughter. The head-waiter, after a last conscientious but
despairing admonition, became Gallic with his shoulders and retired
into the background.
Pulpat’s, as every one knows, has the unvarying respectability of the
table d’hôte. It is not a gay place in the conventional sense. One
comes, drinks the red wine, talks perhaps a little more and a little
louder than usual under the low, smoky ceilings, and then goes home.
It closes up at nine-thirty, tight as a drum; the policeman is paid
off and given an extra bottle of wine for the missis, the coat-room
girl hands her tips to the collector, and then darkness crushes the
little round tables out of sight and life. But excitement was prepared
for Pulpat’s this evening--excitement of no mean variety. A girl with
russet, purple-shadowed hair mounted to her table-top and began to
dance thereon.
“_Sacré nom de Dieu!_ Come down off there!” cried the
head-waiter. “Stop that music!”
But the musicians were already playing so loud that they could pretend
not to hear his order; having once been young, they played louder and
gayer than ever, and Caroline danced with grace and vivacity, her
pink, filmy dress swirling about her, her agile arms playing in
supple, tenuous gestures along the smoky air.
A group of Frenchmen at a table near by broke into cries of applause,
in which other parties joined--in a moment the room was full of
clapping and shouting; half the diners were on their feet, crowding
up, and on the outskirts the hastily summoned proprietor was giving
indistinct vocal evidences of his desire to put an end to this thing
as quickly as possible.
“... Merlin!” cried Olive, awake, aroused at last; “she’s such a
wicked girl! Let’s get out--now!”
The fascinated Merlin protested feebly that the check was not paid.
“It’s all right. Lay five dollars on the table. I despise that girl. I
can’t _bear_ to look at her.” She was on her feet now, tagging at
Merlin’s arm.
Helplessly, listlessly, and then with what amounted to downright
unwillingness, Merlin rose, followed Olive dumbly as she picked her
way through the delirious clamor, now approaching its height and
threatening to become a wild and memorable riot. Submissively he took
his coat and stumbled up half a dozen steps into the moist April air
outside, his ears still ringing with the sound of light feet on the
table and of laughter all about and over the little world of the café.
In silence they walked along toward Fifth Avenue and a bus.
It was not until next day that she told him about the wedding--how she
had moved the date forward: it was much better that they should be
married on the first of May.