No, I'm through today, Martha rejoined. We're neither of us in the
mood. Besides it's absurd to try to paint in this light.
Painting, Peter went on, is not any easier than writing. Always the
search for--for what? he asked suddenly, turning to me.
For truth, I suppose, I replied.
I thought you would say that but that's not what I meant, that's not at
all what I meant.
This logogriph rather concluded that subject, for Peter did not explain
what it was that he did mean. Neither did he wear a conscious air of
obfuscation. He rambled on about many things, spoke of new people, new
books, new music, and he also mentioned Mary Garden.
I have heard of Mary Garden for the first time today, I said, and I am
beginning to be interested.
You haven't seen her? demanded Peter. But she is stupendous, soul,
body, imagination, intellect, everything! How few there are. A lyric
Mélisande, a caressing Manon, a throbbingly wicked Chrysis. She is
the cult in Paris and the Opéra-Comique is the Temple where she is
worshipped. I think some day this new religion will be carried to
America. He stopped. Let me see, what am I doing tonight? O! yes, I
know. I won't do that. Will you go with me to hear Aphrodite?
Of course, I will. I have just come to Paris and I want to do and hear
and see everything.
Well, we'll go, he announced, but I noted that his tone was curiously
indecisive. We'll go to dinner first.
You're not going to dinner yet? Martha demanded rather querulously.
Not quite yet. Then, turning to Clara, How's the Voice?
It was my first intimation that Clara had thus symbolized her talent in
the third person. People were not expected to refer to her as Clara or
Miss Barnes; she was the Voice.
The Voice is doing very well indeed, Clara, now quite mollified,
rejoined. I'm studying Manon, and if you like Mary Garden, wait until
you hear me!
Peter continued to manipulate Clara with the proper address. The
conversation bubbled or languished, I forget which; at any rate, a half
hour or so later, Peter and I were seated in a taxi-cab, bound for
Foyot's where he had decided we would dine; at least I thought he had
decided, but soon he seemed doubtful.
Foyot's, Foyot's, he rolled the name meditatively over on his tongue. I
don't know....
We leaned back against the seat and drank in the soft air. I don't
think that we talked very much. The cocher was driving over the bridge
of Alexandre III with its golden horses gleaming in the late afternoon
sunlight when Peter bent forward and addressed him,
Allez au Café Anglais.
Where meant nothing to me, but I was a little surprised at his
hesitation. The cocher changed his route, grumbling a bit, for he was
out of his course.
I don't know why I ever suggested Foyot, said Peter, or the Café
Anglais either. We'll go to the Petit Riche.
_Chapter III_
If the reader has been led to expect a chapter devoted to an account
of Mary Garden in Aphrodite, he will be disappointed. I did not see
Mary Garden that evening, nor for many evenings thereafter, and I
do not remember, indeed, that Peter Whiffle ever referred to her
again. We dined at a quiet little restaurant, Boilaive by name, near
the Folies-Bergère. The interior, as bare of decoration as are most
such interiors in Paris, where the food and wines are given more
consideration than the mural paintings, was no larger than that of a
small shop. My companion led me straight to a tiny winding staircase
in one corner, which we ascended, and presently we found ourselves
in a private room, with three tables in it, to be sure, but two of
these remained unoccupied. We began our dinner with escargots à la
bordelaise, which I was eating for the first time, but I have never
been squeamish about novel food. A man with a broad taste in food
is inclined to be tolerant in regard to everything. Also, when he
begins to understand the cooking of a nation, he is on the way to an
understanding of the nation itself. There were many other dishes, but
I particularly remember a navarin because Peter spoke of it, pointing
out that every country has one dish in which it is honourable to put
whatever is left over in the larder. In China (or out of it, in Chinese
restaurants), this dish is called chop suey; in Ireland, Irish stew;
in Spain, olla or puchero; in France, ragoût or navarin; in Italy,
minestra; and in America, hash. We lingered over such matters, getting
acquainted, so to speak, passing through the polite stages of early
conversation, slipping beyond the poses that one unconsciously assumes
with a new friend. I think I did most of the talking, although Whiffle
told me that he had come from Ohio, that he was in Paris on a sort
of mission, something to do with literature, I gathered. We ate and
drank slowly and it must have been nearly ten when he paid the bill
and we drove away, this time to Fouquet's, an open-air restaurant in
the Champs-Elysées, where we sat on the broad terrasse and drank many
bocks, so many, indeed, that by the time we had decided to settle our
account, the saucers in front of us were piled almost to our chins. We
should probably have remained there all night, had he not suggested
that I go to his rooms with him. That night, my second in Paris, I
would have gone anywhere with any one. But there was that in Peter
Whiffle which had awakened both my interest and my curiosity for I,
too, had the ambition to write, and it seemed to me possible that I was
in the presence of a writing man, an author.
We entered another taxi-auto or fiacre, I don't remember and it
doesn't matter, there were so many peregrinations in those days, and we
drove to an apartment house in a little street near the Rue Blanche.
The house being modern, there was an ascenseur and I experienced for
the first time the thrill of one of those little personally conducted
lifts, in which you press your own button and take your own chances.
Since that night I have had many strange misadventures with these
intransigent elevators, but on this occasion, miraculously, the machine
stopped at the fourth floor, as it had been bidden, and soon we were in
the sitting-room of Whiffle's apartment, a room which I still remember,
although subsequently I have been in half a dozen of his other rooms in
various localities.
It was very orderly, this room, although not exactly arranged, at any
rate not arranged like Martha's studio, as if to set object against
object and colour against colour. It was a neat little ivory French
room, with a white fire-place, picked in gold, surmounted by a gilt
clock and Louis XVI candlesticks. There were charming aquatints on the
ivory walls and chairs and tables of the Empire period. The tables were
laden with neat piles of pamphlets. Beside a type-writer, was ranged
a heap of note-books at least a foot high and stacked on the floor in
one corner there were other books, formidable-looking volumes of weight
and heft, "thick bulky octavos with cut-and-come-again expressions,"
apparently dictionaries and lexicons. An orange Persian cat lay asleep
in one of the chairs as we entered, but he immediately stretched
himself, extending his noble paws, yawning and arching his back, and
then came forward to greet us, purring.
Hello, George! cried Whiffle, as the cat waved his magnificent red tail
back and forth and rubbed himself against Peter's leg.
George? I queried.
Yes, that's George Moore. He goes everywhere with me in a basket, when
I travel, and he is just as contented in Toledo as he is in Paris,
anywhere there is raw meat to be had. Places mean nothing to him. My
best friend.
I sat in one of the chairs and lit a cigarette. Peter brought out a
bottle of cognac and a couple of glasses. He threw open the shutters
and the soft late sounds of the city filtered in with the fresh spring
air. One could just hear the faint tinkle of an orchestra at some
distant bal.
I like you, Van Vechten, my host began at last, and I've got to talk to
somebody. My work has just begun and there's so much to say about it.
Tell me to stop when you get tired.... In a way, I want to know what
you think; in another way, it helps me merely to talk, in the working
out of my ideas. But who was there to talk to, I mean before you came?
I can see that you may be interested in what I am trying to do, good
God! in what I _will_ do! I've done a lot already....
You have begun your book then?
Well, you might say so, but I haven't written a line. I've collected
the straw; the bricks will come. I've not been idle. You see those
catalogues?