Chapter III

“Now, what the mischief am I to do for half an hour,” mused Clifford, staring out of the blank window, both hands in his pockets, an empty pipe between his teeth. There was a vacancy in his stomach that bothered him, and the more he thought about it, the more it hurt. The canary birds were revelling in bird-seed; he eyed them enviously for a while, then walked up and down whistling. Every time he passed the big gilded cage he could hear the birds cracking and splitting the seeds, and the noise of the feast irritated him.

His neighbour on the floor above was singing away with heart and soul about bull-rings and toreadors, banging joyously upon the Basque drum or snapping and clicking the castanets.

“Dear! Dear!” he thought, “my neighbour is really very gay. She must have moved in to-day. I—I wonder what she’s like!”

He listened, sitting close to his dying fire. After a moment he heard her cross the room and open the piano again.

“Dear! Dear!” he said to himself, “what a musical young lady! Probably an embryo actress from the Conservatoire;—or—or—”

The piano began; it was scales this time. For an hour he sat huddled before the cold ashes, listening to the five-fingered acrobatic exercises, alternately yawning with hunger and cursing Elliott. When six o’clock struck from the concierge’s lodge he stood up, gazing dismally out into the night.

Suddenly he heard the scrape of feet outside, and he hurried to his door and opened it.

Through the lighted hallway a figure shuffled, carrying a large tray covered with a white napkin. It was a waiter from the Café Rose-Croix and Clifford knew him.

“Bon soir, Monsieur Clifford,” he said doubtfully.

“Good evening, Placide, Placide,—er—is that little banquet for me? Oh, it’s all right! I suppose Monsieur Elliott paid for it—”

“But, Monsieur,” said the waiter, “this dinner is for a lady.”

“What’s that?” said Clifford sharply. Then he buttonholed Placide and hauled him inside the studio.

“Who is the lady? The one upstairs?”

“Yes—Mademoiselle Plessis—she awaits her dinner—let me go, Monsieur Clifford,” pleaded Placide.

“Oh, I’m not going to play tricks on you,” said Clifford, “here! hold on!—if you move I’ll tip the tray. Now all I want you to do is—is—er—dear me!”

The odour of a nicely browned fowl disturbed his thoughts; his mind wandered with his eyes. Placide gaped at him. He knew Clifford and he dreaded him. “Here you!” said that young gentleman, removing his eyes from the fowl with an effort, “do you think that because I do you the honour of conversing with you that I wish to rob you? Do I look like a man to interfere with a lady’s dinner? Placide, you know me?”

“I do, Monsieur,” replied the waiter despondently.

“Then listen! I am going to make you my confidant! Think of that, Placide!”

The waiter looked at him obliquely and did not appear to appreciate the honour in store.

“Placide!”

“Monsieur!”

“I am in love!”

“Doubtless—if it is Monsieur’s pleasure—”

“Silence! Idiot! I am about to bestow gifts; I am about to—”

“The chicken, Monsieur, is becoming cold—”

“I am,” repeated Clifford majestically, “about to offer two dozen—twenty-four—canary birds to my adored. You may ask; what is that to you—”

“I do,” began Placide.

“Silence! Pig! These twenty-four canaries are to be carried to her by—think of it, Placide!—by you!”

Placide rolled his eyes, big with anguish. The chicken exhaled a delicious aroma.

Clifford drew in a long breath of the fragrance. Then he lifted the enormous gilt cage, and placed it in Placide’s hands. “Go upstairs and take these cursed birds with the compliments of Foxhall Clifford, artist, American, 70 rue Bara, first floor, door on the right.”

“But—but my tray—”

“Imbecile! Do you think I’m going to eat your tray? Come back for it and—tell me what the lady says.”

Placide shuffled sullenly to the door; Clifford opened it.

“My tray—” began the unwilling waiter.

“Placide,” said Clifford, “I have not dined—er—re—cently and my temper is uncertain. You are discreet. I wish to dine. Do you understand?”

Placide smirked.

“Then use your wits—and when I have ten francs—well—hasten, my good Placide.”

When the waiter had gone, Clifford tiptoed over to the tray and sniffed at the napkin.

“Dear! Dear!” he said, “what a wonderful congregation of perfumes. Now if she doesn’t shut the door on Placide’s nose—I—I hope—I delicately hope that I may receive my reward.”

He paced to and fro, whistling, but never taking his eyes from the tray. After a few minutes he heard Placide’s slippered tread on the stairs, and hastened to admit him.

“The young lady says,” began Placide, lifting the tray, “—the young lady says that Monsieur is too amiable—”

Clifford’s heart sank.

“And,” pursued Placide with dreary deliberation, edging toward the staircase, “the young lady says that she hopes to see you”—

“When?” blurted out Clifford.

“Some day,” grinned Placide, and escaped up the stairway, sneering, triumphant.

The blow staggered Clifford for a moment—but only for a moment. Before Placide had descended again, Clifford was changing his clothes; before Placide had passed the lodge-gate, Clifford had fastened a white neck-tie under a spotless collar. Then he tied a bit of crimson silk tightly around his forehead, inserted two feathers from a duster in the fillet where they waved like the plumes of a Sioux War-chief; and ten minutes later, radiant, patent-leathered, but starved, he rang gaily at the door of the studio overhead.

When Claire Plessis opened the door, Clifford bowed profoundly and skipped in, introducing himself with joyous abandon.

“It is the custom,” he said, bowing again and again with something of an Oriental salaam, “it is the custom in America—in far distant, sunny America,—to call at once upon distinguished strangers who come to lodge in the building. Therefore, Mademoiselle,”—and although he spoke French flawlessly he brutalised it now to suit his purpose,—“therefore, Mademoiselle,”—He salaamed again, rapidly and said:

“How! How! How!”

“Monsieur,” faltered the girl, not knowing whether to laugh or call for assistance,—“Monsieur, I am honoured—pray be—be seated.”

“Mademoiselle—it is too much honour!”

“Monsieur—”

They bowed again, and Clifford sank into a chair, his duster plumes nodding on his head.

The girl regarded him with undisguised amazement. She saw his eyes rolling toward the white-covered table and thought, “Oh dear, what shall I do with this foreign savage who sends me canary birds by the gross and who skips like a dancing dervish?”

“Monsieur,” she stammered.

“How! How! How!” grunted Clifford absently, sniffing the tablecloth.

“Nothing—nothing, Monsieur,” she said hastily; “I wish to thank you for the birds—”

“We eat them in America,” he said, and chattered his teeth.

“Like—like chickens?”

“What are chickens?”

She laughed and looked at the uncarved fowl on the table.

“Is that a chicken?” asked Clifford in his most awful French. “Is it good to eat?”

“If you would do me the honour to accept my hospitality, Monsieur, you could prove it for yourself,” she said laughing, and a little more at ease. “I have not yet dined,—I am quite alone—”

Clifford accepted, rising with oriental languor, and bowed magnificently. He led her to her place, seated her, drew up a chair opposite, and smiled upon her. His feathers bobbed with every movement.

“Now of course, I must carve,” she said, striving hard to repress an hysterical laugh; for Clifford, desiring to play his part of a foreign savage to perfection, was doing impossible things with his knife and fork.

“If she finds me out,” he was thinking, “it will not be very gay for me.” So he showed his teeth and muttered and salaamed occasionally, while the girl bowed to him over her slender glass of claret and helped him to more and more and more until the suffocating desire to laugh brought tears to her eyes.

“In America it is etiquette to eat until there is nothing left—at least I have read that in books,” she ventured.

“It is,” said Clifford, uncorking another bottle.

“You seem to like chicken,” she said.

“Ah,” he replied, “wait until you try my canary birds!”

“But,” she cried, “I am not going to eat them!”

Their eyes met across the table. He felt that he was going to laugh; he looked into her big grey eyes. Her dark-fringed lashes were trembling too; on each cheek a dimple deepened; between her scarlet lips the white teeth parted; then she sank back, her hands flung helplessly into her lap, and, looking into each other’s eyes, they burst into ringing peals of laughter.

Three times she dried the tears in her eyes, and, leaning forward, attempted to speak, but when her eyes met his again, she threw back her pretty head and laughed until the colour deepened to her throat. And so they sat there, trying to speak, but shrieking with laughter, until the glasses and bottles clinked and vibrated and the window panes sang again.

At last she murmured, “For shame, Monsieur! I—I ought to be very angry,—but I laugh—oh dear! oh! dear! I laugh and I should be furious! Fie! You play the foreigner—the—the untutored one who never saw chicken—oh dear! oh dear!—”

She rose, drying her eyes again on a dainty pocket handkerchief.

“Shame on you! How dared you come to my room and—oh dear—and tell me you eat canary birds—and walk like a dancing dervish, and do such things with your knife, and—what is your name?—mine is Claire.”

* * * * *

When, three hours later, he rose to go, he had told her all,—the whole wretched truth, and she had watched him with curious grey eyes, now brimming with laughter, now exquisite in their sympathy. She forgave him—not easily—but when he removed the feathers from his headdress and said he was sorry, she held out her hand to him with brilliant eyes and grave lips.

“So—you are forgiven,—not because you deserve it. Here in the Quarter we are like the leaves in the Luxembourg; we bud with the promise of summer,—we unfold, we nestle and whisper together,—we grow gorgeous and brilliant,—then we fall. Let us live in friendship while we may,—we of the Latin Quarter. I forgive you, mon ami.”