Part 5 (1/2)
”In some ways I like it very much. The food is quite possible as you know, very American in character, but very good American, and it has the advantage of being served out-of-doors. I am a Frenchman by adoption, and I like the outdoor cafe. In fact, I am never happy eating inside.”
”The surroundings are picturesque?” Nancy hazarded.
The stranger laughed. ”According to the American ideal,” he said, ”they are--but I do admit that they show a rather extraordinary imagination. I've often thought that I should like to make the acquaintance of the woman,--of course, it's a woman--who conceived the notion of this mortuary tea-room.”
”Why, of course, is it a woman?”
”A man wouldn't set up housekeeping in--in _Pere Lachaise_.”
”Why not, if he found a really domestic-looking corner?”
”He _wouldn't_ in the first place, it wouldn't occur to him, that's all, and if he did he couldn't get away with it. The only real drawback to this hostelry is, as you know, that they don't serve spirits of any kind. I'm accustomed to a gla.s.s or two of wine with my dinner, and my food sticks in my throat when I can't have it, but I've found a way around that, now.”
”Oh! have you?” said Nancy.
”Don't give me away, but there's a man about the place here whose name is Michael, and he possesses that blend of Gallic facility with Celtic canniness that makes the Irish so wonderful as a race. I told my trouble to Michael,--with the result that I get a teapot full of Chianti with my dinner every night, and no questions asked.”
”Oh! you do?” gasped Nancy.
”You see Michael is serving the best interests of his employer, who wants to keep her patrons, because if I couldn't have it I wouldn't be there. He couldn't trouble the lady about it, naturally, because it is technically an offense against the law. Come, let's go and find a quiet corner where we can continue our conversation comfortably.
There's a painfully respectable little hotel around the corner here that looks like the Cafe L'avenue when you first go in, but is a place where the most bourgeoise of one's aunts might put up.”
”I--I don't know that I can go,” said Nancy.
”There's no reason why you shouldn't, you know. My name is Collier Pratt. I'm an artist. The more bourgeoise of my aunts would introduce me if she were here. She's a New Englander like so many of your own charming relatives.”
”How did you know that?” Nancy asked, as she followed him with a docility quite new to her, past the big green gate, and the row of nondescript shops between it and the corner of Broadway.
”I was _born_ in Boston,” Collier Pratt said a trifle absently. ”I know a Ma.s.sachusetts product when I see one. Ah! here we are.”
He led her triumphantly to a table in the far corner of the practically empty restaurant, waved away the civilities of a swarthy and somewhat badly coordinated waiter, and pulled out her chair for her himself.
”Now, let me have a look at you,” he said; ”why, you've nothing on but muslin, and you're wearing your belt for a turban.”
”A sop to the conventions,” Nancy said, blus.h.i.+ng burningly. She was not quite able yet to get her bearings with this extraordinary man, who had a.s.sumed charge of her so cavalierly, but she was eager to find her poise in the situation. ”I ran away, and I thought it would look better to have something like a hat on.”
”Looks,” said Collier Pratt, ”looks! That's New England, always the looks of a thing, never the feel of it. Mind you I don't mean the _look_ of a thing, that's something different again.”
”Yes, I know, the conventional slant as opposed to the artistic perspective.”
”Good! It isn't necessary to have my remarks followed intelligently, but it always adds piquancy to the situation when they are. Speaking of artistic perspective, you have a very nice coloring. I like a ruddy chestnut hair with a skin as delicately white and pink as yours.” He spoke impersonally with the narrowing eye of the artist. ”I can see you either in white,--not quite a cream white, but almost,--against a pearly kind of Quakerish background, or flaming out in the most crude, barbaric a.s.semblage of colors. That's the advantage of your type and the environment you connote--you can be the whole show, or the veriest little mouse that ever sought the protective coloring of the shadows.”
”You aren't exactly taking the quickest way of putting me at my ease,”
Nancy said. ”I'm very much embarra.s.sed, you know. I'd stand being looked over for a few minutes longer if I could,--but I can't. I'm not having one of my most equable evenings.”
”I beg your pardon,” Collier Pratt said.
For the first time since she had seen his face with the light upon it, he smiled, and the smile relieved the rather empiric quality of his habitual expression. Nancy noticed the straight line of the heavy brows scarcely interrupted by the indication of the beginning of the nose, and wondering to herself if it were not possible for a person with that eyebrow formation to escape the venality of disposition that is popularly supposed to be its adjunct,--decided affirmatively.
”I'm not used to talking to American girls very much. I forget how daintily they're accustomed to being handled. I'm extremely anxious to put you at your ease,” he added quietly. ”I appreciate the privilege of your company on what promised to be the dullest of dull evenings. I should appreciate still more,” he bowed, as he handed her a bill of fare of the journalistic proportions of the usual hotel menu, ”if you would make a choice of refreshment, that we may dispense with the somewhat pathological presence of our young friend here,” he indicated the waiter afflicted with the jerking and t.i.tubation of a badly strung puppet. ”I advise Rhine wine and seltzer. I offer you anything from green chartreuse to Scotch and soda. Personally I'm going to drink Perrier water.”