Читать книгу In New York with the Tucker Twins - Emma Speed Sampson - Страница 4

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“Clang! Clang! Clang!” sounded the dinner gong at six thirty sharp.

It was welcome music to the sojourners in the third floor back. We had spent the day snooping around New York, picking up a snack at a dairy lunch, that was filling for the moment, but as Dum expressed it, did not stick to our ribs. We were filled with curiosity about the persons who were to come from behind the closed doors. Madame had hinted that celebrities were lodged under her roof and we were naturally anxious to meet them.

The dining room was in the basement. It was long and low and plenty of gas made it bright and cheerful, a much more attractive place than the parlor. A narrow table stretched from one end to the other with seats for at least twenty persons. I wondered that so many could have come from behind the closed doors but learned later that many of them were from outside, only taking their dinner at Maison Gaston. Madame had established a reputation for her table d’hôte and had no difficulty in filling the twenty seats with French people or those who had a taste for French food.

The hostess was seated in state as we entered. She bowed her bepuffed and upholstered head, motioning us to three places near the middle of the table. We were thankful to be seated so far from her although we instinctively felt that she had given us what she considered to be seats of dishonor, below the salt.

Opposite her, at the foot of the table was a distinguished looking little man of about fifty, I should say. He was very French looking, with a clipped pointed beard and a bristling pompadour. He was engaged in conversation with a very good looking woman seated to his left. His French was so clear and pure, to my delight I found I could understand almost everything he said, but the handsome woman spoke rapidly and in a guttural tone that made it difficult for one not well versed in French to follow.

Next to the handsome woman was a quiet unassuming man with a modest, retiring manner. He was her husband and it turned out afterwards was one of the celebrities of whom madame had boasted. He was no less than one of the best and most noted baseball players in the world.

Our fellow boarders looked at us curiously, seemingly uncertain whether or not to admit us to the intimacy of the table d’hôte. Madame Gaston introduced us so rapidly that it took the combined wits of the three of us later on when we retired to our third floor back to sort out the persons to whom we had been introduced. We all agreed however that the bearded gentleman at the foot of the table was the cock of the walk and that his name was Monsieur Durand. When he spoke the table listened with attention. Madame called him Monsieur le Chancelier. He represented the French government in some capacity in New York, how we did not know, but he was important evidently.

The baseball player was named Grayson. I liked him better than anybody at the table. His wife was an actress with a perennial grouch against managers, having been kept out of her own by them according to her way of thinking. She had played good parts but never seemed to be able to stick. She was not an American, but I could not spot her nationality. She wanted people to think she was French, speaking constantly of Paris and how she loved the city, but there was a subtle difference between her speech and that of M. Durand that told me she could not be of his country. She paid very little attention to her clean, cheerful looking athlete of a husband but spent her time trying to engage the admiration of the chancelor.

Opposite us, and of equal unimportance in madame’s eyes, sat two maiden ladies from the middle west. They were at Maison Gaston with the dire purpose of learning French. Eagerly they drank in the pure tones of M. Durand and laboriously they endeavored to enter into the conversation. They were tolerated by the others but only tolerated. Mrs. Grayson was frankly bored by them and openly rude. Next to them were some long haired art students who had been driven out of Paris by the war and were now dragging out a miserable existence in their native land until they could return to the city of their adoption. I felt it would be the better part to play had they stayed there and helped save the country they seemed to think so much of, but they looked too feeble to wield anything more dangerous than palette knives and then they had such enormous appetites that perhaps France was better off without them. I am sure that the dinner they got at Maison Gaston was the only meal they had. They ate too much to want breakfast and they were afraid to eat luncheon for fear of ruining the dinner.

I cannot describe all the twenty who ate at Madame Gaston’s table d’hôte. There were some French milliners whose gay chatter of shop must have appealed to the hostess as she placed them next to her. There were some clerks, some music students and one tall blond young man named Smith who had a room in the house and no settled occupation that one could state. He had near-sighted blue eyes and a very red mouth which he kept tightly closed except when he was eating and then he opened it very wide indeed and shoveled in quantities of food in evident appreciation of the French cooking. Indeed it was excellent and neatly and expeditiously served by madame’s two daughters, Yvonne and Claire.

Claire, the child of twelve, looked pale, delicate and overworked, but she waited as well and even better than her sister. She watched her mother furtively for signs which that grenadier-like lady was free to give. Little Claire seemed to know what she meant by her frowns and nods and was quick to do her bidding. Not long was she allowed to tarry in serving the ravenous artists; the best must be taken to M. Durand; Mr. and Mrs. Grayson were also high in favor; the milliners must be attended to carefully; we didn’t count at all, nor did the maiden ladies from the middle west, nor the blond Mr. Smith.

The machinations of our hostess were so amusing I could not help smiling and then blushing as I caught the eye of Mr. Smith. He was gazing intently at me. I wondered if he knew that Madame Gaston put him in the category with the little southern girls who were then occupying her third floor back.

The talk was of the war, always the war. That fall of 1916 was a tense one in the United States. Officially we were not in the war, but the hearts of most good Americans were beating with the Allies. It was a matter of months only and maybe weeks before we would be standing by their sides as a nation.

The conversation was as a rule in French but at times the whole table would drop into English. We were there to learn French but I, for one, was always relieved when I was not having to learn it quite so hard. It was so difficult to follow a discussion of politics in a foreign language that I found I could not eat and listen too. This was brought to my attention when Yvonne whisked my plate away before I had even so much as touched my chop and peas. The only comfort I got out of it was that madame smiled her approval and beamed on me as though she might sooner or later let me come sit by her or even put me up next to the great chancelor. I fancy poor little Claire got that chop and after all she needed it more than I did.

Yvonne was pretty, exceedingly pretty, and she tripped around the table like a stage waitress, making eyes at the men as she served them and sometimes leaning against them just a tiny bit so that they might think it was accidental. I noticed that she was especially solicitous where Mr. Smith was concerned and as she held the Brussels sprouts so he could serve himself she leaned over so far that her fluffy hair brushed his face. The color mounted to his forehead. I wondered if he liked being flirted with in that way.

“Polly voo Fraunsay?” One of the maiden ladies was addressing the Tuckers and me.

As usual Dum and I looked to Dee for assistance.

“A little!” she answered.

“Eel fo polly Fraunsay eesy. Ou avy voo prunny voter dejernay?”

The French of the eager thirster after languages was so bad that we understood it very readily, much more so than when the table d’hôters spoke with the pure Parisian accent. If Dee was to answer in French, answer she must. She was quite equal to the occasion of informing the lady where she had lunched.

“Café de l’enfant,” she announced in a clear tone. There had been a lull in the conversation when the maiden lady had addressed us in her execrable French. Even the clatter of knives and forks had ceased as though the whole of Maison Gaston awaited with intense interest to learn where the new boarders had taken their luncheon on their first day in New York.

“Café de l’enfant?” questioned M. Durand. “I do not know that café. Is it near by?”

“Oh, there are a great many of them, all over the city I believe.” Dee’s eyes were full of fun. The chancelor had fallen into English and since he was the Autocrat of the Dinner Table we had the right to follow suit.

“Ah, French restaurants?”

“No, Monsieur Durand!”

By this time the table was rocking with laughter.

“She means Child’s, she means Child’s!” they shouted. The chancelor laughed and clapped his hands. The milliners applauded; the clerks laughed gleefully; the art students looked up and in whispered converse decided Dee and Dum were both paintable and I was chic; Mr. Grayson smiled in a friendly way: the maiden ladies would have joined in if they could have seen the joke but they were still seeking the point when the subject got changed. The only persons at the table who did not laugh were Mrs. Grayson and Madame Gaston. The former seemed to resent M. Durand noticing one of us and the latter evidently did not consider that a third floor backer had any right to crack a joke at her exclusive table d’hôte.

At any rate Dee’s answer had broken the ice for all of us and we did not feel near so strange and alien. Monsieur le Chancelier had smiled on us, the rest of the table had applauded and now we were in society. Soon we were chattering away in pigeon French, quite holding our own in the conversation.

It was the custom of the house when dinner was over for the boarders to congregate in the ugly parlor for about half an hour and then at an unmistakable signal from madame to disperse. That canny lady had no idea of having her plush chairs unnecessarily sat upon or her lamp-post gas burned unduly. If the place was ugly by day when the sunlight was only allowed to come through the drawn blinds in narrow streaks you may fancy how hideous it was by night when gas was turned full on the bilious paper and the gilded cooking utensils.

M. Durand seemed quite willing to pursue the acquaintance with the Tuckers and me. He asked us to be seated on the long sofa and placed himself in front of us but madame would have none of it. She called us off to show us a picture executed by her daughter, Yvonne, who was responsible for all of the strange and wonderful ornamentation. The chancelor, no doubt, was very agreeable but nothing could exceed the delight we took in this picture. It was a country scene with everything in it one could find in the country. There were houses and barns and fences and trees and water mills with wheels and streams and clouds.

The artist had resorted not to mere pigment for her effect, which fact madame pointed out with pardonable pride. The houses and tree trunks were made of bark glued to the canvas. Leaves were formed of moss, dried and colored, also the grass. For clouds and waterfall the genius of mademoiselle had resorted to pure white cotton which fluffed and foamed in a manner most realistic.

“How wonderful!” gasped Dum. “How did she ever think of doing such a thing?”

“O, my daughter is clever, so clever I shall find it hard to discover anyone good enough to marry her,” declared the fond mother. “A girl with her education and attainments should marry only the best.”

As madame spoke I noticed she involuntarily glanced at M. Durand. Could she have her eye on the grand chancelor as a future son-in-law? Certainly she would not let one of us have a word to say to him and perhaps that accounted for her ill-humor in discovering we were not children. I recalled that the female boarders were none of them of a type to attract middle-aged Frenchmen. Perhaps madame would not welcome such to her table d’hôte. As for Mrs. Grayson: she was safely married and a mild flirtation carried on between M. Durand and her would not hurt her daughter’s chances.

M. Durand followed us on the tour of inspection, which our hostess conducted even into the corners. She opened up the mail box showing us that it concealed a case with two decanters and some wine glasses. As the star boarder approached she could hardly conceal her vexation and quickly gave the congregated boarders to understand that the half hour was up and she was going to turn out the gas. There was nothing for us to do but mount the stairs to our third floor back.

M. Durand followed us and kept us for several minutes on the landing in front of his room (the second floor front) talking to us most agreeably. He was an interesting, well educated gentleman in deep distress because of his beloved country.

“Aren’t you dying to be at the front?” blurted out Dum.

“Ah yes, mademoiselle, but my country sees fit to keep me where I can do the most good.”

I noticed the door of the room next to M. Durand’s was opened a tiny bit and a faint rustle behind it gave me the knowledge that someone was standing close to the crack.

“How can one serve so well as at the front?” questioned Dum, who usually pushed a point until she was through. She was very staunch pro-Ally, as were all of us, long before we, as a country, cast our lot with them. M. Durand flushed. Dum was not tactful in her remark, but Dum was not the tactful kind. No man of fifty or younger or older likes to have his fighting ability questioned and certainly no Frenchman during the great war enjoyed being quizzed as to his loyalty.

“There are many ways and I am no slacker.”

“Oh, I did not mean that—”

“To fight men must have munitions. New forms of firearms, offensive and defensive, are constantly being invented. France must have representatives in this country of all others where the inventive genius is most developed. Now only this day a man came to my office with—” but at this point the man checked himself and shut his mouth with a click. What was he on the point of divulging?

The door next to his room creaked a tiny bit but no one seemed to notice it. I remembered a letter that I had written Father and hoped to get off on the night mail. There was a box near the house and I thought I would run get my letter and slip out and mail it, while the Tuckers were talking to M. Durand. Without saying anything I started up the steps. As my eyes reached the level of the floor above, they came full upon a pair of listening legs. Someone was interested in the conversation being held on the landing below. Instinctively I rejoiced that the Frenchman had shut his mouth when he had. The legs beat a hasty retreat and by the time I arrived at the top of the stairs the hall was empty. I could not tell who was the owner of the legs. I only knew that whoever did own them was possessed of something long and slim.

The creaking door below and the listening legs above made me feel that M. Durand should be careful of his conversation, but I determined to say nothing to Dum and Dee as I often got unmercifully teased by them over the blood and thunder plots that I had a way of seeing around me. If I had merely suggested German spies they would have had a joke on me forever.