CHAPTER FIVE
Through the crowd waiting for tables, Herrick pushed his way and Jean followed closely. Greasy waiters rushed about with great platters of spaghetti, increasing the noise and confusion by their violent gestures and frantic efforts to serve every one at once. As Jean and Herrick made their way among the small tables that took up three-quarters of the long room, people looked at them and made comments which came to Jean in broken sentences of no meaning. Suddenly the air of the Marseillaise rose above the din. Instantly the crowd waiting about the door pushed forward, and those already seated got on chairs and craned their necks toward the end of the room.
Herrick bent to Jean. "Don't be frightened. We're really not a bit dangerous."
Jean did not have time to answer before they passed through the outer rim of the crowd and came into a cleared space before a long table, from which the deafening din arose. Mounted on a chair, a fat man, in a khaki hunting suit and an enormous Windsor tie of peacock blue satin, was bellowing a song set to the tune of the Marseillaise. The burden of the song was, "Bring on the Food! Bring on the Food!" A girl in a dull green crêpe dress that hung from the shoulders like a kimono, stood in the center of the table and carried the air high above the rest in a shrill soprano. The men and women about the table beat time with forks and spoons.
As Herrick and Jean came forward the man in khaki saw them, stopped, appraised Jean in a glance, and silenced his chorus with a wave of his fat hand.
"I hereby fine him, Franklin Herrick, twenty-five cents for tardiness, said fine to be paid in United States silver coin, not later than ten o'clock this evening, and to be used for the sole purpose of aiding the complete debauch of The Bunch."
He jumped down and came forward with both hands outstretched in generous welcome. He appropriated Jean, separated her from Herrick and swept her into the empty chair between a pudgy woman in a black skirt and soiled white waist, and a heavy-browed young man who did not move or glance at Jean as she took the place. With a wave that included the entire table, Flop announced:
"Jean, Jean Norris, and on with the dance!" He seemed to find this funny, and laughed immoderately. A tall, very thin man next to the pudgy woman bent forward, leered at Jean for a second in maudlin earnestness, and then yelled:
"We want Jean! We want Jean!"
The table took it up, and all down the length, glasses were raised and they drank to Jean in the sour, red wine. Across the table, from what was evidently his accustomed place next to the girl in the green crêpe, Herrick smiled reassuringly. The girl had come down from the table at Flop's introduction of Jean and sat with her elbows on the cloth and her chin in her palms, staring at Jean, with no acknowledgment of the latter's existence in her eyes. Now that she looked at her more closely, Jean saw that the woman was not really young, only her smallness made her seem so. Her blue eyes were netted with fine wrinkles and the skin of her hands was faintly withered. The youngest thing about her was her neck, beautifully modeled, and her black hair which was thin but wavy. Jean was just wondering whether the woman was expressing a genuine mood, or resenting a stranger, when the pudgy woman said in a reassuring tone:
"You mustn't be afraid of us. We say and do anything that pleases us, but really we're not the least bit dangerous."
"But I'm not. Not the least bit. Do I look so—so green, that I need protection?" Jean smiled, but this insistence that there was nothing to fear, annoyed her.
The woman thrust her face close to Jean's and scrutinized her carefully. "An azalea! That's it, an azalea! Listen, listen, all ye present, I've got it. Azalea, that's her Bunch name."
"Azalea! Azalea!" Above the noise, Flop's bass bellowed and he beat the table in a frenzy of approval, as if he could not have endured another moment without knowing the right name for Jean. Through the uproar, Herrick's smile reached like a cool touch. They drank Jean's baptism in the sour, red wine and the next moment the interrupted arguments were going on more violently than before. The name was adopted with voracious enthusiasm and complete indifference.
Rather exhausted by the suddenness of the proceeding, Jean drew back and tried to separate the mass before her into its elements. She wondered which were Harcourt and Tolletson and whether they had been "baptized" in wine. She scanned the faces along the opposite side, where Herrick was now listening with a frown to the girl in green; and then, as no one claimed her attention, leaned a little forward. There was a heavy-set young man with a swarthy skin, who talked with an Oxford accent and made Jewish gestures: a middle-aged man, with sleek hair and a Van Dyke, which he was continually stroking with a very white hand. He seemed to carry on his side of the argument with the swarthy person, in a series of grunts and inner explosions, as if his opinions were so violent that they erupted before he could bind them in words. There was also a woman with gray hair framing a young face and sad, kind brown eyes. She seemed interested, but said little, and Jean liked her. And there was a pale, tall girl, with black eyes and hair, who smoked cigarettes faster than the two men beside her could roll them, and who stared in smoldering hate at these men when she had to wait, as if they had mortally injured her. Jean laughed quietly to herself, but instantly the woman beside her turned.
"I'm not so sure 'Azalea' was right. You sound exactly like a dove when you do that, a deep-breasted, soft, blue dove—Paloma. I believe that's it! I say——"
"Oh, no, please don't. I like the other one better. But I do want to know something. Which is Mr. Harcourt and which is Mr. Tolletson?"
"Harcourt and Tolletson? My dear, they never come, that is, hardly ever. Harcourt lives in London and Tolletson spends most of his time in Paris. Mathews lives in bourgeoise respectability in the country with a legal wife and baby. They were Bunchers somewhere in the Dark Ages. Some of us wouldn't know them if we met them on the street, only down underneath, you know, we're kind of proud of them, and keep their names alive. Then, they have been known to come within the memory of man. Makes 'em feel more successful to measure the distance they've got away, I suppose."
"Oh!" Jean felt as if the woman had stripped something from her rudely, but that she must cover this rudeness from some deeper need to herself. After all, Herrick had not promised that these men would be there. She had jumped to that conclusion herself.
"But the rest of us do something every now and then, in a small way," the other went on, with an understanding glint in her eyes that made Jean flush. "Oh, never mind, it wasn't rude, not a bit. Most every one who comes first, expects to see them, and it's rather funny watching the efforts not to ask point blank. Not many are as frank as you. Do you see that black and white thing, smoking like a chimney, and looking as lively as a mummy? That's The Tiger—mad about Flop for the last six weeks, frightful length of time for either of them. He's disciplining her with Magnolia, that big, sleepy porpoise he's kissing. The Tiger and Magnolia write poetry, damned good, too, some of it, but they never bother printing it. Magnolia'd like to, but it's the only trick The Tiger's got—pretending she doesn't care for money or fame, and 'Nolia has to live up to the standard. The human skeleton next to me's Vicky Sergeant; he has no Bunch name because we couldn't find a fruit or animal he looked like. That girl in green next to Franklin is Vicky's wife. We call her The Kitten—for various reasons. And of course you know Franklin's Boy Blue."
"Why Boy Blue?"
The woman laughed. "Don't ask me. Ask The Kitten. She named him long ago. I think it has something to do with always losing sheep."
At this moment, the now almost drunken Vicky claimed her and Jean looked up, to find The Kitten's eyes just turning away, and a scowl of anger on Herrick's face. The fingers crumbling his bread tightened and then he said something to The Kitten that made her drop the match, with which she was about to light her cigarette, and stare at him. After a moment she began to laugh as if the full force of the thing had come to her gradually. With a shrug, Herrick left his place and wedged a chair between Jean and the dumpy woman.
"I'm afraid we didn't get a very good night. They're all rather keyed up. They are sometimes."
The impersonal criticism in his voice linked him with the charter members who never came, separated him from The Kitten and the noisy enthusiasm that glittered like veneer over what Jean instinctively felt was real boredom and disillusion. It drew her to him and she said in a low tone:
"Who's The Kitten?"
He hesitated, and then answered in the same low tone:
"An unhappy woman with claws that tear herself and every one else who gets too near, and she's in the devil of a mood to-night. Poor Kitten, she will never learn."
Jean looked across the table with more pity in her eyes than she realized, until The Kitten's laughter ceased suddenly, and leaning to Jean, she said:
"Don't be too sweet to Boy Blue, Azalea. He can't stand azaleas. I saw him get disgustingly drunk once, just because the room was hot and there was a big bunch of azaleas in it. Don't you remember, Boy?"
"I can't say that I do, Kitten," Franklin answered quietly. "But you remember such a lot of things."
"Dozens, Boy, dozens."
Herrick refused to continue the conversation and, with a remark that included Jean, entered the discussion going on at the end of the table. While she tried to catch the drift of the talk, Jean felt The Kitten's eyes on her and knew that the woman saw her effort to pretend unconsciousness of them. This lasted only a few moments, for, with an elaborate yawn, The Kitten left the table. No one made any comment on her going and Vicky was lost in assumed jealousy of the dumpy woman who was flirting clumsily with Flop.
The argument was a technical one and soon beyond Jean's depth, for she knew nothing at all of painting or artists. But from time to time Herrick appealed to her on a point about which the rankest layman would have an opinion, so that Jean felt in him a keener social sense and greater natural kindliness than any of the others seemed to possess.
When the argument became too intricate for even Herrick to include her, she leaned back, now much more at ease, and sensing a faint, possible charm, which had at first been quite lost under the gaucherie of manner.
The Outlanders, as The Bunch called the rest of the world, had thinned a little, but there were still many tables filled with starers toward the big table in the center. It was evidently the attraction of this rather dirty restaurant, and Jean judged that the proprietor would rather feed The Bunch for nothing than have them transfer their patronage. And for this freedom, this effortful emancipation from the social code that passed as originality and genius, he charged The Outlanders high. This too they appreciated. It gave value to the thing they bought.
"After all," Jean decided, "I suppose I do look like a baby let out alone without its nurse. I've never met any people worth while knowing in my life, or any one out of the beaten track. And because these tie their neckties across instead of down and make a lot of noise, I feel superior. I've certainly never painted a picture or written a poem and I didn't know there was anything the matter with Maeterlinck at all. Jean Norris, you're a cocky fool."
She was recalled from this philosophizing by Herrick's touch upon her shoulder.
"Dreaming again?" His voice was wistful, not this time as if he wished to share her dreams, but as if he envied her the power to dream. Jean thought that his eyes were very tired and his face rather pale, as she looked up. "Well?" he smiled down at her. "Were you really so far away? Come back, won't you, please?"
It was a sincere request, and as Jean followed to the street, she felt that Herrick was often alone among these people and she thought she understood now why he had not tried to do the novel.
On the sidewalk Flop stood in the center of the group debating what to do with the rest of the night. When Herrick and Jean joined, Flop turned to her with his manner of having just been struck by an illuminating thought.
"We'll leave it to Azalea. Which would you rather do, go down to Ramon's and drink mescal, he's just got some from Mexico, or do the Coast? There's a dancer at Frank's worth seeing."
"I'm afraid I can't do either. The next boat won't get me home till after one, as it is."
"Nonsense. Nobody ever goes home while there's anything else to do. 'We won't go home till morning!'"
The others took it up, and the silence of the empty street echoed to the old song. Jean wondered whether Flop was always singing his wants like this, and glanced at Herrick.
"Let's beat it, if you really want to," he whispered, and almost before she knew it, they had turned down a side street. For a block the voices of The Bunch followed. They did not know that Jean and Herrick had slipped away.
"If there's anything more dull than drinking mescal, it's going to Frank's. I don't see what on earth Flop finds in it."
Jean liked his annoyance. Again she felt that they were linked in understanding against the others. She had meant to ask him about Harcourt and Mathews, but now it seemed unnecessary.
They walked in almost total silence through the dark streets lined with closed warehouses that sent out a mingled odor of fruits and vegetables exotic to Jean in its newness. Often the black bulk of empty crates forced them into the cobble paved road-bed, thick with dust and fruit rinds and withered greens. Once, in common consent they stopped to listen to hundreds of crated pigeons, cooing softly behind closed doors.
"Youarelike a dove. She was right for once. A big, calm dove," he said, and they went on silent as before.
On the boat they chose the forward deck and watched the dark hills come closer. The great paddle-wheel churned a rhythm to Jean's thoughts, pictures of the day, from the time she had met Herrick and had walked through the crowded streets, to the present cool emptiness of the upper deck with the night wind touching her face and thousands of stars above. To Jean it had been the fullest day she had ever lived.
Gently Herrick's hand claimed hers and she did not withdraw it. The contact seemed only a finer communication, a surer speech than the clumsiness of words.