Europe Revised — 30 - Ch. XIV: That Gay Paresis, pt. 2

They belonged, it seemed, to a troupe of jubilee singers who had been imported from the States for the delectation of French audiences.

At night, after their work at a vaudeville theater was done, the members of their company were paired off and sent about to the cafes to earn their keep by singing ragtime songs and dancing buck dances.

These two were desperately, pathetically homesick.

One of them blinked back the tears when he told us, with the plaintive African quaver in his voice, how long they had been away from their own country and how happy they would be to get back to it again.

"We suttin'ly is glad to heah somebody talkin' de reg'lar New 'Nited States talk, same as we does," he said.

"We gits mighty tired of all dis yere French jabberin'!"

"Yas, suh," put in his partner; "dey meks a mighty fuss over cullud folks over yere; but 'tain't noways lak home.

I comes from Bummin'ham, Alabama, myse'f. Does you gen'lemen know anybody in Bummin'ham?"

They were the first really wholesome creatures who had crossed our paths that night.

They crowded up close to us and there they stayed until we left, as grateful as a pair of friendly puppies for a word or a look.

Presently, though, something happened that made us forget these small dark compatriots of ours.

We had had sandwiches all round and a bottle of wine.

When the waiter brought the check it fell haply into the hands of the one person in our party who knew French and--what was an even more valuable accomplishment under the present circumstances--knew the intricate French system of computing a bill.

He ran a pencil down the figures.

Then he consulted the price list on the menu and examined the label on the neck of the wine bottle, and then he gave a long whistle.

"What's the trouble?"

asked one of us.

"Oh, not much!"

he said.

"We had a bottle of wine priced at eighteen francs and they have merely charged us twenty-four francs for it--six francs overcharge on that one item alone.

The total for the sandwiches should have been six francs, and it is put down at ten francs.

And here, away down at the bottom, I find a mysterious entry of four francs, which seems to have no bearing on the case at all--unless it be that they just simply need the money.

I expected to be skinned somewhat, but I object to being peeled.

I'm afraid, at the risk of appearing mercenary, that we'll have to ask our friend for a recount."

He beckoned the waiter to him and fired a volley of rapid French in the waiter's face.

The waiter batted his eyes and shrugged his shoulders;

then reversing the operation he shrugged his eyelids and batted his shoulderblades, meantime endeavoring volubly to explain.

Our friend shoved the check into his hands and waved him away.

He was back again in a minute with the account corrected.

That is, it was corrected to the extent that the wine item had been reduced to twenty-one francs and the sandwiches to eight francs.

By now our paymaster was as hot as a hornet.

His gorge rose--his freeborn, independent American gorge.

It rose clear to the ceiling and threw off sparks and red clinkers.

He sent for the manager.

The manager came, all bows and graciousness and rumply shirtfront; and when he heard what was to be said he became all apologies and indignation.

He regretted more than words could tell that the American gentlemen who deigned to patronize his restaurant had been put to annoyance.

The garcon--here he turned and burned up that individual with a fiery sideglance--was a debased idiot and the misbegotten son of a yet greater and still more debased idiot.

The cashier was a green hand and an imbecile besides.

It was incredible, impossible, that the overcharging had been done deliberately; that was inconceivable.

But the honor of his establishment was at stake.

They should both, garcon and cashier, be discharged on the spot.

First, however, he would rectify all mistakes.

Would monsieur intrust the miserable addition to him for a moment, for one short moment?

Monsieur would and did.

This time the amount was made right and our friend handed over in payment a fifty-franc note.

With his own hands the manager brought back the change.

Counting it over, the payee found it five francs short.

Attention being directed to this error the manager became more apologetic and more explanatory than ever, and supplied the deficiency with a shiny new five-franc piece from his own pocket.

And then, when we had gone away from there and had traveled a homeward mile or two, our friend found that the new shiny five-franc piece was counterfeit--as false a thing as that manager's false smile.

We had bucked the unbeatable system, and we had lost.

Earlier that same evening we spent a gloom-laden quarter of an hour in another cafe--one which owes its fame and most of its American customs to the happy circumstance that in a certain famous comic opera produced a few years ago a certain popular leading man sang a song extolling its fascinations.

The man who wrote the song must have had a full-flowered and glamorous imagination, for he could see beauty where beauty was not.

To us there seemed nothing particularly fanciful about the place except the prices they charged for refreshments.

However, something unusual did happen there once.

It was not premeditated though; the proprietor had nothing to do with it.

Had he known what was about to occur undoubtedly he would have advertised it in advance and sold tickets for it.

By reason of circumstances over which he had no control, but which had mainly to do with a locked-up wardrobe, an American of convivial mentality was in his room at his hotel one evening, fairly consumed with loneliness.

Above all things he desired to be abroad amid the life and gayety of the French capital; but unfortunately he had no clothes except boudoir clothes, and no way of getting any, either, Which made the situation worse.

He had already tried the telephone in a vain effort to communicate with a ready-made clothing establishment in the Rue St. Honore.

Naturally he had failed, as he knew he would before he tried.

Among Europeans the telephone is not the popular and handy adjunct of every-day life it is among us.

The English have small use for it because it is, to start with, a wretched Yankee invention; besides, an Englishman in a hurry takes a cab, as his father before him did--takes the same cab his father took, if possible--and the Latin races dislike telephone conversations because the gestures all go to absolute waste.

The French telephone resembles a dingus for curling the hair.

You wrap it round your head, with one end near your mouth and the other end near your ear, and you yell in it a while and curse in it a while; and then you slam it down and go and send a messenger.

The hero of the present tale, however, could not send a messenger--the hotel people had their orders to the contrary from one who was not to be disobeyed.

Finally in stark desperation, maddened by the sounds of sidewalk revelry that filtered up to him intermittently, he incased his feet in bed-room slippers, slid a dressing gown over his pajamas, and negotiated a successful escape from the hotel by means of a rear way.

Once in the open he climbed into a handy cab and was driven to the cafe of his choice, it being the same cafe mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago.

Through a side entrance he made a hasty and unhindered entrance into this place--not that he would have been barred under any circumstances, inasmuch as he had brought a roll with him.

A person with a cluster of currency on hand is always suitably dressed in Paris, no matter if he has nothing else on; and this man had brought much ready cash with him.

He could have gone in fig-leaved like Eve, or fig-leafless like September Morn, it being remembered that as between these two, as popularly depicted, Morn wears even less than Eve.

So he whisked in handily, and when he had hidden the lower part of himself under a table he felt quite at home and proceeded to have a large and full evening.

Soon there entered another American, and by that mental telepathy which inevitably attracts like-spirit to like-spirit he was drawn to the spot where the first American sat.

He introduced himself as one feeling the need of congenial companionship, and they shook hands and exchanged names, and the first man asked the second man to be seated; so they sat together and had something together, and then something more together;

and as the winged moments flew they grew momentarily more intimate.

Finally the newcomer said: "This seems a pretty lachrymose shop.

Suppose we go elsewhere and look for some real doings."

"Your proposition interests me strangely," said the first man; "but there are two reasons--both good ones--why I may not fare forth with you.

Look under the table and you'll see 'em."

The second man looked and comprehended, for he was a married man himself; and he grasped the other's hand in warm and comforting sympathy.

"Old Man," he said--for they had already reached the Old Man stage--"don't let that worry you.

Why, I've got more pants than any man with only one set of legs has any right to have.

I've got pants that've never been worn.

You stay right here and don't move until I come back.

My hotel is just round the corner from here."

No sooner said than done.

He went and in a surprisingly short time was back, bearing spare trousers with him.

Beneath the shielding protection of the table draperies the succored one slipped them on, and they were a perfect fit.

Now he was ready to go where adventure might await them.

They tarried, though, to finish the last bottle.

Over the rim of his glass the second man ventured an opinion on a topic of the day.

Instantly the first man challenged him.

It seemed to him inconceivable that a person with intelligence enough to have amassed so many pairs of trousers should harbor such a delusion.

He begged of his new-found friend to withdraw the statement, or at least to abate it.

The other man was sorry, but he simply could not do it.

He stood ready to concede almost anything else, but on this particular point he was adamant; in fact, adamant was in comparison with him as pliable as chewing taffy.

Much as he regretted it, he could not modify his assertion by so much as one brief jot or one small tittle without violating the consistent principles of a consistent life.

He felt that way about it.

All his family felt that way about it.

"Then, sir," said the first man with a rare dignity, "I regret to wound your feelings; but my sensibilities are such that I cannot accept, even temporarily, the use of a pair of trousers from the loan collection of a person who entertains such false and erroneous conceptions.

I have the pleasure, sir, of wishing you good night."

With these words he shucked off the borrowed habiliments and slammed them into the abashed bosom of the obstinate stranger and went back to his captivity--pantless, 'tis true, but with his honor unimpaired.

Chapter XV