CHAPTER II
THE BEGINNING OF MY ADVENTURE
Wiggins's strange conduct and Jewett's dark hints so disturbed me that the very next afternoon I again sought the Asolando Tea-Room, feeling that in its atmosphere I might best weigh the few facts I possessed touching my friend's love-affairs.
Those who care for details in these matters may be interested to know that the Asolando is tucked away among print-shops and exclusive haberdashers, a stone's throw from Fifth Avenue. The Asolando Tea-Room has a history of its own, but it is not the office of this chronicler to record it. Weightier matters are ahead of us; and it must suffice that the Asolando is sacred to wooers of the flute of Pan, secession photographers, and confident believers in an early revival of the poetic drama. One of my friends, who has probably done more to popularize Nietzsche than any other American, had frequently urged me to visit the Asolando, where, he declared, the daintiest imaginable luncheons could be obtained at nominal prices; but I should not have paid this second visit had it not been for Jewett's history.
It was common gossip in studios where I loafed between my professional engagements, that the monthly deficit at the Asolando was cared for by a retired banker whose weakness is sonnet-sequences. As to the truth of this I have no opinion. It will suffice if I convey in the fewest possible lines a suggestion of the tranquillity, the charming cloistral peace of the little room, with its Arts and Crafts chairs and tables, its racks of books, its portraits of Browning, Rossetti, Burne-Jones and kindred spirits; nor should I fail to mention the delightful inadvertence with which neatly framed excerpts from the bright page of British song are scattered along the walls. Nowhere else, many had averred, was one so likely to learn of the latest Celtic poet, or of a newly-discovered Keats letter; and lest injustice be done in these suggestions to the substantial scholarly attainments of the habitués, I must record that it was over a cup of tea in the Asolando that Bennett made the first notes for his revolutionary essay on the Sapphic fragments in a dog-eared text still treasured among the Room's memorabilia.
I chose a table, sat down, and suggested (one does not order at the Asolando) a few articles from the card an attendant handed me.
"We 're out of the Paracelsus ginger-cookies," she replied, "but I recommend a Ruskin sandwich with our own special chocolate. The whipped cream is unusually fine to-day."
She eyed me with a severity to which I was not accustomed, and I acquiesced without parley in her suggestion. Before leaving me she placed on my table the latest minor poet, in green and gold.
It was nearly three o'clock, and there were few customers in the Asolando. At the next table two women were engaged in conversation in the subdued tones the place compelled. I surmised from the amount and variety of their impedimenta and their abstracted air, peculiar to those who partake of lobster salad with an eye on the 4.18, that they were suburbanites. One of them drew from her net shopping-bag several sheets of robin's-egg blue note-paper and began to read. By the jingle of the rhymes and the flow of the rhythm it was clear even to my ignorant lay mind that her offering was a chant-royale. When she had concluded her reading her friend silently pressed her hand, and after a subdued debate for possession of the check, they took their departure, bound, I surmised, for some muse-haunted Lesbos among the hills of New Jersey.
I was now alone in the Asolando. The attending deities in their snowy gowns had vanished behind the screen at the rear of the room; the food and drink with which I had been promptly served proved excellent; even the minor poet in green and gold had held my attention, though imitations of Coventry Patmore's odes bore me as a rule. Near the street, half-concealed behind a mosque-like grill, sat the cashier, reading. A bundle of joss-sticks in a green jar beside this young woman sent a thin smoke into the air. Her head was bent above her book in quiet attention; the light from an electric lamp made a glow of her golden hair. She was an incident of the general picture, a part of a scene that contained no jarring note. A man who could devise, in the heart of the great city, a place so instinct with repose, so lulling to all the senses, was not less than a public benefactor, and I resolved on the spot to purchase and read, at any sacrifice, the sonnet-sequences of the reputed angel of the Asolando.
It was at this moment that the adventure—for it shall have no meaner name—actually began. My eyes were still enjoying the Rossetti-like vision in the cashier's tiny booth, when a figure suddenly darkened the street door just beyond her. The girl lifted her head. On the instant the lamp-key clicked as she extinguished her light, and the aureoled head ceased to be. And coming toward me down the shop I beheld a lady, a lady of years, who passed the cashier's desk with her eyes intent upon the room's inner recesses. Her gown, of a new fashionable gray, was of the severest tailor cut. Her hat was a modified fedora, gray like the gown, and adorned with a single gray feather. She was short, slight, erect, and moved with a quick bird-like motion, pausing and glancing at the vacant tables that lay between me and the door. Her air of abstraction became her, and she merged pleasantly into the color-scheme of the room. As her glance ranged the wall I thought that she searched for some favorite flower of song among the framed quotations, but I saw now that her gaze was bent too low for this. She appeared to be engaged in a calculation of some sort, and she raised a lorgnette to assist her in counting the tables. The cashier passed behind her unseen and vanished. I heard the newcomer reciting:—
"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven;" and at seven her eyes rested upon me with a look that mingled surprise and annoyance. She took a step toward me, and I started to rise, but she said quickly:—
"I beg your pardon, but this seems to be the seventh table."
"I beg your pardon, but this seems to be the seventh table."
"Now that you call my attention to it," I remarked, gaining my feet, "I am bound to concede the point. If by any chance I am intruding"—
"Not in the least. On the other hand I beg that you remain where you are;" and without further ado she sank into a chair opposite my own.
I tinkled a tiny crystal bell that was among the table-furnishings, and a waitress appeared and handed the lady who had thus introduced herself to my acquaintance a copy of the tiny card on which the articles of refreshment offered by the Asolando were indicated within a border of hand-painted field daisies.
"Never mind that," said the lady in gray, ignoring the card. "You may bring me a caviare sandwich and a cocktail,—a pink one—providing,—providing,"—and she held the waitress with her eye,—"you have the imported caviare and your bar-keeper knows the proper frappé of the spirit-lifter I have named."
"Pardon me, madam," replied the waitress icily, "but you have mistaken the place. The Asolando serves nothing stronger than the pure water of its own fount of Castalia; intoxicants are not permitted here."
"Intoxicants!" repeated the old lady with asperity. "Do I look like a person given to intoxication? I dare say your Castalia water is nothing but Croton whose flavor has been destroyed by distillation. You may bring me the sandwich I have mentioned and with it a pot of tea. Yes, thank you; lemon with the tea."
As the girl vanished with the light tread that marked the service of the place, I again made as to rise, but the old lady lifted her hand with a delaying gesture.
"Pray remain. It is not unlikely that we have friends and ideas in common, and as you were seated at the seventh table it is possible that some ordering of fate has brought us together."
She took from me, in the hand which she had now ungloved, the copy of my minor poet, glanced at it scornfully, and tossed it upon the floor with every mark of disdain.
"What species of mental disorder does this place represent?" she demanded.
"It is sacred to the fine arts, apparently; an endowed tea-room, where persons of artistic ideals may come to refresh body and soul. Such at least seems to be the programme. This is only my second visit, but I have long heard it spoken of by artists, poets, and others of my friends."
"I am sixty-two years old, young man, and I beg to inform you that I consider the Asolando the most preposterous thing I have ever heard of in this most preposterous city. And from a casual glimpse of you I feel justified in saying that a man in your apparent physical health might be in better business than frequenting, in mid-afternoon, a shop that seems to be a remarkably stupid expression of twentieth-century anæmia."
"Attendance here is not compulsory," I remarked defensively.
"If you imply that I must have sought the place voluntarily, let me correct your false impression immediately. I dropped in here for the excellent reason that this shop is the seventh in numerical progression from Fifth Avenue."
"You were not guided by any feeling of interest, then, but rather by superstition?"
"That remark is unworthy of a man of your apparent intelligence. I was born on the seventh of November, and all the great events of my life have occurred on the seventh of the month. If you were to suggest that I am of an adventurous or romantic nature, I should readily acquiesce; but the sevens in my life have been so potent an influence in all my affairs that my belief in that numeral has become almost a religious faith; and if you have been a reader of Scripture you will understand that one does not become a pagan in ascribing to seven all manner of subtle influences."
I was relieved to find that she accepted the tea and sandwiches the waitress had brought without parley. It is with shame I confess that in the first moments of my encounter I believed her capable of quarreling with a waitress; but she thanked the girl pleasantly, lifting her head with a smile that illumined her face attractively. Her demand for a cocktail had not been wholly convincing as to her sincerity, and I wondered whether she were not playing a part of some kind. She suggested pleasant and wholesome things—tiny gardens with neat borders of box and primly-ordered beds of spicy, old-fashioned pinks before the day of carnations, and the verbenas, heliotrope, and honeysuckle we associate with our grandmothers' taste in floriculture. Or perhaps I strike nearer the gold with an intimation of a sunny window-ledge, banked neatly and not too abundantly in geraniums.
In any event the impression was wholly agreeable. I had to do with a lady and a lady of no mean degree. The marks of breeding were upon her, and she spoke with that quiet authority that is the despair of the vain and vulgar. Her features were small and delicate; her ringless hands were perfectly formed, and both face and hands belied the age to which she had so frankly confessed. She was more than twice my age, and there was not the slightest reason why she should not address me if it pleased her to do so; and her obsession as to the potency of the numeral seven was not in itself proof of an ill-balanced mind. I recalled that my own mother had, throughout her life, imputed all manner of occult powers and influences to the number thirteen, and I have myself always been averse to walking beneath a ladder. Musing thus, I reached the conclusion that this encounter was very likely the sort of thing that happened to patrons of the Asolando. My time has, however, a certain value, and I began to wonder just how I should escape. I was about to excuse myself when my companion suddenly put down her cup and addressed me with a directness that seemed habitual in her.
"I have formed an excellent opinion of your bringing up from the manner in which you have suffered my advances, if I may so call them. You act and speak like a gentleman of education. I imagine from your being in this strange place that you may be a water-colorist or a designer of l'art-nouveau wall-papers, though I trust for your own sake that I am mistaken. Or it may be that you are a magazine poet, though when I tell you that I read no poets but Isaiah and Walt Whitman, you will understand that mere verse does not attract me. All this"—and she indicated the mottoes on the wall with a slight movement of the head—"is the sheerest rubbish, a form of disease. Will you kindly tell me the nature of your occupation?"
I produced one of my professional cards.
ARNOLD AMES
CONSULTANT IN CHIMNEYS
Suite 92, Landon Building
She read it aloud without glasses and mused a moment.
"This is very curious," she remarked, placing my card in a silver case she drew from her pocket. "This is very curious indeed. It was only yesterday that my friend General Glendenning was speaking of you. He told me that you had rendered him the greatest service in adjusting several flues in his country house at Shinnecock. My own fireplaces doubtless require attention, and you may consider yourself retained. I shall make an early appointment with you. You will find my name and residence sufficiently described on this card."
Miss Hollister
HOPEFIELD MANOR
"Oh!" I exclaimed, bowing. "Any further introduction is unnecessary, Miss Hollister."
"The name is familiar? I recall that General Glendenning mentioned that you were related to the Ames family of Hartford, and your mother was a Farquhar of Charlottesville, Virginia. If you bear your father's name, I dare say it was he whom I met ten years ago in Paris. There is no reason, therefore, why we should not be the best of friends."
She continued to talk as she drew on her gloves, and I saw, as her eyes rested on mine from time to time during this process, that they were the most kindly and humorous eyes in the world. Her face was scarcely wrinkled, but the hair that showed under the small plain hat was evenly and beautifully gray. It was a kind fate indeed that had led me back to the Asolando, and introduced me to the aunt of Wiggins's inamorata.
It may well be believed that I was immediately interested, attentive, absorbed. As she smoothed her gloves, Miss Hollister continued to speak in a low musical voice that was devoid of any of the quavers of age.
"On the day I reached my sixtieth year, Mr. Ames, I decided that my humdrum life must cease. The strictest conventions had guided me from earliest childhood. My experience of life had been limited to those things which women of education and means enjoy—or suffer, as you please to take it. I resolved that for the years that remained to me I should seek to enjoy myself after my own fashion. To sit in the inglenook and knit, with no human companionship but sick kittens, with dull monotony broken only by visits from dutiful clergymen in pursuit of alms for foreign missions, was not for me. Two years ago I chartered a yacht and cruised among the Lesser Antilles, enjoying many adventures. Later I crossed the Andes; and I have just returned from Switzerland, where I accomplished some of the most difficult ascents. I have a clipping bureau engaged to inform me of all rumors of hidden treasure and sunken ships, and I hope that of this something may come, as I retain a marine engineer and corps of divers and can leave at an hour's notice for any likely hunting-ground. This may strike you as the most whimsical self-indulgence. Tell me candidly whether my remarks so affect you."
"If it were not that your benefactions of all kinds have given you noble eminence among American philanthropists, I might be less biased in favor of the sort of thing you describe; but your gifts to orphanages, colleges, hospitals"—
"Ah!" she interrupted; "enough of that. Philanthropy in these times is only selfish exploitation, the recreation of the conscience-stricken. But you see no reason why," she pursued eagerly, "if I wished to dig up the Caribbean Sea in search of Spanish doubloons, I should not do so? Answer me frankly, without the slightest fear."
"I assure you, Miss Hollister, that such projects appeal to me strongly. I have often lamented that my own lot fell in these eventless times. As an architect I proved something of a failure; as a chimney-doctor I lead a useful life, but the very usefulness of it bores me. And besides, many people take me for a sweep."
"I dare say they do, for unfortunately many people are fools. But I am bent upon adventure. It has dawned upon me that every day has its possibilities, that the right turn at any corner may bring me face to face with the most stirring encounters. My age protects me where youth must timidly turn back. My physician pronounces me good for ten years more of active life, and I intend to keep amused. If I were a young man like you, I should crawl through chimneys no more, but take to the open road. I resent the harsh clang of these meaningless years. As I walked among the hills that lie behind the Manor this morning I heard the bugles calling. Out there in the Avenue at this hour there are miles of fat dowagers in padded broughams who think of nothing but clothes and food. And speaking of food," she continued, with a droll turn, "I am convinced that the caviare in that sandwich was never nearer Russia than Casco Bay."
She drew out her watch, and noting the hour, concluded:—
"Clearly we have much in common. I should like to ask you further as to your unusual profession, but errands summon me elsewhere. However, something tells me we shall meet again."
She rose in her swift bird-like fashion and passed lightly down the room and through the door. She had left a dollar beside her plate to pay her check, which I noted called for only forty cents. I glanced at the cashier's desk. The aureoled head had not reappeared; but immediately I heard a voice murmuring beside me. I had believed myself alone, and in my surprise I thought some wizardry had made audible one of the verses on the wall.
"What of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's picture"—
It was she whose aureoled head I had marked earlier in the receipt of custom, the girl who had vanished as Miss Hollister appeared. She wore the snowy vestments of the other attending vestals, with the difference that the cap that crowned the waitresses was omitted in her case. This I took to be the Asolando's tribute to her adorable head, which clearly did not need the electric light or other adventitious aid to invoke its lovely glow. The line she had spoken hung goldenly upon the air. She was not tall, and her eyes, I saw, were brown. She had clearly not climbed far the stairway of her years, but her serenity was the least bit disconcerting.
"Pardon me," I began, "but I am an ignorant Philistine, and cannot cap the verse you have quoted."
"There is no reason why you should do so. It is the rule of the Asolando that we shall attract the attention of customers when necessary by speaking a line of verse. We are not allowed to open a conversation, no matter how imperative, with 'Listen,' or the even more vulgar 'Say.'"
"A capital idea, of which I heartily approve, but now that I am a waiting auditor, eager"—
"It's merely the check, if you please," she interrupted coldly. "My desk is closed, and the Room will refuse further patrons for the next hour, as the executive committee of the Shelley Society meets here at four o'clock and the Asolando is denied to outsiders."
"This, then, is my dismissal? The lady who joined me here for a time left a dollar, which, you will see, is somewhat in excess of her check. My own charge of fifty cents is so moderate that I cannot do less than leave a dollar also."
"Thank you," she replied, unshaken by my generosity. "The tips at the Asolando all go to the Sweetness and Light Club, which is just now engaged in circulating Matthew Arnold's poems in leaflet form in the jobbing district."
"I sympathize with that propaganda," I replied, gathering up my hat and stick, "and am delighted to contribute to its support. And now I dare say you would be glad to be rid of me. The Asolando has tolerated me longer than my slight purchases justified."
I bowed and had turned away, when she arrested me with the line,—
"My good blade carves the casques of men."
I turned toward her. Several of the waitresses were now engaged in rearranging the tables, but they seemed not to heed us.
"Permit me to inquire," she asked, "whether the lady who joined you here expressed any interest in the life beautiful as it is exemplified in the Asolando?"
"I am constrained to say that she did not. She spoke of the Asolando in the most contumelious terms."
The golden head bowed slightly, and a smile hovered about her lips; but her amusement at my answer was more eloquently stated in her eyes.
"I must explain that my sole excuse for addressing you is that we are required to learn, where possible, just why strangers seek the Asolando."
"In the case of the lady to whom you refer, it was a matter of this being the seventh shop from the corner; and my own appearance was due to the idlest curiosity, inspired by enthusiastic descriptions of the Asolando's atmosphere and rumors of the cheapness of its food."
"The reasons are quite ample," was her only comment, and her manner did not encourage further conversation.
"May I ask," I persisted, "whether the Asolando's staff is permanent, and whether, if I return another day."
"I take it that you do not mean to be impertinent, so I will answer that my service here is limited to Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. On the other days Pippa is in the cash-booth. My name at the Asolando is Francesca."
"I had guessed it might be Lalage or Chloris," I ventured.
She shook her head gravely.
"Kindly write your name in the visitors' book at the door as you pass out."
There was no ignoring this hint. I thought she smiled as I left her.