We Can't Have Everything Part 30

Kedzie laughed with glancing tintinnabulations as if one tapped a row of gla.s.ses with a knife.

Ferriday sighed. He saw that she had never heard of Lamb and thought he was perpetrating an ancient pun. But he did not like bookish women and he often said that nothing was more becoming to a woman than ignorance.

They should have wisdom, but no learning.

Ferriday was one of those terrifying persons who know, or pretend to know, curious secrets about restaurants and their resources.

Wine-cellars and the individualities of chefs had no terror for him so far as she could see. He expressed contempt for apparent commonplaces that Kedzie had never heard of. He used French words with an accent that Kedzie supposed to be perfect.

The waiters knew that he did not know much and had merely picked up a smattering of dining-room lore, but they humored his affectations. And of all affectations, what is more futile than the printing of American bills of fare in French?

"Would you prefer the Astrakhan caviar?" he began on Kedzie, "or some or-durv? The caviar here is fairly trustworthy."

Kedzie shrugged her perfectly accented shoulders in a cowardly evasion, and he ordered the first caviar Kedzie had ever eaten. It looked as if it came from a munitions-factory, but she liked it immensely, especially as a side-long glance at the bill of fare told her that it cost one dollar and twenty-five cents per person.

Next he proposed either a potage madrilene or a creme de volaille, Marie Louise.

Kedzie chose the latter because it was the latter. She mumbled:

"I think a little cremmy vly Marie Louisa would be nice."

She was amazed to find later how much it tasted like chicken soup.

"We don't want any fish, do we?" Ferriday moaned. "Or do we? They don't really understand the supreme de sole a la Verdi here, so suppose we skip to the roast, unless you would risk the aigulette de pompano, Coquelin. The last time I had a troncon de saumon here I had to send it back."

Kedzie said, "Let's skip."

She shuddered. The word reminded her, as always, of Skip Magruder. She remembered how he had hung over the table that far-away morning and recommended ham 'n'eggs. His dirty s.h.i.+rt-sleeves and his grin came back to her now. The gruesome Banquo reminded her so vividly of her early guilt of plebeiancy that she s.h.i.+vered. The alert Ferriday noticed it and called:

"Have that window closed at once. There's an infernal draught here."

Kedzie was thrilled at his autocratic manner. He scared off the ghost of Magruder.

Ferriday pondered aloud the bill of fare as if it were the plot of a new feature film.

"Capon en ca.s.serole, milk-fed guinea-hen escoffier, plover en cocotte, English golden pheasant, partridge--do any of those tiresome things interest you?"

It was like asking her whether she would have a Gorham tea-set, a Balcom gown, or a Packard landaulet. She wanted them all.

But her eyes caught the prices. Four dollars for an English pheasant! No wonder they called it golden. It seemed a shame, though, to stick such a nice man, after he had already ordered two dollars and a half's worth of caviar.

She chose the cheapest thing. She was already falling in love with Ferriday.

The plover was only a dollar. She was not quite sure what kind of animal it would turn out to be. She had a womanly intuition that it was a fowl of some breed. She wanted to know. She had come to the stomach school.

"I think I'll take a bit of the plover," she said.

"Nice girl!" thought Ferriday, who recognized her vicarious economy.

"Plover it is," he said to the waiter, and added, "tell Pierre it's for me and he'd better not burn it again."

The waiter was crushed by Pierre's lapse, especially as the chef's name was Achille.

Ferriday went on: "With the plover we might have some champignons frais sous cloche and a salade de laitue avec French dressing, yes? Then a substantial sweet: a coupe aux marrons or a nesselrode pudding, yes?"

Kedzie wanted to ask for a plain, familiar vanilla ice-cream, but she knew better. She ordered the nesselrode--and got her ice-cream, after all. There were chestnuts in it, too--so she was glad she had not selected the coupe aux marrons.

Ferriday did not take a sweet, but had a cheese instead, after an anxious debate with the waiter about the health of the Camembert and the decadence of the Roquefort. When this weighty matter was settled he returned to Kedzie:

"Now for something to drink. A little sherry and bitters to begin with, of course; and a--oh, umm, let me see--simple things are best; suppose we stick to champagne." He called it "shah pine," according to Kedzie's ear, but she hoped he meant shampane. She had always wanted to taste "wealthy water," as Gilfoyle called it, but never called for it.

Kedzie was a trifle alarmed when Ferriday said: "I hope you don't like it sweet. It can't be too dry for me."

"Me, either," Kedzie a.s.sured him--and made a face implying that she always took it in the form of a powder.

Ferriday smiled benignly and said to the waiter: "You might bring us een boo-tay de Bollinger Numero--er--katter--vang--kanz." He knew that the French for ninety-five was four-twenties-fifteen, but the waiter could not understand till he placed his finger on the number with his best French accent. He saved himself from collapse by a stern post-dictum:

"Remember, it's the vintage of nineteen hundred. If you bring that loathsome eighteen ninety-three I'll have to crack the bottle over your head. You wouldn't want that, would you?"

"_Non, m'zoo, oui, monzoo_," said the German waiter.

"Then we'll have some black coffee and a liqueur--a Curacao, say, or a green Chartreuse, or a white mint. Which?"

Naturally Kedzie said the white mint, please.

With that Ferriday released the waiter, who hurried away, hoping that Ferriday's affectations included extravagant tips.

Kedzie gobbled prettily the food before her. Ferriday could tell that she was anxiously watching and copying his methods of attack. He soon knew that this was her first real meal _de luxe_, but he did not mind that. Columbus was not angry at America because it had never seen an explorer before.

It delighted Ferriday to think that he had discovered Kedzie. He would say later that he invented her. And she wanted tremendously to be discovered or invented or anything else, by anybody who could find a gold-mine in her somewhere and pay her a royalty on her own mineral wealth.

When her lips met the sh.e.l.l-edge of the champagne-gla.s.s and the essence of all mischief flung its spray against the tip of her cleverly whittled nose she winced at first. But she went boldly back, and soon the sprites that rained upward in her gla.s.s were sending tiny balloons of hope through her brain. They soared past her small skull and her braided hair and the crown of her hat and on up through the ceiling, and none of them broke--as yet.

Her soul was pleasantly a-simmer now and she could not tell whether the wine made her exultant or she the wine. But she was sure that she had at last discovered her life.

And with it all she was dreadfully canny. She was only a little village girl unused to city ways, and the handsome city stranger was plying her with wine; but she was none of your stencil figures that blot romance.

Kedzie was thinking over the cold, hard precepts that women acquire somehow. She was resolving that since she was to be as great as he said she should be, she must not cheapen herself now.

Many of these little village girls have come to town since time was and brought with them the level heads of icily wise women who make love a business and not a folly. Many men are keeping sober mainly nowadays because it is good business; many women pure for the same reason.

Turkish sultans as fierce as Suleiman the Magnificent have bought country girls kidnapped by slave-merchants and have bought tyrants in the bargain. Ferriday the Magnificent was playing with holocaust when he set a match to Kedzie.

But now she was an attractive little flame and he watched her soul flicker and gave it fuel. He also gave it a cigarette; at least he proffered her his silver case, but she shook her head.

"Why not?" he asked. "All the women, old and young, are smoking here."

She tightened her plump lips and answered, "I don't like 'em; and they give me the fidgets."

"You'll do!" he cried, softly, reaching out and clenching her knuckles in his palm a moment. "You're the wise one! I felt sure that pretty little face of yours was only a mask for the ugliest and most valuable thing a woman can possess."