Part 43 (2/2)

March heard Kendricks protest in vain, and the colonel say, gravely: ”I do not wonder, sir, that these things interest you. They const.i.tute a problem which society must solve or which will dissolve society,” and he knew from that formula, which the colonel had, once used with him, that he was laying out a road for the exhibition of the hobby's paces later.

Fulkerson came back to March, who had turned toward Conrad Dryfoos, and said, ”If we don't get this thing going pretty soon, it 'll be the death of me,” and just then Frescobaldi's butler came in and announced to Dryfoos that dinner was served. The old man looked toward Fulkerson with a troubled glance, as if he did not know what to do; he made a gesture to touch Lindau's elbow. Fulkerson called out, ”Here's Colonel Woodburn, Mr.

Dryfoos,” as if Dryfoos were looking for him; and he set the example of what he was to do by taking Lindau's arm himself. ”Mr. Lindau is going to sit at my end of the table, alongside of March. Stand not upon the order of your going, gentlemen, but fall in at once.” He contrived to get Dryfoos and the colonel before him, and he let March follow with Kendricks. Conrad came last with Beaton, who had been turning over the music at the piano, and chafing inwardly at the whole affair. At the table Colonel Woodburn was placed on Dryfoos's right, and March on his left. March sat on Fulkerson's right, with Lindau next him; and the young men occupied the other seats.

”Put you next to March, Mr. Lindau,” said Fulkerson, ”so you can begin to put Apollinaris in his champagne-gla.s.s at the right moment; you know his little weakness of old; sorry to say it's grown on him.”

March laughed with kindly acquiescence in Fulkerson's wish to start the gayety, and Lindau patted him on the shoulder. ”I know hiss veakness. If he liges a cla.s.s of vine, it iss begause his loaf ingludes efen hiss enemy, as Shakespeare galled it.”

”Ah, but Shakespeare couldn't have been thinking of champagne,” said Kendricks.

”I suppose, sir,” Colonel Woodburn interposed, with lofty courtesy, ”champagne could hardly have been known in his day.”

”I suppose not, colonel,” returned the younger man, deferentially. ”He seemed to think that sack and sugar might be a fault; but he didn't mention champagne.”

”Perhaps he felt there was no question about that,” suggested Beaton, who then felt that he had not done himself justice in the sally.

”I wonder just when champagne did come in,” said March.

”I know when it ought to come in,” said Fulkerson. ”Before the soup!”

They all laughed, and gave themselves the air of drinking champagne out of tumblers every day, as men like to do. Dryfoos listened uneasily; he did not quite understand the allusions, though he knew what Shakespeare was, well enough; Conrad's face expressed a gentle deprecation of joking on such a subject, but he said nothing.

The talk ran on briskly through the dinner. The young men tossed the ball back and forth; they made some wild shots, but they kept it going, and they laughed when they were hit. The wine loosed Colonel Woodburn's tongue; he became very companionable with the young fellows; with the feeling that a literary dinner ought to have a didactic scope, he praised Scott and Addison as the only authors fit to form the minds of gentlemen.

Kendricks agreed with him, but wished to add the name of Flaubert as a master of style. ”Style, you know,” he added, ”is the man.”

”Very true, sir; you are quite right, sir,” the colonel a.s.sented; he wondered who Flaubert was.

Beaton praised Baudelaire and Maupa.s.sant; he said these were the masters.

He recited some lurid verses from Baudelaire; Lindau p.r.o.nounced them a disgrace to human nature, and gave a pa.s.sage from Victor Hugo on Louis Napoleon, with his heavy German accent, and then he quoted Schiller.

”Ach, boat that is a peaudifool! Not zo?” he demanded of March.

”Yes, beautiful; but, of course, you know I think there's n.o.body like Heine!”

Lindau threw back his great old head and laughed, showing a want of teeth under his mustache. He put his hand on March's back. ”This poy--he was a poy den--wars so gracy to pekin reading Heine that he gommence with the tictionary bevore he knows any Grammar, and ve bick it out vort by vort togeder.”

”He was a pretty cay poy in those days, heigh, Lindau?” asked Fulkerson, burlesquing the old man's accent, with an impudent wink that made Lindau himself laugh. ”But in the dark ages, I mean, there in Indianapolis. Just how long ago did you old codgers meet there, anyway?” Fulkerson saw the restiveness in Dryfoos's eye at the purely literary course the talk had taken; he had intended it to lead up that way to business, to 'Every Other Week;' but he saw that it was leaving Dryfoos too far out, and he wished to get it on the personal ground, where everybody is at home.

”Ledt me zee,” mused Lindau. ”Wa.s.s it in fifty-nine or zixty, Pa.s.sil? Idt wa.s.s a year or dwo pefore the war proke oudt, anyway.”

”Those were exciting times,” said Dryfoos, making his first entry into the general talk. ”I went down to Indianapolis with the first company from our place, and I saw the red-s.h.i.+rts pouring in everywhere. They had a song,

”Oh, never mind the weather, but git over double trouble, For we're bound for the land of Canaan.”

The fellows locked arms and went singin' it up and down four or five abreast in the moonlight; crowded everybody' else off the sidewalk.”

”I remember, I remember,” said Lindau, nodding his head slowly up and down. ”A coodt many off them nefer gome pack from that landt of Ganaan, Mr. Dryfoos?”

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