He had never met any of Joel Pierce’s family, but one night towards seven o’clock when he had just returned to his room from the university, Joel telephoned him, and, saying that his father was in town, asked him if he would go to dinner and to the theatre with them. He found Joel and his father waiting for him in the lobby. Mr. Pierce was a man of fifty years, comfortably dressed for the hot weather in a black mohair suit, and with a kind of stately yet spacious dignity of linen that was agreeably old-fashioned and that evoked a picture of an older and more leisurely generation. He was quite deaf — so deaf, in fact, that he made use of a small ear-phone — but his speech and manners, like his dress, were easy, friendly, and yet touched with an air of distinguished authority.
He took the two boys to the Lafayette for dinner, and ordered generously and with the easy and comforting assurance of a man of the world who gives everyone around him a happy feeling of security and well-being. For Eugene, it was a memorable experience.
The fine restaurant — it was perhaps the finest he had yet seen — the French waiters, the delicious food, the beautiful women, the well-dressed, prosperous and worldly-looking men and the pleasant weary languor of fading day, the huge nameless thrill and prophecy of oncoming night touched him with a feeling of joy and nameless anticipation. He felt, as he had never felt before, that strange, seductive promise which the city has at evening, at the end of a day of terrible summer’s heat, and which is so strangely mixed of sorrow and delight, of desolation and the promise of a wild and nameless joy.
And suddenly, all the horror, heat and desolation of the day were forgotten. He forgot the blind horror of the man-swarm thrusting through the mazes of the furious streets. He forgot the drowning flood of humid flesh, the pale, wet, suffering faces that thrust from nowhere out of sweltering heat, that were engulfed again into the heat-hazed distances of swarming streets in which man’s life seemed more uncountable than the sands of the sea, and more blind, lost and horribly forsaken than the lives of those eyeless crawls and gropes that scuttle blindly and for ever through murky ooze upon the sea’s vast floor.
The old red light of evening filled his heart again with its wild prophecy, its huge and secret joy, and the great stride of oncoming night revived again, in all their magic, his childhood dreams of the enchanted city, the city of great men and glorious women, the city of unceasing joy, of power, triumph and success, and of the fortunate, good, and happy life.
As Mr. Pierce sat there with his air of quiet and urbane authority, studying the menu with a little frowning smile through the lenses of a pince-nez that dangled fashionably and casually from a black silk cord when he was not using it, the boy felt an indescribable sense of wealth and power and prosperous ease. It seemed to him that everything in the world was his for the asking, and the suave service of the waiter, hovering over Mr. Pierce with poised pencil and an attitude of devoted respect, the rich designs of snowy linen, the heavy silver, the thick carpets, the handsome women and distinguished-looking men, all added to this feeling of wealth and happiness.
Mr. Pierce kept studying the menu with an air of good-natured seriousness, quizzing his son from time to time with gruff but genial banter:
“Joel,” he would say, “what do you want? Have you any preference of your own or will you leave it to me to decide?”
“Gosh!” Joel answered in his soft, eager tone. “I don’t care, Pups. Whatever you say goes with me! You know, it’s all the same to me, anyway. I can eat anything you order. Only,” he added laughing, “I’d prefer it if there’s no meat. I’d like it much better if you ordered vegetables.”
Mr. Pierce knocked the pince-nez from his nose, and turning to Eugene with an air of agreeable confidence, said:
“What’s wrong with a boy who takes no more interest in his food than that? Can you make it out? It strikes me as the most astonishing thing,” he went on in a gruff, distinguished way, “to see a healthy young man who has no interest in his belly. Really Joel,” he went on, turning to his son and regarding him with a kind of quizzical but good-humoured sarcasm, “I’d feel so much better about you if you only liked food more. It’s really tragic to see a boy of your age deliberately throwing away one of the greatest pleasures in life. Don’t you think so?” he demanded, turning to the other boy again with his air of friendly confidence. “Or have you turned vegetarian, too?”
“Gosh, no!” Joel said, laughing his hushed eager, immensely agreeable laugh. “He’ll agree with every word you say, Pups. He likes food even more than you do.”
“Then I’m glad to hear it!” said Mr. Pierce approvingly. “I had begun to fear that this younger generation had gone utterly to hell. But if the symptoms are only local —” he frowned humorously at his son for a moment —“perhaps it’s not as bad as I thought.”
“You and Pups should get along together beautifully,” said Joel to Eugene. “He loves to eat — he’s a wonderful cook — you should come up to Rhinekill sometime and let him cook one of his meals for you.”
The ordering of the meal proceeded in this agreeable fashion. Mr. Pierce ordered liberally: small pink-fleshed clams, cold, pungent and exciting in their perfect shells, a thick pea soup with little squares of toast-crust floating in it, young chicken, plump and tender, grilled so succulently that it seemed to melt away the moment that one put it in his mouth, asparagus and potatoes, and a salad of crisp lettuce, beautifully mixed, “fatigued,” in a big salad bowl, iced coffee, and a dessert of ripe Camembert and salted crackers. Mr. Pierce and Eugene ate heartily and with obvious relish, but Joel, in spite of all their protests and his father’s bantering ridicule, which he took with the beautiful laughing good-nature which was one of the finest traits of his character, stuck to his vegetable diet with the gentle doggedness that was also characteristic of him.
Later, when they had finished dinner, they drove uptown in a taxi-cab and went to one of the summer musical shows near Broadway, where an English revue was appearing. The comic actress, Beatrice Lillie, was the star of the performance. Eugene had never heard of her before, but it was evident from the fashionable and “smart” look of the audience, and the way in which Joel and other people greeted every word and gesture, that the actress was “all the rage,” one of those persons who, in addition to their native talent, have some special quality that for a time makes them the darling of the cult-adepts of the world of fashion.
The revue was a clever and amusing one, but it also had a stylish quality of fashionable ............