To some the
restaurant was a club; others ventured in counting the cost, taking
it seriously, even considering that it conferred upon them some
social distinction. There were pretty women in paint and spangles,
with conscious, half-grown boys just up from Oxford; company-
promoters dining and wining possible subscribers or "guinea-pigs"
into an acquiescent state; Guardsmen giving a dinner of farewell to
brother-officers departing for the Soudan or the Cape; wide-eyed
Americans just off the steamer in high dresses, great ladies in low
dresses and lofty tiaras, and ladies of the stage, utterly
unconscious of the boon they were conferring on the people about
them, who, an hour before, had paid ten shillings to look at them
from the stalls.
Edouard, as he sat with his violin on his knee, his fingers fretting
the silent strings, observed them all without envy and without
interest. Had he been able to choose, it would not have been to such
a well-dressed mob as this that he would have given his music. For at
times a burst of laughter killed a phrase that was sacred to him, and
sometimes the murmur of the voices and the clatter of the waiters
would drown him out altogether.
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