Again the club would hold a Roman feast in one of Solari's upstairs rooms--the successor to Riley's of the old days--each man speaking ancient Latin with Tenth Street terminals, the servants dressed in tunics and sandals, and the members in togas. Or they would make a descent at midnight on Fulton Market and have their tomcods scooped from the fish-boxes alive and broiled to their liking while they waited; or they would take possession of Brown's or Farrish's for mugs of ale and English chops. But it was always one so different from any other function of its class that it formed the topic of the studios for weeks thereafter.
To-night it was the humor of the club to reproduce as closely as possible, with the limited means at their disposal--for none of the Stone Mugs were rolling in wealth, nor did these functions require it--some one of the great banquets of former times, not to be historically or chronologically correct, but to express the artistic atmosphere of such an occasion.
That there were certain unavoidable and easily detected shams under all this glamour of color and form did not lessen the charm of the present function.
Everybody, of course, knew before the evening was over, or could have found out had he tried, that the two knights in armor who guarded the side-walk entrance to this royal chamber, and who had been the target of the street-rats until they took their places at the inside door, were respectively Mr. Patrick McGinnis, who tended the furnace in the basement of the Tenth Street Studio Building, stripped for the occasion down to his red flannels, and Signore Luigi Bennelli, his Italian assistant.
A closer inspection of the two ebony blackamoors, with drawn scimitars, who guarded the royal chair at the head of the table, would have revealed the fact that they were not made of ebony at all, but of veritable flesh and blood--the blackamoor on the right being none other than Black Sam, the bootblack who shined shoes on the corner of the avenue, and his bloodthirsty pal on the left the kinky-haired porter who served the grocer next door; the only "HONEST" thing about either of them, to quote Waller, being the artistic clothes that they stood in.
Further investigation would have shown that every one of the wonderful things that made glad and glorious the big square room on the ground floor of the building, from the brass sconces on the walls to the hanging church lamps, with everything that their lights fell upon, had been gathered up that same morning from the several homes and studios of the members by old black Jerry, the official carman of the Academy, and had been dumped in an indiscriminate heap on the floor of the banquet hall, where they had been disentangled and arranged by half a dozen painters of the club; that the table and table cloth had been borrowed from Solari's; that the very rare and fragrant old Chianti, the club's private stock, was from Solari's own cellars via Duncan's, the grocer; and that the dinner itself was cooked and served by that distinguished boniface himself, assisted by half a dozen of his own waiters, each one wearing an original Malay costume selected from Stedman's collection and used by him in his great picture of the Sepoy mutiny.
Moreover there was not the slightest doubt that the "Ingin," who was now bowing so gravely to the master of ceremonies, was no other than the distinguished Mr. Thomas Brandon Waller, himself;
"N.A., Knight of the Legion of Honor, Pupil of Piloty, etc., etc.;" that the high-class mandarin in the sacred yellow robe and peacock feather who accompanied him, was Crug the 'cellist; that the bald-headed gentleman with the pointed beard, who looked the exact presentment of the divine William, was Munson; and that the gay young gallant in the Spanish costume was none other than our Oliver. The other nobles, cavaliers, and hidalgos were the less known members of the club, who, in their desire to make the occasion a success, had fitted themselves to their costumes instead of attempting to fit the costumes to themselves, with the difference that each man not only looked the character he assumed but assumed the character he looked.
But no one, even the most knowing; no student of costumes, no reader of faces, no discerner of character, no acute observer of manners and times--in glancing over the motley company would have thought for one instant that, in all this atmosphere of real unrealism, the two old gentlemen who had just entered leaning on Oliver's arm--one in a brown coat with high velvet collar and fluffy silk scarf, and the other in a long pen-wiper cloak which, at the moment was slipping from his shoulders--were genuine specimens of the period of to-day without a touch of makeup about them; that their old-time manners, even to the quaint bows they both gave the master of ceremonies, as they entered the royal chamber, were their very own, part of their daily equipment, and that nothing in the gorgeous banquet hall, from the jewelled rapier belted to Oliver's side, and which had once graced the collection of a prince, down to the priceless bit of satsuma set out on the table and now stuffed full of cigarettes (the bit could be traced back to the Ming dynasty), were any more veritable or genuine, or any more representative of the best their periods afforded than these two quaint old gentlemen from Kennedy Square.
Had there been any doubt in the minds of any such wiseacre, either regarding their authenticity or their quality, he had only to listen to Oliver's presentation of his father and friend and to hear Richard say, in his most courteous manner and in his most winning voice:
"I have never been more honored, sir. It was more than kind of you to wish me to come. My only regret is that I am not your age, or I would certainly have appeared in a costume more befitting the occasion.
I have never dreamed of so beautiful a place."
