arty was increased by a young Englishman named Routh
whom Jimmy had seen with Segouin at Cambridge. The young men supped in
a snug room lit by electric candle lamps. They talked volubly and with
little reserve. Jimmy, whose imagination was kindling, conceived the
lively youth of the Frenchmen twined elegantly upon the firm framework
of the Englishman's manner. A graceful image of his, he thought, and a
just one. He admired the dexterity with which their host directed the
conversation. The five young men had various tastes and their tongues
had been loosened. Villona, with immense respect, began to discover to
the mildly surprised Englishman the beauties of the English madrigal,
deploring the loss of old instruments. Riviere, not wholly ingenuously,
undertook to explain to Jimmy the triumph of the French mechanicians.
The resonant voice of the Hungarian was about to prevail in ridicule of
the spurious lutes of the romantic painters when Segouin shepherded his
party into politics. Here was congenial ground for all. Jimmy, under
generous influences, felt the buried zeal of his father wake to life
within him: he aroused the torpid Routh at last. The room grew doubly
hot and Segouin's task grew harder each moment: there was even danger
of personal spite. The alert host at an opportunity lifted his glass
to Humanity and, when the toast had been drunk, he threw open a window
significantly.
That night the city wore the mask of a capital. The five young men
strolled along Stephen's Green in a faint cloud of aromatic smoke. They
talked loudly and gaily and their cloaks dangled from their shoulders.
The people made way for them. At the corner of Grafton Street a short
fat man was putting two handsome ladies on a car in charge of another
fat man. The car drove off and the short fat man caught sight of the
party.
"Andre."
"It's Farley!"
A torrent of talk followed. Farley was an American. No one knew very
well what the talk was about. Villona and Riviere were the noisiest,
but all the men were excited. They got up on a car, squeezing themselves
together amid much laughter. They drove by the crowd, blended now into
soft colours, to a music of merry bells. They took the train at Westland
Row and in a few seconds, as it seemed to Jimmy, they were walking out
of Kingstown Station. The ticket-collector saluted Jimmy; he was an old
man:
"Fine night, sir!"
It was a serene summer night; the harbour lay like a darkened mirror at
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