The Golden House | Page 4

end
of the century is a time of license if not of decadence. The situation had
its own piquancy, partly in the surprise of some of those assembled at

finding themselves in bohemia, partly in a flutter of expectation of
seeing something on the border-line of propriety. The hour, the place,
the anticipation of the lifting of the veil from an Oriental and ancient
art, gave them a titillating feeling of adventure, of a moral hazard
bravely incurred in the duty of knowing life, penetrating to its core.
Opportunity for this sort of fruitful experience being rare outside the
metropolis, students of good and evil had made the pilgrimage to this
midnight occasion from less-favored cities. Recondite scholars in the
physical beauty of the Greeks, from Boston, were there; fair women
from Washington, whose charms make the reputation of many a
newspaper correspondent; spirited stars of official and diplomatic life,
who have moments of longing to shine in some more languorous
material paradise, had made a hasty flitting to be present at the
ceremony, sustained by a slight feeling of bravado in making this
exceptional descent. But the favored hundred spectators were mainly
from the city-groups of late diners, who fluttered in under that
pleasurable glow which the red Jacqueminot always gets from
contiguity with the pale yellow Clicquot; theatre parties, a little jaded,
and quite ready for something real and stimulating; men from the clubs
and men from studios--representatives of society and of art graciously
mingled, since it is discovered that it is easier to make art fashionable
than to make fashion artistic.
The vast, dimly lighted apartment was itself mysterious, a temple of
luxury quite as much as of art. Shadows lurked in the corners, the ribs
of the roof were faintly outlined; on the sombre walls gleams of color,
faces of loveliness and faces of pain, studies all of a mood or a passion,
bits of shining brass, reflections from lustred ware struggling out of
obscurity; hangings from Fez or Tetuan, bits of embroidery, costumes
in silk and in velvet, still having the aroma of balls a hundred years ago,
the faint perfume of a scented society of ladies and gallants; a skeleton
scarcely less fantastic than the draped wooden model near it; heavy
rugs of Daghestan and Persia, making the footfalls soundless on the
floor; a fountain tinkling in a thicket of japonicas and azaleas; the stems
of palmettoes, with their branches waving in the obscurity overhead;
points of light here and there where a shaded lamp shone on a single
red rose in a blue Granada vase on a toppling stand, or on a mass of
jonquils in a barbarous pot of Chanak-Kallessi; tacked here and there

on walls and hangings, colored memoranda of Capri and of the North
Woods, the armor of knights, trophies of small-arms, crossed swords of
the Union and the Confederacy, easels, paints, and palettes, and rows of
canvases leaning against the wall-the studied litter, in short, of a
successful artist, whose surroundings contribute to the popular
conception of his genius.
On the wall at one end of the apartment was stretched a white canvas;
in front of it was left a small cleared space, on the edge of which, in the
shadow, squatting on the floor, were four swarthy musicians in Oriental
garments, with a mandolin, a guitar, a ney, and a darabooka drum.
About this cleared space, in a crescent, knelt or sat upon the rugs a
couple of rows of men in evening dress; behind them, seated in chairs,
a group of ladies, whose white shoulders and arms and animated faces
flashed out in the semi-obscurity; and in their rear stood a crowd of
spectators-- beautiful young gentlemen with vacant faces and the
elevated Oxford shoulders, rosy youth already blase to all this world
can offer, and gray-headed men young again in the prospect of a new
sensation. So they kneel or stand, worshipers before the shrine,
expecting the advent of the Goddess of AEsthetic Culture.
The moment has come. There is a tap on the drum, a tuning of the
strings, a flash of light from the rear of the room inundates the white
canvas, and suddenly a figure is poised in the space, her shadow cast
upon the glowing background.
It is the Spanish dancer!
The apparition evokes a flutter of applause. It is a superb figure, clad in
a high tight bodice and long skirts simply draped so as to show every
motion of the athletic limbs. She seems, in this pose and light,
supernaturally tall. Through her parted lips white teeth gleam, and she
smiles. Is it a smile of anticipated, triumph, or of contempt? Is it the
smile of the daughter of Herodias, or the invitation of a 'ghazeeyeh'?
She pauses. Shall she surprise, or