The Price

Francis Lynde

• Publisher: Perlego
• Year: 2006
• eBook ISBN: 9700000019462
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

In the days when New Orleans still claimed distinction as the only American city withouttrolleys, sky-scrapers, or fast trains-was it yesterday? or the day before?-there was adingy, cobwebbed café in an arcade off Camp Street which was well-beloved ofnewspaperdom; particularly of that wing of the force whose activities begin late and end inthe small hours."Chaudière's," it was called, though I know not if that were the name of the round-faced, round-bodied little Marseillais who took toll at the desk. But all men knew the fame of itsgumbo and its stuffed crabs, and that its claret was neither very bad nor very dear. And ifthe walls were dingy and the odors from the grille pungent and penetrating at times, therewent with the white-sanded floor, and the marble-topped tables for two, an Old-World airof recreative comfort which is rarer now, even in New Orleans, than it was yesterday or theday before.It was at Chaudière's that Griswold had eaten his first breakfast in the Crescent City; and itwas at Chaudière's again that he was sharing a farewell supper with Bainbridge, of theLouisianian. Six weeks lay between that and this; forty-odd days of discouragement andfailure superadded upon other similar days and weeks and months. The breakfast, heremembered, had been garnished with certain green sprigs of hope; but at the supper-tablehe ate like a barbarian in arrears to his appetite and the garnishings were the bitter herbsof humiliation and defeat.Without meaning to, Bainbridge had been strewing the path with fresh thorns for thedefeated one. He had just been billeted for a run down the Central American coast to writeup the banana trade for his paper, and he was boyishly jubilant over the assignment, whichpromised to be a zestful pleasure trip. Chancing upon Griswold in the first flush of hiselation, he had dragged the New Yorker around to Chaudière's to play second knife andfork at a small parting feast. Not that it had required much persuasion. Griswold had fastedfor twenty-four hours, and he would have broken bread thankfully with an enemy. And ifBainbridge were not a friend in a purist's definition of the term, he was at least a friendlyacquaintance.