WHITEWASH
deck could see it all as plainly as if he were occupying one of the little white-clothed tables now being wine-spotted by the hungry horde,—fat, paunchy men, with small, round features and pig eyes, who wielded dexterous knives, gesticulating, enthusiastic, with clothes-brush pompadours and bristly moustaches; elderly and overflowing matrons, with black lace bonnets and lavish breastpins, chaperoning slim slips of daughters of marriageable age, mildly and fearfully regarding a fiancé of papa's choosing—always a young man with a crumpled white waistcoat and a black satin tie, designed to imitate a "cravat," and adorned by a gilt safety-pin. Sometimes he was blond, sometimes brunette, but the uniform was invariable. There, too, the inevitable tenth-rate viveur, with pimpled face, gray hair, and a lean lecherousness, accompanied by his tenth-rate concomitant—a girl with painted cheeks, and bandeau tresses surmounted by a flaring velvet hat of faded plumage—the usual habitués of the French quarter restaurant café. Later there would be petits verres and dominoes until eleven. Valdeck knew it all to the sickening
