Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (594 page)

Mr. Jeaffreson seemed convinced. I tossed the other papers to him. I said:

“Look through them. You’ll see you have a good house, as they say of theatres.”

He had a little hesitation — almost a blush.

“
Ought
one?” he asked, “ to read papers here? Isn’t it insulting to the performers?”

I told him, amiably, to look through them quickly. Two professional tangoists had just left the little stage. They were running down again the white sheet for my shadow show.

It was then 10.45. The place was filling. Waiters were placing together square tables, just behind the solicitor, for the sixteen guests of Madame and myself. Men were pushing sideways through groups, top hats held on high, as in church, so that searching for Madame was like pushing through a halted regiment in column of route. A deep growl of voices vibrated ceaselessly on the ear.

It took me a long time. And then: Outside the door of the pink room Mr. Revendikoff, the tears pouring down his face, was on his knees seeking to grasp the hand of Madame. She remarked:

“Poor fellow. Come in here!”

I was retiring. She cried out:

“No! No! You’re the poor fellow. Not Revendikoff. He’s just a suppliant.”

Revendikoff, who had made the same mistake as myself, now made a horrible grimace at me. He threw his arms on high and rushed into the crowd, a few yards away, between the impossible pillars. In the room Madame said:

“I must settle you, you poor fellow, because I love all lovers.” I said:

“For goodness sake....”

She stroked my cheek.

“Yes, yes!” she said. “How hot your face is! Believe me, I sympathise. This is a breathing moment for me. I can speak.”

“I wish you would,” I said.

She had suddenly a Carlsbad plum in her fingers: it was like conjuring. She bit it slowly half through, and, holding the remainder in the air, she remarked:

“Of course they are both legitimate!” ‘

She chewed her plum slowly, luxuriously — and very beautifully.

“It is like this,” she began. “I give you now of my psychology — which is noted. When you see an Earl at a bathing place with two lovely children and an old bonne, and the Earl passes by the name of Hijmann — that’s how it is really spelt! — and pretends to be the children’s uncle — oh, la! la! — what do you think?
Comme femme du monde
? What?.... Obviously,
that
!.... But... a detail!

... Imagine the old bonne: very strict, very devoted, always with the children. A French Fleming, too. Madame had also been a French Fleming.”

I said:

“Surely an Arlésienne?”

Madame shook her head.

“No, no, no! From near Armentières. And beautiful as the day. And devout and good.... So the old bonne always talked of her.... So she would talk to the children. She would say, Maman, who was beautiful as the day, would not like little girls who are greedy and untruthful about meringues.... And if it was at table, for the children were brought to stand by our table for dessert, the old bonne would say to Monsieur: ‘ Is it not true that Madame, who was as beautiful as the day and devout and good, would not like little girls who...” and the rest of it... And I have seen tears in that man’s eyes... Now I ask you, does an English peer, very stiff, very correct... In short, do you not make out that he married the mother?” A high note, like the overtone of a bell, had been vibrating round that little pink cell from outside — for a second or two. And then there were hoots — sudden and very disturbing. It was then two minutes past eleven....

Would you believe it? Miss Heimann and Miss Jeaffreson in the middle of Madame’s table, which was close up against the little stage, were holding newspapers on high to read them by the dim light of the auditorium. And the people behind were shouting to them to put them down! My shadow play was on....

You know, Kate Robins was a remarkable artist. And she had her chance that night — and took it. The shadow play was imbecile in a silly class of thing — a burlesque of Romance. A man is attacked by a cobra and an assassin at the same moment. The cobra bites his little finger — which of course is irrevocable death; but at the pain he starts aside, and the descending yataghan of the assassin cuts off the little finger. So the hero is saved from his oriental adventures — the assassin was, of course, a Deceived Husband — and returns to Europe with a heroine from behind the grille of a harem, to open a tobacco shop.

This not very amusing story in my bombastic words Miss Honeywill declaimed — a true Tragic Muse with an awful voice in which every word was clearer than type. Great heavy words! She reclined on her golden throne, gilded laurels in her hair, her face pallid and stiffened, like an ivory mask in the dim light that fell through the sheet, and black draperies ran from her, half across the stage, whilst the non-representational snakes, assassins, and harem-grilles wriggled across the illuminated sheet. She looked ten feet high!

And then, suddenly... I had not the least idea how she did it: the light did not even go out. She must have had a superb athletic physique; for there she was, crosslegged, in the middle of the stage, in front of the sheet, in scarlet trousers, rolling a cigarette, with a beam of limelight that George Heimann was casting on her. And you know she was just a little midinette, exclaiming with the voice and accent of a London typewriter girl — the half falsetto, piquant, ironic intonation:

“And who is
This..
. this graceful figure, cross-legged and rolling the fragrant weed in the window of the Emporium, No. 32....” — and so on.

She looked so little and Cockney and brave — who had seemed so immense, so classical, and so despondent. And the scarlet trousers and the tight sapphire blue bodice, the colour and the light!

Intellectually I know that she brought down the house, for the Guardees and stockbrokers and German Jews made her repeat the last seventy words of it three times running.

I did not see these encores. For — I never had
much
luck — I was violently engaged for half an hour with the cloaked and steeple-hatted replica of George Heimann, the fellow who had designed the cardboards for the shadows. I could not make out what was the matter, but I was really afraid at one time that he was going to punch my head. He was gloomy, Byronic and violent, but quite incomprehensible. It turned out in the end that he was enraged because George Heimann had turned the limelight on to Miss Honeywill, not giving his final shadow display time enough to sink into the minds of the audience. I sympathised with him, really, and finally got Lady Laubenheimer to ask him down to her Hurstcote then and there, so that he got a cheap and opulent holiday for as long as holidays lasted in that maimed year —

But, whilst I was doing this, I missed, or only got glimpses of, half a dozen quaint, admirable, and rapturously received little turns that Miss Honeywill was forced to put up on that tiny stage. I daresay she did not need much coercing, for she was a perfectly businesslike young lady, and this was her opportunity. And George Heimann, who positively acted as her accompanist, neatly, and with good humour, supplied all the physical coercion that was needed. So that whilst talking to that shadow fellow, whilst penetrating to the table of Lady Laubenheimer, and whilst effecting the introduction, I had, out of the corner of my eyes, glimpses of George with a beamingly happy, brilliant face, his cloak falling about like the wings of a wounded raven, bowing the girl off or dragging her on to the low platform. And, mind you, there were ovations! She performed little French chansonettes; she danced an old dramatic country dance called, I think “Bushes of Gorse,” and sang one or two silly little German songs.

And, when I got at last to my table and sat down beside Lady Ada Pugh Gomme, George Heimann was standing up alone on the platform giving an impromptu translation of a terrible German song that she was going to sing. It was by a fellow called Dehmer or Dehmel, and I still feel a little goose-flesh when I remember it. It was about a mother who saw her daughters one by one go on the streets as her man drank more and more and starvation settled down on the family. Just grim, like that: and that young woman made it sound like all the starving sordidness of the world. It was a great talent!

And then, suddenly, as if with a little common wink, she and the young man began to sing a German street song, to the effect that —

It doesn’t cost much in an automobile From Hamburg to Kiel —

The Germans in the hall — and the place seemed to be full of Germans; there were two large Congresses going on in London at the time — made a noise like lions in Hell. And those two young people, in each other’s arms, fell right off the stage, in the second bar of a quick waltz, and collapsed, panting and glorious, into their places at our table. It was a minute or so before we could begin to eat for the shouting....

London, of course, lost a great artist — a great diseuse — in that young woman who was there and then swept up into the footlights of blessed and stereotyped inanities and did the same thing night after night for a thousand nights, literally. But her fairy tale had come true, and I was glad of it, for she had been very persevering, patient, and enduring.

The two young things ate their suppers in great gulps, talking so that their long hairs seemed to mingle, just opposite myself and Lady Ada. That kind woman made in my ear a good many benevolent suggestions about the young people, but she never finished a sentence. What it seemed to amount to was that George’s father had had admirable gifts at charades and things. And, of course, he was a great Parliamentary speaker. But his voice and manner were to George’s, judging by what she had seen that evening, as was the little Tottie of her rather vacant but quite amiable son, who sat beside her, to that entirely admirable young woman, George’s find. I said that she was
my
find. And Lady Ada said with some concern:

“Then I hope you won’t... Please don’t... She’s exactly what he wants to counteract those rather dreadful....” She added:

“He’s such a
good
boy. I really love him very much. And that isn’t — is it? — what you could have expected of me.”

I gathered — for that was the only definite set of sentences that she uttered, and they were astonishing enough — that she had a large and influential Someone, whom she had brought, and who was rolling his immense sides and shaking with laughter two places down — she had this Someone thoroughly interested in George. And if a General Election came... and who knew when it might not, with a certain Power in its then frame of mind...

I wasn’t, you know, to use a vulgar phrase, taking any more. I wasn’t going to pursue her hint, or her purposed slip as to the boy’s parentage, or to enquire as to his possible constituency. I was just going to feign the imbecility of extreme fatigue.

But, naturally, they would not let me alone. Mr. Jeaffreson, after being talked to with great vigour by his sister and Marie Elizabeth, each whispering animatedly in his ear, wrote something on a dirty slip of paper. A hard-faced man, very erect, with suspicious eyes and features that must have been polished after being soaped until they shone like mirrors, bent over George Heimann, opposite me, and whispered as if with a suspicious wariness.
 
I had a suspicion myself that a police-sergeant was arresting him all over again. George went ten yards away and talked with him, shaking his head repeatedly. I
knew
that the solicitor, the dirty slip of paper rolled between his fingers, was waiting to catch my eye. I avoided his. George Heimann returned and fetched Miss Honeywill away from the table. She talked with the hard-faced man.

The solicitor moved stealthily into her vacant seat, just opposite me. He kept on stretching his fingers half across the table. I talked with great animation to Lady Ada Pugh Gomme. But I could not keep it up for ever. I had to look at that man. Immediately his slip was in my fingers. It read:

“Miss Heimann begs you to be cautious in talking to lady on your right. She is probably his aunt. Complications!”

A voice said in my ear:

“She blesses you and thanks you. On bended knee. She has the offer of a perfect engagement.”

It showed that she was a good girl that she should think of thanking me, like that, right away. George Heimann’s hair was tickling my ears. His dark eyes were reading the note from his solicitor to me. He could not help it: it lay unrolled on the tablecloth just beneath his aquiline nose.