Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 512
I said:
“You wait, my boy, till you see her running from agent to agent, in that tattered green skirt, with a dilapidated hat and broken shoes. This is her fairy tale night!”
He said:
“Damn it, yes! You can’t imagine how we both recognise you as our benefactor! She asks me to tell you!”
They must have arranged that speech whilst I was telling that electric horror to go away. We were at the bottom of the stairs, and the fantastic vista of that home of orgies opened before us, a dim cellar in which, in what daylight-filtered down, all shapes were grey. At a considerable distance, over some tables, Madame was moving desultorily. Though it was mid-July she was wrapped up in an immense fur coat.
CHAPTER VI
I HAD come up from Plymouth by an early train that morning, and I had had nothing to eat since dawn but the buckwheat cakes and maple syrup of the young people’s restaurant and two shavings of bread and butter at the Ladies’ Club tea. So I was simply not in the mood to bother any more. I felt a certain trust in those young things: they would probably make some sort of show out of my affair.
I was relieved, too, to have got my silly speech over. One frittered one’s time away a good deal in those days with such trifles, out of good nature. Generally to please some woman. One pretended that one did not care whether they succeeded or no. But one did.
I had sunk down — yes, really sunk, for I was very tired — on a chair at a round, marble-topped table, before the sheet stretched for my shadow play. It covered the whole square of the little stage, and had a frame like a picture-frame in plain gilding. That cellar was gloomy, dim, and so cavernous that sounds seemed to die away in dim distances, though the place was not really so very large. Behind my back the two young people were talking in whispers. Madame was wavering towards us, a rather shapeless black shadow, coming deviously, between the little tables, her face gradually swimming up, chalk white. In the whiter reflections of that sheet she held, just protruding from a furred sleeve, an enormous peach. She placed that in my left hand and then, withdrawing into her sleeve-hole, protruded a small white cylinder of paper that dropped on to the marble table-top. She looked slowly round at the sheet and drifted away.
The young people seized on that manuscript and ran off.
A waiter in his shirt sleeves was at my elbow. He bore on a silver tray four admirable — four wonderful — sandwiches that contained immense prawns, a long-necked green bottle of Moselle and a tall, greenish drinking glass.
I ate ravenously. The young man who had designed the silhouettes for the shadow-play passed swiftly before the screen, a cardboard box beneath his cape, himself a silhouette. In costume he was an exact replica of George Heimann, only he was not quite so tall. That was uniform, really, for certain dashing young men. Well, they had uniforms enough a very little later.
This was not, of course, my milieu, but it was extraordinarily soothing. I was not on the verge of a nervous breakdown — or perhaps I was. But, after the surface of the ground where everyone had been asking me questions or making agitated statements, this cavern, where dim and uncommented on things just happened, was what I needed. Above-ground people were disagreeably odd and wearisome things had to be accounted for. Here everything was so foreign and so oriental that I asked even myself no questions. My manuscript had been stolen; it had been returned; Madame fed me. Why, didn’t matter!
Being fed was like love. But I could not think it was love. Madame had once been in the same room with me, at someone’s At-home, but she had not addressed a word to me, and we had not been introduced. I have not the ghost of an idea who it was told me that a Monsieur Revendikoff had carried off my manuscript out of jealousy. He had certainly been in attendance on Madame at that At-home, but I could not flatter myself that he had noticed my existence. So that jealousy seemed unreasonable.
It was all very vague; but I could not help it! I only knew that Madame must be a miracle of sympathetic divination. She seemed to be aware that I did not want to be talked to; that I was hungry. Over the telephone she had told me that my favourite wine was Assmannshausen, 1906, though that was the first time she had ever heard my voice. I agreed with myself that she was a Circassian magician, and all I hoped was that she would go on feeding me and saying nothing!
And behold! A waiter was there with a silver cup of iced soup. Madame drifted up to my table, looked at the soup, and went away slowly. She left on the air a faint perfume of violets.
Mr. Revendikoff, at a run, passed between me and the sheet. He hissed that he was leaving for New York this evening: I didn’t care. He had high, singularly meagre features, that showed over the immense fur collar of a travelling cloak. He was very fair. I didn’t know what he was or did. I had just that vague idea that he was a Russian tenor and phthisical. Anyhow, I had found that it sounded well to say that my manuscript had been stolen by a consumptive Russian tenor. I don’t mean that it sounded aristocratic — but somehow convincing. The sort of thing one could not invent!
A waiter was serving me with reverential awe from an immense vol-au-vent in gilded pastry. He looked like a Calmuck, but I daresay he wasn’t. The Russian tenor ran the reverse way across the sheet, both arms above his head, in an attitude of despair. I wondered if he were going to run to New York like that. Madame, too, drifted right across that dim illumination. She approached an irregular, greyish column. Light existed — and a terrific white wooden pillar like a beaked man with a scarlet tongue — a Caryatid I think it is called. Other white Caryatids existed all round me, more dimly, as if they supported the roof of that vast cellar. All had scarlet details, the heads of hawks, cats, camels, and the white of their paint gave small shining reflections. Madame, invisible, had I suppose switched on some electric light. A pinprick of light existed behind the sheet and grew to a pale glare, a flat black serpent wavered across, rather dimly.
A round, extremely moving, autocratic voice exclaimed: “We must have more laight in the hall. This is a respectable na-ight. As respectable as Hell!”
A gloomy voice said, from behind the sheet:
“All right! It will ruin my show!”
The round voice, obviously from behind the Caryatid, said:
“All ra-ight! Vairy well!” The light in the hall died.
The one behind the screen was immense at once. Beside me sounded shuffling feet and asthmatic breathing. Dim men in green aprons were conveying a gilt throne. I was pleased, and eating — but more slowly. Madame had taken my stage directions seriously. A waiter was holding a miraculous tournedos à la Meyerbeer under my nose for my inspection.
The silhouettes of George Heimann and Clarice Honeywill were before me, as if supporting one another. She sank on to the gilt throne; he arranged draperies from her form to the middle of the stage. The light illuminated her dimly. She appeared pallid, but ten feet high and menacing, like recumbent Destiny. On the sheet there showed arcaded and domed shadows of buildings: they appeared — grew immense and shadowy. Then they fixed themselves, lamp black. George leapt off the stage and ran lightly to distances.
An immense voice, gloomy and vibrating, so that you shivered down the spine, filled the whole place. It said:
“THIS IS THE STORY OF THE NARROWEST ESCAPE FROM DEATH!”
From behind my back the thin voice of George Heimann said:
“Too loud! Much too loud!” peremptorily. It added: “We must have more light on the speaker!”
From behind its pillar the rounded voluptuous voice said:
“Of course we must have more lai-ght on the reca-ighter. She’s a damn pretty girl. That’s what the men come to see!”
There came into the hall enough light to let you see that in her hair Miss Honeywill had golden laurel leaves. She exclaimed:
“This is the story of the Narrowest Escape from Death ever known!”
The voice was exactly the same, but smaller, as if your ear had been removed to a distance. It gave an extraordinary effect of drill and patience.
George Heimann said:
“That’s better. That’s exactly it. Stick to that!”
The gloomy organ from behind the sheet exclaimed:
“If there’s any light at all in the audience I withdraw my designs!” And the shadow of the Eastern façade disappeared.
Then all the lights were gone; there were brushings of feet on the floor. Three queer, sinewy women, very grey in what grey light filtered from outside, stood with thin grey moustaches and boat-shaped hats, before my table. I was eating ice pudding filled with pistachio nuts and covered with scalding chocolate sauce. I took them to be the mothers of a Cabinet Minister. I said to the spokeswoman:
“No, Madame, the entertainment does not begin until eleven p m.” They disappeared.
Madame drifted before me, a waiter carrying a chair behind her. She sat down, leaning half across my table, and took the Gargantuan peach that was still beside my left hand, and a silver knife. The waiters had been placing cutlery on that table all night long. She began to peel the peach. She said:
“The dinner, was it good?” without looking at me. They had placed between us a silver tazza filled with a mish-mash of fruits. It had been a miraculous dinner. I love to recall it. I daresay that is evident.
Madame had loosened her furs; her shoulders showed alabaster-white, and her rounded oriental features. She looked up at me tranquilly; she had in her dark hair a necklace of enormous pearls. She said:
“Charles!... But you are not Charles!” quite languidly. She added: “Then you must be Mr. Jessop!” She had no aspect of caring in the least. Her immense brown eyes were as still as fishponds.
A waiter was at my elbow with a long, greenish document. It was folded down its length; a triangular corner turning up showed the figures £7 14 6. Madame reached slowly across the table and took languorously the long greenish document. She tore it into innumerable green-grey triangles and showered them over the head of the waiter.
To this day I do not know who Charles was. But I had obviously eaten his dinner. And even now I cannot fit the thing together. For if she had taken me for Charles, why had she given Charles my manuscript? It did not fit. But it did not seem to matter.
Madame produced from under furs an orange, green and scarlet, circular box of Carlsbad plums, and began to eat them slowly and lusciously, with large, languid gestures of her arms. She said I should be glad to hear that after all Jellycheck was singing Romeo at the Budapesth Opera that night. And I was glad, though I did not know who Jellycheck was. I told her then that I had not been able to secure more than ten people for her table that night. She said:
“Oh dear! And we are going to be so full!”
I recited with some alarm what she had said to me over the telephone. She said:
“That is it just. Just it! I have asked everybody to bring sixteen people. Just because we are going to be full. That is life. That is living! Innumerable people! Packed motionless. The gowns tom off the backs! Ah.. h.. h! And Jellycheck! I am so glad!”
With my uneasy insularity I could not, alas, believe that speech. I was convinced that it was Charles she had been ordering to bring sixteen people, and that Charles and I must have had identical tastes in wine. And that he had been expected to pay for his dinner! So, next morning, being very unhappy, I wrote her a great big cheque for my dinner of ten people, and sent it her by messenger. He came back with the largest box of chocolates I have ever seen, in a Morocco case tied with purple bows. I passed it on that afternoon to some young woman, and, by the last post the same night, received a plain envelope enclosing an ornate and scented other envelope, decorated with a purple coronet and inscribed in an enormous handwriting: “ Will Mr. Jessop’s Lady give this to Mr. Jessop?” Inside was my cheque tom in four. On the back of each fragment was a word, and the four words ran:
“Dog — doesn’t — eat — Dog!”
I suppose she took me for a kindred spirit. Alas, I was nothing so fine.
For she was a kind, voluptuous, abstracted creature. Heaven knows what she thought about. Jellychecks, I suppose. She had that wonderful dark hair, a hooked nose, and eyes that blazed out and then went in again, brown, like a hawk’s. I know she was very benevolent to innumerable young men with steeple-crowned hats and black side whiskers, and to many young women with gifts, like Clarice Honeywill, who had gone to her in sheer desperation. I wonder where she is now. Poor old London could not any more allure her. Every night may her gown be torn off her back, if that is what she really likes!
We sat there for a very long time. She had lovely teeth, crushing those Carlsbad plums. But I don’t believe that we talked at all. The only remark of hers that comes back to me is, uttered with intense irritation, that that damned oxy-hydrogen limelight machine used for making my shadows had cost her fifty shillings. She was going to smash it into sixty bits as soon as the show was over. That did not seem to be very rational. And yet, I don’t know! Cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face must be a very luxurious operation, and very gratifying, if one can afford it.
She did give me, however, a taste of her organising qualities — in a little contest of wills. She wanted me at one point to go and superintend my artists. I didn’t want to go, partly because I was lazy, partly because I trusted them, partly because I wanted to block the way of Marie Elizabeth and the Jeaffresons, who were certain to come at the most inopportune moment, and who were just as certain to upset George Heimann, and probably the young woman too. But she just made me. She said:
“We artists cannot ever afford not to attend to the minutest details. Believe me, I do not let a waiter here serve an anchovy without inspecting it. There will be six hundred people here to-night — to see your show!”
I believe she was a millionairess, losing hundreds of pounds every night. For the love of Art? To brighten London? There are people who have had that odd ambition. Or she may have been anything else. God knows!
I only know that a sort of aristocratic scorn in the tones of that speech forced me to my feet.
I said:
“No doubt, Comtesse! Still there are dangers worse than inadequate rehearsals. The draught I have been feeling on my shoulder-blades....”
She exclaimed:
“Shoulder-blades!” with a blank non-comprehension. She was a real Countess, not even by marriage. Then she exclaimed: “Ah!” and went on swiftly:
“If it is that: I assure you my doors are never open. Always before them there is... an angel with a flaming sword. Hein? Does that satisfy you?”
She had understood me more quickly than I did her, and she went on:
“I assure you that no bailiff could get at your young man, and no lover at your young woman! Nor any husband at you! Not here!”
I said:
“We’ve got to look out for worse people. A sister. A family solicitor!”
She said:
“Pouff!” and rubbed her thumb lightly over her forefinger. She went on, however, reasonably. “Well, yes. No doubt worse than bailiffs or lovers. Not than husbands perhaps. I do not know. But shall they get past me... Pouff! Go and look at your young people!”
I reached in the dim distance a small cell. It was a cabinet particulier, reserved I believe for H.M. Ministers, Royal Dukes, and newspaper proprietors. It was triangular in shape, and had pink walls, pink lampshades, a pink-covered table — all that pink being of silk.
It made a charming picture. Miss Honeywill, between two Charles II’s, was bent over the paper-strewn table, the bright light falling down on her hair and her shoulders that were just strapped over with black. The two young men, their hairs both very black and drooping, bent one on each side of her. It made a symmetrical group that was abandoned, breathlessly, to their business in hand. They were arranging little irregular cards in packs. One of them said:
“That’s where the cobra bites his hand. No. 13. That’s the yataghan cutting it off. No. 14.”
I thought for a moment that Madame had been right: that they needed guidance.
“It’s his little finger!” I interrupted. “The cobra bit his little finger!”
They said, all three in unison:
“Of course! Of course! We know,” without one of them looking up. They did not need guidance.
I stood looking at them for a time, out of sheer pleasure at the picture and the quiet.
I turned away into a purgatory of conversation, the upper world having descended into those quiet glooms. Madame, at a distance, in front of that sheet, was barring the way to three figures. Two appeared to be muffled up and shapeless — in flannel rugs as it might be. But the third was in an energetic black domino. I stepped behind a Caryatid that was like a white dromedary on its hind legs. The voice of Madame I could hear very plainly; the others, all talking together, made just a babble. Madame said:
“I regeret! It is an absolute rule. No one here speaks to my artistes. The police interfere!”
The other voices all talked at once. Madame said:
“It is an absolute rule. I regeret! Jacques, those carnations are for table eighteen. The police interfere.” They went on like that for a very long time. When I moved out from behind that animal, Madame was standing alone beside my table. I hurried to her and exclaimed: “Don’t say that you have saved the show!”
She answered:
“That girl is beautiful. But tyrannous. Be careful! Johann, come here!”
She added:
“But why should you be careful? You are young. Enjoy yourself and pay for it. Make trouble for yourself. They are only in the cloakrooms.” An albino waiter approached and held to her a pink ear into which she began to talk earnestly.
There could be no doubt that, beautifully dressed, George Heimann’s sister was beautiful in a French, complete sort of way. Before, that day, when I had seen her, she had been in rather dowdy clothes that I took it she wore either out of compliment to Miss Jeaffreson, or to uphold some sort of political creed. She was coming, fast, in and out of those avenues of columns, like a black panther approaching a peacock. Of course she did not resemble a panther; but, when I saw her advancing swiftly, on soft, dancing feet, I felt as I had felt when looking at a Japanese print of a black panther that was descending through the air upon a white peacock. That is exact.
