The Outrage Part 16

The Curate of Lindfield had arranged a Benefit Concert for the refugees.

It was to be held in the schoolhouse on the last Sat.u.r.day in September, and the proceeds were to be divided among the Belgian refugees of the neighbourhood, to whom also complimentary tickets were sent. The two front rows of seats were reserved exclusively for them.

For weeks past the excitement among the amateur performers who had offered their services had been intense. Miss Snelgrove, the Whitakers'

nearest neighbour, who was going to sing "Pur dicesti" and "Little Grey Home in the West," had been alternately gargling and practising all day, until it was often hard to make out which of the two she was actually doing.

Finally her throat became so sore that Mrs. Mellon, of "The Grange," had to be asked to sing in her stead.

Mrs. Mellon, stout and good-tempered, said she would do anything for charity; so the "Habanera" from "Carmen" was put on the program instead of "Pur dicesti" and the "Little Grey Home"; and Mrs. Mellon heroically untrimmed her best hat, so as to have the red velvet rose which adorned it to wear in her hair.

"But surely," said Miss Snelgrove, who had magnanimously gone to see her on the eve of the concert to ask how her throat felt--she herself spoke in a hoa.r.s.e whisper--"surely you are not going to sing Carmen in costume, are you?"

"No, not exactly in costume," said Mrs. Mellon, trying the rose first over the left temple and then under her right ear, "but I think the dress ought to be suited to the song; don't you? I have had my black lace shortened, and have added a touch of colour ... here and there...."

Mrs. Mellon indicated her ample bosom and her portly hips. "A scarlet sash, and the red rose in my hair will be quite effective. I _had_ thought of having a cigarette in my hand--as Carmen, you know--but Mr.

Mellon and the vicar thought better not.

"L'amour est enfant de Bohem-ah, "See tew ne maim pah, je t'aim-ah"....

she warbled in her rich padded contralto, and the envious Miss Snelgrove felt her own small, scratchy soprano contract painfully in her overworked throat.

George Whitaker was to perform a few conjuring tricks which he had learned from a book called _Magic in the Home_. He had performed them innumerable times in the family circle, with great adroitness and success; but when the evening of the concert came round he vowed he would not be able to do anything.

"I know I shall make an a.s.s of myself," he said repeatedly to every one, and n.o.body had time to contradict him. About an hour before they were to start he stood with Cherie in the hall, waiting for the others.

Cherie was wearing a white muslin gown of Eva's, which George knew very well, and which made him feel almost brotherly towards her. Mrs.

Whitaker and Eva were still upstairs dressing, and Loulou had gone to put Mireille to bed, telling the maid in anxious maternal English to "wake on her, is it not?"

"I know I shall make an a.s.s of myself," repeated George. "My hands are quite clammy."

"What a pity!" sighed Cherie sympathetically, shaking her comely head.

"Most awfully clammy. Just feel them," said George, stretching out to her a large brown hand.

"I can see that they are," said Cherie.

"Oh, but just feel," said George.

Cherie cautiously touched his palm with the tip of one finger. "Most clammy indeed," she said; and George laughed; and Cherie laughed too.

"Besides," said the conjuror, "I am nervous. I positively am. Heart thumping and all that kind of thing."

"Dear, dear," said Cherie.

George sighed deeply and repeated, "I know I shall make a hash of things."

He did.

His was the first number of the program, and when he appeared he was greeted with prolonged and enthusiastic applause. Things bulged in his back and things dropped out of his sleeves; objects he should not have had popped out of his pocket and rolled under the piano; flags appeared and unfurled themselves long before they should have done so and in parts of his person where flags are not usually seen.

His mother sat bathed in a cold sweat as he fumbled and bungled, and Eva kept her eyes tightly shut and prayed that it might finish soon. But it did not. The flags, which should have been the crowning patriotic finale of his performance, having appeared in the beginning of it, there seemed to the agonized George to be nothing to finish with and no way of finis.h.i.+ng. He went on and on, stammering and swallowing with a dry palate, clutching a hat, a handkerchief, and an egg, and wondering what on earth he was going to do with them.

Cherie had watched him solemnly enough in the beginning, but when he caught her eye and dropped the egg something seemed to leap into her throat and strangle her. When a tennis-ball dropped from his sleeve and he had to crawl after it under the grand piano while the Union Jack hidden up his back slowly unfurled itself behind him, she felt that she must laugh or die.

She laughed; she laughed, hiding her face in her hands, her forehead and neck crimson, her slim shoulders heaving, while Loulou nudged her fiercely and whispered, "_Ne ris pas!_"

George, returning from under the piano caught sight of that small, shaking figure in the front row; his hands grew clammier, his throat drier.

At last the curate, to end the painful performance, started applauding in the wings, and the abashed conjurer turned and walked quickly away--with a rabbit peering out of his coat-tail pocket.

In the wings he met the curate, who tried to comfort him. "Don't you mind. It wasn't so bad!" he said genially, clapping George on the back.

"That silly girl laughing in the front row put you out."

"Not at all, not at all," declared George. "It was that beastly egg.

Besides," he added, "everybody ought to have laughed. I wanted them to laugh. It was intended to be a funny number."

"Oh, was it?" said the curate, somewhat sourly. "You should have announced that on the program. n.o.body would have thought it to look at you."

But the next number was already beginning. Mrs. Mellon was on the platform clasping a fan in her gloved hands. The gloves were tight and white and short, and so were her sleeves, and between the two a portion of red and powerful elbow was disclosed. The rose was in her hair, the sash round her waist, her eyes flashed with impa.s.sioned Spanish vivacity. At the piano the timid, short-sighted Mr. Mellon took his seat, after a good deal of adjustment of the creaky piano-stool.

No sooner had he nervously started the first notes of the introductory bars than Mrs. Mellon's loud contralto burst from her, and with hand on hip, she informed the audience in French that love was a rebellious bird.

Mr. Mellon, who still had three bars of introduction to play, floundered on awhile, then turned a bewildered face to his wife and stopped playing. There followed a brief low-voiced discussion as to who was wrong--she asking him angrily why he did not go on, and he murmuring that she ought to have waited four bars. Then they began again; and once more Mrs. Mellon told every one that love was a rebellious bird. With Latin fervour, with much heaving of breast and flas.h.i.+ng of eye, she declared, "_Si tew ne m'aim-ah pas--je t'aim-ah_," and the warning, "_Si je t'aim-ah prends garde a toe-ah_" seemed to acquire a real and very terrifying significance.

Again Cherie, who had listened with becoming seriousness to the opening bars, was seized with a fit of spasmodic laughter. The agitated Mrs.

Mellon telling every one to beware of her love seemed to her to be the most ludicrous thing she had ever heard; and she bowed her face in her hands and rocked to and fro with little gasps of hysterical laughter.

Louise glanced at her and then at Mrs. Mellon; and then she, too, was caught by the horrible infection. Biting her lips and with quivering nostrils, she sat rigid and upright, staring at the platform, but her shoulders shook and the tears rolled down her face, which was crimson with silent laughter.

Mrs. Mellon must have seen it--were the culprits not in the first row?--and she looked disdainfully away from them; but her song grew fiercer and fiercer, her notes grew louder and higher as she soared away from the pitch and left poor Mr. Mellon tinkling away in the original key, about three semitones below.

The other refugees, sitting on either side of Cherie and Louise, turned and looked at them; the Pitou children began to giggle but were quickly pinched back into seriousness by their mother.

The next number on the program was a dance; a somewhat modified Salome dance, performed by Miss Price.

When Miss Price ran coyly in with bare legs and feet, and a few Oriental jewels jingling round her scantily draped form, even Madame Pitou gave way completely, and had to let the little Pitous laugh as they would, while she, with her face hid behind her handkerchief, gasped and choked and gurgled. The convulsive hilarity soon gained all the refugees. Every posture of Miss Price, her every gesture, every waggle of her limbs, every glimpse of the soles of her feet--somewhat soiled by contact with the stage carpet--made all the occupants of the two front rows rock and moan with laughter. Those immediately behind them noticed it. Then others; it was whispered through the hall that the refugees were laughing. Soon the entire audience was craning its neck to look at the unworthy, thankless foreigners for whose benefit the entertainment had been arranged, and who were rudely and stupidly laughing like two rows of lunatics.

The unwitting Miss Price was just rising from an att.i.tude of genuflexion with a rapturous smile and two black marks on her knees, when she caught sight of the Pitou boy writhing with silent merriment at the end of the first row. Her eye wandered along that row and the next one and she saw all the bowed and quivering figures, the flushed faces hidden in handkerchiefs, and the heaving shoulders.

Casting upon them a glance of ineffable disdain she walked haughtily with her bare legs into the wings. Mr. Mellon rippled on at the piano for a little while, then he, too, stopped and hurried off the stage at the nearest exit.

Behind the scenes the artists were a.s.sembled in an indignation-meeting.

There were eleven numbers still to come, but no one would go on. It was proposed that the curate should go out and make a short but cutting speech; and he went half-way out and then came back again, not having anything ready to say. Besides the sight of the refugees still convulsed with laughter upset him. For their part his appearance and disappearance did nothing to allay their condition, now bordering on collective hysteria.

Finally, after rapid consultation in the wings, the good-natured Miss Johnson was prevailed upon to go out and sing the "Merry Pipes of Pan."

She was not nervous and did not care whether the silly refugees laughed or not.

When she stepped out she saw that Mr. Mellon was not there to accompany her, so after a long wait she went off into the wings on one side, just as Mr. Mellon--wiping his mouth after a hasty refreshment--came hurrying in on the other.

Miss Johnson had to be coaxed and driven and pushed out again, and this so fl.u.s.tered her that she forgot most of her words and had to make a series of inarticulate sounds until she came to the refrain.