Mummers in Mufti/Chapter 9

UCKILY Bellsmith was not compelled long to keep up his efforts to entertain "the Duchess" as Mrs. Trip was called in the "Eleanor" company, for the genteel politeness which had opened the feast was of short duration. In fact, without being exactly conscious of how the transition had come about, others besides Bellsmith were soon aware that Tommy Knight's birthday party was rolling along very nicely indeed.

The natural-selection method of seating was one which should be looked into, for the inevitable and highly successful result of it in this case was to bring together the several groups of congenial souls. At the sides of the table Miss Marshall and Bellsmith, Mrs. Trip Bellony and Miss Winner formed what was, both literally and figuratively, the conservative center. At the head, Tommy Knight and his coadjutor, the curly-haired assistant stage-manager, formed a moderate-liberal right, beaming good will and reconciliation toward all the various factions. At the other end, Charlie Barnes, the bold-faced girl, the two lost chorus sheep, and one or two men who were, neither then nor afterward, ever identified, formed what might be called the extreme left, with all the attributes of that term.

Bellsmith himself, who had been appalled at the idea of eating another supper, found himself doing amazingly well with his lobster. The punch apparently had fixed on pink as its final color, and several rounds of this hue had been circulated when a buzzing and giggling from the extreme left culminated in the rising of Charlie Barnes, still—but now only in burlesque—in his attitude of the backwoods toast-master.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, rubbing his hands, "with your kind permission I wish to introduce Miss Poppy Vaughn, nee Hedberg, who will now favor us with one of her famous classical and interpretive dances performed on the leading stages of the world and before all the crowned heads of Europe."

In the mild and tentative applause which greeted his announcement the comedian sat down, cupped his hands before his face, and began to play a lively air on a jews'-harp. At the same moment a man beside him stretched out his hands and began to accompany him on an imaginary banjo. The whish and pang of the two together were astoundingly realistic. It was, in fact, two or three minutes before Bellsmith realized that the jews'-harp was as purely imaginary as the banjo.

The bold-faced girl, who was apparently none other than Miss Poppy Vaughn, "nee Hedberg," was, however, suddenly diffident. It was curious to see her as blushing and reluctant as an amateur. First self consciously and then angrily she brushed aside all applause, and the music stopped in the middle of a bar.

"Hey! What's the matter?" demanded Barnes.

"Come on, Poppy! Oh, go ahead!" called several voices from the length of the table.

At last the girl rose and stood waiting in the small open space of carpet between Barnes and the folding bed. Barnes nodded his head and the imaginary instruments struck up again.

At the first note the girl's face changed suddenly, assuming a set, waxen smile. At the same moment she rose to the very tips of her street shoes, clasped her hands behind her head, and went flickering around the room. Like many children of immigrant parents, the girl had apparently been trained for a ballet dancer of the old school, and Bellsmith had to admit that her performance was remarkably good. At least in those informal surroundings it seemed remarkably good, and, watching her during the next three minutes, Bellsmith was assailed with a question that was to perplex him a great many times during the months of his acquaintance with the "Eleanor" company.

How was it, he asked himself, as he watched the girl and as he listened to the improvisations of Barnes and his companion, how was it that people of what were unmistakably such limited minds and talents, so completely without ambition or initiative, could suddenly rise to such apparent heights of real excellence, real cleverness, then with equal suddenness and equal resignation, completely relapse to the level of less than mediocrity from which they had sprung? Any girl of his own acquaintance who could dance one tenth as well as this girl would have been regarded as a prodigy. Indeed Bellsmith had seen heralded "artists" of what Barnes had called the "interpretive" school who had nothing like the genuine accuracy and finish of this girl—none of her genuine groundwork. Yet they were highly paid and famous. This girl was a nonentity in a routine hack company and always would be. What was the difference? Didn't this girl want to be anything different and could she be if she wanted! There must be some answer, but Bellsmith was to become far more familiar with the kind of talent represented by Charlie Barnes and the bold-faced girl before he discovered it.

For three or four minutes the girl continued to dance to her imaginary jews'-harp and banjo; then, suddenly catching just the right note, she turned a complete handspring without ruffling a line of her petticoat. Oddly, it was the most refined thing that she had done all the evening. A boom from an imaginary bass drum, thrown in for good measure by some other extemporaneous artist farther up the table, caught her as she landed, and the music abruptly stopped. The girl, breathless and laughing, plopped into her chair, and, although showered with applause in which Bellsmith was the leader, she refused to repeat. A moment later she was again merely the coarse, witless gamine.

Waiters bearing cigars and Tommy Knight pathetically scouring the bottom of the punch-bowl furnished a respite for a moment; then Barnes, who had now completely edged himself into the mastership of ceremonies began calling up the table to Bellony.

"Hey, Tony! Your turn next! Give us a number." A girl, hopefully and gently clapping, added to the invitation, which was completed by a sudden and respectful silence that settled over the entire table. This was evidently to be an event.

There was one virtue at least about Adrian Bellony, "nee" (as Barnes would have said) Francis Xavier Bellamy. He was neither reluctant nor precipitate in responding to an invitation to perform. Merely waiting, professionally, until the room was in complete silence, he ran his finger between his collar and his neck, fastened his eyes on the molding, opened his tremendous throat and began to sing: Except that it had range and power, Bellony's was probably the worst voice that Bellsmith had ever heard in his life, at least in that song. The piercing, metallic tenor cut like a buzz-saw, and Bellsmith, sitting almost opposite that open throat, got the full force of it. He was almost afraid that he had winced when the shock of it had first hit him, but sincerely hoped that he hadn't, for the other guests were apparently deeply impressed. For once the air of mockery had completely left the room. Every one remained motionless, the eyes of the men on the singer, fixed and respectful, the eyes of the women turned musingly downward. Even Tilly Marshall, beside Bellsmith, was lost in a reverie. Even the bold-faced girl was silent. The singer went on, throaty and nasal at the same time, falsely accenting the Italian words to get cheap, sentimental effects, bellowing at absolutely unrelated moments and pianissimo-ing when piano would have been more than ample. Where the voice was expected to break in pathos he merely slurred up a half-tone and back again. Where the song was Intended to trail off wistfully, Bellony "improved" it by jumping up a full octave and ending in a piercing, triumphant falsetto, sustained and strongly crescendo. Words, fortunately, cannot state what he did to that song:

"… deeeeeee!!!!!"

dee— "Wha-wha-ha-de—

Alas, poor Mimi, indeed, if she had to stand while a man held her hand in the darkness and sang like that!

As the singer went on and on and the horror grew, Bellsmith glanced furtively and incredulously around the table. Were they really taking this seriously? Wasn't it a huge joke?. He saw that there was no mistake. His fellow-guests were not merely polite. They were genuinely moved, their eyes on the table-cloth, their attitudes strained and self-conscious.

And again there rose within Bellsmith one of those wandering, reflective queries which make up the life of the lonely man. Perhaps this second question was an answer to his first. Again, he wondered, how could this group of worldly, experienced people, who jeered at convention, who would be the first to mock at imposture, who could produce and appreciate such a finished, professional thing as the dance he had just witnessed, suddenly fall to depths in which they could be genuinely stirred by, see nothing ludicrous in, this awful singing? By one of those paradoxes that they should have been the first to appreciate, the handspring of the hard-faced girl had been so completely artistic and the rendering of Puccini was so completely vulgar. Yet the  "Eleanor" company obviously regarded this as much the higher performance of the two.

Omne ignotum pro magnifico! That must be the only explanation of it although Bellsmith made a mental note to look up the quotation in the morning He was a little hazy whether it was omne or omna and, by some inverse logic, the singing of Bellony made him viciously determined to correct his own Latin.

Still on and on went the piercing, grating tenor, now softening into that beloved, sentimental falsetto. Again Bellsmith, thoroughly unhappy, trying hard to look as if he enjoyed it but knowing that he was making a very bad job of it, looked furtively up the table and suddenly encountered a twinkle in the eye of the curly-haired stage-manager. For an instant a laugh telegraphed itself from one man to the other; then both caught themselves, the face of the stage-manager relaxing into bored woodenness, the face of Bellsmith contorting back into polite appreciation of the singer opposite him. But that twinkle had been unmistakable. Sudden flashings like that across a table make lifelong allies. This one was to do so in this case.

At last the interminable song came to an end in first a dead silence, then a wild burst of applause. Shufflings and conversations sprang up around the table, but the massacred Puccini had done its work. The party was visibly sentimentalized, and Tommy Knight sprang up in alarm. Stringing three or four of the sherbet glasses on the fingers of each hand, he made the round of the table.

"Come on, people," he ordered. "The dregs. The bitter dregs."

At the same time the imaginary jews'-harp and the imaginary banjo began operations at the other end of the table, but from that feat the flavor was gone. Charlie Barnes saw very plainly that he was now running second string to the red-faced tenor. He began a conspiratory whispering with his partner of the imaginary banjo and, as the pink punch again began to restore the élan of the party, the banjo player rose and knocked for silence.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he announced. "We have the honor to have with us this evening Mr. De Wolf Hopper, who will now favor us with a recitation of—of—"

The speaker leaned down to catch a prompting whisper from the orator himself and then continued: "—of 'The Bells.'"

No one laughed, for no one was quite sure what it was all about. Very solemnly, Barnes rose in his place. Impressively he took a sip of water, brushed his hand over his close-cropped hair, cleared his throat, and began in a voice that might have been that of De Wolf Hopper or of William Jennings Bryan, for all that Bellsmith knew.

At these words, however, a roar and catcalls arose from the table. As if shocked, Barnes held up his hand.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen," he admonished. "This piece is serious, tragic."

He began again.

But this time he got only as far as "evening," for the catcalls began again, and one of the men who was to be forever unidentified began to clutch at his throat and gulp like a stage maniac, crying, hoarsely, "A drink! A drink!"

Barnes grinned. Things were going as he liked them now and, knowing that he had the house with him, he let the ribaldry run its own course. As it died out he began again:

This time Tommy Knight, at the head of the table, suddenly threw his arms wildly over the cloth, upsetting two coffee-cups, buried his face in his lavender shirt-sleeves, and began to sob convulsively.

"Don't! Don't!" he choked. "I can't stand it! I can't stand it!"

Alone among them the curly-haired stage-manager sat staring at the reciter with solemn, pedantic interest.

"‘'Twas a balmy summer evening,'" he prompted gently, "'and a goodly crowd was there.'"

Vaguely amused but puzzled, Bellsmith turned to Miss Marshall.

"What is it?" he asked. "What's he trying to say?"

"Search me," said Miss Marshall.

She turned to the curly-haired man who sat just beyond her.

"Pete, Mr. Bellsmith wants to know what it is."

With a friendly grin the stage-manager leaned over to Bellsmith.

"Do you mean to say that you have never heard that classic selection? I'm surprised."

"Well, that's all very well in its way," replied Miss Marshall, "but what is it!"

"'The Face on The Bar-room Floor.'"

"Oh!" said Miss Marshall, completely enlightened, but Bellsmith was still in the dark.

The three of them leaned back, Tommy Knight raised a grinning face from his shirt-sleeves, and Barnes tried again.

That, however, was as much as Bellsmith was ever to hear of the famous ballad, for this time there came a sudden interruption from an outside source—a loud and imperious knock on the door. Instantly both the speaker and the audience fell silent, the former still belligerent, the latter rather ashamed.

"Come in," called some one, cautiously.

The door opened, and a grinning bell-boy stood inside.

"The night clerk says please not so much noise."

"All right," answered Barnes, still standing and ready to go on. "I can say it just as well in a whisper," He waved at the boy. "'Out, damnèd spot!' That's Shakspere and means, 'The hook'—'Vanish'—'Leave.'"

The boy turned to go, but somehow, for the first time, the host, Tommy Knight, seemed to grasp the fact that something was going on. He rose and walked with unctuous politeness toward the boy.

"This is my party," he announced. "Who did you want?"

The boy grinned. "The night clerk says please not so much noise."

This apparently struck Knight as a wholly new idea. He hung his head and pondered it.

"The night clerk says it," he repeated thoughtfully, as if that made all the difference in the world. "The night clerk says it." Then suddenly a beaming air of renunciation came over him and he added. "Well, if he does, he does."

"Come on, Tommy, sit down," called the stage-manager. "The boy's right. The other people in the hotel want to sleep."

As usually happens in such cases, if no one had interfered the host would have been quite content to have it end there, but, as it was, this new voice served only to give him new life. He waved a weak hand toward the curly-haired man. "Now, you keep out of this. This is my party. Is n't it, boy?"

"Yes, sir. I guess so," grinned the boy.

He turned to make his escape, but Knight grabbed him by the dingy gold braid on his shoulder and drew him back into the room.

"Now let's argue this out," he said, pleadingly, "man to man. I mean man to bell-boy."

The boy stood grinning impassively. He was evidently used to such scenes, but Barnes became suddenly impatient to go on with his recitation.

"All right, boy," he called. "We 'll keep quiet."

Again the boy tried to dodge out, but again Knight caught him by the shoulder.

"Just a minute! Just a minute!"

As the boy watched him curiously, Knight began to pull crumpled dollar bills, one after another, out of every pocket of his waistcoat.

"Say, boy," he began. "Can't you get us—get us something—just a little more?"

The boy shook his head. "I'm sorry, sir. I can't get a thing. Not unless you know the manager personally, and he's gone to bed. I don't think he'd get up for any one."

Curiously, the mention of liquor had made Knight perfectly sober. It also had an amazingly fraternal effect on every one in the room, including the bell-boy. Drawn into a common cause, they all looked around at each other inquiringly.

"Is n't there any one here who knows the ropes?" asked Knight. "Does n't somebody know the manager?"

Suddenly, by a process of elimination, Bellsmith, who had not been paying much attention, discovered that every one at the table was looking at him, the only stranger and the only native. Whether he welcomed it or not, Bellsmith's great moment had come. He wet his lips and spoke to the boy, nervously.

"What's that head waiter's name!" he asked. "Is he still around?"

"Fernoy?" said the boy. "Yes, he's still here, but I don't think he 'll give you anything."

"Well, try him anyway," broke in the host, but the boy evidently had more faith in the dinner-jacketed Bellsmith. "Who 'll I tell him?" he asked.

"Tell him Mr.—Mr.—" interposed Knight, regally, and Bellsmith supplied the name for him:

"Mr. Bellsmith."

A few minutes later there was a smoother but not less authoritative knock at the door, and Barnes piped up:

"There's your party!"

Bellsmith, not eager for any more scenes like the last, quickly stepped to the door and opened it. The head waiter, in day dress, still the diplomat but now the diplomat on a confidential mission, stepped into the room.

"Did you want something, Mr. Bellsmith?"

"Yes, Jules," said Bellsmith. "Do you think that it would be possible to get us a little—" He searched for a word but found nothing better than the one used by the host. "A little—something?"

The head waiter looked a bit uncertainly around the bedraggled room, but, after all, Bellsmith was Bellsmith.

"What would you like, Mr. Bellsmith!"

"Why, er," began Bellsmith, "could you find half a dozen bottles of champagne!"

A gasp went up from the hard-faced girl, and the curly-haired stage-manager looked at Bellsmith with a sudden amused admiration, but the head waiter seemed to find nothing extraordinary in the request.

"Why, yes, sir, I think so. Of course we have n't got what we used to have, but the manager himself saved out a little imported—very good, sir, really very good."

"That will do nicely. Thank you very much," replied Bellsmith. As the head waiter hesitated, he added. "Er—perhaps you don't want this signed for. Shall I—?"

The head waiter held up his hand. "Oh, that's all right, Mr. Bellsmith! That's perfectly all right."

As soon as the door had closed behind him, the hard-faced girl stared at Bellsmith.

"Say, Duke, you must be the Mayor of this city!"

But no one joined her in her laugh. The moment was too deep for that.