[“The Chimes” at Yarmouth, and what Henry Gastonard learned of them.]
The New Vicarage, Lowestoft,
August 6th, 1905.
Dear Paddy,--Byron told us that:
“Christians have burned each other, quite persuaded;
That all the Apostles would have done as they did.”
I am not quite sure that my dear cousin, Arthur, would not put me
immediately to the stake were it not for this worldly little wife of
his, who leaps through the hoop of his philosophy like a clown at the
circus, and is never so pleased as when her antics move him to
paroxysms of jealousy.
Let me, none the less, postpone for the moment a narration of this
particular tragedy, and thank you for your letter. I am sorry to hear
that they let the wind out of your pneumatic golf ball, and so
provoked you to expressions not found in the catechism--but, my dear
Paddy, is not half the world flogging balls so treated, and are not
the fortunate few those who can command a superfluity of that
necessary gas by which mankind achieves success?
I give you this for consolation. Would to heaven you could console me
as effectually. For, to be candid, Paddy, I am as hard driven by my
doubts as ever a man was in this world. Yesterday I saw Mimi for the
second time. My first visit was paid to her almost immediately after I
had written to you; and a sorry enough pilgrimage it was, so full of
drab shades and mournful harmonies that I write of it with reluctance,
and do not speak of it at all.
Recollect that I had traced the child to the old town of Yarmouth, and
was determined to seek her there. Of course, my car is here, and
serves me well at these times. A fast journey in the famous “forty,”
which has carried us together upon many a merry venture, brought me to
that fishing village they call Gorleston; then to an even more crabbed
street--the main thoroughfare of Yarmouth to wit. I know nothing of
these places, but the approach to them depressed me greatly, and left
me but ill prepared for the really superb sea-front which a side
street of Yarmouth presently disclosed to me.
It is inconceivable, Paddy, that such a parade as this should be so
little known to the children of civilisation. Depict a wonderful
strand of the purest golden sand, a gentle sea with many ships in a
narrow street, a wide thoroughfare abutting upon the promenade, and a
mile of houses as a background to it all. Do this, I say, and you will
still have the poorest idea of Yarmouth--for its glory lies in the
booths they have erected upon the sand, and in its entertainments, its
wide piers, its floral halls, its orderly gardens, and superabundant
bandstands. Such a city upon a seashore I have never seen in all my
life. I drove my car to a decent hotel on the front, and I descended
presently, feeling as lost as an African set down suddenly at
Ludgate-circus.
This would have been about a quarter to eight o’clock of a splendid
summer evening. Thousands of lights were now blazing upon the
promenade, lights large and small, and of all the hues of the rainbow.
Turn your ears where you would, music pleased or offended them. And
what music, Paddy!--now that of a fine military band, again of a
hurdy-gurdy, and upon that the tinny notes of a worn piano,
laboriously thumped by some child of the academies. Nor was this
sufficient, for youths passed raving of Jenny or Sarah, and here and
there a woman screeched some incoherent lines which the music-hall or
the sea beach had taught her.
I crossed the street, and ventured upon the golden sands. The
barbarity of the scene impressed me strangely. That such an artist,
such a born child of all that is really the fruit of genius as Mimi
the Simpleton, should have sunk to this, inflicted me with an
intolerable melancholy which nothing could relieve.
Here, Paddy, here I must find Mimi the Simpleton. To this _ultima
thule_ some inspiration of the nomad’s life had wafted her. You can
have little idea of the emotions which followed me to the quest of her
as I threaded the human lanes, and would have closed my ears to their
voices, but could not.
But I will not weary you with a recital to so little purpose. Let it
be sufficient to say that when I discovered Mimi at last, it was not
upon the lower sands where the meaner booths are set, but in a
considerable wooden structure built almost against the promenade, and
promising at least a better atmosphere and a better company.
Here a bill at the door informed that “The Chimes” were performing,
and that for the inconsiderable sum of sixpence I might be privileged
to hear the famous singer Wat Urling in his famous song “Bonny Bill,”
and also to witness the gyrations of the Spanish dancer “Alphonsine.”
Other lines accorded notoriety to a certain Jack Bendall, and to a
person by the name of Bertie Idden, who, it appears, had played the
banjo before the crowned heads of Europe, and was still alive to tell
the tale. These promises I read swiftly, and, paying a shilling for
the front row, I passed into the place, and saw Mimi again.
It was a quaint scene, Paddy. Some fifty square yards were fenced in
by a wooden awning and provided with benches and garden-seats. The
platform at the further end had a torn Union Jack for its emblem, and
a Spanish flag to cross it. Here stood a piano, and two or three
chairs for the performers, of whom there appeared to be five,
including the lady accompanist. All were dressed in quasi-Pierrot
costumes of black and yellow; and Mimi, I observed, wore precisely
similar garments to the men.
As to the entertainment, it consisted of a part-song sung in three
keys and wofully discordant; but Mimi left the group at the end of it,
and returned shortly afterwards in a black spangled dress and a quiet,
respectable mantilla.
I took my seat in a garden-chair to the left of the stage, and watched
the child closely. She had not seen me, and I perceived that her whole
soul went out to this business of the dancing. Perhaps it stood to her
for a reflex of Paris in a dismal land. I can imagine her recalling
the balls of the Butte--all the familiar faces of the Quat-Z-Arts--and
believing for the time being that the music was made by Jean Delmas,
and that Chardibert was her partner in the dance. She had no talent
for such a class of entertainment--so much I confess at once. Her
dancing was spirited, but inelegant; she threw herself about with the
uncouth gestures of a child at play. When she sang, it was not in
Spanish, but in that argot of the atelier, which even a Frenchman in
the audience might not have understood. But I understood it, Paddy;
and, as though she were speaking to me alone of all the company, I
watched her intently until her eye caught mine, and she ceased to
dance as suddenly as though a strong man held her ankles to the floor.
This was for the merest fraction of a minute. A seedy individual in a
long grey overcoat--or rather, an overcoat which had once been
grey--strode forward from his nook behind the piano and addressed her
in rough tones. She answered him with a nod, and continued to dance
immediately, which provoked a whole torrent of bad language, and a
subsequent draught from a substantial flask when the back of the piano
somewhat hid the man from the audience. Mimi, upon her part, now
danced on as though she had never seen me at all. I did not catch her
eye again, not once, until the entertainment was done and the people
had quitted the enclosure.
Be sure, however, that I had no intention of leaving without seeing
her. That would have been a folly surpassing all. No sooner was the
crowd departed than I walked up to the platform and spoke to her in
the French she understood so well.
“Bon soir, Mimi. Shall we go and fish for gudgeons at the Châtelet?”
“_Ah, mes enfants_--it is Monsieur Henry who has come back.”
“What are you doing in this place, Mimi?”
“I am dancing, Monsieur Henry.”
“I see perfectly well; but you are tired of dancing, and are now going
to return to Paris with me.”
“That is impossible, Monsieur Henry. I have not got a boat.”
“But I shall buy one. Go and tell these gentlemen that you can dance
no more for them. I shall wait until you have done so.”
She shrugged her shoulders defiantly.
“Does Madame d’Alençon send you here, Monsieur Henry?”
“I will tell you when you have spoken to your friends.”
She was about to answer me when the greasy man stepped forward and
intervened. He spoke in the jargon of the music halls.
“’Ere,” he said, cocking a vile cigar in the corner of a huge mouth,
“and what’s all this?”
“I have come to take this young lady to her friends,” said I.
“Ho,” cried he, “and ’ave you? Well, a bloomin’ long journey that’s
going to be. ’Ere, you clear out of this--we don’t ’ave none of your
sort ’ere.”
I stepped up upon the platform and looked him squarely in the face.
“My man,” said I, “by whose authority did you take this girl from her
home, and when will you show it to the police?”
He turned a little pale, and took his cigar from his mouth hurriedly.
“What’s that to you?” he asked.
“It is everything to me,” said I, “as you will presently discover.”
“Is she ’ere against ’er will, then? Arst ’er yourself. Ain’t I givin’
’er advantages? Who says I took ’er from ’er friends--who says it?”
“I say it, and presently will prove it.”
“Oh, you do, do yer? Well, my name’s Jack Bendall, and my ’ome’s the
Pav. at Ealing. Now go and prove it--let me see you do it. Why, half
the profession will answer for my character. Who’s going to answer for
yours--and who the deuce are you, all said and done?”
He did not wait for me to answer, but called Mimi up to him.
“Do you know this man?” he asked her.
“Yes, Monsieur; that is Monsieur Henry.”
“Is ’e related to you?”
“He is one of my friends--I knew him in Paris.”
“A--student, I suppose. Just as I thought. Well, now ’e’s going out of
’ere, and right sharp, too.”
Imagine the fellow’s impudence, Paddy. He strode up to me in a
threatening attitude and laid his hand upon my collar; but not a
second time, for I tripped him before you could count two, and threw
him headlong down among his own stalls.
“Hands off,” I said when he had picked himself up, “and learn to
behave yourself. I am now going to the police station. You can follow
me there if you like.”
I did not wait a moment longer, but marched from the place--Mimi
watching me with wide-open eyes, another woman snivelling on the bosom
of her “poor Jack,” and that worthy himself close upon my heels. As it
turned out, my car stood within twenty yards of the place, and the
sight of it with the great flaming headlamps and the gaping crowd
about it sobered the clown immediately. He pushed up to me with a
sidling gesture and spoke his first civil word.
“No offence meant, guv’nor. Gawd witness I never ’armed the girl.
Don’t be ’asty like. So help me ’eaven, my own daughter ain’t been
treated better. Now, what’s it all about--you ain’t going to do
nothink imprudent, guv’nor?”
I turned upon him and took him at his word. After all, I had no case
for a police-court, and he might have beaten me hollow there. It was
prudent to temporise, and I did not lose the opportunity.
“I am the guardian of this child,” said I. “Your honesty is not at
stake if you listen to reason. I don’t hold you responsible for her
appearance here, but I must speak to her immediately. Show me where
that can be done, and we may settle the affair yet.”
“If that’s all, guv’nor, you can speak to ’er in the show and welcome.
I didn’t know I was talking to a gent like you--though. Gawd’s truth,
I’d pay a fiver to learn that fall.”
“Oh,” says I, showing him a five-pound note, “no need to try it a
second time. Take the company out and give them supper at my expense.
I suppose that’s your last show to-night?”
“The last’s at half-past nine. You can ’ave twenty minutes with her.
She said her name was Mimi Oliver and that she came from Bordeaux. Is
it the truth, guv’nor, or a lie?”
“It’s a lie,” said I. “She left my house in Paris to go to you. Now
leave us together, please; I have much to say to her.”
He nodded assent, and I went up to the platform again. The show was
quite deserted by this time, and the performers made a hasty supper in
the corner over by the piano. As for Mimi, she sat upon a bench a
little way from the others, dressed in her spangles and wearing that
pretty smile I have never yet been able to fathom as long as I have
known her. Whether she was pleased by my return, or still angry, I
cannot say. But I went up and sat beside her; and then I knew, Paddy,
that nothing but her courage kept her from weeping.
Of this interview, with its new issue, of all that she confessed to
me, and of my plans for her, a letter to-morrow must tell you. I am
but just in time to catch the post, and, to be plain with you, old
friend, my heart is full of a sadness I cannot define and would write
of to no other. The memory of this interview recalls it powerfully.
Let me then sleep upon it all--and bidding you a hearty good night,
remain--My dear Paddy, your friend,
Harry Gastonard.