The performance had been going on for an hour when the four entered the
theatre, groping their way down the dark aisle to a row of unoccupied
seats at the left side. The stage was being set for a troupe of
Japanese tumblers, and the interval was bridged by news films and an
animated cartoon. To Judith this form of entertainment was new. Raoul
could tolerate nothing but the sprightliest comedy. With the Ramsays
and Herbert Faulkner she had tried to find surcease in grand opera and
the symphony. Once in London she and her mother had taken refuge from
the rain in a cinema theatre where, on a wide screen, a company of fat
French women chased a terrified little man--who had loved not wisely
but too often--through the familiar streets of the Latin Quarter,
overturning flower stands and vegetable carts, falling in scrambled
heaps that writhed with a brave showing of lingerie, untangling
themselves and scampering to fresh disaster, when they discovered that
the object of their jealous rage had somehow slipped unhurt from the
mass. Mrs. Denslow was disgusted. Judith was only bored.
But this bit of screen craft was different. On an expanse of dazzling
white a single black dot appeared, paused a breathless moment and went
tripping about in a zigzag dance, spilling smaller dots as it went.
These resolved themselves into figures that stalked about with the
jerky motion of automata. A ghostly hand passed over the picture, and
it stood revealed a plenum of regularly arranged dots. With another
wave of the wraithlike hand, the dots began to move slowly to and
fro, advancing and retreating until they assumed the outlines of a
great picture, “Washington Crossing the Delaware.” Other pictures were
produced by means of those same dots. But Mrs. Ascott, who had never
before watched the vibrant changes of an animated cartoon, found it
necessary to close her eyes to relieve the strain. And then ... some
one was leaning over her shoulder, heavy with the odour of a spent
cigar, and a full, authoritative voice was saying:
“Come on, Eileen. The whole bunch is down in front. Ina and Jimmy are
there, and Kitten and Dan.”
“Hal Marksley, if you can’t come to the house for me--” the girl said
petulantly, but she stepped to the seat of her chair and vaulted nimbly
over the back. Theodora moved to the vacant place beside her. Lady
Judith and the play went on.