SONG, SCENE AND DANCE
Every head was turned. Emanuel coughed, frowned, and put his left hand
between his collar and his neck, as though he had concealed something
there. The new arrivals slipped cautiously into chairs. James was
between Helen and Jos. And he distinctly saw Jos wink at Helen, and
Helen wink back. The winks were without doubt an expression of
sentiments aroused by the solemnity of Emanuel's frown.
The piano tinkled on, and then Emanuel's face was observed to change.
The frown vanished and a smile of heavenly rapture took its place. His
mouth gradually opened till its resemblance to the penultimate vowel was
quite realistic, and simultaneously, by a curious muscular
co-ordination, he rose on his toes to a considerable height in the air.
The strain was terrible--like waiting for a gun to go off. James was
conscious of a strange vibration by his side, and saw that Jos Swetnam
had got the whole of a lace handkerchief into her mouth.
The gun went off--not with a loud report, but with a gentle and lofty
tenor piping, somewhere in the neighbourhood of F, or it might have been
only E (though, indeed, a photograph would have suggested that Emanuel
was singing at lowest the upper C), and the performer slowly resumed his
normal stature.
"O Love!" he had exclaimed, adagio and sostenuto.
Then the piano, in its fashion, also said: "O Love!"
"O Love!" Emanuel exclaimed again, with slight traces of excitement, and
rising to heights of stature hitherto undreamt of.
And the piano once more, in turn, called plaintively on love.
It would be too easy to mock Emanuel's gift of song. I leave that to
people named Swetnam. There can be no doubt Emanuel had a very taking
voice, if thin, and that his singing gave pleasure to the majority of
his hearers. More than any one else, it pleased himself. When he sang he
seemed to be inspired by the fact, to him patent, that he was conferring
on mankind a boon inconceivably precious. If he looked a fool, his looks
seriously misinterpreted his feelings. He did not spare himself on that
evening. He told his stepmother's guests all about love and all about
his own yearnings. He hid nothing from them. He made no secret of the
fact that he lived for love alone, that he had known innumerable loves,
but none like one particular variety, which he described in full detail.
As a confession, and especially as a confession uttered before many
maidens, it did not err on the side of reticence. Presently, having
described a kind of amorous circle, he came again to: "O Love!" But this
time his voice cracked: which made him angry, with a stern and
controlled anger. Still singing, he turned slowly to the pianist, and
fiercely glared at the pianist's unconscious back. The obvious inference
was that if his voice had cracked the fault was the pianist's. The
pianist, poor thing, utterly unaware of the castigation she was
receiving, stuck to her business. Less than a minute later, Emanuel's
voice cracked again. This time he turned even more deliberately to the
pianist. He was pained. He stared during five complete bars at the back
of the pianist, still continuing his confession. He wished the audience
to understand clearly where the blame lay. Finally, when he thought the
pianist's back was sufficiently cooked, he faced the audience.
"I hope the pianist will not be so atrociously clumsy as to let my voice
crack again," he seemed to be saying.
Evidently his reproof to the pianist's back was effectual, for his voice
did not crack again.
And at length, when Jos had communicated her vibration to all her
family, and every one had ceased to believe that the confession would
ever end, the confession did end. It ended as it had begun, in an even,
agreeable tenor piping. Emanuel was much too great an artist to allow
himself to be carried away by his emotion. The concluding words were,
"Oh, rapture!" and Emanuel sang them just as if he had been singing
"One-and-eleven-pence three-farthings."
"Oh, rats!" said Jos, under cover of the impassioned applause.
"It was nearly as long as Jarndyce _v_. Jarndyce," observed Adams, under
the same cover.
"What!" cried James, enchanted. "Have you been reading that too?"
Adams Swetnam and great-stepuncle James had quite a little chat on the
subject of Jarndyce _v_. Jarndyce. Several other people, including the
hostess, joined in the conversation, and James was surprised at the
renown which Jarndyce _v._ Jarndyce seemed to enjoy; he was glad to
find his view shared on every hand. He was also glad, and startled, to
discover himself a personality in the regions of Hillport. He went
through more formal introductions in ten minutes than he had been
through during the whole of his previous life. It was a hot evening; he
wiped his brow. Then iced champagne was served to him. Having fluttered
round him, in her ample way, and charmingly flattered him, Mrs. Prockter
left him, encircled chiefly by young women, in order to convey to later
arrivals that they, and they alone, were the authentic objects of her
solicitude. Emanuel Prockter, clad in triumph, approached, and
questioned James, as one shrewd man of business may question another,
concerning the value in the market of Wilbraham Hall.
Shortly afterwards a remarkable occurrence added zest to the party.
Helen had wandered away with Sarah and Jos Swetnam. She reentered the
drawing-room while James and Emanuel were in discussion, and her
attitude towards Emanuel was decidedly not sympathetic. Then Sarah
Swetnam came in alone. And then Andrew Dean came in alone.
"Oh, here's Andrew, Helen!" Sarah exclaimed.
Andrew Dean had the air of a formidable personage. He was a tall, heavy,
dark young man, with immense sloping shoulders, a black moustache, and
incandescent eyes, which he used as though he were somewhat suspicious
of the world in general. If his dress had been less untidy, he would
have made a perfect villain of melodrama. He smiled the unsure smile of
a villain as he awkwardly advanced, with out-stretched hand, to Helen.
Helen put her lips together, kept her hands well out of view, and
offered him a bow that could only have been properly appreciated under a
microscope.
The episode was quite negative; but it amounted to a scene--a scene at
one of Mrs. Prockter's parties! A scene, moreover, that mystified
everybody; a scene that implied war and the wounded!
Some discreetly withdrew. Of these was Emanuel, who had the
sensitiveness of an artist.
Andrew Dean presently perceived, after standing for some seconds like an
imbecile stork on one leg, that the discretion of the others was worthy
to be imitated. At the door he met Lilian, and they disappeared together
arm in arm, as betrothed lovers should. Three people remained in that
quarter of the drawing-room--Helen, her uncle, and Sarah Swetnam.
"Why, Nell," said Sarah, aghast, "what's the matter?"
"Nothing," said Helen, calmly.
"But surely you shake hands with Andrew when you meet him, don't you?"
"That depends how I feel, my dear," said Helen.
"Then something _is_ the matter?"
"If you want to know," said Helen, with haughtiness, "in the hall, just
now--that is--I--I overheard Mr. Dean say something about Emanuel
Prockter's singing which I consider very improper."
"But we all----"
"I'm going out into the garden," said Helen.
"A pretty how-d'ye-do!" James muttered inaudibly to himself as he
meandered to and fro in the hall, observing the manners and customs of
Hillport society. Another couple were now occupying the privacy of the
seat at the end of the side-hall, and James noticed that the heads of
this couple had precisely the same relative positions as the heads of
the previous couple. "Bless us!" he murmured, apropos of the couple,
who, seeing in him a spy, rose and fled. Then he resumed his silent
soliloquy. "A pretty how-d'ye-do! The chit's as fixed on that there
Emanuel Prockter as ever a chit could be!" And yet James had caught the
winking with Jos Swetnam during the song! As an enigma, Helen grew
darker and darker to him. He was almost ready to forswear his former
belief, and to assert positively that Helen had no sense whatever.
Mrs. Prockter loomed up, disengaged. "Ah, Mr. Ollerenshaw," she said,
"everybody seems to be choosing the garden. Shall we go there? This
way."
She led him down the side-hall. "By the bye," she murmured, with a
smile, "I think our plan is succeeding."
And, without warning him, she sat down in the seat, and of course he
joined her, and she put her head close to his, evidently in a
confidential mood.
"Bless us!" he said to himself, apropos of himself and Mrs. Prockter,
glancing about for spies.
"It's horrid of me to make fun of poor dear Emanuel's singing," pursued
Mrs. Prockter. "But how did she take it? If I am not mistaken, she
winked."
"Her winked," said James; "yes, her winked."
"Then everything's all right."
"Missis," said he, "if you don't mind what ye're about, you'll have a
daughter-in-law afore you can say 'knife'!"
"Not Helen?"
"Ay, Helen."
"But, Mr. Ollerenshaw----"
Here happened an interruption--a servant with a tray of sustenance,
comprising more champagne. James, prudent, would have refused, but under
the hospitable urgency of Mrs. Prockter he compromised--and yielded.
"I'll join ye."
So she joined him. Then a string of young people passed the end of the
side-hall, and among them was Jos Swetnam, who capered up to the old
couple on her long legs.
"Oh, Mrs. Prockter," she cried, "what a pity we can't dance on the
lawn!"
"I wish you could, my dear," said Mrs. Prockter.
"And why can't ye?" demanded James.
"No music!" said Jos.
"You see," Mrs. Prockter explained, "the lawn is at the far end of the
garden, and it is impossible to hear the piano so far off. If it were
only a little piano we could move it about, but it's a grand piano."
In James's next speech was to be felt the influence of champagne. "Look
here," he said, "it's nobbut a step from here to the Green Man, is it?"
"The Green Man!" echoed Mrs. Prockter, not comprehending.
"Ay, the pub!"
"I believe there is an inn at the bend," said Mrs. Prockter; "but I
don't think I've ever noticed the sign."
"It's the Green Man," said James. "If you'll send some one round there,
and the respex of Mr. Ollerenshaw to Mr. Benskin--that's the
land-lord--and will he lend me the concertina as I sold him last
Martinmas?"
"Oh, Mr. Ollerenshaw!" shrieked Jos. "Can you play for dancing? How
perfectly lovely it would be!"
"I fancy as I can keep _your_ trotters moving, child," said he, gaily.
Upon this, two spinsters, the Misses Webber, wearing duplicates of one
anxious visage, supervened, and, with strange magic gestures, beckoned
Mrs. Prockter away. News of the episode between Andrew Dean and Helen
had at length reached them, and they had deemed it a sacred duty to
inform the hostess of the sad event. They were of the species of woman
that spares neither herself nor others. Their fault was, that they were
too compassionate for this world. Promising to send the message to Mr.
Benskin, Mrs. Prockter vanished to her doom.
Within a quarter of an hour a fête unique in the annals of Hillport had
organised itself on the lawn in the dim, verdurous retreats behind Mrs.
Prockter's house. The lawn was large enough to be just too small for a
tennis-court. It was also of a pretty mid-Victorian irregularity as
regards shape, and guarded from the grim horizons of the Five Towns by a
ring of superb elms. A dozen couples, mainly youngish, promenaded upon
its impeccable surface in obvious expectation; while on the borders, in
rustic chairs, odd remnants of humanity, mainly oldish, gazed in ecstasy
at the picturesque ensemble. In the midst of the lawn was Mrs.
Prockter's famous weeping willow, on whose branches Chinese lanterns had
been hung by a reluctant gardener, who held to the proper gardener's
axiom that lawns are made to be seen and not hurt. The moon aided these
lanterns to the best of her power. Under the tree was a cane chair, and
on the cane chair sat an ageing man with a concertina between his hands.
He put his head on one side and played a few bars, and the couples posed
themselves expectantly.
"Hold on a bit!" the virtuoso called out. "It's a tidy bit draughty
here."
He put the concertina on his knees, fumbled in his tail-pocket, and drew
forth a tasselled Turkish cap, which majestically he assumed; the tassel
fell over his forehead. He owned several Turkish caps, and never went
abroad without one.
Then he struck up definitely, and Mrs. Prockter's party had resolved
itself, as parties often do, into a dance. In the blissful excitation
caused by the ancient and jiggy tunes which "Jimmy" played, the sad
episode of Helen Rathbone and Andrew Dean appeared to be forgotten.
Helen danced with every man except Andrew, and Andrew danced with every
woman except Helen. But Mrs. Prockter had not forgotten the episode; nor
had the Misses Webber. The reputation of Mrs. Prockter's entertainments
for utter correctness, and her own enormous reputation for fine tact,
were impaired, and Mrs. Prockter was determined that that which ought to
happen should happen.
She had a brief and exceedingly banal interview with Helen, and another
with Andrew. And an interval having elapsed, Andrew was observed to
approach Helen and ask her for a polka. Helen punctiliously accepted.
And he led her out. The outraged gods of social decorum were appeased,
and the reputations of Mrs. Prockter and her parties stood as high as
ever. It was well and diplomatically done.
Nevertheless, the unforeseen came to pass. For at the end of the polka
Helen fainted on the grass; and not Andrew but Emanuel was first to
succour her. It was a highly disconcerting climax. Of course, Helen,
being Helen, recovered with singular rapidity. But that did not lighten
the mystery.
In the cab, going home, she wept. James could scarcely have believed it
of her.
"Oh, uncle," she half whispered, in a voice of grief, "you fiddled while
Rome was burning!"
This obscure saying baffled him, the more so that he had been playing a
concertina and not a fiddle at all. His feelings were vague, and in some
respects contradictory; but he was convinced that Mrs. Prockter's scheme
for separating Helen and the Apollo Emanuel was not precisely
succeeding.