THE SWOON
In the north-east corner of the Luxembourg Gardens, where the lawn-tennis
courts were permitted by a public authority which was strangely impartial
and cosmopolitan in the matter of games, Miss Ingate sat sketching a group
of statuary with the Rue de Vaugirard behind it. She was sketching in the
orthodox way, on the orthodox stool, with the orthodox combined paint-box
and easel, and the orthodox police permit in the cover of the box.
The bright and warm weather was tonic; it accounted for the whole
temperament of Parisians. Under such a sky, with such a delicate pricking
vitalisation in the air, it was impossible not to be Parisian. The trees,
all arranged in beautiful perspectives, were coming into leaf, and through
their screens could be seen everywhere children shouting as they played at
ball and top, and both kinds of nurses, and scores of perambulators and
mothers, and a few couples dallying with their sensations, and old men
reading papers, and old women knitting and relating anecdotes or entire
histories. And nobody was curious beyond his own group. The people were
perfectly at home in this grandiose setting of gardens and fountains and
grey palaces, with theatres, boulevards and the odour and roar of
motor-buses just beyond the palisades. And Miss Ingate in the exciting
sunshine gazed around with her subdued Essex grin, as if saying: "It's the
most topsy-turvy planet that I was ever on, and why am I, of all people,
trying to make this canvas look like a piece of sculpture and a street?"
"Now, Miss Ingate," said tall red-haired Tommy, who was standing over her.
"Before you go any farther, do look at the line of roofs and see how
interesting it is; it's really full of interest. And you've simply not got
on speaking terms with it yet."
"No more I have! No more I have!" cried Miss Ingate, glancing round at
Audrey, who was swinging her racket. "Thank you, Tommy. I ought to have
thought of it for my own sake, because roofs are so much easier than
statues, and I must get an effect somewhere, mustn't I?"
Tommy winked at Audrey. But Tommy's wink was as naught to the great
invisible wink of Miss Ingate, the everlasting wink that derided the
universe and the sun himself.
Then Musa appeared, with paraphernalia, at the end of a path. Accompanying
him was a specimen of the creature known on tennis lawns as "a fourth." He
was almost nameless, tall, very young, with the seedlings of a moustache
and a space of nude calf between his knickerbockers and his socks. He was
very ceremonious, shy, ungainly and blushful. He played a fair-to-middling
game; and nothing more need be said of him.
Musa by contrast was an accomplished man of the world, and the fact that
the fourth obviously regarded him as a hero helped Musa to behave in a
manner satisfactory to himself in front of these English and American
women, so strange, so exotic, so kind, and so disconcerting. Musa looked
upon Britain as a romantic isle where people died for love. And as for
America, in his mind it was as sinister, as wondrous, and as fatal as the
Indies might seem to a bank clerk in Bradford. He had need of every moral
assistance in this or any other social ordeal. For, though he was still the
greatest violinist in Paris, and perhaps in the world, he could not yet
prove this profound truth by the only demonstration which the world
accepts.
If he played in studios he was idolised. If he played at small concerts in
unknown halls he was received with rapture. But he was never lionised. The
great concert halls never saw him on their platforms; his name was never in
the newspapers; and hospitable personages never fought together for his
presence at their tables, even if occasionally they invited him to perform
for charity in return for a glass of claret and a sandwich. Monsieur
Dauphin had attempted to force the invisible barriers for him, but without
success. All his admirers in the Quarter stuck to it that he was in the
rank of Kreisler and Ysaye; at the same time they were annoyed with him
inasmuch as he did not force the world to acknowledge the prophetic good
taste of the Quarter. And Musa made mistakes. He ought to have arrived at
studios in a magnificent automobile, and to have given superb and
uproarious repasts, and to have rendered innumerable women exquisitely
unhappy. Whereas he arrived by tube or bus, never offered hospitality of
any sort, and was like a cat with women. Hence the attitude of the Quarter
was patronising, as if the Quarter had said: "Yes, he is the greatest
violinist in Paris and perhaps in the world; but that's all, and it isn't
enough."
The young man and the boy made ready for the game as for a gladiatorial
display. Their frowning seriousness proved that they had comprehended the
true British idea of sport. Musa came round the net to Audrey's side, but
Audrey said in French:
"Miss Thompkins and I will play together. See, we are going to beat you and
Gustave."
Musa retired. A few indifferent spectators had collected. Gustave, the
fourth, had to serve.
"Play!" he muttered, in a thick and threatening voice, whose depth was the
measure of his nervousness.
He served a double fault to Tommy, and then a fault to Audrey. The fourth
ball he got over. Audrey played it. The two males rushed with appalling
force together on the centre line in pursuit, and a terrible collision
occurred. Musa fell away from Gustave as from a wall. When he arose out of
the pebbly dust his right arm hung very limp from the shoulder. No sooner
had he risen than he sank again, and the blood began to leave his face, and
his eyes closed. The fourth, having recovered from the collision, knelt
down by his side, and gazed earnestly at him. Tommy and Audrey hurried
towards the statuesque group, and Audrey was thinking: "Why did I refuse to
let him play with me? If he had played with me there would have been no
accident." She reproached herself because she well knew that only out of
the most absurd contrariness had she repulsed Musa. Or was it that she had
repulsed him from fear of something that Tommy might say or look?
In a few seconds, strongly drawn by this marvellous piece of luck,
promenaders were darting with joyous rapidity from north, south, east and
west to witness the tragedy. There were nurses with coloured streamers six
feet long, lusty children, errand boys, lads, and sundry nondescript men,
some of whom carefully folded up their newspapers as they hurried to the
cynosure. They beheld the body as though it were a corpse, and the corpse
of an enemy; they formulated and discussed theories of the event; they
examined minutely the rackets which had been thrown on the ground. They
were exercising the immemorial rights of unmoved curiosity; they held
themselves as indifferent as gods, and the murmur of their impartial voices
floated soothingly over Musa, and the shadow of their active profiles
covered him from the sparkling sunshine. Somebody mentioned policemen, in
the plural, but none came. All remarked in turn that the ladies were
English, as though that were a sufficient explanation of the whole affair.
No one said:
"It is Musa, the greatest violinist in Paris and perhaps in Europe."
Desperately Audrey stooped and seized Musa beneath the armpits to lift him
to a sitting position.
"You'd better leave him alone," said Tommy, with a kind of ironic warning
and innuendo.
But Audrey still struggled with the mass, convinced that she was showing
initiative and firmness of character. The fourth with fierce vigour began
to aid her, and another youth from the crowd was joining the enterprise
when Miss Ingate arrived from her stool.
"Drop him, you silly little thing!" adjured Miss Ingate. "Instead of
lifting his head you ought to lift his feet."
Audrey stared uncertain for a moment, and then let the mass subside.
Whereupon Miss Ingate with all her strength lifted both legs to the height
of her waist, giving Musa the appearance of a wheelless barrow.
"You want to let the blood run _into_ his head," said Miss Ingate with a
self-conscious grin at the increasing crowd. "People only faint because the
blood leaves their heads--that's why they go pale."
Musa's cheeks showed a tinge of red. You could almost see the precious
blood being decanted by Miss Ingate out of the man's feet into his head. In
a minute he opened his eyes. Miss Ingate lowered the legs.
"It was only the pain that made him feel queer," she said.
The episode was over, and the crowd very gradually and reluctantly
scattered, disappointed at the lack of a fatal conclusion. Musa stood up,
smiling apologetically, and Audrey supported him by the left arm, for the
right could not be touched.
"Hadn't you better take him home, Mrs. Moncreiff?" Tommy suggested. "You
can get a taxi here in the Rue de Vaugirard." She did not smile, but her
green eyes glinted.
"Yes, I will," said Audrey curtly.
And Tommy's eyes glinted still more.
"And I shall get a doctor," said Audrey. "His arm may be broken."
"I should," Tommy concurred with gravity.
"Well, if it is, _I_ can't set it," said Miss Ingate quizzically. "I was
getting on so well with the high lights on that statue. I'll come along
back to the studio in about half an hour."
The fourth, who had been hovering near like a criminal magnetised by his
crime, bounded off furiously at the suggestion that he should stop a taxi
at the entrance to the gardens.
"I hope he has broken his arm and he can never play any more," thought
Audrey, astoundingly, as she and the fourth helped pale Musa into the open
taxi. "It will just serve those two right." She meant Miss Ingate and
Tommy.
No sooner did the taxi start than Musa began to cry. He did not seem to
care that he was in the midst of a busy street, with a piquant widow by his
side.