The Curate of Lindfield had arranged a Benefit Concert for the refugees.
It was to be held in the schoolhouse on the last Saturday in September,
and the proceeds were to be divided among the Belgian refugees of the
neighbourhood, to whom also complimentary tickets were sent. The two
front rows of seats were reserved exclusively for them.
For weeks past the excitement among the amateur performers who had
offered their services had been intense. Miss Snelgrove, the Whitakers'
nearest neighbour, who was going to sing "Pur dicesti" and "Little Grey
Home in the West," had been alternately gargling and practising all day,
until it was often hard to make out which of the two she was actually
doing.
Finally her throat became so sore that Mrs. Mellon, of "The Grange," had
to be asked to sing in her stead.
Mrs. Mellon, stout and good-tempered, said she would do anything for
charity; so the "Habanera" from "Carmen" was put on the program instead
of "Pur dicesti" and the "Little Grey Home"; and Mrs. Mellon heroically
untrimmed her best hat, so as to have the red velvet rose which adorned
it to wear in her hair.
"But surely," said Miss Snelgrove, who had magnanimously gone to see her
on the eve of the concert to ask how her throat felt--she herself spoke
in a hoarse whisper--"surely you are not going to sing Carmen in
costume, are you?"
"No, not exactly in costume," said Mrs. Mellon, trying the rose first
over the left temple and then under her right ear, "but I think the
dress ought to be suited to the song; don't you? I have had my black
lace shortened, and have added a touch of colour ... here and there...."
Mrs. Mellon indicated her ample bosom and her portly hips. "A scarlet
sash, and the red rose in my hair will be quite effective. I _had_
thought of having a cigarette in my hand--as Carmen, you know--but Mr.
Mellon and the vicar thought better not.
"L'amour est enfant de Bohêm-ah,
"See tew ne maim pah, je t'aim-ah"....
she warbled in her rich padded contralto, and the envious Miss Snelgrove
felt her own small, scratchy soprano contract painfully in her
overworked throat.
George Whitaker was to perform a few conjuring tricks which he had
learned from a book called _Magic in the Home_. He had performed them
innumerable times in the family circle, with great adroitness and
success; but when the evening of the concert came round he vowed he
would not be able to do anything.
"I know I shall make an ass of myself," he said repeatedly to every one,
and nobody had time to contradict him. About an hour before they were to
start he stood with Chérie in the hall, waiting for the others.
Chérie was wearing a white muslin gown of Eva's, which George knew very
well, and which made him feel almost brotherly towards her. Mrs.
Whitaker and Eva were still upstairs dressing, and Loulou had gone to
put Mireille to bed, telling the maid in anxious maternal English to
"wake on her, is it not?"
"I know I shall make an ass of myself," repeated George. "My hands are
quite clammy."
"What a pity!" sighed Chérie sympathetically, shaking her comely head.
"Most awfully clammy. Just feel them," said George, stretching out to
her a large brown hand.
"I can see that they are," said Chérie.
"Oh, but just feel," said George.
Chérie cautiously touched his palm with the tip of one finger. "Most
clammy indeed," she said; and George laughed; and Chérie laughed too.
"Besides," said the conjuror, "I am nervous. I positively am. Heart
thumping and all that kind of thing."
"Dear, dear," said Chérie.
George sighed deeply and repeated, "I know I shall make a hash of
things."
He did.
His was the first number of the program, and when he appeared he was
greeted with prolonged and enthusiastic applause. Things bulged in his
back and things dropped out of his sleeves; objects he should not have
had popped out of his pocket and rolled under the piano; flags appeared
and unfurled themselves long before they should have done so and in
parts of his person where flags are not usually seen.
His mother sat bathed in a cold sweat as he fumbled and bungled, and Eva
kept her eyes tightly shut and prayed that it might finish soon. But it
did not. The flags, which should have been the crowning patriotic finale
of his performance, having appeared in the beginning of it, there seemed
to the agonized George to be nothing to finish with and no way of
finishing. He went on and on, stammering and swallowing with a dry
palate, clutching a hat, a handkerchief, and an egg, and wondering what
on earth he was going to do with them.
Chérie had watched him solemnly enough in the beginning, but when he
caught her eye and dropped the egg something seemed to leap into her
throat and strangle her. When a tennis-ball dropped from his sleeve and
he had to crawl after it under the grand piano while the Union Jack
hidden up his back slowly unfurled itself behind him, she felt that she
must laugh or die.
She laughed; she laughed, hiding her face in her hands, her forehead and
neck crimson, her slim shoulders heaving, while Loulou nudged her
fiercely and whispered, "_Ne ris pas!_"
George, returning from under the piano caught sight of that small,
shaking figure in the front row; his hands grew clammier, his throat
drier.
At last the curate, to end the painful performance, started applauding
in the wings, and the abashed conjurer turned and walked quickly
away--with a rabbit peering out of his coat-tail pocket.
In the wings he met the curate, who tried to comfort him. "Don't you
mind. It wasn't so bad!" he said genially, clapping George on the back.
"That silly girl laughing in the front row put you out."
"Not at all, not at all," declared George. "It was that beastly egg.
Besides," he added, "everybody ought to have laughed. I wanted them to
laugh. It was intended to be a funny number."
"Oh, was it?" said the curate, somewhat sourly. "You should have
announced that on the program. Nobody would have thought it to look at
you."
But the next number was already beginning. Mrs. Mellon was on the
platform clasping a fan in her gloved hands. The gloves were tight and
white and short, and so were her sleeves, and between the two a portion
of red and powerful elbow was disclosed. The rose was in her hair, the
sash round her waist, her eyes flashed with impassioned Spanish
vivacity. At the piano the timid, short-sighted Mr. Mellon took his
seat, after a good deal of adjustment of the creaky piano-stool.
No sooner had he nervously started the first notes of the introductory
bars than Mrs. Mellon's loud contralto burst from her, and with hand on
hip, she informed the audience in French that love was a rebellious
bird.
Mr. Mellon, who still had three bars of introduction to play, floundered
on awhile, then turned a bewildered face to his wife and stopped
playing. There followed a brief low-voiced discussion as to who was
wrong--she asking him angrily why he did not go on, and he murmuring
that she ought to have waited four bars. Then they began again; and once
more Mrs. Mellon told every one that love was a rebellious bird. With
Latin fervour, with much heaving of breast and flashing of eye, she
declared, "_Si tew ne m'aim-ah pas--je t'aim-ah_," and the warning, "_Si
je t'aim-ah prends garde a toe-ah_" seemed to acquire a real and very
terrifying significance.
Again Chérie, who had listened with becoming seriousness to the opening
bars, was seized with a fit of spasmodic laughter. The agitated Mrs.
Mellon telling every one to beware of her love seemed to her to be the
most ludicrous thing she had ever heard; and she bowed her face in her
hands and rocked to and fro with little gasps of hysterical laughter.
Louise glanced at her and then at Mrs. Mellon; and then she, too, was
caught by the horrible infection. Biting her lips and with quivering
nostrils, she sat rigid and upright, staring at the platform, but her
shoulders shook and the tears rolled down her face, which was crimson
with silent laughter.
Mrs. Mellon must have seen it--were the culprits not in the first
row?--and she looked disdainfully away from them; but her song grew
fiercer and fiercer, her notes grew louder and higher as she soared away
from the pitch and left poor Mr. Mellon tinkling away in the original
key, about three semitones below.
The other refugees, sitting on either side of Chérie and Louise, turned
and looked at them; the Pitou children began to giggle but were quickly
pinched back into seriousness by their mother.
The next number on the program was a dance; a somewhat modified Salomé
dance, performed by Miss Price.
When Miss Price ran coyly in with bare legs and feet, and a few Oriental
jewels jingling round her scantily draped form, even Madame Pitou gave
way completely, and had to let the little Pitous laugh as they would,
while she, with her face hid behind her handkerchief, gasped and choked
and gurgled. The convulsive hilarity soon gained all the refugees. Every
posture of Miss Price, her every gesture, every waggle of her limbs,
every glimpse of the soles of her feet--somewhat soiled by contact with
the stage carpet--made all the occupants of the two front rows rock and
moan with laughter. Those immediately behind them noticed it. Then
others; it was whispered through the hall that the refugees were
laughing. Soon the entire audience was craning its neck to look at the
unworthy, thankless foreigners for whose benefit the entertainment had
been arranged, and who were rudely and stupidly laughing like two rows
of lunatics.
The unwitting Miss Price was just rising from an attitude of genuflexion
with a rapturous smile and two black marks on her knees, when she caught
sight of the Pitou boy writhing with silent merriment at the end of the
first row. Her eye wandered along that row and the next one and she saw
all the bowed and quivering figures, the flushed faces hidden in
handkerchiefs, and the heaving shoulders.
Casting upon them a glance of ineffable disdain she walked haughtily
with her bare legs into the wings. Mr. Mellon rippled on at the piano
for a little while, then he, too, stopped and hurried off the stage at
the nearest exit.
Behind the scenes the artists were assembled in an indignation-meeting.
There were eleven numbers still to come, but no one would go on. It was
proposed that the curate should go out and make a short but cutting
speech; and he went half-way out and then came back again, not having
anything ready to say. Besides the sight of the refugees still convulsed
with laughter upset him. For their part his appearance and disappearance
did nothing to allay their condition, now bordering on collective
hysteria.
Finally, after rapid consultation in the wings, the good-natured Miss
Johnson was prevailed upon to go out and sing the "Merry Pipes of Pan."
She was not nervous and did not care whether the silly refugees laughed
or not.
When she stepped out she saw that Mr. Mellon was not there to accompany
her, so after a long wait she went off into the wings on one side, just
as Mr. Mellon--wiping his mouth after a hasty refreshment--came hurrying
in on the other.
Miss Johnson had to be coaxed and driven and pushed out again, and this
so flustered her that she forgot most of her words and had to make a
series of inarticulate sounds until she came to the refrain.
Here she felt safe.
"Then follow the mipes,"
she warbled,
"The perry mipes----"
There seemed to be something wrong with the words, but she could not get
them right
"Yet, the perry perry mipes of Pan!"
"Gracious goodness," murmured the husky Miss Snelgrove to Mrs. Whitaker,
who sat near her, "what a strident voice!"
"Yes," assented Mrs. Whitaker. "And what _are_ the 'perrimipes,' I
wonder?"
* * * * *
There was no denying it. The concert was a fiasco. Owing to the
execrable behaviour of the refugees and the contagion of their senseless
laughter, a kind of hysteria gained the hall and half the audience was
soon in a condition of brainless and uncontrollable hilarity.
Every new number was greeted with suffocated giggles, sometimes even
with screams of laughter from the younger portion of the audience.
The curate--who had himself been found holding both his sides in one of
the empty schoolrooms--made a caustic speech at the close of the
performance about "our well-meant efforts, our perchance too modest
talents," having appealed mainly to the risible faculties of their
foreign guests, and he had pleasure in stating that the sum collected
was eighteen pounds seven shillings and sixpence.
The refugees slunk home and were treated like pariahs for many weeks
afterwards; while the word "Concert" was not pronounced for months in
the homes of Mrs. Mellon, of Miss Johnson, or of Miss Price.