Part 8

neatly framed in gold. As the Duke had a fancy for frequently changing his clothes, it was well-nigh impossible for the Ceylonese servants, tall, brown fellows with combs in their straight ebony hair, to put away the procession of trousers, coats, boots, and stockings which marched over the floor and the chairs. The front chamber was a serene little Louis XIV room, and always gave the appearance of never having been occupied, even after some one had been living in it for several days. These apartments were connected by the bath, panelled in alternating squares of malachite and lapis lazuli, with a tub of rose-jade with golden faucets. The floor was paved with diamond-shaped bloodstone flags. Two full-length mirrors, set in the wall, were backed with black instead of quicksilver. The long dressing-table, gilded, and surmounted by an oval, black mirror, held a mysterious array of luxurious objects and a profusion of crystal bottles with gold tops. The Duke admitted frankly that he had taken the house for the sake of this bathroom, and confessed that he passed most of his time there when he had no guests. It may be added, however, that the Duke was seldom alone. The third floor the owner had transformed--old New York houses are as capable of countless metamorphoses as Ovidian gods--into a miniature theatre, the walls of which had been decorated by Paul Thévenaz with dying stags, agile monkeys, wriggling serpents, gorgeous macaws, iridescent humming-birds, mad huntsmen, bayaderes, odalisques, and Hindu Rajahs. The drop-curtain was of silver cloth into which had been woven an infinity of semi-precious stones, in a conventional Persian design. It was in this theatre that the Duke proposed to give New York its season of summer opera.

* * * * *

On a sultry day, late in July, Campaspe, in a clinging garment of chartreuse swiss, with a Lucie Hamar hat of geranium-red, flesh-coloured stockings, and ivory kid shoes with vermilion heels, sat with the Duke and Paul under the great umbrella in the garden, discussing plans for the opera. Out of Jacobite ale-glasses with air-twist stems they were sipping that pleasant hot-weather mixture, gin and ginger beer, cooled with ice and flavoured with limes. A bowl of chopped ice, several unopened stone bottles of Idris, and a blue pitcher half-full of Gordon gin stood on the table between them. The Duke’s suit, too, was of blue, the coolest of colours, he explained, exactly the colour to compete with the sirocco. And, he went on, as was his wont, exactly the wrong colour for a theatre. A theatre should never be blue, for a theatre must be warm; even in summer, the effect of a theatre should be warm.

Ronald dear, I agree with you, said Campaspe. We cannot discuss that. Anyway _your_ theatre isn’t blue, so there would be nothing to discuss even if I felt argumentative. But the opera....

Well, of course, the Duke began tentatively, I don’t mean exactly an opera. Rather a p-p-p-play, b-b-b-but the kind of play you don’t see in New York. Not modern either. Whenever I hear the word I think of Cocteau’s phrase, a nigger prostrate before the telephone. Everything one called modern a year or two ago is old-fashioned: Freud, Mary Garden, Einstein, Wyndham Lewis, Dada, glands, the Six, vers libres, Sem Benelli, Clive Bell, radio, the Ziegfeld Follies, cubism, Sacha Guitry, Ezra Pound, The Little Review, vorticism, Marcel Proust, The Dial, uranians, Gordon Craig, prohibition, the young intellectuals, Sherwood Anderson, normalcy, Guillaume Apollinaire, Charlie Chaplin, screens in stage d-d-d-d-decoration, Aleister Crowley, the Russian Ballet, fireless cookers, The Chauve Souris, Margot Asquith, ectoplasm, Eugène Goossens, the tango, Jacques Copeau, Negro dancing! Let’s not be modern. Let’s turn back to the great period around 1910--even a trifle earlier.

The Frogs? suggested Campaspe.

Oh! No croaking.

Lysistrata?

That’s an idea. You are warmer.

Less blue.

Redder. Oranger. Lysistrata! Perhaps. But I should prefer something more curious. I like B-B-B-Bacon’s phrase: There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the p-p-p-proportion.... He appeared to ponder.... I have it! Rachilde’s l’Araignée de Cristal.

The Crystal Spider.

Firebird! You understand French.

I seem to foresee this play: cold and perverse.

Blood.

Cold blood.

There’s a mother and a boy who is afraid of mirrors. I will play the b-b-boy and you will p-p-p-play the mother.

Frozen blood. No mother for me! Out! What else?

Ronald Firbank’s Princess Zoubaroff is perhaps more colorado.

Oh! Firbank.

I hear, hopefully put in Paul, who did not understand Spanish, that he is an indecent writer.

Every alternate line is decent, exclaimed the Duke. A master of wordcraft! He’s writing something new--I forget the name--: Mackerel Fishing in the Bois de Boulogne; perhaps that’s it--or Cocktails.

Is it about America? asked Paul.

Possibly. Le vit est dur partout.

Campaspe ended this: The Princess Zoubaroff is an idea. If we give that we must ask all New York.

And cable Ronald to come over to make bows.

Ronald cables Ronald.

The Duke grinned at the possibility as he lifted his glass automatically to search for the rough pontil mark. The group was now disturbed by a sudden raucous tumult at the other end of the garden. The white dachshund and the golden Pomeranian were engaged in a noisy dispute. Presently two Ceylonese servitors appeared and, separating the combatants, bore them yelping into the house.

Terrible d-d-d-dogs! remarked the Duke. I call them Dédé and Eskal Vigor. Ils ont de mauvaises mœurs. He returned to the subject under discussion: I’ve really made up my mind.

I was sure of it, Campaspe declared. What is it?

Nozière’s l’Après-midi Byzantine.

I don’t know it.

Certainly, you don’t. It’s in one act and no costumes: cool for the actors, and hot for the spectators. Grues and a charioteer and a boy. La scène est à Byzance. Le principal meuble est un siège bas qui ressemble à un lit.

You will play the boy.

I will play the charioteer. In Paris a girl played the b-b-b-boy: Madeleine Carlier. It is b-b-better so. It makes the piece more perverse.

And what am I to play?

Xantippe or Myrrha.... Zimbule must play the boy, Clinias.

You seem more interested in casting Zimbule than in arranging a part for me, Campaspe bantered.

You shall play Myrrha. It is the b-b-b-best rôle.

Do I have scenes with you?

With me, with Zimbule, with everybody. There are two servants, but their parts present no difficulty, and a dancer. I can arrange that. A Byzantine Afternoon! What an opera for New York! July is already the season.

If you can get an audience, put in Paul.

Ah! They will come in f-f-from the mountains. They will rush over from London. The Aquitania will b-b-bulge.

There’s no part for me, I take it, Paul remarked.

You can be a stage-hand; Harold, an electrician.

He will have to join the union, said Campaspe. Then, more seriously, There’s something there. None of you understands Harold. I like the boy.

So do I, said Paul.

Firebird, we all d-d-do, protested the Duke. And I understand him. He is like a silver flamingo.

A silver flamingo?

Yes, glowing, glamorous, shining--like Galahad in armour--and strange, aloof; he d-d-does not mate with the rose flamingos.

Campaspe smiled and smoothed out her frock. You are describing yourself, Ronald, she said.

You, Firebird, he went on, paying no heed to her interruption as he was in the mood for similizing, you are the crystal spider. You draw them all into your net: these Harolds and Bunnies and Zimbules. What a crew! Where do you find them?

It’s my life to find them, but I never hunt.

He was, apparently, bent on comparison, for he continued, ponderingly, A catalyst, perhaps.... Yes, certainly, a catalyst.

What, asked Paul, is a catalyst?

An agent which effects a chemical reaction while appearing to take no part in it, the Duke replied.

Campaspe enjoyed talking nonsense with the Duke. She wondered if they all were aware how different she was with each of them, how she reflected their respective temperaments. It was one of her purposes in life to act the part of mirror. Was it a black mirror today? she questioned herself.

* * * * *

Plans for the play progressed. The Duke thought of Drains, who, it appeared, had a talent for light magic. He could make rabbits appear from hats, and balance an eel on his left ear. Zimbule was delighted to assist. Her initial adventure in the theatre had proved sufficiently diverting. She had been rehearsing with a brown-haired star who objected that Zimbule’s hair was too near her own colour. At the next rehearsal Zimbule appeared in a yellow wig. The star now developed a decided aversion to wigs. Zimbule dyed her hair. The star discharged her. I don’t blame the dame, the girl said. She’s forty-five and she looked ninety ’side o’ me. I showed her up. At any rate, Zimbule was now free to appear in the Duke’s opera.

The Duke began to exhibit a lively interest in the composition of the audience. There should be an audience of tired business men, he announced, American business men. It will amuse them; it will wake them up, he explained.

You have such romantic ideas about America, Campaspe expostulated. Is there such a thing as a business man in America? I suppose so. Cupid, even, does something down town. But we try to keep that sort of thing in the background. We try not to be aware of it. It is the smart thing to do nothing, or, at any rate, to appear to do nothing. It is even a trifle démodé to write or paint. Of course, she observed in conclusion, there are people from Chicago who might do.

Oh! those furtive people from Chicago! Paul exclaimed. Those wicked, rich Chicagoans, who come to New York to be naughty, like American sophomores in Paris. Once here, you would imagine that they devote their whole lives to libidinous adventures. But if you see them back in Chicago, I am told, they are respectable fathers of families who dine at home every night, and eat breakfast across the table from their wives. Those middle-western group breakfasts! And if a word is used that the very children speak in the streets of Vienna, these Chicago business men blush.

Why, Paul! Campaspe cried, you must feel about Chicago business men the way Laura feels about Jews. When did you meet these monsters?

Meet them! Paul shrieked, waving his jade cigarette-holder about in the air. Meet them! How did you get such an idea? Meet them, indeed!

The Duke, slightly bewildered by this discourse, attempted to pull the conversation back into its proper channel.

You know perfectly well what I mean, he said. I want a reaction. I don’t want a lot of b-b-b-b-bored lollers out in front.

You’d better ask the Brooklyn Elks, Paul suggested.

Or the Campfire Girls, put in Campaspe.

Or the Academy of Arts and Letters, alternated Paul.

I don’t think, the Duke asseverated solemnly, that you and Paul appreciate your great country. The Hackensack meadows always remind me of the Roman Campagna, and yet I find that no one drives about in them.

What are you going to have to eat? Campaspe asked by way of creating a diversion.

Pickled walnuts, p-p-p-p-potted b-b-blackbirds, plovers’ eggs....

Paul began, unreasonably, to grin. I don’t know what reminds me, he said, but have you heard about Bunny? He’s had Zimbule’s name tattooed on his person so cunningly that it can only be deciphered under certain conditions.

* * * * *

The rehearsals were very strange. A friend of Paul’s had been called in to play Xantippe. After the cast was arranged the Duke remembered that he had not yet translated the play. He began to do so, and then he conceived the idea of leaving his own part in French.

I will play the charioteer in French, while the other characters play in English, he announced. It will add a fillip!

But Zimbule objected to this proposal, refusing point-blank to play her scene with him in any such manner.

The Duke began to enjoy directing the piece.

Firebird, please say that line again; a little more emphasis on the word love.... Miss O’Grady, please stand down centre d-d-during this scene.

But this was unnecessary. Zimbule was always standing down centre. It was difficult, if not impossible, to persuade her to stand anywhere else. She took the best position as naturally as an old stock star would have taken it.

When the Duke, enamoured of directing, dropped out of the cast, Harold was drafted to fill his place. Never having acted before, the boy was appallingly self-conscious, all arms and legs, nor can it be said that he was an ideal choice for the rôle of a debauched athlete of the arena, bent on persuading his mistress to deceive him. He was serious, however, and came to his second rehearsal letter-perfect. A new phenomenon caught the eye of the observant Mrs. Lorillard: Zimbule, seemingly having exhausted Bunny’s attractions, appeared to be developing an interest in Harold. Campaspe took her on another shopping tour.

Never, she was explaining, wear clothes with designs in the cloth. You are much too beautiful for that. Wear the plainest, simplest things. Give your face a chance.

But you ... began Zimbule.

I am not beautiful, Campaspe replied. I can wear what I please. Even so, I am careful. I once owned a watch, the case of which was cut from a single sapphire. I christened it at a dinner in Rome, but I never wore it again thereafter. It was too marvellous. I could not compete with it.

Zimbule gazed at her with admiration. The girl was extremely adaptable, took everything in. In a month she had learned more about dressing, walking, standing than some women ever know. Even her speech was improving.

Never keep your rooms too dark, Campaspe continued. Bright rooms are best. Bright lights. Always sit facing the window. Then there will be no shadows and shadows across the face make even the youngest of us look old. So few women know this.

Zimbule drove away from Bendel’s in a new Lanvin frock, black and severely plain. With her yellow hair and green eyes, she was sufficiently striking but she instinctively knew how to wear clothes, and was not even lacking in a certain kind of distinction. Campaspe, on the whole, was proud of her.

In the motor Campaspe ventured a question, What is Bunny doing?

Oh! Bunny! I don’t know. Writing music, I suppose. There was a touch of petulance in the reply.

Nice boy.

Is he? Zimbule, obviously, was uninterested. There was a short pause before she said, Mrs. Lor--Campaspe, do you know Harold very well?

I’ve known him such a short time, Campaspe parried.

But what a kid!

I applaud you.

I like him.

Campaspe veiled her curiosity. So do I, was all she said.

At rehearsal that evening she observed that Zimbule had begun her siege. Bunny, brought thither to arrange or compose the music for the Duke’s opera, sulked in a corner. The Duke had evolved the idea of reviving music by Salvatore Viganò, music entirely antipathetic to the mood of the piece. Bunny, on the contrary, wanted to fit the play with music by Arthur Honegger, or possibly something by himself.

The Duke shrugged his shoulders. Zimbule was whispering to the embarrassed Harold in a corner.

I think, growled Bunny, I’d like to write some modern jazz for this show.

The Duke began to brighten. That, he remarked, would be as good as music by Viganò. Jazz for a B-B-B-Byzantine play! He urged Bunny to carry out his idea.

Bunny scowled. He had no idea. His temper was one of opposition, and he had given voice to the first contradiction that had surged into his brain. His mind, on the whole, was not on jazz. Zimbule was wearing a gown of rose charmeuse, without a single decoration or ornament. Her movements and gestures were all quick and abandoned. She buzzed about Harold like a brilliant humming-bird hovering over a tropical flower. The tropical flower, it was perceivable, belonged to the vegetable kingdom. It made no false effort to enter into the movement. It sat quietly awaiting the attack, perhaps even unconscious that there would be an attack, but dimly aware that some unnatural phenomenon was in process of accomplishment. Quite suddenly, casting off the semblance of the radiant bird, Zimbule became as colubrine as one of her ex-serpents, and coiled as if to strike. Campaspe watched her, fascinated; Bunny watched her, glowering.

* * * * *

The great night arrived. There had been more discussion about the spectator-guests.

Ask your friends, Campaspe had suggested, mocking despair.

I have no f-f-f-friends, retorted the Duke, only people that amuse me, and people I sleep with.

Well ... ask them.

The people that amuse me are all in the p-p-p-play.... The theatre isn’t b-b-b-b-b-big enough to hold the others.

Still, from somewhere, he had gathered an audience, a splendid, showy throng. Campaspe, through the folds of the curtain, watched them file into the theatre. Some of the faces she recognized; others were unknown to her; but the assembling of such a representative collection on a hot night in July was a feat which she appreciated. As she looked out over the house, a fluttering, fragrant acervation of luminous colour, like the flower-beds at Hampton Court, she was irresistibly reminded of an opera night at Covent Garden, and this, she recalled, had been the Duke’s idea, to give New York an unseasonable opera. Ronald had a faculty for arranging things, and Campaspe loved efficiency. Whatever he put his mind to, she began to believe, happened. It was seldom enough, however, that one could be altogether certain what he was putting his mind to. Even now....

In the little balcony reserved for it, the orchestra was tuning up, discordantly. Presently, the leader lifted his bâton, and the men began to perform Bunny’s overture. It was a new kind of music, she told herself at once, contrapuntal jazz, in which saxophones whistled and shrieked and groaned like hysterical school-girls telling lewd experiences, while the violins and double-basses vamped rhythmically. Flutes cried out in the tones of insane criminals. There was an indescribable clatter of tambourines, bones, triangles, castanets, gongs, drums, tomtoms, cow-bells, cymbals, wood-blocks, and rooster-crows. Listening behind the folds of the silver curtain, Campaspe realized that at last she was hearing the music of the future. Ornstein, Prokofieff, Schönberg would sound, in comparison, like a minuet by Luigi Boccherini. There was a rush, a push, an extravagant primitive quality in this music. If I listen to this music, I shall forget my rôle, she confessed to herself, and it occurred to her to wonder if Bunny was, after all, a genius. Anybody must be a genius who could stir her as this music was stirring her. She was drenched, nay submerged, in merciless floods of clang-tints: unnamable sins obsessed her consciousness. She exerted her will, and peeping between the folds of the curtain, gazed at the assemblage. The ladies’ faces were drawn taut and pale; some of them were contorted by strange grimaces. Bosoms rose and fell in a shuddering, broken rhythm. The men looked hard and cold, like men who had just had their toes chopped off, but who were too stoical to scream. Suddenly, with one shrill blast from the saxophones, one crisp screech from the flutes, the band saw purple and cavorted into obsolete keys, neglecting its duties towards the tempered scale. Then, swiftly, with a tortured snatch of parody of I’ll build a stairway to paradise, the overture ended. The men were now flushed and restless, seemingly ashamed to look at their companions. The ladies, as if to recover their poise, began to chatter affectedly. There was no applause.

A triumph! A complete triumph! Campaspe turned to the Duke.

Rather! he admitted. And I wanted this man to arrange some of Viganò’s p-p-p-paltry tunes. He’s better than Stravinsky!

Campaspe was reflective. He never wrote like this before. I wonder if it is Zimbule who has inspired him?

He has seen something. It is the last wail of a d-d-discarded mule in hell.

Zimbule, in her boy’s costume, approached.

Say, what is it?

Bunny’s overture, Campaspe muttered.

Sounded like a stale calliope at Coney. Where’s Harold?

Clear the stage, shouted Paul in his capacity as stage-manager.

They obeyed him and, as the silver folds parted, out into the void before a yellow satin drop walked Oliver Drains in a suit of purple tights which terminated only in a white-ruffed collar. For some time Drains had fancied himself arrayed à la John Barrymore in The Jest. He had seized his opportunity. The orchestra played Some sunny day. There was a ripple of applause for the performer. Drains bowed. He began by tossing gold balls in the air. He continued the ritual. White mice were discovered harboured in the kinky wool of a recalcitrant coon. Artificial mango bushes bloomed from empty jars. An otiose table suddenly offered support to a bowl of swimming goldfish, which, apparently, had come out of the air. The orchestra played Dear old southland. The spectators seemed to have regained their equilibrium. Only one woman, far in the back, gazed about furtively in an attempt to discover if any one recalled what her condition had been but a few brief moments earlier.

May I borrow a hat? Drains called out.

The hats were piled in the Louis XIV bedroom. One of the Duke’s Ceylonese servants descended in search of the demanded article. There was a flutter of fans through the heated chamber. An old gentleman already suffered from a sad and correct drunkenness. Two young men strolled out, feeling their hips. This recognition scene became more general.

After Drains’s number absinthe was served in goblets.

Next came the acrobats, four brothers from the halls, professionals in pink fleshings, with spangled ruching about their middles. The orchestra played I’m just wild about Harry. The fans pursued their endless game. After this turn the Ceylonese servants served arrack in crystal bowls, and passed cigarettes with lighters on beaten copper trays.

Now the glow in the auditorium was extinguished. The Ceylonese boys set fire to braziers and the odour of Narcisse Noir permeated the atmosphere. Again, the orchestra played Bunny’s music, the incidental music he had composed for Nozière’s baroque comedy, l’Après-midi Byzantine, music which began with a faint roll of drums, which grew louder and louder and then died away. Now a clarinet, solo, played a plaintive, incestuous melody in a scale much higher than that which is usually associated with this instrument. The saxophone took up the thread, playing a few bars, and when the saxophone had finished, the double-bass had something indelible to say. Then, quite unreasonably, the piano held a soliloquy. Campaspe was glad that she was not looking at the audience. She could imagine the faces. Her hands, she felt, were as cold as fresh spring water.

The silver curtains parted anew and the play proceeded. The first great moment was the appearance of the Cambodian dancer, a slender, full-bosomed bayadere, clad, like Moreau’s Salome, only in jewels. Sparkling with light, her face as expressionless as a Noh mask, she stood on a small round platform in a miniature circle of illumination. Her movements were slow and insinuating; there was no abandon, no swift grace, in this dance. But she contrived to invest her slightest gesture with a leste significance, and when, seated, cross-legged, she bent her long fingers back until they touched her fore-arms, her face remaining the face of an unwrapped mummy, she suggested, irrevocably, the expiatory pain of a supreme sin.