When George Pethick entered his dressing room at the Hippodrome on Monday night he found a note from Densham.
Dear George:
It may surprise you to find that I am back in England. Being unable to locate you today I got a couple of aisle seats for this evening. One of them is enclosed, and I hope you will be able to join me as soon as your turn is over. Till then, au revoir —Griff.
In the stalls Densham was glancing over the programme. He experienced a queer sensation on turning over a leaf and finding the Russian Ballet billed in large letters. When he looked over the Amusement column of The Times that morning, before running up to London, it had been merely Pethick’s name he was seeking, and once finding it under the heading of the Hippodrome, his eye had not roved further.
Now, he eagerly scanned the page before him. There was Kalinova’s name, separately displayed, as premier danseuse. He had not been presented to her the night before. Several minutes before anyone had started to leave he had glanced in the direction of the divan—one of a score of glances he had turned in that direction—and found that it had been vacated. Milónoff had gone, too. Through the French windows he could see into the garden, which was black and shadowy. As he looked two figures passed out of sight down the path, faintly outlined by the glow of the stars. One of them was certainly, Kalinova. Neither she, nor Milónoff, had appeared again before he took his leave.
“Tonight,” he thought, “I am to see her in her ‘war-paint’.”
He wondered if Milónoff would be there, and began to search discreetly in the stalls and boxes; but there was no sign of the handsome, bearded Russian.
The orchestra had started by this time, and soon the curtain rose. The tumblers, who came first, amused him intensely. They were followed by a brazen slip of a girl, who sang a number of American song-hits; changing her costume between each, with the aid of a chic little dresser in white apron and cap, in full view of the audience.
While this was in progress Griffith saw—out of the corner of his eye—someone entering the lower box on his left. He glanced around and beheld Milónoff, his piled and waving hair looking as though it had just been pomaded, his short beard squarer than ever—not unlike, Densham thought, the beards of Assyrian warriors carved on ancient tablets in the British Museum.
The Russian settled himself comfortably in the front of the box, within a few feet of the stage, and turned upon the audience a callous and contemptuous glance of amused disapproval. Those thick brows, almost meeting; those black eyes, too small and too close together; the pallor of his brow and cheeks; the thick lips and even teeth; the whole man, in every feature, in every attitude, enraged Densham unaccountably whenever he looked at him.
Nevertheless, throughout the third turn, which interested Densham very little, he continually glanced in Milónoff’s direction, and on one occasion believed he had surprised the other in the act of bestowing on him a look of coldly interested recognition.
Almost immediately afterward the asbestos curtain was rung down, an electric letter “E” glowed beside the stage, and the orchestra commenced a sobbing, barbaric chant—the prelude to the Ballet.
The first number, a Cossack dance, was brilliantly executed by a double sextette whose high, polished boots clattered to an accompaniment of extravagant dissonances, ending in a mad tattoo by the tympani.
The stage darkened. Curtains could be seen ascending and descending vaguely in the inky gloom. A stately air given out by the oboes and horns floated into every corner of the crowded, silent theatre. At last a faint glow illumined the stage, and there could be dimly discerned a background of tall poplars rising from behind a semicircular balustrade of gleaming marble. The light slowly increased. There was a rustle of programmes in every part of the house. Whispers were heard on all sides—“Kalinova!” A thin voice behind Densham murmured: “The Death of a Peacock”.
Presently the premier danseuse appeared in a gorgeous head-dress of osprey feathers and an immense fan-like train, dotted with heart-shaped eyes of shimmering silver. She was behind the balustrade, moving majestically forward, her head thrown back, the long curve of her throat silhouetting its ravishing whiteness against the green of the plume-shaped poplars.
At the head of the steps, leading down from the wide terrace, she swept her train behind her and imperiously faced the audience. In an instant the house thundered with applause. The costume was calculated to strike one breathless. Her hips and breasts were tightly sheathed in two bands, sparkling with sequins, and joined only by silver cords stretched taut across her flesh when she stood—as she did at that moment—with her chin in the air, leaning arrogantly forward. Her arms were swathed behind her and concealed in a silken cape which terminated in the train. Loose silver cords, hanging from the band about her hips and attached to her sandals, enclosed the slender beauty of her limbs.
A soaring, rapturous melody played by the solo violin accompanied her slow descent of the staircase, melting into a movement for all the strings which rose in a swelling tide of sound as Kalinova raised and spread out behind her the glittering train.
Applause rang out again. The danseuse lowered her head, inclined her body forward, and with precise, bird-like steps advanced to the footlights. The great fan slowly drooped. A new, lilting rhythm was announced by the wind instruments. Kalinova swiftly threw up her head in an incomparable gesture and began the dance. It was at once stately and joyous, a light, parading, strutting step, taking her in wide sweeping circles.
Densham watched every moment with entranced attention. Presently, at a moment when her back was to the audience, he noticed a stir in the cape, as though she were extricating her arm. When she again faced the house a golden-shafted arrow had been ingeniously fastened to her costume—as though it had entered her breast.
She reeled, and from her knees upward drooped slowly back—back, until her prone body seemed almost to be lying on the air. Then, with a wounded jerk, she twisted to one side, lurched forlornly across the stage, dropped to her knees, and collapsed in a pitiful heap—within a few feet of where Milónoff was sitting, hunched forward, his eyes fixed in a glassy stare.
The descending curtain intervened. Densham saw Milónoff dart a swift glance sideways at the audience and then sit back with closed eyes as though feasting his intoxicated soul upon the memory of Kalinova’s prostrate loveliness.
Densham himself was thrilled in every fibre by her exquisite allure. The number that followed irritated him. He glanced at his programme. Kalinova was to appear again in the finale which bore the title—“Mêlée Fantasque.” He awaited it impatiently.
Finally the curtain rose upon a scene of indescribable confusion. Riotous colours literally attacked the eye. Inconceivable pillars towered out of sight. Unearthly trees, of the strangest hues—blue, pink and purple—flung their writhing branches against a sky of burning copper. In the centre of the stage, around a sculptured fountain, there was already surging—when the curtain went up—a crowd of prancing figures in the scantiest and most bizarre attire. In their wildly gesticulating hands they held long wide scarves of every known colour. These were flung into the air, flicked into each other’s faces, rolled and unrolled round their bodies. Meanwhile the orchestra was creating a deafening and toneless din, devoid of any semblance to music to save in its bacchanalian beat; and so fast that the feet of the dancers, in keeping time to it, seemed hardly to touch the ground.
Minutes elapsed. The dance was utterly patternless, except that every now and then the entire group, one after another, in the wildest disorder, approached the fountain, flung their scarves upward and scampered backwards away from it in attitudes of ecstatic obeisance.
After a time a more or less concerted movement took place. The dancers gathered close about the fountain, which continued to spray thin jets of water into the wide bowl.
The orchestral din slackened it precipitant tempo. The scarves were thrown high into the air, across the spraying water; uplifted hands grasped their floating ends; and for a moment a sort of dome was formed of these fluttering, multi-coloured ribbands. Through this silken lattice there suddenly shot a pair of snowy arms. Immediately the ends of the ribbands were loosened; swiftly they were snatched aside, and there—poised on the fountain’s broad lip, with the water streaming over her—stood Kalinova!
On her head was a silver helmet with a raised vizor, over which two serpents were coiled. Two silver medallions covered her breasts, and from her waist to her thighs she was enveloped in chain mail, also of silver, through which her skin gleamed.
For a moment she remained there. Then she leaped into the arms of the revellers crouched before the bowl of the fountain. They caught her, carried her with high, tramping tread about the stage, flinging about her their rainbow-hued scarves.
Presently she dropped to her feet and whirled about the stage, her arms extended, her head thrown back; every motion depicting the wildest abandon. In the midst of this a man, clothed in a leopard’s skin, dashed from the wings and grasped her about the waist. It was Stepinine, her partner.
The revellers darted between them, Stepinine leaping over their scarves every now and again, to reach Kalinova’s side.
Finally, when the pace and the noise had reached a point of almost unendurable frenzy, Kalinova was caught up by her partner and carried high above his head—still writhing and gesticulating—off the stage. The curtain came down amidst an ear-splitting blare of trumpets.
Densham did not wait for the encores. He made his way to the bar and stood there, abstractly sipping his drink, with the jabber of other drinkers in his ears, puzzled and irritated by the scene he had just witnessed.
A grim smile curled his lip.
“Very well, my boy,” he said to himself, almost aloud, “there’s Ecstasy for you, with a capital ‘E.’ I hope you like it.”
His whole being revolted at the thought. He recalled the engrossed, fascinated gaze of Milónoff, leaning half out of his box, his cheeks white with uncontrolled desire.
This, then, was the logical conclusion of an abandoned plunge into the stream of life. This was the apotheosis of feeling, as opposed to thought.
“Hic Jacet!” he murmured. “Here lie the remains of pursued Ecstasy! What then? Is there nothing that does not crumble in the grasp?”
He left the question hanging in his mind and went back to his seat. As he passed down the aisle the audience burst into a sharp guffaw. He looked at the stage. In front of the “street drop” stood a single figure, motionless, waiting for the rippling laughter to subside. It was George Pethick.
He had grown stout. His face—thin almost to emaciation in his youth— had filled out; but his small hands and feet, his hair parted slickly in the centre, and those huge, round, mischievous eyes were unmistakable. He had developed a grimace which accentuated the tilt of his upturned nose. His impudent goblin-like appearance was unspeakably comic to Densham. It was like looking at a devilishly clever animated caricature of his boyhood chum.
Later, when Pethick squeezed into the seat beside him, minus his makeup, he looked worn and aged. Not a glint of lustre was left in his protruding eyes; his mouth was drawn; his cheeks flabby.
“Well, Griff,” he whispered, as their hands met in the semi-darkness, “back from the wild and woolly—what?”
The two men gave each other a searching look and felt at once that they were precisely that—boys no longer; but men—and so long parted that their boyhood together was no longer a tie; so many years, events, divergences of thought, occupation and condition had slashed across it in the meanwhile.
Outside, they began in a half-hearted way to tell each other something of what had happened to them in the interval. In a few minutes they were seated at a table in Stolling’s, a tiny restaurant frequented by professional people. They conversed merrily, endeavouring to hide from each other their mutual lack of interest.
Later on the talk reverted to the performance, and Densham remarked:
“By the way, George, I saw Kalinova at Milónoff’s on Sunday night in Croydon.”
Pethick’s goblin-like eyes grew rounder than ever. “He even takes her to his home, does he? I see him about with her a lot in town. He was there tonight, in a box.”
“Yes. I saw him.”
“He’s there three or four performances a week. Of course, he’s notorious. I don’t suppose you remember Cissie Hulatt? No. She flared up and went out very suddenly. But this is quite the maddest crush—even for him.”
“Is she married? Kalinova?”
“No. But there’s a Bohemian bounder—a real Bohemian, I mean, from Bohemia—an arch-duke or a prince; yes, Prince Bienjonetti, they call him, who is supposed to have followed her here from Europe. He’s furious, of course. It’s rumoured that they fought a duel down at Epping; but it isn’t generally believed.”
“Do you suppose Madame Milónoff knows of it?”
Pethick glanced quickly at his friend with a mocking, elfish expression, as though he hardly credited such ingenuousness.
“Oh, absolutely. Why, Milónoff is more than notorious; he’s famous. Of course, she’s an invalid; never gets to town; probably doesn’t hear much. But she must know something.”
“What’s his business?”
“Importer. Rolling in money. She’s wealthy, too. That house in Croydon belonged to her mother, I believe. I wonder she didn’t divorce him—years ago.”
“I don’t,” said Densham. “She isn’t …”
But instead of finishing his sentence he changed the subject.