After dinner Eva, as usual, went to the piano, opened it and lit the candles, while her father sat in the dining-room with the folding-doors thrown wide open, as he declared he could not enjoy his port or his pipe without Eva's music.
"What shall it be tonight, Paterkins?" Eva called out in her birdlike voice. "Rachmaninoff?"
"No. The thing you played yesterday," said her father, settling himself comfortably in his armchair, while the neat maid quietly cleared the table.
"Why, that was Rachmaninoff, my angel-dad," laughed Eva, and twisted the music-stool to suit her height.
George came close to her and bending down said something in an undertone.
"Good idea," said Eva. "Ask the mater."
"You ask her," said George, sauntering into the adjoining room, where he sat down beside his father and lit a cigarette.
Eva went to her mother, and coaxed her into consenting to what she asked. Then she ran out of the room and reappeared soon after, bringing with her the three figures in black. As they hesitated on the threshold, she slipped her arm through the arm of the reluctant "Sherry" and drew her forward. "Do come!—Venny!" she said, and the three entered the room.
They were quite like ghosts again, with pale faces and staring eyes and the rigid gait of sleep-walkers.
They sat down silently in a row near the wall, and Eva went to the piano and played. She played the Rachmaninoff "Prelude," and when she had finished they neither moved nor spoke. She wandered off into the gentle sadness of Godard's "Barcarole," and the three ghosts sat motionless. Schumann's "Carnaval" did not cheer them, nor did the "Moonlight Sonata" move them. When Eva at last closed the piano they rose, and the two eldest, having silently bowed their thanks, they left the room, conducting between them the little one, whose pallor seemed more spectral and whose silence seemed even deeper than theirs.
"Poor souls! poor souls!" growled Mr. Whitaker, clearing his throat and knitting his brows. "Theresa, my dear," to his wife, "see that they lack for nothing. And I hope the children are always very kind and considerate in their behaviour to them. George," he added, turning what he believed to be a beetling brow upon his handsome son, "I noticed that you stared at them. Do not do so again. Grief is sensitive and prefers to remain unnoticed."
George mumbled that he hadn't stared and marched out of the room. Eva put her arms round her father's neck and pressed on his cheek the loud, childish kisses that he loved.
"May I go and talk to them a little?" she asked, in a coaxing whisper.
"Of course you may," said her father, and Eva ran out quickly, just as her mother looked up to say, "What is it?"
"I have sent Eva to talk to those unhappy creatures," said Mr. Whitaker. "We must try and cheer them a little. It is nothing less than a duty. Poor souls!" he repeated, "I have never seen anything so dismal."
"I think we fulfil our duty in providing them with shelter and food," said Mrs. Whitaker.
"You think nothing of the kind, Theresa," said Mr. Whitaker.
"I do," asserted his wife. "And as for Eva, she is already inclined to be exaggeratedly sentimental in regard to these people. She is constantly running after them with flowers and cups of tea."
"Nice child," said her father, with a little tightening in his throat.
"She is not a child, Anselm. She is nineteen. And I do not wish her to have anything to do with those women."
"Theresa?" said her husband, in a high questioning voice. "Theresa. Come here."
Mrs. Whitaker did not move. "Come here," he repeated in the threatening and terrible tone that he sometimes used to the children and to his old retriever Raven—a tone which frightened neither child nor beast. "Come here."
Mrs. Whitaker approached. "Sit down," he said, indicating a footstool in front of him; and Mrs. Whitaker obeyed. "Now, wife," he said, "are you growing hard and sour in your old age? Are you?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Whitaker. "I am."
"Ah," said Mr. Whitaker, "that's right. I knew you weren't." And he laughed, and patted her cheek.
This was not the answer Mrs. Whitaker was prepared for and she had nothing ready to say. So the wily Mr. Whitaker went on, "I have noticed lately in you certain assumed asperities, a certain simulated acrimony.... Now, Theresa, tell me; what does this make-believe bad temper mean?"
Mrs. Whitaker felt that she could weep with rage. What is the good of having a bad temper when it is not believed in? Of what use is it to be sore and sour, to feel bitter and hard, in the face of smiling incredulity?
"With other people, my dear," continued Mr. Whitaker, "you may pretend that you are disagreeable and irascible, but not with me. I know better."
This simple strategy had proved perfectly successful for twenty years and it answered today, as it always did.
"I am disagreeable, I am irascible, I am bitter, and hard, and cross," said Mrs. Whitaker, whereupon Mr. Whitaker closed his eyes, smiled and shook his head.
"Don't keep on shaking your head like a Chinese toy," she added. "Anselm, you really are the stupidest man I have ever seen." And then she laughed. "It is dreadful," she added, putting aside the hand he had laid on her shoulder, "not to be believed when one is cross, not to be feared when one is angry. It makes one feel so helpless."
"You may be helpless," he said; "womanly women mostly are. But you are never cross and you are never angry. So don't pretend to be."
Now Mrs. Whitaker was tall and large and square; she was strong-minded and strong-featured; she was what you would call a "capable woman"—and none but her own inmost soul knew the melting joy that overcame her at being told that she was helpless. She raised her hand to the hand that lay on her shoulder again, and patted it. She bent her head sideways and laid her cheek upon it.
"Now, what's the trouble?" said her husband.
"The trouble … I can hardly express it," she spoke hesitantly, "either to myself or to you. Anselm!" she turned her eyes to him suddenly, the eyes full of blueness and temper and courage he had fallen in love with in Dublin long ago. "I hate those three miserable women," she said. "I hate them."
"What!" cried her husband, drawing his hand away from hers.
"I fear them, and I hate them!" she repeated.
"What have they done?"
"They have done nothing," said his wife, with drooping head and downcast eyes. "But I cannot help it. I hate and fear them … for the children's sake."
"What do you mean?" Mr. Whitaker was sitting very straight. The thin soft hair still crowning his brow was ruffled.
"The mystery that surrounds them frightens me," said Mrs. Whitaker. "I don't know where they come from, what they have seen, what they have lived through. I should like to be kind to them, I should like to encourage the children to cheer them and speak to them. But there is something … something in their eyes that repels me, something that makes me want to draw Eva away from them. I cannot express it. I don't know what it is."
There was a brief silence. Then her husband spoke. "A woman's instinct in these things is right, I suppose. But to me it sounds uncharitable and cruel."
Mrs. Whitaker rose to her feet, her face flushing painfully. "Are we called upon to sacrifice our daughter's purity of mind, her ignorance of evil, to these strangers? Is it our duty to encourage an intercourse which will tear the veil of innocence from her eyes?"
"I am afraid so," said Mr. Whitaker gravely. "How can our daughter have pity on human suffering while she does not know its meaning? True charity, Theresa, cannot be blind; compassion must know the ills it tries to heal. My dear, we are face to face with one of the problems—one of the minor problems perhaps, but still a very real problem—which this ghastly war has raised. Think for a moment, Theresa; how can our girls, who are called upon to nurse the wounded in body, and comfort the stricken in soul, live in the midst of puerile ignorance any longer? Painful though it may be, the veil you speak of, the white veil that hides from a maiden's eyes the sins and sorrows of life, must be rent asunder."
"It is cruel! it is cruel!" cried the mother.
"Yes. War is cruel. And life is cruel. But do not let us—you and I—add to the cruelty of the world. If our daughter must learn to know evil in order to be merciful, then let innocence die in her young heart, in order that pity which is nobler, may be born." There was a long silence.
Then Mrs. Whitaker raised her husband's hand to her lips and kissed it.
CHAPTER VIII
Eva had gone upstairs to the schoolroom, now transformed into a sitting-room for the refugees, and had knocked softly at the door.
No one answered and she stood for a moment irresolute. Then the sound of a sobbing voice fell on her ear, "Mireille! Mireille!" … The despair of it wrung her heart. With sudden resolve she turned the handle and went in.
Under the green-shaded electric light a picture almost biblical in its poetic tragedy presented itself to her eyes. The youngest of the refugees, the child, with her long hair loosened—and it fell like golden water on either side of her white face—stood motionless as a statue under the lamp-shine, gazing straight before her, straight, indeed, into the eyes of Eva as she halted spell-bound on the threshold. Kneeling at the child's feet, with her back to the door, was the eldest one of the three, her long black garments spreading round her, her arms stretched upwards in a despairing embrace of that motionless childish figure; her head was thrown forward on her arm and it was her sobbing voice that Eva had heard. Standing beside her holding a little golden crucifix in her clasped and upraised hands, stood the other girl—the girl who had smiled—and she was praying: "Sainte Vierge, aidez-nous! Mère de Dieu, faites le miracle!" Unmoved, unseeing, unhearing the little girl they were praying for stood like a statue, her wide, unseeing eyes fixed before her as in a trance.
With sorrow and pity throbbing in her heart Eva slipped back into the passage again, closing the door softly behind her. After a moment's uncertainty she knocked at the door once more, this time more loudly. A voice answered timidly, "Entrez."
They were all three standing now, but the tears still fell down the cheeks of the eldest one, who had quickly risen from her knees.
"May I come in?" asked Eva timidly. "I thought I should like to come and talk with you a little."
The second one, who understood English, came forward at once with a wan and grateful smile. "Thank you. Please come," she said. And Eva entered and closed the door.
There was a pause; then Eva put out her hand shyly and stiffly to the eldest one; "Don't cry," she said.
Surely no other words so effectively open the flood-gates of tears! Even though they were spoken in a tongue foreign to her, the stricken woman understood them and her tears flowed anew.
"Loulou, Loulou, ne pleure pas!" cried the younger girl, and turning to Eva she explained: "She cries because of her child"—she pointed to the little spectre—"who will not speak to her."
"Is she really dumb?" asked Eva, in awed tones, gazing at the seraphic little face, dazed and colourless as a washed-out fresco of Frate Angelico.
"We do not know. She has not spoken for more than a month." The girl's gentle voice broke in a sob. "She does not seem to know us or to hear us." She went over to the child and caressed her cheek. "Mireille, petite Mireille! dis bonsoir à la jolie dame!"
But Mireille was silent, staring with her vacant eyes at what no one could see.
Eva stepped forward, trembling a little, and took the child's limp hand in hers. "Mireille," she said. The blue eyes were turned full upon her for an instant, then they wavered and wandered away. "What has happened to her? What made her like this?" asked Eva, in a low voice.
"Fear," replied the girl, her lips tightening. And she said no more.
"Fear of what?" insisted Eva, with the unconscious cruelty of youth and kindness.
"The Germans came to our house," faltered the girl; "they … they frightened her." Again her quivering lips closed tightly; a wave of crimson flooded her delicate face. Then the colour faded quickly, leaving behind it a waxen pallor and a deep shadow round her eyes.
"Were they unkind to her? Did they hurt her?" gasped Eva, and for the first time, as she gazed at that motionless child figure, her startled soul seemed to realize the meaning of war.
"No; they did not hurt her. They did nothing to her. But she was frightened" … her arm went round the child's drooping shoulders, "and because she cried they … they bound her … to an iron railing...."
"They bound her to an iron railing!… How cruel, how wicked!" cried Eva.
"Yes, they were cruel," said the girl, and a terrified look came into her eyes. She moved back a little, nearer to the other woman, the tall black figure that stood silent, looking down at the glowing embers of the fire. She had neither moved nor spoken since Eva had entered the room.
Eva continued her questioning.
"And were you frightened, too?"
"Yes. I was frightened."
"What did you do? Did you run away?"
"I don't know. I don't remember. I don't remember anything."
Such terror and anguish was there in the lovely girlish face, that Eva dared to ask no more.
"Forgive me," she stammered; "I ought not to have made you speak about it. Forgive me—Mademoiselle." She placed her hand timidly on the girl's arm. "Or may I call you 'Chérie'?"
CHAPTER IX
The mild September days swung past; the peaceful English atmosphere and the wholesome English food, added to the unobtrusive English kindness—which consists mainly in leaving people alone and pretending not to notice their existence—wrought gentle miracles on the three stricken creatures.
Not that Mireille found speech again, but Louise watched day by day with beating heart the return of the tender wild-rose colour to her child's thin cheeks, and saw the strange fixed expression of terror gradually fade out of her eyes.
Mireille never wept and never smiled; she seemed to wander in the shadow of life, mute, quiet, and at peace.
But life and joy came throbbing back to Chérie's young heart, in fluttering smiles and little trills of laughter, in soft flushes and quick, light-running steps. Louise, seated by Mireille at the schoolroom window, would let her work sink on her lap to watch the girlish slender figure of her sister-in-law darting to and fro on the tennis-lawn; she would listen amazed to the sweet voice that had so quickly attuned itself to English words and English laughter. And her soul was filled with wonder. How—how had Chérie so quickly forgotten? Had she no thought for brother and lover fighting on the blood-drenched plains of Ypres? How could she play and talk and laugh while there was no news from Claude or from Florian? While they might even now be lying dead—dead with upturned faces, under the distant Belgian sky! And how, ah! how could she have forgotten what befell, on that night of horror but a few short weeks ago?
As if some subtle heart-throb warned her, Chérie would turn suddenly and gaze up at the two pale faces framed in the window beneath the red and gold leaves of the autumnal creeper. Then she would fling down her racket and, leaving Eva and Kitty Mulholland and George—who were often her partners in the game—without a word, she would run into the house and up to the schoolroom and fling herself at Louise's feet in a storm of tears.
"Mireille!… Florian!… Claude!" The beloved names were sobbed out in accents of despair, and Louise must needs comfort her as best she could, smoothing the tumbled locks, kissing the flushed, wet face, and finally herself leading her out into the garden again. Mireille went lightly and silently beside them, like a pale seraph walking in her sleep.
It was not only to console Chérie that Louise smiled in those first days of exile. Hope, like a shy bird, had entered into her heart.
There was better news from the Continent; all Europe had taken up arms and was fighting for them and with them. There had been the glorious tidings of the battle of the Marne. Then one day Florian had sent a message.
It appeared on the front page of The Times, and Mr. Whitaker himself went up with it to the schoolroom, followed by Mrs. Whitaker, Eva and George. Florian said he was safe, and was in touch with Claude. He gave an address for them to write to if this message caught their eye.
Louise and Chérie embraced each other with tears of joy. Claude and Florian were safe! Safe! And would one day come over to England to fetch them. Perhaps in a month or two the war would be over.
Louise dreamt every night of Claude's return. She pictured his arrival, the sound of his footsteps in the garden, his voice in the hall—then his strong arms around her.... Ah! but then he would see Mireille! He would ask what had happened—he would have to be told....
No! No! Mireille must be healed before he arrives. He must never know—Never! She need not tell him. She must not tell him.
Or must she?
It became an obsession. Must she tell him? Why, why must she tell him? Why break his heart? No; he need never know—never! Mireille must be healed before he arrives. Mireille must be taught to speak and smile again. Mireille must find again the dear shrill voice of her childhood, the sweet piercing treble laughter with which to welcome his return. The laughter and the voice of Mireille! Where were they?
Had the Holy Saints got them in their keeping?
Louise fell on her knees a hundred times a day and prayed to God and to the Virgin Mary and to the Saints to give back to Mireille her voice. Perhaps Saint Agnes would help her? Or little Saint Philomena, who both were martyred in their thirteenth year. Or if not, surely there was Saint Anthony of Padua who would restore Mireille's voice to her. He was the Saint who found and gave back what one had lost. And to Saint Anthony she prayed, in hope and faith for many days; in anguish and despair for many weeks.... Then, suddenly, she prayed no more.
From one day to another her gentle face changed. The soft lines seemed suddenly to be carved out of stone. When she sat alone face to face with Mireille their eyes would gaze into each other with the same fixity and stupefaction; but while the gaze of the child was clear and vacant, the eyes of the mother were wild and wide with some dark horror and despair. Fear—fear—the mad affrightment of a lost spirit haunted her, and with the dawn of each new day seemed to take deeper root in her being, seemed to rise from ever profounder depths of woe and horror.
"Loulou! dearest! What is the matter? Are you ill?" Chérie asked her one morning, noting her lagging footsteps and her deathly pallor.
"No, darling, no," said Louise. "But—you?" She asked the question suddenly, turning and fixing her burning eyes on the girl's face.
"I? Why do you ask me?" smiled Chérie, surprised.
"Are you well?" insisted Louise. "The English boy told me"—Louise seemed hardly able to speak—"that the other day—you fainted."
"Oh!" Chérie laughed and shrugged her shoulders. "How silly of him to tell you. It was nothing. They were teaching me to play hockey … and suddenly I was giddy and I stumbled and fell. I am often giddy and sick. It is nothing. I believe I am a little anæmic. But I really am quite well. Really, really!" she repeated laughing and embracing Loulou. "I am always as hungry as a wolf!"
And she danced away to find "Monsieur George" and scold him for telling tales.
Louise's eyes followed her with a deep and questioning gaze.
CHAPTER X
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.