Читать книгу The City of Pleasure: A Fantasia on Modern Themes - Arnold Bennett - Страница 12

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That night the City of Pleasure was illuminated. Eighty thousand tiny electric lamps hanging in festoons from standard to standard lighted the Central Way alone; the façades of all the places of amusement were outlined in fire; the shops glittered; and the cable-cars, as they flashed to and fro, bore the monogram I.C. in electricity on their foreheads. At eight o’clock the thoroughfare was crowded with visitors, and the stream of arrivals was stronger than ever. In the superb restaurants, at all prices (no matter what the price, they were equally superb in decoration), five thousand diners were finishing five thousand dinners, their eyes undisturbed by the presence of advertisements on the walls. The theatre, the music-hall, the circus, the menagerie, the concerts, and the rest of the entertainments, were filling up. In the Amusements Park people shot down railways into water, slid down smooth slopes into mattresses, circled in great wheels, floated in the latest novelties of merry-go-rounds, ascended in the balloon, and practised all the other devices for frittering away eternity, just as though night had not fallen. In the vast court of the Exposition Palace a band was swelling the strains of the newest waltzes to three storeys of loungers and sitters at café-tables, while within the interior of the building men and women wandered about examining the multifarious attractions of the Woman’s Exhibition.

But the chief joy was the Oriental Gardens, wherein a multitude of over fifty thousand persons had gathered together. The Oriental Gardens were illuminated, but in a different manner from the Central Way. Chinese lanterns were suspended everywhere in the budding trees, giving the illusion of magic precocious flowers that had blossomed there in a single hour, in all the tints of the rainbow and many others entirely foreign to the rainbow. The bandstand alone was picked out in electricity. It blazed in the centre of the gardens like a giant’s crown, and, although yet empty, it formed the main object of attention. Overhead stretched a dark-blue sky, silvered with stars, and the wind had a warm and caressing quality which encouraged sightseers to expose themselves to it to such an extent that the fifteen cafés of the Oriental Gardens, some sheltered, some quite open, but each a centre of light and laughter, were every one crowded with guests. The four thousand chairs surrounding the bandstand were occupied, and also the six thousand other chairs dispersed in various parts of the gardens. The murmur of conversation, the rustle of dresses, the tinkle of glasses, the rumour of uncountable footsteps, rose on the air. The faces of pretty women could be observed obscurely in the delicious gloom, and the glowing scarlet of cigars bobbed mysteriously about like aspecies of restless glow-worm.

And everybody was conscious of the sensation of the extraordinary and amazing success of the great show. The evening papers had carried the news of the wonderful thing to each suburb of London. These papers gave from hour to hour the number of the persons who had passed the turnstiles, and calculated the number of tons of shillings that Ilam and Carpentaria would have to bank on Monday morning. But the principal thing that struck the evening papers was the complete readiness of the City of Pleasure. No detail of it was unfinished, and all agreed that this phenomenon stood unique in the history of the art of amusing immense crowds. All felt that a new era of amusement enterprise had been ushered in by Ilam and Carpentaria, that everything was changed, and that in the future an enlightened and excessively exacting public would not be satisfied with what had pleased it in the past. And the owners of the old-fashioned resorts trembled in their shoes, and hated Ilam and Carpentaria, while the myriad patrons of Ilam and Carpentaria on that first day flattered themselves that they had personally assisted at the birth of the grand innovation, and thought how they would say to their grandchildren: “Yes, I was present at the opening of the City of Pleasure, and a marvellous affair it was,” and so on, in the manner of grandparents.

All were expecting Carpentaria, the lion of the show.

His band was due to perform from eight o’clock to ten, and special bills, posted on the sides of the gilded bandstand and in the cafés, announced: “Carpentaria’s band will play the Balloon Lullaby, the latest composition of Carpentaria, composed this afternoon.”

At ten minutes before eight the members of the band, sixty in number, and clad in the imperial purple uniform, marched in Indian file across the gardens to the stand. At a distance of ten paces from the end of the procession came Carpentaria, preceded by a small page bearing his baton on a cushion of purple velvet. Carpentaria always did things with overwhelming style and solemnity. Superior persons laughed at the style and solemnity, but the vast majority did not laugh; they cheered; they appreciated. Whether they were right or wrong, the indubitable fact is that these things came naturally to Carpentaria; they were the expression of his exceedingly theatrical soul, the devices of a man who believes in himself.

At eight o’clock precisely Carpentaria faced the fifty thousand from his bandstand, and, after having bowed elaborately thrice, turned to the band, and lifted the sacred stick.

It was a dramatic moment, the real inauguration of the City of Pleasure.

Cheers and hurrahs rolled in terrific volumes of sound across the gardens, and they did not cease; and people not acquainted with the fame and renown of Carpentaria perceived what it was to be a favourite of capitals, a leading star in the galaxy of stars that the public salutes and recognizes.

Carpentaria preserved the immobility of carven stone until the plaudits had ceased; they lasted for exactly five and a half minutes. Consequently the concert was exactly five and a half minutes late in commencing. Carpentaria himself was never late, but his public had a habit of delaying him.

Suddenly he brought rown his baton with a surprising shock. The carven stone had started into life, and “God save the King” was under way.

Now to see Carpentaria conduct was one of the sights of the world. He conducted not merely with his hand and eye, but with the whole of his immortal frame and his uniform. It was said that he was capable of conducting the Eroica Symphony of Beethoven with his left foot—and who shall deny it? “God save the King” was child’s play to him. Moreover, he showed a certain reserve in handling it. He merely conducted it as though in conducting it he himself were literally saving the King. That was all. But with what snap, what dash, what chic, what splash and what magnificent presence of mind did he save the King! The applause was wild and ample.

The next item was “The City of Pleasure March,” composed by Carpentaria. Indeed, Carpentaria conducted nothing but national hymns, his own compositions, and, as a superlative concession, Wagner and Beethoven. “The City of Pleasure” was in Carpentaria’s finest style, and it was planned to give him the fullest scope in conducting it. He had already made it famous in a triumphal tour through the United States in the previous year. It began with the utmost possible volume of sound. It had a contagious and infectious lilt to it, and both the lilt and the volume of sound were continued without the slightest respite during the whole composition. In the course of this masterpiece Carpentaria performed physical feats that would have astounded Cinquevalli and the Schaffer Troupe. In the frenzy of self-expression he all but stood on his head. The bandstand was too small for him; he needed a planet on which to circulate. By turns his baton was a sceptre, a pump-handle, a maypole, a crutch, a drumstick, a flag, a toothpick, a mop, a pendulum, a whip, a bottle of soothing-syrup, and a scorpion. By turns he whipped, tortured, encouraged, liberated, imprisoned, mopped up, measured, governed, diverted, pushed over, pulled back, and turned inside out his band, and whenever their enthusiasm seemed likely to lead them into indiscretions, he soothed them with the soothing-syrup. By turns the conducting of the piece was a march, a campaign, a house on fire, the race for the Derby, the forging of a hundred-ton gun, a display of fireworks, a mayoral banquet, and a mother scolding a numerous family.

It was colossal.

At the close, as sudden as the shutting of a door, there was a vast strange silence, and then the applause, as colossal as the piece, broke out like a conflagration.

Carpentaria bowed; the entire band bowed; Carpentaria bowed again. Lastly he indicated a flute-player with his baton, and the flute-player came forward and shared the glory of Carpentaria. Why a flute-player, no one could have guessed. Forty flutes could not have been heard in that terrific concourse of brass and drums. But Carpentaria was Carpentaria.

“Did any of you hear the sound of a shot?” Carpentaria said in a low voice to his band.

“Shot? No, sir. No, sir,” came from a dozen mouths. “Why, sir?”

“Because a bullet has just grazed my ear. It was in the fourth bar from the end.” He put his hand to his ear and showed blood on his finger. “It’s nothing, nothing,” he quieted them. “I shall expect you to behave as though nothing had occurred, as soldiers in fact.”

“Certainly, sir,” replied the intrepid band.

Carpentaria gazed at one of the iron supports of the roof of the bandstand. In a line with his head the surface of the pillar had been damaged and dented. He disturbed two trombone-players in order to search the floor, and in a few seconds he had found a flattened bullet, which he put in his pocket.

“Number two,” he said sharply, going to his desk and tapping it.

Number two was the lullaby. No more striking contrast to the march could have been found. It was so delicate, so softly stealing, that you could scarcely hear it; and yet you could hear it—you could hear it everywhere. Carpentaria drew sweetness out of his band with the gestures of a conjurer drawing an interminable roll of coloured paper from his mouth, previously shown to be empty. It was the daintiest thing, swaying in the air like gossamer. It brought tears to the orbs of mothers, and made strong men close their eyes. Such was the versatility of Carpentaria.

The applause amounted to a furore.

“I give you my word of honour, ladies and gentlemen,” said Carpentaria, coming to the rail of the stand and stilling the cheers with a gesture, “at halfpast three this afternoon not a note of the little piece was composed.”

His demeanour gave no sign of agitation. But at the close of the concert, no more bullets having arrived, he wiped his brow with relief. Most of the band did the same.

He walked about on the river terrace for over an hour, calming his spirit, which had been through so many excitements, artistic and otherwise, during the afternoon and evening. And he meditated, now on the bullet, and now on Ilam. He could scarcely realize how nearly he had escaped quarrelling with Ilam in the balloon; their relations hitherto had been invariably amicable, at any rate on the surface; and he had done so much for Ilam; he had put a second fortune in Ilam’s pocket. The dazzling success of the day of inauguration was the success of Carpentaria’s ideas. And yet Ilam hated him. He felt that Ilam hated him. He almost shuddered as he remembered the moment when he had sat on the dizzy edge of the balloon-car, and Ilam had threatened him, and then laughed.

The Oriental Gardens were empty and dark. The gay crowd had departed; the lights were extinguished. Only the light in Ilam’s drawing-room shone across the expanse as it had shone through all the evening. Carpentaria’s own bungalow was dark. He wondered what Juliette was doing.

At length he set off home through the gardens. And just as he was entering his front-door he recollected that he had given no instructions about the drunken man in the enclosure. He turned back down the steps, and went into the enclosure and struck a match. The man was lying on the ground, no doubt asleep.

“Well, this is a caution!” he muttered.

A notion occurred to him, one of his fanciful pranks. He picked up the unconscious man, who held himself stiff and did not even groan, and carried him, not with too much difficulty—for Carpentaria was extremely powerful—to the side-door of Ilam’s residence; he placed the form against the door. Every night for weeks past Ilam had come out by that door about midnight to take a final stroll of inspection. He felt that he owed Ilam a grudge. Then he retired into the shadow and waited.

Presently the door opened, and Ilam fell over the man, as Carpentaria hoped he would, and picked himself up with oaths and struck a match and gazed at the form.

At the same instant a woman’s figure passed Carpentaria in the dark. He was surprised to recognize Juliette. He touched her.

“Oh!” she cried softly, starting back.

“Why do you start like that?” he demanded.

“You—you—frightened me,” she said.

He escorted her into their house. When he came out again Ilam was descending the steps by the side door. Nothing lay near the door.

“Seen anything of a drunken man?” Carpentaria called out.

“No,” said Ilam, after a pause.

“Not near your door?”

“No. Why?”

“Oh, nothing. Only I thought I saw one.”

“Good night,” growled Ilam, but instead of taking the air he returned abruptly to the house.