Читать книгу Things That Have Interested Me - Arnold Bennett - Страница 20

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The hotel-resident who took us by storm in the matter of buying tickets for the Shrove Tuesday dance at the Casino answered our objection that we did not dance by the argument that the affair was for charity. And she boasted of the number of tickets she had already sold and the number she would sell before Pancake Day. She mentioned some young women upon whom she had planted tickets, and when we pointed out that as all male residents in all the hotels were middle-aged or old the aforesaid young women would never get partners, she said that she had promised to get native partners for them and that her knowledge of the whole district would enable her to do so. Then she made the thing romantic for us by stating that every purchaser of a ticket had to be vouched for, on account of the Orientalism of the local husbands, who feared that undesirable persons might obtain admittance to the ball. She said that only on Shrove Tuesday were the indigenous ladies permitted to attend a public dance, and she added that some of them might possibly be masked. The tickets said clearly enough that masks would be forbidden; but she insisted that the regulation applied only to men. Hence we went to the dance excited by anticipations of mysterious beauties, fierce husbands, and the chance of undesirable persons. And sure enough when we presented our cards they were taken by old and beflowered heavy swells who inspected them carefully (after the manner of passport officials), searched for our names on long lists of names, and ticked off our names on the list, and then, apparently reassured, invited us with bows and smiles to go forward into Paradise.

The band and the lights were embedded in fresh blossoms. The centre of the floor was quite empty, and round about it seats with rather high backs were arranged in very straight rows, so that they resembled church pews. And the place was as solemn as a church, and as an English church, and the occupants of the pews were almost exclusively naïve English and Scotch girls with their equally naïve mammas. There were no masked native beauties, there were no native beauties at all. There was not the slightest mystery about the origin and past of any of these fair simple creatures in their best hotel frocks. We knew them from A to Z. A number of young and youngish men gradually congregated round the door, and they were without doubt native; but they were acquainted with none of the English, and the ticket-seller was invisible, and no M.C. arrived to perform introductions. Presently a middle-aged English bachelor from one of the hotels came along and respectfully asked one of the girls for the pleasure of a dance, which pleasure she at once gave him. That noble public-spirited fellow had resolved to go through as many of the girls as time would permit, and he manfully did so, and each time he solicited a dance he marvellously contrived by his tone to indicate that it was he and not the lady who was receiving the favour. Soon girls were to be seen dancing together. A honeymoon couple danced dance after dance. . . . Every fifteen minutes seemed like two hours. The girls smiled and chatted courageously, but from those with whom we had achieved some intimacy we learned that furious discontent reigned and that curses were floating off in hundreds to damn the still invisible ticker-seller with her false promises of partners. Assuredly the romance of the country had been for ever dissipated, and in spite of its poetical climate the town was shown up in its true prosaic quality—as being no better than Bournemouth, indeed not so good.

The next day the ticket-seller told us of the great success of the ball and of the fact that she had sold sixty-two tickets and paid in the money to the account of charity. We expressed our surprise that she still lived, and warned her of a widespread demand on the part of naïve British girls for her blood.