Читать книгу Moss Rose - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 4

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It was a pretty scene, this divertissement that was one of the music-hall 'turns.' At the back of the stage a transparency showed a terrace of blooms behind a gigantic silver cobweb spangled with dew-drops. Either side, leaves of gold tinsel quivered on invisible net. In the centre the fairies from the flowers gathered round the "Queen of the Flowers," a white rose, holding a wand on the end of which sparkled a glistening star. Her two principal attendants were Minnie Palmer, the lily, and Belle Adair, the moss rose; beyond them was the violet, the carnation, the tiger lily, the sunflower, the iris and the hollyhock, an odd bouquet swiftly forming under the rosey glow from the lanterns in the wings, in front of which red paper had been fixed. The foot-lights had also been shrouded with soft shades and this warm hue of the foreground contrasted with the ethereal silverness of the enchanted distance.

The music, taken from popular tunes, was soft and flowing; particularly pleasing was the little waltz to which the Moss Rose circled for her short pas seul. This melody, dedicated to a lovely and beloved English Princess on her recovery from rheumatic fever, was well known and much liked in London, and the audience tapped feet and half-emptied beer mugs, hummed with zest as the familiar opening bars were struck up by violins and piano.

The flower fairies withdrew into the painted side-slips and the Moss Rose pirouetted on her toes; Minnie Palmer, striking an attitude beside her, whispered: "Pretty, isn't it? Don't you wish that you were dancing it with a real gentleman?"

With her arms folded on her breast Belle Adair waltzed round the stage; she was taller, more slender than any of the other dancers, she had a good ear and was light of foot. In the flattering blurred light she gave an illusion of beauty; the swirling pink skirts like petals, the green bodice like folded leaves, the gracefully held head with the verdant cap—something ardent, proud and swift in poise and movement—had a transient quality of enchantment. But the audience was not pleased, the applause was feeble; it was always the same with Belle, she never made a success, there was something remote and alien about her, some quality of disdain and coldness that made people uneasy, even hostile. The music jerked into a polka, Minnie. Palmer bounced forward, and, winking and grinning, flung her shapely legs, in the pink stockings and laced boots, about in a frenzied caricature of a ball dance. The audience roared with delight. The Moss Rose, forgotten, slipped in amidst the other fairies and, mechanically smiling, raised one end of a garland of paper blossoms that was lowered from the flies to enchain the girls with festoons of flowers as the curtain fell and the stage hands came on to clear the stage for the next turn—a Chinese juggler.