Читать книгу Fancy Dress Ball - J. Jefferson Farjeon - Страница 3

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There is a theory, which some people find harder and harder to refute, that the world is mad. Yet who among us can definitely prove or disprove this assertion? Madness, often enough, is merely a relative term, and the lunatic of yesterday may be the sage of to-day, while the sage of to-day may become the lunatic of to-morrow. There appears as yet no central point to sanity, unless it resides in the elusive seed of human happiness, and happiness is as difficult to define as madness itself.

But if those who take an uncomplimentary view of the world’s condition wish to reinforce their opinion they can do so once a year, at least, by purchasing a ticket for the Chelsea Arts Ball at the Albert Hall. Here our search for happiness takes the strangest form. From ten p.m. till five a.m. sober folk discard their sobriety, flinging themselves into queer costumes and queerer mental attitudes in an attempt to forget the humdrum of existence. For seven hours they play this game, thumbing their noses at Fate, and laughing at Reality.

Yet Fate stalks in their midst, and Reality beats in their hearts. For it is only a game, this attempt to escape from the humdrum, and the underlying pathos shatters criticism. The real story of that man over there is not in his bandit costume; it is on the Stock Exchange, among considerably duller forms and figures. That elderly gentleman behind him, watching the dancers revolve round the vast dancing space, has nothing to do with the gaily-lined Venetian cloak he is wearing; he is wasting away with disease, trying to warm cold fingers in a fading fire. The beautiful, sparsely-clad nymph who floats dreamily by and throws him a little smile (or so he pretends) will be serving, to-morrow, in a West End shop. That coy blonde with deep frank bosoms is speeding despairingly towards sixty.

Others, more fortunate, do receive a definite fillip to the momentary happiness they have brought with them from outside. The lights, the colour, the music, all on the most elaborate and most magnificent scale, add to their natural buoyancy of spirit, and these true lovers who mingle with the sensualist and the cynic find in the Albert Hall an almost overpowering fulfilment of an exciting dream. But all possess stories of one kind or another which have their centre elsewhere, and as the great ballroom revolves with its comedy and tragedy, its light and its shade, some of the stories are suspended, and some go on.

Henry Brown regarded his half-shaved face in the little mirror hanging by his bed. He regarded it with disapproval, almost with panic. It looked worried when it ought to have looked gay, for this was to be a night of nights, an occasion of high adventure and rare audacity, and if he did not begin in the right mood, in what kind of a mood would he end? He forced a smile into his strained features. “This is fun!” he assured himself, overdoing the confidence. His smile did nothing to compose his agitated mind.

He turned from the mirror to the window. The window-glass was obscured by a dark, worn blind. The cord was off the blind and you had to give the bottom a careful tug to get it up. Not a hard tug. If you did that something disastrous happened and the blind stayed down for days. A soft, delicate tug.... He gave a soft, delicate tug. The blind shot up with a violent snap, snarled round the top roller, and became wedged. Now it would stay up for days.

“Damn!” muttered Henry Brown.

Life was very difficult.

With the blind up he feared that everybody would see in, and he was not in a condition to be viewed. Almost immediately, however, he realised that he had no need to worry about his visibility. No one could see in if he himself could not see out. A thick fog hung outside the window, a brooding, yellow, impenetrable curtain. It had been threatening all day. The morning paper had predicted it, the evening wireless had confirmed it, and here it was, adding fresh trouble to the occasion. Henry’s mind jerked from one trial to another, and the lines on his rather tired face deepened.

“Fog!” he grunted. “That’s a nice thing! How am I going to get to the blessed place?” Then another thought struck him. “Yes, and what happens if I can’t?”

For a brief instant the possibility of not getting there brightened, surprisingly, his horizon. He recognised that although he had planned and plotted to get there, and had scraped and saved to get there, he also dreaded getting there; and no one could call you a funk, could they, for failing to turn up at a place you could not reach! If this particular place could not be reached—if the ’buses were at a standstill and the taxis were sprawling across the pavement—then Henry Brown would be forced to spend the evening at home, and nobody would ever see him in the ridiculous costume that lay on his bed waiting for his insufficient body. A loose velvet jacket of unfamiliar shape. Strange, hugely-checked slacks. An enormous flowing blue tie. A vast red sash. Or was the tie the sash, and the sash the tie? And above all, in every sense, a mammoth beret. Not the happy beret of a Borotra, but an endless expanse of dark ribbed stuff that flowed over the side of your head almost down to your neck, giving you the feeling that you were in deep mourning for a pancake. It was this Gargantuan headgear that had first upset Henry’s morale, and that now made him momentarily bless the fog.

The moment passed, however. Henry was even more afraid of fear than of the thing he feared. He did not possess a first-class mind, but it was good enough to recognise the spuriousness of his excuses. And there was, in addition, the financial side of the question to strengthen his resolve and to urge him forward. The hiring of the costume had cost half a guinea, paid in advance. The paid in advance was important. It meant that you could not get the money back again. Then the ticket for the Albert Hall had cost another thirty-one and six. You saved ten-and-six by purchasing it hazardously before the actual day. Happily the ticket included supper, so you could be sure of getting something definite for your outlay. Then, again, there was a manicure. Henry had thought a lot about the manicure. It was not likely that his small hand would be noticed in the vastness of the Albert Hall, but somehow or other the manicure had seemed necessary; though not a pedicure. He had never been manicured before, and he had suffered acutely when the manicurist had taken his unattractive hand into her pretty one and had replied to his muttered apologies that she had seen worse. Two shillings, that suffering had cost, with sixpence for the girl. That raised the damage to date up to £2 4s. 6d. Almost a week’s pay! No, dammit, you couldn’t allow yourself to waste as much as that!

There was something deeper than purse or pride, however, that drew Henry back into the current of terrifying desire. It was the stirring possibility of adventure and romance. Not that adventure and romance were likely to come his way, for people of his timid type rarely attract them. Still—you never knew, did you? Some girl or other might smile at him in the crowd, and he might smile back. He might even have the courage to ask her for a dance. Particularly if wine were included in the supper! You never knew, did you?

He returned determinedly to his shaving. He could wake up on the morrow resigned to the knowledge that adventure had not come his way, but he would wake up in a torment of distraction, he was convinced, if through eleventh hour funk he failed to resolve the agonising question!

His shaving complete, he felt his chin. The utter smoothness of it comforted him. No barber could have shaved him closer for sixpence. And he had not cut himself.

Then, taking a breath, he tackled the strange garments on the bed.

His pants and his vest, as he stood in them before the plunge, had never seemed so dear to him. They were like a familiar home about to be obliterated. He decided not to look at himself during the obliterating process, for to watch the metamorphosis bit by bit would be too unnerving. When the transformation was accomplished and he regarded himself in the mirror, the shock was almost more than he could bear. He discovered, to his dismay, that he had dared to hope.

“Do you mean to tell me,” he cried aloud to his reflection, “that any girl is going to dance with that?”

He seized the flowing beret from his head and hurled it to the ground. Then he picked it up again.

“Silly ass!” he growled at himself. “You’d think a girl was all I was going for!”

Possibly it was.

He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. A quarter-past nine. That was a nuisance. He wished it had been later. The ball didn’t start till ten, and you’d look a fool if you got there earlier. On the other hand, you didn’t want to waste any of it by getting there late. And, of course, the fog would mean slow travelling.

“Five minutes—I’ll wait five minutes,” he decided.

What could he do to fill out five minutes?

All at once he thought of it. Money! Whew, he might have gone without any! His forehead perspired at the ghastly idea. How much did one take? Just enough for the fare there and back? Or a shilling or two over, in case of accidents? “I suppose wine is included?” he reflected. “But suppose it isn’t? Will I want any?” He rarely took wine. For one reason, he could not afford it, and for another, a very little went a long way. “No, I won’t want any,” he settled it. “This is costing me quite enough as it is.” Then into Henry’s wavering mind came a sudden startling vision. It had no right to come, but it did. He saw himself sitting at a little supper table in a secluded corner. Opposite was a girl of dazzling loveliness. Her cheeks were flushed, but her bare shoulders were white, with tiny shadowy pools in the contours. He saw them as distinctly as that. “I’ve lost my party,” she was laughing. “One always does at the Chelsea Arts. Do you mind?”

He came out of the vision with a wrench. His forehead was damper now than ever. “Steady!” he muttered to himself. “You’re not drunk yet, you know!” He was. With excitement.

He went to the box where he kept his money. His fingers trembled slightly as he unlocked it. The box contained four one-pound notes. Apart from the twelve-and-sixpence in silver which still lay on his bed, these four pound notes were all the wealth he possessed in the world. He began to lock the box. Then quickly, to cheat his intelligence, he unlocked it again and seized the notes. “Just in case,” he said aloud.

Putting the empty box away, and fighting against a sensation of theft, he began to slip the notes in his trouser-pocket. The notes slid nakedly over the loose, grotesque material. He discovered to his dismay that his costume did not possess any trouser pockets. The only pockets he could find were two wide ones, painfully obvious, on either side of the velvet jacket. A pickpocket could slip his hand into them with the utmost ease.

“That’s done it!” thought Henry.

But the notion of leaving the notes at home because he did not know where to carry them shamed him. It suggested that he was allowing circumstances to steer his course, when to-night he was in a mood to steer circumstances. He wondered whether they would be safe in his beret. There was room in the beret for the whole Mint! Then all at once he found his solution. He took off his black shoes, folded the notes, and put two in each shoe. When he had the shoes on again they tickled his soles pleasantly, giving him an odd rich feeling.

The silver had to take its chance in one of the jacket pockets.

He glanced at the clock again. Twenty-past nine. Good! Just right!

“Now I’m really off,” he said.

He walked to the door and listened. He wanted to get out of the house without being seen. He had put on his overcoat, but the loud slacks were not obliterated. They shouted for nine inches below where the overcoat ended.

Hearing no one, he turned the door-handle softly and peeped out into the passage. Empty. Good again! But the peeling walls seemed to have eyes that bored into his soul and questioned it. He turned, without knowing why, and took a last look at his room. He felt as though he were saying good-bye to himself.

It has been indicated that as yet there was no particular girl in Henry Brown’s life, or in his mind. Girl existed for him in the abstract, and it was to be the mission of the Albert Hall to translate the abstract into material terms. But if, while he had struggled with his reflection in his looking-glass, he could have seen the reflection of Dorothy Shannon in another, daintier mirror, he might have gone to the Chelsea Arts Ball already conquered.

The reflection of Dorothy Shannon was very different from that of Henry Brown. It was wholly satisfactory. From the topmost hair of her auburn crop down to the tips of her golden shoes, she was five-foot-eight of sheer loveliness. In the frankly-expressed opinion of her parents she would easily stand out as the most beautiful sight in the whole of the hall. She was somewhat inclined to this view herself. It was temporary excitement, however, rather than natural vanity that made her hopeful; and her brother Conrad, on the other hand, betrayed a less flattering perspicacity.

“Yes, you look topping, Sis,” he admitted, popping his head in through her door, “but don’t run away with any high-falutin’ ideas about yourself. You’ll be utterly lost in the crowd, you know.”

“You won’t!” retorted Dorothy, with conviction. “And, of course, don’t trouble to knock when you enter a lady’s bedroom!”

Conrad grinned. He had seen to it that he himself would not be lost in the crowd. At the previous New Year’s Ball he had been utterly lost as a pirate—in company with countless other pirates—but this year he had vowed that, for better or worse, he would be noticed, and the head that had popped in so unceremoniously through his sister’s door was completely gold. Completely gold, also, was the rest of him. The gilding process had cost him considerable time and agony; but there are strange occasions in life, and this was one of them, when fools stand out where wise men cease to shine; and, although Conrad did not know it, there was something oddly artistic about his queer appearance. He looked like a golden Grecian statue, of which perhaps the most remarkable part was the curly, gold-clogged hair.

“Do go away,” pleaded Dorothy, as he lingered.

“There’s nowhere to go to,” he answered gloomily. “Nowhere peaceful, I mean. Father’s swearing at his wig—you’d think the whole of Cosmos depended upon its set—and mother’s running around him picking up the things he drops, and this house, once so sweet and calm, is a cauldron of despair.” He paused and regarded his sister critically. “Of course, I suppose you are aware that you don’t look a bit like Du Barry——”

“Oh, don’t I?” interrupted Dorothy, and thrust an old copy of a theatrical journal towards him. It was open at a full-page picture of Annie Ahlers on which she had based her conception. “Tell me where I’m wrong?”

“Yes, you look like that,” he agreed, “but that’s out of a musical show, and musical shows aren’t history. The Du Barry in the play, I remember, became the mistress of a handsome and attractive French monarch, but the historical Du Barry—the real Du Barry—attached herself to a Louis XV. who was entering senile decay, so she must have been a nasty, filthy sort of person. Fact. Listen!” He opened a fat book he had brought with him and read: “ ‘When Du Barry met the King of France he was already, at sixty years of age, in his dotage of shame.’ So, to avoid historical inaccuracy, my dear, look out for slobbering old boys to-night! Yes, and you want to have some dirty cracks ready for ’em, too. Listen again; ‘Her piquant if vulgar wit amused the worn-out dotard.’ ”

“How do you expect me to get on while you babble?” she groaned.

“And you had a most horrible end,” continued the gilded youth, irrepressibly. “I trust it is not prophetic. You sneaked over to London to sell your jewels, and when you got back to France you were arrested for wasting treasures of State, and you were guillotined on December 7th, 1793. Voilà!”

“Are you suggesting that I shall be guillotined at the Albert Hall?” inquired Dorothy.

“Oh, I don’t expect it will be quite as bad as that,” answered Conrad, “but it might be wise to remember that Du Barry’s always a bit of a Jonah. You’d have been safer as Little Miss Muffit. Hallo! Bell! Would that be Harold?”

“If it is, for God’s sake go down and give him his shock!” she burst out.

“Good notion,” he nodded. “I will! The poor lad’s got to get it over. Exit the Golden Statue.” He turned, then paused to add, “By the way, I rather like the idea of an M.P. for a brother-in-law. What’s the betting Harold proposes to-night?”

He vanished. Dorothy stared after him indignantly. As she removed her eyes back to the mirror, however, she could not deny that he was probably right. “Though that does not mean,” she informed her reflection, “that I shall accept the proposal!”

Passing his parents’ bedroom on his way down to the hall, Conrad found the door ajar, and stopped to listen. He loved hearing other people’s conversations, not to make use of them, but just for the sheer fun of it. They generally sounded idiotic. And then it was amusing trying to guess. You pass two tongue-wagging women in Oxford Street and one of them is saying: “My dear, he did! And before everybody!” Did what? Or in a ’bus: “From the top to the bottom, and then up and along.” Knitting or diving? Once at a concert, during Tschaikovski’s Pathetic Symphony, he had bent forward to learn musical secrets from a couple of white-haired professors in the row ahead of him, and had found them comparing notes as to the best way to cook onions....

Now, through the crack of the slightly-open bedroom door, came the voices of his parents.

“Wonder if that’s Harold?”

“Would you hold your head a little higher, dear?”

“Well, I am. It’s a bit thoughtless of him getting here so early.”

“No, no, not as high as that!”

“Eh? I hope one of us is ready.”

“Well, if not, he’ll just have to wait. Now, then, look at yourself. Is that any better?”

“We don’t want him to wait! He’s—yes, much better. But, you know, something’s still wrong with the wig. Doesn’t it hang down lower on one side than the other?”

“If it does, I expect it’s supposed to.” (The listener in the passage chuckled. Poor old mother!) “I like your buckles.” (The listener chuckled again. The subtle praise that turneth away wrath!)

“Eh? Do you? Yes, not bad. I suppose men did wear red heels in those days? Damn silly. Somebody ought to go down. Where’s Conrad?”

“Don’t worry, dear! It really won’t hurt Harold to wait two minutes.”

“He’s not going to wait! Call Conrad!”

“He mayn’t be dressed.”

“Then he ought to be dressed.” (“Why? He’s not,” reflected Conrad.) “Yes, damn it, it does hang lower! Anyway, you’d better find out. What about a patch? Did Charles II. wear a patch?”

Conrad retreated a few steps, then advanced again loudly. He was passing the bedroom door as his mother looked out.

“Go down, dear!” she whispered hoarsely. “We think that’s Harold!”

“Just on my way,” answered Conrad airily.

Something suddenly smote his soul, causing him to pause. Something about his mother. He wondered what it was. She wasn’t half ready herself. Of course that didn’t really matter, for although the ball started officially at ten it went on till five next morning, and to miss a dance or two was no catastrophe. Some people didn’t turn up till just before midnight. The only real urgency resided in one’s own impatience. Still ...

“You haven’t got very far with your own glad rags,” he commented, the hard gaiety momentarily departing from his voice.

She felt vaguely surprised, and vaguely pleased. It was rather nice, somehow, his saying that. She had not even commenced to put on her fancy costume, that of a china shepherdess with a long crook, although she was absent-mindedly holding the crook. The crook seemed to accentuate her deshabille, like a sword in the hand of a naked soldier. Mrs. Shannon was not naked, but her deshabille was so frank that Conrad found himself striving not to be worried by it. He was never really comfortable in the presence of too much bosom. It was not his own discomfort, however, but his mother’s, that concerned him now. She had given a hand to everybody during the hectic dressing period, but who had given her a hand?

“Mary!” came a shout from the bedroom. Charles II. was in difficulties again. “Snuff! What about snuff?”

Mrs. Shannon vanished back into the bedroom, and Conrad completed his interrupted journey to the hall below.

A rather massive man of thirty looked up as he came round the final bend of the staircase.

“Good God!” exclaimed the rather massive man, involuntarily. “What’s this? The Gold Standard?”

Harold Lankester had himself played for safety, and was unimpeachable, if somewhat heavy, as a Russian dancer.

“Please be a little more parliamentary in your language,” replied Conrad solemnly. “However, I’m glad you like it.”

“Thanks for the information,” smiled Lankester. “May I know what you are supposed to be?”

“You may not know. I don’t know myself. Someone will tell me. But this you can bet your seat on—your Westminster seat. When I return home in the small grey hours of to-morrow morning I shall have been either the success or the flop of the show. I’ve been sent down to talk to you. Bad luck, isn’t it? How’s the Prime Minister?”

“Very nicely, thank you.”

“Good! And where’s the next war going to break out?”

“Near East, I should say. Cheerful news for your father, anyway.”

Conrad frowned. War meant munitions, and munitions meant business, and business meant motor cars. Might even mean a motor car for himself, Conrad Shannon. A racer! But ... oh, well, the world was a mad hat, anyway.

Conrad decided to talk about the weather. Instead he found himself saying:

“Look here, you don’t mean it, do you?”

“What? War?” Lankester shrugged his shoulders. “Probably not. But who knows? War will go on till the world’s temperature cools—and till every man can contemplate his own extinction.”

Conrad stared at the speaker. This wasn’t exactly ballroom talk! But it fascinated him. People didn’t often trouble to talk to him seriously. Out of nowhere he shot the question:

“And till father’s munition factory goes bust?”

“No, munitions don’t make war any more than peace conferences stop ’em. It’s all a personal matter—and the moment you and I hear the drum, off we’ll pop to the recruiting office.” He laughed. “But meanwhile, Conrad, we are a Russian dancer and a golden cherub. Where’s Dorothy?”

“Still adoring herself in her mirror,” he answered, “but I admit she’s got a case.”

We have looked into two mirrors. A third gave back to its owner the face of Nell Gwynn framed in long, attractive ringlets. The ringlets fell almost to the gleaming shoulders, and the shoulders, hunched provocatively, escaped from a wide expanse of snowy lace.

Near by stood a man, watching. He was a very different proposition. His suit was practically a sheet of pearl buttons, and his coarse features needed no make-up to complete his conception of a coster king.

He had just arrived, and his small, narrow-set eyes, still smarting a little from the fog, were expressing definite approval.

“Like it?” inquired the woman, shifting her gaze from herself and regarding him through the mirror.

“Bloody all right,” he answered.

“It’s got to be,” she observed, “or I stand to lose——”

She stopped abruptly.

“Go on, finish it,” he urged. “ ’Ow much do yer stand to lose, Sally?”

“Just as much, Sam, as I hope to make,” she answered.

“And wot’s that?”

“My business!”

“Oh, is it?” retorted Sam. “Then wot’s my business?”

“To do what you’re told, and to ask no questions,” said Sally.

“Fer twenty quid,” murmured Sam contemplatively.

“And damn good pay,” declared Sally. “But for old times, Sam, I could have got plenty of others to do the job for half what I’m paying you!”

“Twenty quid,” repeated Sam. “And ’ow much does that leave yer? Yus, ’ow much is somebody else payin’ you?”

She did not answer. She was busy increasing the red of her lips.

“Muck!” commented Sam. “It on’y comes off and leaves a mark.”

“Sometimes it’s supposed to,” smiled Sally.

Sam drew a step closer. No doubt about it, she was a stunner! Pity she’d gone up in the world and left him behind. She was a bit different now from the old days when they’d started working together. He was divided between resentment and admiration.

“It’s a big risk fer twenty quid,” he remarked, as she laid down the lipstick. “S’pose I don’t think it’s enough?”

“Making a bit of a nuisance of yourself, aren’t you?” she responded.

“I said, s’pose I don’t think it’s enough?”

“Then you’ll have to go on thinking, Sam.”

“S’pose I do, and chuck the job.”

“You wouldn’t do that.”

“You’d be dished if I did!”

“Don’t you believe it!” But her heart stood still for a second. “I could get someone else.”

“Not now, you couldn’t.”

She rounded on him, and her bright eyes flashed angrily.

“I could, and I would!” she exclaimed. “And to-morrow morning you’d wake up twenty pounds short—cursing yourself! Don’t be a fool, boy! You’re on to a good thing, and you hold on to it before it slips!”

“Gawd, you’re a good looker!” muttered Sam. “Damn those toffs!”

The too-red lips curled deliberately. Sam discovered, to his secret mortification, that he was losing a little of his bravado. Her moving up in the world—that was what had done it. The same as him still, at heart, but working in higher circles.

“I wonder if I made a mistake,” she said, quietly.

“Wot mistake?” he grunted.

“Trying to hand on a bit of my luck to an old pal? And a real, substantial slice, too.”

“Well, Sally, we was pals once!”

“Am I forgetting it?”

“And I taught you some of your tricks. They was the fifty-fifty days. Now it’s more like twenty to fifty, I shouldn’t wunner!”

“So what are you going to do about it?” she inquired. “Quick, make up your mind.”

Sam thought. He closed his eyes especially to do so. Then he made up his mind.

“This is wot I’m goin’ to do about it, Sally,” he said. “I won’t stick you fer more than the twenty——”

“Good boy!”

“——but I’m goin’ to stick you fer something else.”

“Oh! Really?”

“Yus. Really!”

“Let’s hear, then.”

“You’re goin’ to ’ear, then! You’re comin’ back after the ball to this room—and I’m comin’ back with yer! See?”

She sat very still. The notion appalled her. Sam was only half-correct in thinking that she had not changed in her heart. Crooked she remained, for crookedness had been ingrained in her before she had had any time to think about it. Ethically, her sins were as great as Sam’s. But since she had escaped from the gutter which still held him she had acquired a certain fastidiousness, and physically her old pal was as repulsive to her now as once he had been attractive.

Yes, she had made a mistake. That rendered it all the more necessary not to make another. Controlling her repugnance, or the outward show of it—Sam could be ugly when he chose—she answered him.

“We’ll see.”

Sam shook his head.

“Not good enough,” he said. “I want a promise.”

“Even if I promised, would you believe me?”

“If a kiss went with it, I might,” he grinned.

He took another step towards her chair. For an instant Sally saw red. Driven to it, she could be as ugly as Sam, but she had more control—that was one reason why she had risen out of the gutter and he had not—and she continued to sit very still while the murderous colour came and went. Had she acted on her impulse to strike him, certain events at the Albert Hall a few hours later would have taken a very different course. When the instant had flown, she rose calmly from her dressing-table and advanced her lips towards his.

“You’re a bad lad, Sam,” she said, “but you’re going to be a good lad afterwards.”

He took his prize. It was not quite as satisfactory as he had hoped, for she pushed him away too soon, but it was enough to make him vow that he would secure bigger satisfaction later.

“Gawd, Sally, this is goin’ to be a cinch for you!” he muttered thickly. “In that get-up you’d make jelly of the King o’ Calcutta!”

“Let’s hope you’re right,” she responded, returning to her dressing-table and making up her lips again.

“ ’Oo are you s’posed to be?”

“Ever heard of Nell Gwynn?”

“Wot, that tart?” He laughed. “Well, you know something about ’er game, don’t yer?”

“How nicely put!”

“Oh, come off it! I expect that’s why you chose the dress? Sort of ’ome from ’ome!”

“If you want the truth,” she retorted, “I didn’t choose it, it was chosen for me.”

“ ’Oo chose it?”

“A little bird. Well, let’s be moving. Have you got your paraphernalia?”

“Me wot?”

“Sorry. I forgot you only knew words of one syllable. The things I asked you to bring?”

“Oh, them,” he replied, with a wink, and patted his bulging pockets. “But wot’s the ’urry? It’s a filthy night. Talk about pea soup! Let’s stay ’ere fer a bit.”

“I’ve got a job to do,” she reminded him.

“Well, so’ve I, ain’t I? But there’s seven hours to do it in.”

“I may need all that. Come on.”

“Not even a drink?” he grumbled.

She relented. A drink was not a bad idea. She went to a little cupboard, and his eyes brightened as they followed her. A drop of something was what he wanted, to settle a nasty uncomfortable feeling that was gaining on him about the job.

“Let’s ’ave a toast, Sally!” he cried, when she had brought the glasses.

“Right,” she agreed. “What’ll it be? The King?”

“ ’Allo, wot’s turned you patriotic all of a sudden?” he asked.

“Patriotic nothing!” she smiled. “The King I mean is Charles II.”

With meticulous care, but an odd lack of enthusiasm, Warwick Hilling sat before a cracked looking-glass—our fourth and final mirror—completing his admirable transformation.

He was an admitted master in the art of make-up. He was, in fact, considerably better at making-up than he was at acting, which may have explained why he had spent most of his career abroad giving protean performances before All the Crowned Heads of the World. Before no Crowned Head, however, had he exhibited more skill than he was exhibiting at this moment, and his resemblance to the newspaper photograph, propped up against the mirror, on which he was modelling his features offered no possible scope for criticism.

The photograph had appeared that morning in a popular illustrated journal over the words, “Mr. Warwick Hilling, the Protean Actor, in the striking Balkan costume and make-up he will wear at the Chelsea Arts Ball to-night.” But the photograph was not of Mr. Warwick Hilling. It had not even been sent to the illustrated journal by Mr. Warwick Hilling, or by his agent, or by anybody possessing his authority. It must have been sent, Hilling had decided, by the same mysterious hand that two days previously had sent him his instructions, accompanied by twenty-five one-pound notes and the promise of another twenty-five “to be paid, provided the said instructions are carried out, before ten p.m. on the evening of December 31st, on completion of our business.”

An actor whose chief attribute is his make-up, and who in these democratic days is mainly dependent on Crowned Heads for his audience, is liable to reach a time of life when twenty-five one-pound notes form a serious temptation. Warwick Hilling had reached that time. Penury had not destroyed his good looks and distinguished bearing. Everything about him—even about the shiny suit now laid carefully aside on the plain, neat bed—proclaimed that once he had been successful, and that he was still a gentleman. But his success was now a fading memory, and even to keep a memory alive, one needs a minimum of warmth and food and creature-comfort.

So Hilling had kept the notes. There was indeed no address to which they could have been returned. And when in response to a mysterious telephone call he had confirmed his acceptance, he had faithfully attended to the instructions.

The instructions were odd, but simple. He was to make it known that he was going to the Chelsea Arts Ball. He was to buy the ticket personally and he was to talk freely and loudly about it, declaring that he would wear the costume of one of the Crowned Heads before whom he had performed. In order to complete the illusion he would even remain silent throughout the evening, lest his accent should mar the effect; and although he could not recall having granted an interview to any reporter, his intention was duly published in the press.

The costume itself had turned up, anonymously, that morning. The parcel containing it, together with the original of his alleged newspaper photograph, appeared with his breakfast-tray. And in the parcel was a further note, bearing further instructions: “The writer has had occasion to learn of your skill at face-transformation and impersonation, and is therefore confident that you will have no difficulty in copying the features of the picture you will find, with your name under it, in to-day’s daily press. In case of accidents, however, an original copy of the photograph is included herewith. Also in case of accidents, you are requested to burn this letter as soon as you have read it, and to continue to conduct the whole matter with the utmost secrecy and discretion. At 9 p.m. you will be ready, dressed and transformed. Between that hour and 10 p.m. you will be visited, and you will receive the final half of your fee. Till then!”

So here Warwick Hilling sat, as the clock ticked away anxious minutes on the last day of the year, in the perfect guise of a Balkan Prince, awaiting the next step with outward calm but inward trepidation.

“Of course, all this is splendid publicity for me,” he reflected, endeavouring in these moments of trying tension to keep his mind busy and cheerful, “and it may even put me back on the map.” Only in his private thoughts did he admit that he was no longer on the map. “If I can keep near the press photographers I might get my photograph in the papers a second time—yes, genuinely, the second time—and then that damned agent may begin to take an interest in me again. Even the No. 2 towns.... And meanwhile, whatever happens,” he added, forcing his mind away from the rather depressing contemplation of the No. 2 towns, “I have £17 6s. 3d. in my pocket, with another £25—plus an excellent supper—to come!”

He had fasted religiously since morning in the prospect of this excellent supper to come. Fasting in these lean days was an art in which he was well practised.

“Yes, but what, in the name of the Immortal Bard, is it all about?” he exclaimed, suddenly resuming his cogitations after a period of mental blankness. “Really—this seems incredible!”

Outside his window curled the cloak of fog. Fog was everywhere, physically and mentally. All at once he shivered. He imagined he heard somebody knocking on the door. He became annoyed with himself. “Though, true,” he reflected, “all real artists have nerves.” Then he jumped up from his chair. Somebody was knocking!

He jerked his head round quickly. The action was peculiarly inappropriate to his dignified rôle. Yet perhaps a Balkan Prince could be swift as well as imposing, with a heart that beat tumultuously beneath a passive exterior? A voice sounded from the landing. His landlady’s voice. Until two days ago her voice had rankled, but it had taken a turn for the better since she had received somewhat unexpectedly her rent.

“The chauffeur, sir,” she called. “Your car’s here.”

Chauffeur? Car?

Then the door opened, and the chauffeur entered. He was a short man, almost squat, and the landlady behind him could easily feast her eyes over the top of his head at the splendid vision of Mr. Hilling. But only for a moment was the vision permitted to her inferior eyes. The chauffeur abruptly closed the door, shutting her out.

For a few moments the two men regarded each other in silence, while the disgruntled landlady, cheated of a full-length memory, shuffled downstairs. The chauffeur was composed. Hilling merely appeared so. A queer chill had entered the room with the chauffeur, a chill that was more disconcerting than the fog. Fog was British ...

The chauffeur’s opening words, however, were satisfactory.

“Good! So! Good!” he said.

He spoke with an accent, but with the assurance of one for whom language had no terrors.

“I am glad you approve,” answered Hilling, rather stiffly. “You are—er—driving me to the Hall?”

“In a minute I drive—to the Hall, yes,” nodded the chauffeur, his bright, very live eyes still boring. Hilling noticed the little pause that broke up the statement. “Yes, in a minute. But, first, some questions. All is done as you are instructed?”

“You observe,” retorted Hilling, holding out his arms impressively. He did not quite like that word “instructed.” It savoured too much of a master speaking to a servant, and the only master Hilling acknowledged, as he had boasted on countless occasions, was his art.

“Good, so!” smiled the little chauffeur. “I observe! But I observe only that which I see. All has been done with discretion?”

“Naturally, sir!”

“Good, naturally. You have said only what was to be said? No more? You burn the letter?” The chauffeur waited till Hilling nodded. “And you have bought the ticket for the ball, good, naturally?”

“I understood that was a part of the contract.”

“To mean that you have bought it, that is so?”

“I have bought it.”

“Show me, pray.”

Hilling waved towards the mantelpiece on which the ticket reigned among lesser objects.

“Ah!” murmured the chauffeur, and speeding to the mantelpiece he took the ticket and pocketed it.

Hilling frowned.

“I shall need the ticket, to get in,” he reminded his visitor.

“But if you do not get in, you do not need the ticket,” answered the chauffeur briskly.

“I beg your pardon?” exclaimed Hilling, astonished.

“I explain,” replied the chauffeur. “But, no, first I show you the good faith. That is the English way, good, so?” He produced a bundle of notes as he spoke and laid them on the table. “You expect twenty-five. Observe there are twenty-six one-pound and one ten-shilling, and now I add a one-shilling piece and a sixpence piece.” He did so. “So we have the twenty-five we arrange, with also the cost of the ticket, good, so?” He smiled amiably. “There is no charge for the costume.”

“I—I am afraid, sir, I do not understand you,” murmured Hilling, restraining an impulse to snatch the notes lest they, like the ticket, should vanish. “Do I not go to the ball?”

“No. I explain,” repeated the chauffeur, still smiling amiably. “It is so. You go down the stairs with me to the car. So many stairs! They make one to puff! But no matter. You have order the car, make remember of that. In the hall is the landlady of the house. Oh, yes, I know the English landlady. She is—you have a strange word for it—ah, agog. She is agog. She sees us get in. Good, so! You in front of me, make note. But as you open the door I step back and tread on her toe, and while she cries ‘Ah!’ you are in the car, and the door is quick closed, so she does not see another in the car because I tread on to her toe and it is dark and he sit well back and it is a fog. But, pah!” He waved his little fat hands contemptuously. “We do not need your fog. We arrange it all, what is your word, ah, in the water-tight. Then, voilà, off we go!”

“Voilà? You are French?” asked Hilling, catching at straws.

The chauffeur laughed amusedly. “No! Voilà, it is all the world over. Japan, even.”

“Where do we go off to?” inquired Hilling, fighting against a sensation that he was in a dream, and not necessarily a good dream.

“To your Albert Hall,” returned the chauffeur. “Me, I drive there.”

“But I understood you to say——”

“That you do not go to the ball? So! You do not go to the ball. It is the other man who will go to the ball, the other man who sit well back, but who get out at your Albert Hall, yes, the other man so like you, and you so like him, eh? The brain, it clears?”

“I—see,” muttered Hilling slowly. “Yes—I see. The man whose photograph——”

“Was in the papers. I send it. And the interview. I send it. I arrange it. For me, the work. For you——” He snapped his fingers towards the notes.

“And now come, it is the time.”

But Hilling paused. His head was spinning. There was something likeable about the chauffeur, but the sensation that the dream was not a good dream increased each moment. It might be risky to inquire further; inquiry might eliminate the chauffeur’s likeable quality, and substitute one less appealing. Those bright, live eyes might not be pleasant to encounter in another mood. Still, would the conscience of Warwick Hilling remain passive if its owner funked the risk? Hilling was a bad actor, but he was not a bad man, and the two, despite the critics, can be separate.

“One moment, sir,” said Hilling, as his visitor made for the door.

“There is no moment,” answered the chauffeur, without stopping.

“I insist!”

“So? Insist?” Now the chauffeur stopped, and for an instant anger dawned in his eyes. But he drove the anger away with a quick shrug, and waited.

Three questions raced round Hilling’s mind. Two were easy to ask, the third was not. He began with the simplest and most obvious.

“What happens to me, when the other man gets out of the car at the Albert Hall?”

“We drive away,” replied the chauffeur simply. “And—presently—I drive you back.” He added, reassuringly, “I look after you. You are all right.”

It was not a very satisfactory response, but Hilling passed on to the next.

“How did you come to select me for this—business?” was the second question.

“You ask much!”

“In another sense, sir, I could quote that back.”

It pleased Hilling to find that he was keeping up his end with fair credit. Occasionally, on the stage, he had been forced to deal with unruly members of second-rate audiences (for all his audiences were not composed of Crowned Heads) who did not understand serious Art, and his somewhat massive repartee rarely failed.

“Well, perhaps it hurts nothing that you know,” said the chauffeur. “You have performed in Europe? Before, as you say in the announcement, the Crowned Heads, so? In one place, then, you were remembered. And when I am here, in your country, I am here to keep the eyes open. So I know of your great talent, Mr. Hilling, and I know also—if you pardon me—of your—difficulties?” He glanced expressively round the shabby room. “And now I hope there is no more question?”

“Just one, I am afraid, sir.”

“Then, quick!”

“It is more quickly asked than answered, perhaps. If I am to know little, this I must know. I have my code, and my pride. Yes, sir, even though I also have, as you have just remarked, my difficulties. This—this rôle of mine—is it a rôle I shall play with—honour?”

The rather theatrical dignity with which this speech was delivered had a surprising effect upon the little chauffeur. At the words “code” and “pride” a new light sprang into his eye, and he stiffened slightly. Then he stood silent for several seconds, considering.

“Sir,” he said at last, in a tone hardly less theatrical than Hilling’s, “let the mind be at peace. The world, it is strange. We poor people, what do we know? In God only lies all knowledge. But the part you play is honourable!” He thumped his chest tremendously. “Good, so?”

He held out his hand. Hilling took it, satisfied. But he descended the stairs with his head in a whirl.