The Square Peg or The Gun Fella полностью

He was off to the battlefield, but the Trojan king came out bleeding before he reached the door. He was the tall drunken man who had called for Tomás. Blood was running down his cheek from scratches, and Tzigajzwsky followed up her foe with a volley of old dancing shoes.

“Say now, Birdie,” Mike began, “you mustn’t mind that big mutt.”

He drew her away into the room. Sounds of storm followed, while the audience waited. Presently Mike appeared, to say that it was unfortunately not possible to perform Les Circasses; they would substitute for it, with their permission, the famous Divertissements, which the audience would find described on the back pages of their programmes. He did not say so, but there was a pretty scene raging at the back at that moment. However, he was used to raging scenes, and having been in the ring could deal with most that came his way.

The curtain rose upon Marianela in her famous Chilian success of La Cachuca, with big black, languishing eyes and a pair of castanets; her genius was much more for this kind of dance, than for any other. She had a real success, and was recalled. Frampton noted the admiration of the lad at the door. He heard him say:

“Those are the sort of girls that stick a knife into a chap.”

Sorya came fourth upon the list, with what was called a Russian Moon Dance. As she was less made up for this than in the dance before, her likeness to Margaret was more startling.

Soon, the performance ended with the playing of God Save the King. He went out to the hall. The rain was falling heavily now, as though it would do nothing else till dawn. He stood staring out into it, while folk put on their coats and pushed past him.

Frampton’s big car drove up with Mrs. Haulover. After a very few minutes, one by one, the five dancers appeared. Mike introduced them: Miss Aranowski, a tall, very strange-looking lady, with pale eyes and a vehement soul; Miss Zapritska, still stormy from some trouble of the dressing-rooms, with a twitching nostril above some suggestions of moustache. Third was Miss Sorya. As she came forward into the light, Frampton saw Mrs. Haulover start; he knew at once that the reason for his inviting them was plain to her. She spoke English; she greeted Mrs. Haulover, and Frampton with a few words of thanks and then moved aside, to make room for Godelof, tall, handsome, with red-gold hair of great beauty, and Marianela, a little, wiry, lean, quick, brown-faced woman with decisive movements. Frampton packed them into the car and spread the rugs about them. Then the car drew away, with Zapritska lighting a cigarette.

He watched the car out of sight; then bought tickets for Mrs. Haulover and some of the household for the night’s performance.

“You’ve done a good deed, Sorr,” Mike said, “taking them girls in. It’s no life for a girl at all. Men’s different, but a girl likes a home to go to. Even I gets sick of these one-night stands, year in, year out.”

Frampton took his own car, and offered Mike a lift to his garage; but Mike had something to say to the boys who were setting the stage for the evening show.

When he reached home, he found the Godelof sitting by the blaze of the fire, which made her red-gold hair shine at its best. Aranowski joined them; she slid her neat, long foot along the floor and said that that was the place for a dance, not that sale hall in the town.

“Dance, if you like,” he said. “But I have a little old theatre here. To-morrow you could dance in it with much greater effect, if you’d like to.”

“A theatre? Here?” she cried.

Zapritska joined them at this instant.

“You ’ave a theatre here?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, “but it hasn’t been used for some century or so, except as a dog-kennel.”

“Perhaps,” Godelof said, with meaning, “perhaps we could dance the Circasses there, to-morrow; not be put out by some fracas of the Halles, no.”

The Zapritska would have replied to this in the Goneril manner, but Sorya and Marianela came in together at this instant, and Marianela caught sight of Tenor Cobb’s big painting.

“Ha,” she cried, “you ’ave a Cobb?”

“So you like Cobb?” he said.

“I adore Cobb,” Marianela said. “That is well touched, that one. I ’ave sit to Cobb for the ’and. I ’ave the good ’and.”

She held it out; she spoke the humble truth; she had a very good hand.

“And do you paint?” he asked.

“I cannot paint, alas. I am vagabonde.”

“A very good thing to be,” he said.

“It’s like Texas,” Sorya said, “fine for men and dogs, but hell on women and oxen.”

He had not heard this before and laughed at it.

“Come along now and eat and drink,” he said. “You’ve not too much time, since you have to get back and make up for to-night.”

Mrs. Haulover was a good hostess.