The Square Peg or The Gun Fella полностью

“Why not have them all out here and exercise in the theatre or in the court outside?” he suggested. “I can telephone and arrange it. You have a transport ’bus, and I could manage to bring some here; and I can give the party some tea later. Why not?”

Sorya could see no reason why not. It would be a pleasure to them all. As they walked back to the house, she said:

“I went to look at my cousin’s portraits. I left your photographs of her on your table there.”

“Thank you,” he said. “For the moment we won’t speak of that. You will understand that I had to show you.”

He arranged for the company to come that afternoon to practise in the theatre. It chanced that the weather improved steadily as the day progressed. At two o’clock, the wind had died, and a hot autumn sun was shining, so that many people from Stubbington drove out to Stubbington Hill, behind Mullples, parked their cars, and came to the edge to see the view. It was at its best on a sunny autumn afternoon, when some trees were bare, and the others in different colours, when the autumn ploughing had turned up red, brown and yellow fields, and the green crops of roots had not been taken. In parts of this expanse flood water was gleaming. The view from Mullples edge stretched away and away. Many who loved the view loved to come a little forward, so as to see Mullples Lake and the line of the severe roof ridge.

Among those who came forward, as it chanced, on this Sunday afternoon, were Mrs. Method-Methodde and her friends, the Morral-Galles. They had focussed their glasses on the blue smears in the distance, to see whether they could distinguish Burnt Top from Bildon, when they became aware of a bus near the court of Mullples, a yellow, rather battered bus, which had an air of knowing a thing or two. In the court-yard, a company of men and women appeared.

“Who can these be?” Mrs. Method-Methodde asked.

To the company came others, to wit the gun-man and his man, bearing what they could not identify upon a wheelbarrow. The thing was taken from the barrow. It was a gramophone. Distant as it was, a faint strain or two came to them from it, and the company began to dance.

“I’ve seen that thing,” Mr. Morral-Galle said. “It’s the Circasses; quite a well-known ballet.”

“Circasses?” Mrs. Method-Methodde cried. “But those must be the Circassians who were at the Pitte Rooms. I wouldn’t let my maids go. They looked a dreadful set. I saw two of them in the street. And Mr. Mansell has them out to dance on a Sunday.”

Shocking as the sight was, she watched it. There they were, in the open air, dancing themselves to damnation, while preaching red revolution and doubtless practising free love. And on a Sunday, too. And the worst of it was that the earth didn’t open to swallow them. They danced for a long time, and then all trooped away to the house.

“So,” she concluded, “he is giving them tea; those people. Really, to bring those people to Mullples, which was once a monastery, is a little too much. They had a dreadful poster in Stubbington which gave a lot of offence.”

However, it was a new sin of the gunman’s, and as such a good topic for talk.

As he watched the dancers, on his stage, Frampton thought:

“Why should they not dance a ballet here next Spring? Cobb longs to design for the ballet; the young poet whom I met longs to invent for it, and the musician Harold spoke of, whose work I so much liked, has all sorts of schemes. Why should they not get busy and make something for the Sorya and the others to dance here? It is true, there is no audience; but I shall have some people on the Waste then, and I’ll get my main audience down from London. I’ll make it a big thing. It is true, I know nothing of dance-writing, and know no one who does. But I’ll get the best chap there is, when I’ve the fable and the music. And by Christmas, I myself will have learned all that a layman can learn of the art. These swine tried to stamp on Margaret, when they drew Spirr. They tried to stamp on Sorya, not coming to her dance yesterday. My Golly, they shall long to come to her dance here and not be asked. That’ll make ’em squirm. These people will be touring England till after Christmas, and then go to the South of France for a short season. After that, I’ll get them for my thing, or the best of them. I’ll make this Sorya famous here, and this place famous, too, as the home of a new ballet.”

Instantly, his mind seized on this new way of angering his neighbours. He was not one to do a thing by halves. As the dancers practised before him, a part of his shrewd brain went into the probable costs of a season of ballet there, while in another part came visions of a matchless décor by Cobb, and Sorya floating in upon it, sur les pointes; he would make it the loveliest thing.