Harlequinade | Page 9

love comes, waddling most amazingly and wrapped in the tablecloth. We are sure it's Clown, and who wouldn't be? But the Man of the World--for a real Man of the World--is strangely deceived. He kneels to her adoringly; he rises and would embrace her passionately.
ALICE. "Love of my life," he says. "Let us away!"
[Harlequin waves his wand. The tablecloth has gone. It is Clown indeed, clownish and undoubted.
Yes, it's Clown, it's Clown, it's Clown! And Clown says:--"Whither away, fair sir?" And the Man of the World just withers.
[He grinds his teeth, does the Man of the World (if there is anything in the orchestra that will do it). And he goes, defeated. "Exit, baffled, the Man of the World."
Alice is breathless.
Harlequin and Gelsomino are alone now, and Harlequin wraps Gelsomino, all trembling as he is, in the cloak which the Man of the World dropped there. They wait. Then comes poor Columbine creeping in, timid and ashamed. She half-dreads from the stern cloaked figure. She turns to her home to kiss her hand to it. But Harlequin with his wand lures her forward. And she goes, she goes. Then the wand is waved again, and the cloak is off. It is her husband; and she shrinks, this time in terror. He stands like a stone. She waits for a blow--for a curse. But suddenly he kneels among the petals of the forgotten rose. Is it he begging forgiveness of her? She has no thought for that; only that she always loved him. She bends to him, he takes her hands. He rises and she lifts her face. Their lips join.
Alice and Uncle Edward draw the curtains.
There! That's how they get back among the gods.
* * * * *
We don't travel to the next Scene too quickly. Alice has gone back to her little chair, and there she sits silent, her chin cupped in her hand, her eyes dreamy. Uncle Edward clears his throat noisily several times. Then he puts on his spectacles and looks at her.
UNCLE EDWARD. Wool-gathering?
ALICE. I love a love story. And she's such a darling, and always, all through the ages, all through what Clown calls the longest weekend on record, she falls in love and falls in love ...and falls in love.
UNCLE EDWARD. Come, now, it's only storytelling. Don't let it get on your mind. Here, I want to speak to you.
[Alice most obediently goes over to him, and he whispers to her.
ALICE. [By no means in a whisper.] But perhaps George is busy with the next scene.
UNCLE EDWARD. Never you mind.
[Away she goes and through the curtains, leaving Uncle Edward to fill his pipe. But she's back almost at once and full of smiles.
UNCLE EDWARD. [Anxiously.] Well, what did he say?
ALICE. He said:--"I was thinking of having one myself, Miss Whistler."
[And there follows her through the curtains a hand and arm holding a foaming pint of beer, which she takes across to her Uncle. The beer goes the way of all beer.
UNCLE EDWARD. [After wiping his mouth, most politely, with the cheerfullest looking handkerchief you ever saw.] On the warm side. Go on with your bit.
[Alice takes her talking place again, feet together, hands behind her. Then a long breath.
ALICE. So the years went by. And they acted in Italy, and they acted in France, and they acted in England. Which is where we've got to now, in about seventeen hundred and something. All sorts of odd people got added to the company, and dropped out again on the journeys. In France they found Pierrot. But, being a Frenchman, he hated travelling; so they left him there. Nobody knows who Pierrot was ... at least I don't.
UNCLE EDWARD. My dear, if we start on what we don't know, we'll be here all night ... and the next.
ALICE. I'll skip lots then ... all about Mr. Rich and the great Harlequins. People liked them better than Garrick! And now we come to the next story. It's England, and it's London. It's about Columbine running away. It must always be about that. The hero runs away with her. Or, strictly speaking, p'raps this time it's her that runs away with him.
UNCLE EDWARD. Grammar.
ALICE. Her ... or she that runs away with he ... or him! She's a country girl come to be a chambermaid in London. A singing chambermaid, she is; they had them in the old plays, and it must have brightened the hotels lots. And she's called Richardson for short. Harlequin's a valet in the same house. And why they're servants now instead of actors is because it was about this time people began to think that Art and Religion and Love were things you could just ring the bell for, and up they would come and wait on you. So this is another sort