At each recurrence of the refrain the four negroes of the orchestra, or at least the three of them who played with their hands alone—for the saxophonist always blew at this point with a redoubled sweetness, enriching the passage with a warbling contrapuntal soliloquy that fairly wrung the entrails and transported the pierced heart—broke into melancholy and drawling song:
“What’s he to Hecuba?
Nothing at all.
That’s why there’ll be no wedding on Wednesday week,
Way down in old Bengal.”
“What unspeakable sadness,” said Gumbril, as he stepped, stepped through the intricacies of the trot. “Eternal passion, eternal pain. Les chants désesperés sont les chants les plus beaux, Et j’en sais d’immortels qui sont de purs sanglots. Rum tiddle-um-tum, pom-pom. Amen. What’s he to Hecuba? Nothing at all. Nothing, mark you. Nothing, nothing.”
“Nothing,” repeated Mrs. Viveash. “I know all about that.” She sighed.
“I am nothing to you,” said Gumbril, gliding with skill between the wall and the Charybdis of a couple dangerously experimenting with a new step. “You are nothing to me. Thank God. And yet here we are, two bodies with but a single thought, a beast with two backs, a perfectly united centaur trotting, trotting.” They trotted.
“What’s he to Hecuba?” The grinning blackamoors repeated the question, reiterated the answer on a tone of frightful unhappiness. The saxophone warbled on the verge of anguish. The couples revolved, marked time, stepped and stepped with an habitual precision, as though performing some ancient and profoundly significant rite. Some were in fancy dress, for this was a gala night at the cabaret. Young women disguised as callipygous Florentine pages, blue-breeched Gondoliers, black-breeched Toreadors circulated, moon-like, round the hall, clasped sometimes in the arms of Arabs, or white clowns, or more often of untravestied partners. The faces reflected in the mirrors were the sort of faces one feels one ought to know by sight; the cabaret was ‘Artistic.’
“What’s he to Hecuba?”