The waiter emitted an explosive Bon and threaded his way through the labyrinth of chairs to a high wooden counter, where a fat man, with his shirt-sleeves rolled back to his elbow, stood sentinel over rows of coloured bottles. The light shone on green and red liqueurs, on pale amber and dark brown bottles placed on glass shelves against a looking-glass background, that reflected the bullet shape of the patron's close-cropped head.
Meanwhile the pianist had finished his interlude, and there was a burst of applause as a woman appeared on the stage. She wore an amazing hat of orange and white silk, in which feathers were the most insistent feature. There was something extraordinarily bold and flaunting in her presence. Her neck and shoulders and bosom were bare to the low cut of her bodice, and the cruel light showed the powder that she had scattered over her throat and shoulders to make them white and enticing; it showed the red paint on the lips and the rouge on the cheeks, and the black on her eyelashes and eyebrows. The crude touches of obvious artifice destroyed her beauty. Her waist was compressed into a painful smallness, and her skirt was flounced and reached only to the knees.
She sang a song that had something to do with a soldier's life. "Tell me, soldier," she sang, "what do you think of in battle? Do you think of the glory of the Fatherland and the splendour of dying for France?" And the soldier answers: "I think only of a farm in Avignon, and a maiden whose lips I used to kiss on the old bridge; I think only of my old mother and how she will embrace me when I come home."
When she sang the simple song, though her voice was false, and her gestures stereotyped, the rouge and the powder and the paint were forgotten for a moment. She was one of those unconscious artists belonging to a people who have art woven into the warp and woof of their daily life.
The audience took up the chorus. She nodded to them with an audacious smile. The pianist, with his cigarette stub hanging from his lips, under cover of the volume of voices, forsook the treble for a moment, and reached out with his hand for a glass of beer that rested above the piano.
It was the strange, fumbling motion of his hand that caught Humphrey's eye, trained to observe such details. He looked closer, and saw that the pianist's eyes were closed, and the lashes were withered where they met the cheek. He was blind; he never saw the faces and figures of the women who sang, he only heard the voices; he could see nothing that was harsh and cruel. And the picture of the blind pianist at the side of the garish stage, improvising little runs and trills and spinning a web of melody night after night, stirred Humphrey with an odd emotion.
There was a pause. The door opened and closed as people came and went. Humphrey sipped at the brandy; the fiery taste of it made his palate and throat smart. The price of the entertainment was one franc, including a drink.
Suddenly the pianist struck up a well-known air. A slim girl, in the costume of the district, slouched on to the stage, her hands thrust into the pockets of her apron. Her hair was bundled together in careless heaps of yellow, her eyes were pale blue and almost almond-shaped, her features finely moulded, with a queer distinction of their own. And when she took one hand out of her apron pocket, he saw that the fingers were long and exquisitely tapered, and tipped with pink, beautiful nails that shone in the light. Those finger-nails betrayed her. They were not in keeping with the part.
She started singing, walking the small stage with a swaying motion of her body; her young form was lithe and graceful; her movements tigrine. And as she sang her lilting chorus, her pale eyes gazed from their narrow slits at Humphrey, not boldly or coquettishly, but with an indeterminate appeal, as though she felt ashamed of her song.
"Quand je danse avec mon grand frisé