The tables were being cleared from the stage, and the fringe of gentlemen who remained hungry and thirsty was retiring slowly and with palpable reluctance toward the wings. Some sad-faced musicians emerged wearily from an unsuspected cave beneath the footlights, and exhibited their violins and flutes to the general gaze with an air of profound dejection. Their fiddle strings began to whine at one another, in a perfunctory and bad-tempered groping about for something they were expected to have in common. A stout man on the stage vigorously superintended the removal of the last table, and warned off with a comprehensive gesture the lingering remnant of unsated raveners; then, turning, he lifted his hand. On the instant, some score and more of the young ladies in white and pale pinks and blues and lavenders rose from their front stalls, and moved toward the stage door at the left. They pressed forward like a flock of sheep—and with faces as listlessly vacant as any pasture could afford. Christian observed their mechanical exit with a curling lip.
“If these are the renowned beauties, whose fascinations turn the heads of all the young men about town,” he confided to his companion, “then it says extremely little for the quality of what is inside those heads.”
“Yes, isn’t it extraordinary!” she mused at him, eyeing the bevy of celebrities with a ruminating glance. “This must be somewhere near the sixth or seventh lot of ’em that even I’ve seen passing through the turnstile, as you might say. Where do they all come from?—and good heavens! where do they all go to? It’s a procession that never stops, you know. You’d think there was a policeman, keeping it moving. You have these girls here—well, they’re the queens, just for the minute. They own the earth. Nothing in the world is too good for them. Very well: just behind them are some other girls, a few years younger. Goodness knows where they were to-night—in the back ranks of the ballets, perhaps, or doing their little turn at the Paragon or the Canterbury, or doing nothing at all—nothing but keeping their toes pointed in this direction. And they are treading close on the heels of these queens you see here; and behind them are girls of sixteen or so, and behind them the little chits of ten and twelve—and they’re all pushing along—and in time each lot gets in front, out under the limelight, and has its little year on the throne—and then gets shoved off to make room for the next. You might have seen two-thirds of these men here ten years ago. But not the women. Oh, no! Only here and there one—an old stager like Polly Wiltshire—or a middle-aged stager like myself. But we’re merely salt to the porridge.”
“But do you not wish to dance?” he asked her. The orchestra had begun a waltz, and the young ladies from the front stalls, each now attached to a stiffly gyrating male figure, were circling about on the stage, with a floating, wave-like swing of their full skirts which revealed to those below in the stalls rhythmic glimpses of whisking feet and trim black ankles.
“I will dance with you with pleasure,” she replied, promptly.
“Unfortunately”—he began with confusion—“it is ridiculous of me, but I never learned.”
“Oh, then, we will sit here and talk,” she insisted. “I truly don’t want to dance. It’s ever so much cooler and more comfortable here. One has to come to these things, you know—you have to show yourself or you’re like the man who fell out of the balloon—simply not in it. But they’re all alike—all deadly stupid unless you’re young and want to kick your legs about—or unless you find some one you’re particularly glad to see.”
Christian did not seek to evade the implication of the genial glance with which she pointed this last remark. “Yes, it is good of you to stay here with me,” he declared. “Except you and my friend who brought me here—I thought I saw him dancing a moment ago—I don’t know a soul. I have been saying to-day,” he continued, settling down in his seat toward her, “that I make friends badly—I remain here in England almost a stranger.”
“Why, I thought you went everywhere. I know I’m forever seeing your name in the ‘Morning Post.’ You spell it Tower, I notice.”
“Oh, yes, I have been going everywhere—but going as one goes alone through a gallery of pictures. I do not bring out any friends with me.”