After dinner, at a restaurant whose proprietor had exuberantly decided to celebrate the cessation of hostilities by trebling prices all round—a dinner at which purely private and domestic plans were raptly discussed amid an atmosphere of riotous publicity—they went to a revue.
It was not the usual French war-time revue for Anglo-Saxon consumption—with syncopated melodies and Cockney chorus-girls, imperfectly disguised as Parisiennes. It was a revue intime, intended for Paris alone, and was full of delicate fancies, and esoteric jokes, and mysterious topical allusions. Boone and Frances understood possibly one third of the dialogue and one in a hundred of the allusions. But they enjoyed the revue exceedingly. In their present frame of mind they would have enjoyed a Greenwich Village mystery-play, or Hamlet without cuts.
The audience was almost exclusively Parisian—officers in uniform; fair women wearing their jewels for the first time in months; stout, bald, bearded citizens of the bourgeoisie; here and there a British uniform. But so far as our own particular pair of truants could see, they were the only Americans present.
From the boulevard outside came the muffled tramp of feet; shouts of triumph; coy feminine shrieks; the honking of motor-horns; the clink of cow-bells—all suggestive of New Year’s Eve on Broadway. But inside the theatre the revue flowed smoothly on. No one on the stage made any allusion to the matter which was bursting all hearts. Not that there was no tension, both on the stage and in the auditorium. In theatre-land it is an understood thing that upon occasions of public rejoicing the actors and the play take second place, while the audience, for one night only, steps into the spot-light and plays “lead.” For instance, at this moment, not many blocks away, upon the stage of the Folies Bergères a self-appointed band of khaki-clad enthusiasts were assisting a hysterical corps de ballet in the execution of its duty.
But the revue intime pursued its intimate course. The piece was too delicately planned and executed to admit of unauthorized “gags” or inartistic interpolations. The audience, being Parisian, realized this, and waited. A time would come. Meanwhile, they leaned back in their seats, fanned themselves, and laughed at the jokes. But the fans moved very rapidly, and the laughs sounded rather breathless—rather like sobs.
Then, suddenly, unexpectedly, at the end of the second act, came the cracking-point.
The scene was laid in a restaurant. (Not that that mattered; a sewing-circle would have served equally well.) The glittering little company were already gathered upon the stage for the finale. They were headed by the leading lady—young, blonde, lovely; a shimmering vision in silver—prepared to burst into song. The orchestra gave her a preliminary chord; she opened her carmine lips. And then, to her entered from the wings, apparently without cue or authorization, the principal comedian, in the rôle of the head waiter of the restaurant—preposterous weeping whiskers and all.
He walked to the footlights, turned to the audience, and announced, quite simply:—
“L’Armistice est signée!”
The thing came with such consummate unexpectedness—the thing they had been expecting all evening—that for a moment no one stirred. Then, with a rush, the audience were on their feet; so were the orchestra. One long-drawn, triumphant electrifying chord sprang—apparently of its own volition—from their instruments, and a tremor ran through the theatre. The girl in silver stepped forward, and broke into the Marseillaise, with tears raining down her face.…