One of the least unsuccessful costume-balls the city has ever seen came off just before Christmas, in the year we are describing. Willie van Troyen was there as Paris, with another Helen, this being a delicate joke on the part of the woman whose rule was to end next week. As she accurately pointed out, the right Helen was, after all, the wrong love.
Only Gerard’s deep mourning had prevented his presence. Somebody had suggested, behind his back, that he might go as a Mute. The gay band he lived among agreed unanimously that “it was high time that Gerard got over his parent’s demise.” He was not a success in the rôle of the impecunious orphan.
Willie van Troyen on this festal occasion was drunk, and from his place in a stage-box, between two sirens, he was roaring with laughter at the antics of a goose in the pit. The whole floor of the small theatre had been cleared for perambulation, while those who meant dancing could retire to the stage. Most of the masks, however, preferred to walk about and make believe they were funny, in a half-annoyed jostle of ungracious familiarity, under the critical contemplation of the humbler amphitheatre side-tables, and of the champagne-sodden boxes up above. Every now and then some ambitious buffoon, excited by the continuous spur of the music, would suddenly leap at facile applause. There would be a sweep of the crowd in his direction and an outburst of meaningless laughter, every one exclaiming that the joke was good, while thinking it rather tame.
But even the numerous laughers who were only pretending to amuse themselves agreed in recognizing the very real drollery of the Goose. He—it was evidently a masculine goose, as distinguished from a gander—he trotted about in the stupidest manner, a great yellow-beaked ball of white and black feathers with unreasonably protruding quills. Just now he had got hold of a stout and solemn gentleman in red velvet, who evidently represented a potent, grave, and reverend Signior. This dignified personage looked exceedingly out of place—not to speak of a false nose through his mask—in so foolish a company of mummers.
The Goose had a nasty talent for cackling with the extravagant clatter of his big wooden beak, and he kept up this deafening music incessantly as he ran round and round the fat gentleman in velvet, who turned helplessly hither and thither amid volleys of merriment. Every now and then the cruel bird, as it ran, would draw the pointed quills from under its feathers and therewith prick the reverend signior in unexpected places, causing him to wriggle and twist. Just then there was a pause in the programme; the whole theatre shook with this unexpected fun.
“Why can’t you leave me alone?” hissed the unfortunate senator, in streaming suspense. But the Goose made no reply. Stopping his mad race for a moment, he actually began chalking up ribaldry with one of his quills on the senator’s pendent mantle, chattering all the while. In vain the proud aristocrat wrestled and protested. The Goose, holding the mantle firmly, chalked a huge note of interrogation upon it, and wrote under this sign, amid breathless interest, the question, “What does your Worship here?” A renewed outburst greeted this sally. Willie van Troyen, unsteadily prominent, pelted the witty bird with hot-house grapes.
“Go along, you hypocrite, I know you,” said the Goose in his victim’s ear. “I’ve chalked up your real name behind.”
At this the crimson noble, breaking down, began to cry real tears of shame and spite. “You’ve ruined me, then,” he exclaimed. “And I can’t for the life of me imagine why!”
“Boh,” said the Goose, and resumed his clatter more heartily than ever.
But at this juncture a Goose-girl stepped unexpectedly into the arena. She drove off the Goose with some well-directed blows, and, taking the arm of the red-velvet gentleman, led him disconsolate away.