The Harlequinade: An Excursion Part 5

ALICE. I'll skip lots then ... all about Mr. Rich and the great Harlequins.

People liked them better than Garrick! And now we come to the next story.

It's England, and it's London. It's about Columbine running away. It must always be about that. The hero runs away with her. Or, strictly speaking, p'raps this time it's her that runs away with him.

UNCLE EDWARD. Grammar.

ALICE. Her ... or she that runs away with he ... or him! She's a country girl come to be a chambermaid in London. A singing chambermaid, she is; they had them in the old plays, and it must have brightened the hotels lots. And she's called Richardson for short. Harlequin's a valet in the same house. And why they're servants now instead of actors is because it was about this time people began to think that Art and Religion and Love were things you could just ring the bell for, and up they would come and wait on you. So this is another sort of a...symbol. And the G.o.ds have lost their magic.

UNCLE EDWARD. [Much alarmed.] What?

ALICE. All right, Uncle; it's to make a surprise. [And then to rea.s.sure the audience, who, bless them, aren't alarmed at all.] They really haven't, and they never can. They may lose their magicky magic; for the world grows up like we do. But Harlequin can still see deep into the hearts of men, and Columbine's so sweet that you can't help loving her though you don't know why. And that's the realest magic of all. There!

Pantaloon's the hero's lawyer ... because when you're an old 'un you're always a bit of a lawyer ... you can't help it. And Clown is Charles, his friend, a country squire, come up to swagger in London because they did.

The story's the same story really ... it always is ... just twisted about.

The Italian young man was buried in books, which was bad enough. But this young man is so drowned deep in himself ... which is worse ... that he's almost nothing but clothes. In fact he has so dropped right through himself, that he isn't himself at all. There's nothing left of him but the reflection in his mirror. In his mirror! Do remember that ... it's important.... And Harlequin has to make a man of him ... because Harlequin is the spirit of man wanting to come to life. It's the young man's wedding morning, and Harlequin-valet--is putting out his wedding suit. There's a Woman of the World this time instead of a Man of the World, who is going to marry him only for his money. But Columbine, the chambermaid that he has never even noticed ...

[Behind the dosed curtains a girl's voice is heard singing a simple country song.

There! they've begun ... because I've been so long. That's her song. She sings as she goes through the rooms a-dusting them. And when she sings, little wild flowers grow up through the c.h.i.n.ks of the boards.

UNCLE EDWARD. I suppose they are ready.

[She pokes her head between the curtains. Uncle Edward has really melted to this last touch. He is wreathed in smiles.

She's a wonderful child. Knows the whole thing backwards. Thinks of new bits for herself! I call to mind her mother saying ...

[Alice has turned back.

ALICE. Ready when we've counted twenty.

UNCLE EDWARD. Right.

[Alice counts: you can see her lips move. Uncle Edward hums his counting as an accompaniment to the little song.

And so we have got to the Eighteenth Century. And we're to have a comedy of manners, and a nice study of clothes. All rather shapely; for it contains a real Beau, and the only valet who was ever a hero, and the only hero who ever had Mercury to valet him.

There is a good deal of dressing up in this scene, and a neat ploy of dressing down, and a man's soul comes into being all over an affair of a looking-gla.s.s. Which makes a pretty piece of work.

Alice knows Hogarth through the--shall we say?--nicer prints, and Austin Dobson through the daintiest of Ballads. This scene is a sort of mixture to her of early reading, and visits with her Uncle to the National Gallery, and old bits of China, and dumpy little leather-bound volumes of "The Spectator", the real "Spectator", which she can just remember on the fourth shelf from the top near the window.

You may add, for your own personal satisfaction, when you are sitting and looking on, all that tense excitement the very words "Eighteenth Century"

awaken in the properly balanced mind. Wigs and coaches and polite highwaymen, and lonely gibbets on still more lonely moors, and the Bath road with its chains and posts, all come into the background. Pedlars and cries of Pottles of Cherries, Puppet Showmen, and Clowns on stilts and French watergilders, and the sound of swords early in the morning in Leicester Fields: the touch of them all should be there. And also St.

James's Street crammed with sedan chairs, and black pages with parrots, and the rattle of dice at White's or Almack's, and the hurrying feet of the Duke of Queensberry's running footmen. Such romantic dreams should come to you. Sliding panels and gentlemen driving heiresses to Gretna Green, and secret meeting places, and Fleet marriages and the scent of lavender, musk, and bergamot!

But the song is nearly over and the curtains are drawn back.

The room might be a background to a picture by Zoffany, dim and mellow and empty. There is a door leading to the pa.s.sage; another that must lead to the Beau's bedroom. There is a fireplace with a fire burning. A portrait of the Woman of the World is over the fireplace. There is a dressing-table by the fireplace, with a tall wig stand and a big arm-chair by it. There is a bureau with writing materials. There are cupboards in the wall full of clothes and stockings and shoes. The bedroom door is open.

Harlequin-Valet stands listening until the sound of the song dies away. He has a clothes' brush in his hand. Then he places the clothes he has been brus.h.i.+ng on the Beau's chair in a ridiculous semblance of a man. He adds a wig to the wig stand which is behind it, puts a patch on the wig block; a cane to one sleeve, a snuff-box to the other; puts shoes to their place, so that the stockings dangle into them, and then stands back to admire his work. He bows low.

Columbine dances on with a feather brush in her hand. He takes her to the clothes, and presents her to them with every formality. She curtseys.

ALICE. You see, she's a new maid, and he's pretending that that's her master. Lord Eglantine ... Betty Richardson! It's rather wicked of them.

[Harlequin waves his clothes' brush, and the wig stand bows back. He waves it again, and all the clothes tumble together in a heap.

One hears the front door bang. Harlequin waves Columbine into the bedroom, sweeps the clothes together into a neat pile and stands waiting by the door. There enters Lord Eglantine, the Beau. A trifle pale, disordered, calm. He has been gambling all night. To the rhythm of a minuet Harlequin takes his cloak, hat, and cane, takes off his coat and gets him into a gorgeous dressing-gown, and so into his chair.

And there he sits looking for all the world like the bundle of clothes come to life.

In the next room Columbine begins to sing again, and Lord Eglantine leans forward to listen.

EGLANTINE. Maunds of cowslips, honey bags of bees! Whose voice is that?

HARLEQUIN. Ten thousand pardons, my lord, it is the chambermaid.

EGLANTINE. She has a name?

HARLEQUIN. Richardson, my lord.

EGLANTINE. Richardson. Are there people called Richardson? Interesting!

HARLEQUIN. I will stop her, my lord. We did not expect your lords.h.i.+p to return so soon.

EGLANTINE. No. A woman singing ... in my bedroom. Dusting yesterday's cares away to make room for the cares of to-morrow. Put that down. I may want to say it again. What is she singing? You know everything.

HARLEQUIN. A country song, my lord.

EGLANTINE. Is the country like that? Handkerchief.

[The word has hardly left his lips before the handkerchief, neatly unfolded, is in his hand. What a valet!

She has stopped. Put the door ajar so that I see her.

[Harlequin looks at the door. It opens and stands obediently ajar.

A picture of innocence. Putting her hair tidy before my mirror. She is like a ... [He has almost forgotten those little things that grow so prettily.]

... when I was a boy they grew in the garden.

HARLEQUIN. Flower, my lord?

EGLANTINE. I must give her a guinea. Give me a guinea. Send her to me.

HARLEQUIN. Certainly, my lord.

[He beckons to Columbine, and she dances on.