And then Madame wiped her own shrewd black eyes, and nodded slow approval. Suddenly Louis started and held up a warning finger. They all at once covered their smiles and pulled themselves together. Only Alvina lay silently laughing.
“Oh, good morning, Mrs. Rollings!” they heard Mr. May’s voice. “Your company is lively. Is Miss Houghton here? May I go through?”
They heard his quick little step and his quick little tap.
“Come in,” called Madame.
The Natcha-Kee-Tawaras all sat with straight faces. Only poor Alvina lay back in her chair in a new weak convulsion. Mr. May glanced quickly round, and advanced to Madame.
“Oh, good morning, Madame, so glad to see you downstairs,” he said, taking her hand and bowing ceremoniously. “Excuse my intruding on your mirth!” He looked archly round. Alvina was still incompetent. She lay leaning sideways in her chair, and could not even speak to him.
“It was evidently a good joke,” he said. “May I hear it too?”
“Oh,” said Madame, drawling. “It was no joke. It was only Louis making a fool of himself, doing a turn.”
“Must have been a good one,” said Mr. May. “Can’t we put it on?”
“No,” drawled Madame, “it was nothing—just a nonsensical mood of the moment. Won’t you sit down? You would like a little whiskey?—yes?”
Max poured out whiskey and water for Mr. May.
Alvina sat with her face averted, quiet, but unable to speak to Mr. May. Max and Louis had become polite. Geoffrey stared with his big, dark-blue eyes stolidly at the newcomer. Ciccio leaned with his arms on his knees, looking sideways under his long lashes at the inert Alvina.
“Well,” said Madame, “and are you satisfied with your houses?”
“Oh yes,” said Mr. May. “Quite! The two nights have been excellent. Excellent!”
“Ah—I am glad. And Miss Houghton tells me I should not dance tomorrow, it is too soon.”
“Miss Houghton knows,” said Mr. May archly.
“Of course!” said Madame. “I must do as she tells me.”
“Why yes, since it is for your good, and not hers.”
“Of course! Of course! It is very kind of her.”
“Miss Houghton is most kind—to everyone,” said Mr. May.
“I am sure,” said Madame. “And I am very glad you have been such a good Kishwégin. That is very nice also.”
“Yes,” replied Mr. May. “I begin to wonder if I have mistaken my vocation. I should have been on the boards, instead of behind them.”
“No doubt,” said Madame. “But it is a little late—”
The eyes of the foreigners, watching him, flattered Mr. May.
“I’m afraid it is,” he said. “Yes. Popular taste is a mysterious thing. How do you feel, now? Do you feel they appreciate your work as much as they did?”
Madame watched him with her black eyes.
“No,” she replied. “They don’t. The pictures are driving us away. Perhaps we shall last for ten years more. And after that, we are finished.”
“You think so,” said Mr. May, looking serious.
“I am sure,” she said, nodding sagely.
“But why is it?” said Mr. May, angry and petulant.
“Why is it? I don’t know. I don’t know. The pictures are cheap, and they are easy, and they cost the audience nothing, no feeling of the heart, no appreciation of the spirit, cost them nothing of these. And so they like them, and they don’t like us, because they must feel the things we do, from the heart, and appreciate them from the spirit. There!”
“And they don’t want to appreciate and to feel?” said Mr. May.
“No. They don’t want. They want it all through the eye, and finished—so! Just curiosity, impertinent curiosity. That’s all. In all countries, the same. And so—in ten years’ time—no more Kishwégin at all.”
“No. Then what future have you?” said Mr. May gloomily.
“I may be dead—who knows. If not, I shall have my little apartment in Lausanne, or in Bellizona, and I shall be a bourgeoise once more, and the good Catholic which I am.”
“Which I am also,” said Mr. May.
“So! Are you? An American Catholic?”
“Well—English—Irish—American.”
“So!”
Mr. May never felt more gloomy in his life than he did that day. Where, finally, was he to rest his troubled head?
There was not all peace in the Natcha-Kee-Tawara group either. For Thursday, there was to be a change of program—“Kishwégin’s Wedding—” (with the white prisoner, be if said)—was to take the place of the previous scene. Max of course was the director of the rehearsal. Madame would not come near the theatre when she herself was not to be acting.
Though very quiet and unobtrusive as a rule, Max could suddenly assume an air of hauteur and overbearing which was really very annoying. Geoffrey always fumed under it. But Ciccio it put into unholy, ungovernable tempers. For Max, suddenly, would reveal his contempt of the “Eyetalian,” as he called Ciccio, using the Cockney word.
“Bah! quelle tête de veau,” said Max, suddenly contemptuous and angry because Ciccio, who really was slow at taking in the things said to him, had once more failed to understand.
“Comment?” queried Ciccio, in his slow, derisive way.
“Comment!” sneered Max, in echo. “What? What? Why what did I say? Calf’s-head I said. Pig’s-head, if that seems more suitable to you.”
“To whom? To me or to you?” said Ciccio, sidling up.
“To you, lout of an Italian.”
Max’s colour was up, he held himself erect, his brown hair seemed to rise erect from his forehead, his blue eyes glared fierce.
“That is to say, to me, from an uncivilized German pig, ah? ah?”
All this in French. Alvina, as
