“Masters, you won’t mind my coming round again? Perhaps tonight?”
“Sleep here, if you like,” he smiled. “I’ll be coming myself for a second, about midnight. Wife’s got a party. Like to come? Rather good bridge. Well, please yourself. …”
II
I agreed with my sister that it was abominably rude of her younger brother to be nearly an hour late to take her out to dinner, especially as she had been ready for at least twenty minutes. She was furious. I said: “There is a new dance place open. I heard about it from a friend of mine, Mr. Cherry-Marvel. You will meet him, he is charming. This new place is called La Plume de Ma Tante. It has only been open three nights, so it will be very modish for another two. There is a nightingale there.”
“One cannot dance to a nightingale.”
“But why are you so exclusive?”
“It is cruel and beastly to keep a nightingale caged.”
“Dear, it takes a woman who once had a passion for aigrettes and who loves eating lobsters to be so sensitive. But there is probably baser music to supplement this nightingale. There are, in fact, five lovely niggers. The place is called La Plume de Ma Tante so that English people may know exactly where they stand.”
“You are so funny tonight, but would you mind not polishing your shoes on my dress? This is a very terrible taxi, and I think men are monstrous. If you were taking any woman but your sister out to dinner you would have chosen the taxi with discretion.”
“Rudolf and Raymonde are the dancers. I do not want to go to The Pen of My Aunt, but for your sake I would go anywhere. After dinner.”
She was pleased, loving to dance. We walked up the pavement of the rue Royale to the quiet doors of Larue. She said: “I love Rudolf and Raymonde. I saw them dancing at Monte Carlo, and they say American women give him platinum watches from Cartier and that he was a footman in San Francisco, or was that Rudolf Valentino?”
I said: “I say, do you know anything about septic poisoning?”
“Really, how callous you are! Do I know anything about it! But I had it!”
“No!” One’s sister!
“But of course I had it! It is amazing when one’s own brother is quite unaware that one has been through endless pain and torture.”
“Not pain and torture,” I said. “A little bird told me.”
“But I am not responsible for your feathered friends! I was as good as dead, that’s all I know.”
“But, my dear, that was when you were having a baby! I was in Vienna.”
“So you said. But, of course, it came on after I had a baby. One does not get septic poisoning for nothing. I nearly died, I can tell you.”
“Vestiaire, monsieur?”
“… Oh, I see. A baby. After that. …”
“I have never been so hungry in my life,” my sister said, “and you talk to me of septic poisoning. I suppose you think you will destroy my appetite and therefore the bill will be less. I will begin with caviar.”
“Septic poisoning,” I said, “did not kill you, that is the point. You cannot imagine how glad I am. Let us eat caviar.”
III
La Plume de Ma Tante. Bright green walls splashed with vermilion. A platform at one end, whereon five blackamoors perspired. At the other, a naked woman. She was without hips, according to the fashion for women. Her arms were twined above her head, and raised on the tip of her fingers was a bowl of green malachite from which pink water splashed into a white alabaster basin at her feet. Many English people were present. They would be going to the Riviera, then they would be coming back from the Riviera. Colonel Duck was there, with the quality. Colonel Duck was, no doubt, just returned from some notably swift exploits on the Cresta Run. But he never was so talkative about his outdoor activities. Cherry-Marvel was there, with a great big woman and a nice-looking boy with the hands of a housemaid who was a famous boxer. There was the usual group of Argentines, very well dressed indeed. They talked about le polo. All over the room elderly women were dancing with young men of both sexes. Mio Mi Marianne was there, sitting alone, but I might not speak with her because I was with my sister. A demimondaine will feel insulted if you speak with her when you are with your sister. Two years before Mio Mi Marianne had one night tied a silk handkerchief round her wrist, and it became the fashion for women to tie silk handkerchiefs round their wrists. Then Mio Mi Marianne tied a silk handkerchief round her throat, and that became the fashion. She thought of these things while smoking opium. She sat alone, staring into a glass of Vichy Water. A young American polo-player called Blister went up to her table, and maybe he asked her to dance, but she just looked at him and he went away again. Her eyes were intent on an opium-dream, and she was very happy in the arms of the infinite. Mio Mi Marianne will be found one day lying on the Aubusson carpet of her drawing-room. There will be a hole in the carpet where her cigarette has died out.
A blackamoor beat a warning roll on his drum, the dancers left the floor, the lights dwindled and awoke again in swaying shadows of blue and carmine. A heavily built young man with the face of a murderer danced a tango with a lovely young girl with short golden curls. Then he threw her on the floor, and picked her up again. Rudolf and Raymonde. He did it beautifully. An American woman called the Duchess of Malvern threw Rudolph a pink carnation. The Baron de Belus said harshly: “That is a white carnation really, but it is blushing at the fuss that women make
