Chapter XV: “The Chimes” at Yarmouth, and what Henry Gastonard learned of them

The New Vicarage, Lowestoft,
August 6th, 1905.

Dear Paddy,--Byron told us that:

“Christians have burned each other, quite persuaded; That all the Apostles would have done as they did.”

I am not quite sure that my dear cousin, Arthur, would not put me immediately to the stake were it not for this worldly little wife of his, who leaps through the hoop of his philosophy like a clown at the circus, and is never so pleased as when her antics move him to paroxysms of jealousy.

Let me, none the less, postpone for the moment a narration of this particular tragedy, and thank you for your letter. I am sorry to hear that they let the wind out of your pneumatic golf ball, and so provoked you to expressions not found in the catechism--but, my dear Paddy, is not half the world flogging balls so treated, and are not the fortunate few those who can command a superfluity of that necessary gas by which mankind achieves success?

I give you this for consolation. Would to heaven you could console me as effectually. For, to be candid, Paddy, I am as hard driven by my doubts as ever a man was in this world. Yesterday I saw Mimi for the second time. My first visit was paid to her almost immediately after I had written to you; and a sorry enough pilgrimage it was, so full of drab shades and mournful harmonies that I write of it with reluctance, and do not speak of it at all.

Recollect that I had traced the child to the old town of Yarmouth, and was determined to seek her there. Of course, my car is here, and serves me well at these times. A fast journey in the famous “forty,” which has carried us together upon many a merry venture, brought me to that fishing village they call Gorleston; then to an even more crabbed street--the main thoroughfare of Yarmouth to wit. I know nothing of these places, but the approach to them depressed me greatly, and left me but ill prepared for the really superb sea-front which a side street of Yarmouth presently disclosed to me.

It is inconceivable, Paddy, that such a parade as this should be so little known to the children of civilisation. Depict a wonderful strand of the purest golden sand, a gentle sea with many ships in a narrow street, a wide thoroughfare abutting upon the promenade, and a mile of houses as a background to it all. Do this, I say, and you will still have the poorest idea of Yarmouth--for its glory lies in the booths they have erected upon the sand, and in its entertainments, its wide piers, its floral halls, its orderly gardens, and superabundant bandstands. Such a city upon a seashore I have never seen in all my life. I drove my car to a decent hotel on the front, and I descended presently, feeling as lost as an African set down suddenly at Ludgate-circus.

This would have been about a quarter to eight o’clock of a splendid summer evening. Thousands of lights were now blazing upon the promenade, lights large and small, and of all the hues of the rainbow. Turn your ears where you would, music pleased or offended them. And what music, Paddy!--now that of a fine military band, again of a hurdy-gurdy, and upon that the tinny notes of a worn piano, laboriously thumped by some child of the academies. Nor was this sufficient, for youths passed raving of Jenny or Sarah, and here and there a woman screeched some incoherent lines which the music-hall or the sea beach had taught her.

I crossed the street, and ventured upon the golden sands. The barbarity of the scene impressed me strangely. That such an artist, such a born child of all that is really the fruit of genius as Mimi the Simpleton, should have sunk to this, inflicted me with an intolerable melancholy which nothing could relieve.

Here, Paddy, here I must find Mimi the Simpleton. To this _ultima thule_ some inspiration of the nomad’s life had wafted her. You can have little idea of the emotions which followed me to the quest of her as I threaded the human lanes, and would have closed my ears to their voices, but could not.

But I will not weary you with a recital to so little purpose. Let it be sufficient to say that when I discovered Mimi at last, it was not upon the lower sands where the meaner booths are set, but in a considerable wooden structure built almost against the promenade, and promising at least a better atmosphere and a better company.

Here a bill at the door informed that “The Chimes” were performing, and that for the inconsiderable sum of sixpence I might be privileged to hear the famous singer Wat Urling in his famous song “Bonny Bill,” and also to witness the gyrations of the Spanish dancer “Alphonsine.” Other lines accorded notoriety to a certain Jack Bendall, and to a person by the name of Bertie Idden, who, it appears, had played the banjo before the crowned heads of Europe, and was still alive to tell the tale. These promises I read swiftly, and, paying a shilling for the front row, I passed into the place, and saw Mimi again.

It was a quaint scene, Paddy. Some fifty square yards were fenced in by a wooden awning and provided with benches and garden-seats. The platform at the further end had a torn Union Jack for its emblem, and a Spanish flag to cross it. Here stood a piano, and two or three chairs for the performers, of whom there appeared to be five, including the lady accompanist. All were dressed in quasi-Pierrot costumes of black and yellow; and Mimi, I observed, wore precisely similar garments to the men.

As to the entertainment, it consisted of a part-song sung in three keys and wofully discordant; but Mimi left the group at the end of it, and returned shortly afterwards in a black spangled dress and a quiet, respectable mantilla.

I took my seat in a garden-chair to the left of the stage, and watched the child closely. She had not seen me, and I perceived that her whole soul went out to this business of the dancing. Perhaps it stood to her for a reflex of Paris in a dismal land. I can imagine her recalling the balls of the Butte--all the familiar faces of the Quat-Z-Arts--and believing for the time being that the music was made by Jean Delmas, and that Chardibert was her partner in the dance. She had no talent for such a class of entertainment--so much I confess at once. Her dancing was spirited, but inelegant; she threw herself about with the uncouth gestures of a child at play. When she sang, it was not in Spanish, but in that argot of the atelier, which even a Frenchman in the audience might not have understood. But I understood it, Paddy; and, as though she were speaking to me alone of all the company, I watched her intently until her eye caught mine, and she ceased to dance as suddenly as though a strong man held her ankles to the floor.

This was for the merest fraction of a minute. A seedy individual in a long grey overcoat--or rather, an overcoat which had once been grey--strode forward from his nook behind the piano and addressed her in rough tones. She answered him with a nod, and continued to dance immediately, which provoked a whole torrent of bad language, and a subsequent draught from a substantial flask when the back of the piano somewhat hid the man from the audience. Mimi, upon her part, now danced on as though she had never seen me at all. I did not catch her eye again, not once, until the entertainment was done and the people had quitted the enclosure.

Be sure, however, that I had no intention of leaving without seeing her. That would have been a folly surpassing all. No sooner was the crowd departed than I walked up to the platform and spoke to her in the French she understood so well.

“Bon soir, Mimi. Shall we go and fish for gudgeons at the Châtelet?”

“_Ah, mes enfants_--it is Monsieur Henry who has come back.”

“What are you doing in this place, Mimi?”

“I am dancing, Monsieur Henry.”

“I see perfectly well; but you are tired of dancing, and are now going to return to Paris with me.”

“That is impossible, Monsieur Henry. I have not got a boat.”

“But I shall buy one. Go and tell these gentlemen that you can dance no more for them. I shall wait until you have done so.”

She shrugged her shoulders defiantly.

“Does Madame d’Alençon send you here, Monsieur Henry?”

“I will tell you when you have spoken to your friends.”

She was about to answer me when the greasy man stepped forward and intervened. He spoke in the jargon of the music halls.

“’Ere,” he said, cocking a vile cigar in the corner of a huge mouth, “and what’s all this?”

“I have come to take this young lady to her friends,” said I.

“Ho,” cried he, “and ’ave you? Well, a bloomin’ long journey that’s going to be. ’Ere, you clear out of this--we don’t ’ave none of your sort ’ere.”

I stepped up upon the platform and looked him squarely in the face.

“My man,” said I, “by whose authority did you take this girl from her home, and when will you show it to the police?”

He turned a little pale, and took his cigar from his mouth hurriedly.

“What’s that to you?” he asked.

“It is everything to me,” said I, “as you will presently discover.”

“Is she ’ere against ’er will, then? Arst ’er yourself. Ain’t I givin’ ’er advantages? Who says I took ’er from ’er friends--who says it?”

“I say it, and presently will prove it.”

“Oh, you do, do yer? Well, my name’s Jack Bendall, and my ’ome’s the Pav. at Ealing. Now go and prove it--let me see you do it. Why, half the profession will answer for my character. Who’s going to answer for yours--and who the deuce are you, all said and done?”

He did not wait for me to answer, but called Mimi up to him.

“Do you know this man?” he asked her.

“Yes, Monsieur; that is Monsieur Henry.”

“Is ’e related to you?”

“He is one of my friends--I knew him in Paris.”

“A--student, I suppose. Just as I thought. Well, now ’e’s going out of ’ere, and right sharp, too.”

Imagine the fellow’s impudence, Paddy. He strode up to me in a threatening attitude and laid his hand upon my collar; but not a second time, for I tripped him before you could count two, and threw him headlong down among his own stalls.

“Hands off,” I said when he had picked himself up, “and learn to behave yourself. I am now going to the police station. You can follow me there if you like.”

I did not wait a moment longer, but marched from the place--Mimi watching me with wide-open eyes, another woman snivelling on the bosom of her “poor Jack,” and that worthy himself close upon my heels. As it turned out, my car stood within twenty yards of the place, and the sight of it with the great flaming headlamps and the gaping crowd about it sobered the clown immediately. He pushed up to me with a sidling gesture and spoke his first civil word.

“No offence meant, guv’nor. Gawd witness I never ’armed the girl. Don’t be ’asty like. So help me ’eaven, my own daughter ain’t been treated better. Now, what’s it all about--you ain’t going to do nothink imprudent, guv’nor?”

I turned upon him and took him at his word. After all, I had no case for a police-court, and he might have beaten me hollow there. It was prudent to temporise, and I did not lose the opportunity.

“I am the guardian of this child,” said I. “Your honesty is not at stake if you listen to reason. I don’t hold you responsible for her appearance here, but I must speak to her immediately. Show me where that can be done, and we may settle the affair yet.”

“If that’s all, guv’nor, you can speak to ’er in the show and welcome. I didn’t know I was talking to a gent like you--though. Gawd’s truth, I’d pay a fiver to learn that fall.”

“Oh,” says I, showing him a five-pound note, “no need to try it a second time. Take the company out and give them supper at my expense. I suppose that’s your last show to-night?”

“The last’s at half-past nine. You can ’ave twenty minutes with her. She said her name was Mimi Oliver and that she came from Bordeaux. Is it the truth, guv’nor, or a lie?”

“It’s a lie,” said I. “She left my house in Paris to go to you. Now leave us together, please; I have much to say to her.”

He nodded assent, and I went up to the platform again. The show was quite deserted by this time, and the performers made a hasty supper in the corner over by the piano. As for Mimi, she sat upon a bench a little way from the others, dressed in her spangles and wearing that pretty smile I have never yet been able to fathom as long as I have known her. Whether she was pleased by my return, or still angry, I cannot say. But I went up and sat beside her; and then I knew, Paddy, that nothing but her courage kept her from weeping.

Of this interview, with its new issue, of all that she confessed to me, and of my plans for her, a letter to-morrow must tell you. I am but just in time to catch the post, and, to be plain with you, old friend, my heart is full of a sadness I cannot define and would write of to no other. The memory of this interview recalls it powerfully. Let me then sleep upon it all--and bidding you a hearty good night, remain--My dear Paddy, your friend,

Harry Gastonard.