Mr American. George Fraser MacDonald

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СКАЧАТЬ learned accidentally, but Pip was too occupied to listen; she was making her entrance, keeping an eye cocked and a profile turned for theatrical managers, calling and waving brightly to acquaintances, keeping up a running fire of comment while the champagne was poured, and pausing only to take an appraising sip.

      “Not bad for a tanner a glass,” was her verdict, and Mr Franklin, who had tasted French champagne for the first time on the Mauretania, would not have presumed to argue. Privately, he thought it an overrated drink, but he was content to sip while his companion prattled, and watch the well-dressed throng in the dining room below.

      “Thin house tonight,” was how Pip described it. “’Course, it’s early yet; there’ll be more later.” Mr Franklin remarked that so far as he could see, every table was full, and Pip clicked impatiently.

      “I mean real people, silly – celebrities. They’re nobodies –” and she dismissed the assembly with an airy wave. “Let’s see, though – there’s one or two – see, over there, that dark lady with the pearls, beside the chap with whiskers? Mrs Pat Campbell, that is – you’ve heard of her. They reckon she’s a great actress – in all them grisly plays by Henry Gibson, or whatever his name is. She’s got a new play now, at Her Majesty’s, but I heard tell it was a stinker. False Gods, I ask you!” Pip rolled her eyes and pronounced in a strangled contralto: “‘Desmond, our ways must part – forevah! Yah touch defiles me!’ Honest, that’s the sort of thing they put on – well, how can that run against revues and variety and niggers singing in the bioscope?”

      She drained her glass, and twitched at the sleeve of a passing waiter. “Menus, Dodger – I’m peckish.” She suddenly put her forearms on the table and leaned across towards him, smiling impishly, but with a hint of apology. “I’m sorry – I’m dead common, aren’t I? Chivvying waiters and taxi-drivers, shouting out and making an exhibition of myself. Aren’t you ashamed? Sorry you came? But it’s the way I’m made – and being in the show business, you see. I’m just a Cockney sparrow – well, you can tell by the accent. And I squint, too.”

      Mr Franklin was spared a gallant denial by the arrival of the menus, imposing documents of several pages in ornate script, most of it in French. Pip seized on hers with satisfaction.

      “Oysters! Say a couple of dozen between us? I love oysters – prob’ly comes of having a father in the fish business.”

      “He keeps a shop?” said Mr Franklin, idly scanning his menu.

      “He had a barrow. Jellied eels and whelks – but you won’t know about those, I guess. He’s retired now. Rheumatism – and rum, too, if you ask me. Poor old Dad. Here –” she suddenly lowered her menu and regarded him seriously “– you all right for a fiver, are you?”

      “I beg your pardon?”

      “Have you got five quid? – let’s see, that’s twenty-five dollars, your money. ’cos that’s what this’ll cost you, including our private room. Well, we could eat out here, but nobody does who’s anybody in the theatre – and then we could get away for three quid, if you’re stretched.”

      “If your standing in the theatre is at stake,” said Mr Franklin gravely, “I think I could manage five pounds without embarrassment.”

      “You’re sure?” The pretty face under the blonde tresses was earnest, and Mr Franklin found himself liking this girl a great deal. “’cos if you’re not – we can go dutch, you know. That’s fifty-fifty. Oh, stop grinning like that – “ Mr Franklin realized that he had been smiling at her with pure pleasure. “Just for that, I’ll have the consommé, the salmon stuffed with shrimps in champagne sauce – let’s see, the veal cutlets, the pheasant – and we’ll see about pudding after. That’ll take care of your fiver, all right …”

       Five pounds at the Monico … ten cents at Yancy’s if you hadn’t any grub of your own to bring … eggs at a dollar apiece when the boom was at its height at Tonopah … the Indian girl baking bread at Hole-in-the-Wall, and Sundance Harry Longbaugh burning his fingers on the crust … tortillas and flapjacks, and his father frying bacon and corn that morning after the Battle of Shrewsbury on the El Paso road … “No beef this trip, son … ‘I am a great eater of beef, and I believe it does harm to my wit’” … the old man saying grace over the frying-pan … salmon and shrimps in champagne sauce … that steak and fried onions at the Bella Union, with the tin plate on his knees as he sat on the trunk watching the door, looking over a balcony rail just like this one, but instead of the orderly parties of diners in their evening finery, eating off china and crystal and snowy cloths, with waiters hovering – instead of that, the huge crowded bar-room of the big bonanza time, with bearded, booted miners capering on the tables with the sluts, yelling and sprawling and smashing furniture while the fiddlers on the stage scraped out, “Hurrah, boys, hurrah!” and the long bar was three-deep with drinkers, awash with beer and red-eye, while he finished his steak, touching the hilt of his Remington every so often as his eyes ranged over the inferno of celebration, looking for the Kid and his gang, and old Davis snoring drunk on the bed with his britches round his ankles… and he had sat through that thundering, boozing, carousing night on the tin trunk, drinking coffee with his back to the wall, shaking his head at the brown girl with smoky eyes in the red silk dress, and she had tossed her head and spat in disappointment and left him to his determined vigil in the brawling, bawling Bella Union, with a fortune in silver six inches beneath his pants-seat….

      “You haven’t heard a word I’ve been saying, have you?” Pip was laughing at him across the table. “Where were you? Renzo wants to know if you want Bordeaux or Burgundy – unless you want to carry on with the bubbly?”

      Of course they continued with the champagne, and as they ate their splendid dinner in the velvet-lined little private cabinet on the second floor, Mr Franklin wondered if it was the working of the wine that made him enjoy himself more and more with each passing minute. No, to be fair, he decided, it was Pip herself; she was merry and animated and full of gossip, about the theatre, and herself, and her eccentric parents and their large family, who appeared to live on laughter and a portion of her earnings, and about London, which was all the world to her, and her ambitions, which consisted simply of being the Queen of Musical Comedy some day, and strutting the boards of the West End, singing the latest rude songs, having hosts of admirers waiting at the stage door, preferably in carriages with crests – and marrying one of the richest and most noble of them? wondered Mr Franklin.

      “No,” said Pip, and sighed. “I’m not the kind they marry. Oh, plenty from the chorus finish up as My Lady – they say half the heirs to the Lords married Gaiety Girls, and it’s not far wrong. But I like the theatre, you see – couldn’t be happy away from it, and all the noise and chat and fun. I couldn’t give that up. Can’t see me in a stately home, dishing out tea – not while there’s curtains going up and orchestras playing my cue.” She laughed. “I’m just a shameless, painted hussy of the variety stage – common as dirt and glad of it. You have to be, if you want to get to the top of my trade – look at Marie Lloyd, she’s no lady, but she’ll be topping the bill until she drops, no matter how fat she gets. Maybe I’ve got a little of what she’s got – not just the voice, and the figure, and the cheek, but – well, you know, it’s how you put it over. If I’ve got it, then I’ll go on until I drop, too – and if I haven’t, I’ll prob’ly finish up married to some sobersides in Ealing, if I’m lucky, with six kids and a couple of maids.” She chuckled happily. “Sing ’em ‘Boiled Beef and Carrots’” at the church social, too. Meantime, I’m enjoying myself, so who cares? Anyway,” and she stretched a hand across and patted Mr Franklin on the arm, “I’m fed up talking about me, and you must be, too. What about you, Mr American? You’ve just sat all evening, very polite and quiet, listening to me gassing on and on and on, and you haven’t СКАЧАТЬ