The Pretty Lady

MP3 Audio CD. The Pretty Lady

Chapter I

THE PROMENADE


The piece was a West End success so brilliant that even if you
belonged to the intellectual despisers of the British theatre you
could not hold up your head in the world unless you had seen it; even
for such as you it was undeniably a success of curiosity at least.

The stage scene flamed extravagantly with crude orange and viridian
light, a rectangle of bedazzling illumination; on the boards, in the
midst of great width, with great depth behind them and arching height
above, tiny squeaking figures ogled the primeval passion in gesture
and innuendo. From the arc of the upper circle convergent beams of
light pierced through gloom and broke violently on this group of the
half-clad lovely and the swathed grotesque. The group did not quail.
In fullest publicity it was licensed to say that which in private
could not be said where men and women meet, and that which could
not be printed. It gave a voice to the silent appeal of pictures and
posters and illustrated weeklies all over the town; it disturbed the
silence of the most secret groves in the vast, undiscovered hearts of
men and women young and old. The half-clad lovely were protected from
the satyrs in the audience by an impalpable screen made of light and
of ascending music in which strings, brass, and concussion
exemplified the naïve sensuality of lyrical niggers. The guffaw which,
occasionally leaping sharply out of the dim, mysterious auditorium,
surged round the silhouetted conductor and drove like a cyclone
between the barriers of plush and gilt and fat cupids on to the
stage--this huge guffaw seemed to indicate what might have happened if
the magic protection of the impalpable screen had not been there.