Now abruptly the orchestra caught hold of him, shook
him and dragged him back. It was playing something which he had heard
before--on a street barrel-organ, and which he disliked now with an
intensity for which he could give no reason. It was perhaps because he
wanted to remain aloof and indifferent, and because it would not let him
be. It destroyed his isolation. His pulse caught up its beat like the
rest. His personality lost outline--merging itself into the cumbrous
uncouth being of the audience.
Though it was a rhythm rather than a tune it was not rag-time. Rag-time
Stonehouse appreciated. He recognized it as a symptom of the _mal du
siecle_, a deliberate break with the natural rhythm of life, a desperate
ennui, the hysterical pressure upon an aching cancer. Ragtime twitched
at the nerves. This thing jostled you, bustled you. It was a shout--a
caper--the ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay of its day, riotous and vulgar. It was
the sort of thing coster-women danced to on the pavements of Epsom on
Derby night.
The stage, set with a stereotyped drawing-room, was empty as the curtain
rose. Two hands, dead white under their load of emeralds, held the black
hangings over the centre doorway--then parted them brusquely. Stonehouse
heard the audience stir in their seats, but there was only a faint
applause. No one had come to the theatre for any other purpose than to
see her, but they knew her history. And, after all, they were
respectable people.
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