The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars (5 page)

“I really believe that I am not so bad. Anyway, the die is cast. I am going to confront that thousand-faced hydra known as the British gentry without a single stitch of clothing, and it’s too bad about you if you suffer through any of the sarcastic remarks which the chic philanthropists are sure to make.”

This conversation recurred to me while I was fighting off the importunate guests who, on that May afternoon, were laying siege to Lady Diana’s dressing-room in the Garrick Theater. There were some young snobs in exquisite afternoon
attire, bending mechanically at the angle dictated by the crease in their striped trousers; a few Members of Parliament, like escaped convicts out of Hogarth’s caricatures; and two or three forceful and large-bellied Peers. Even the cunning little birds, who sleep after luncheon at the Club—safely installed in the arms of massive leather chairs—were all there, drawn to this matinée for the benefit of the tubercular people of the Isle of Wight, by the commentaries which the programs, cast about in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair, had so rapidly provoked. The Duchesses from Grosvenor Square, the
nouvelles riches
from Regent’s Park, the emancipated ladies of Hampstead had alike been intrigued by the last number of the first part:
Lady Diana Wynham—“Pagan Rhythms”
(
Nude Dances
).

Her enemies had whispered that she would certainly be excluded from royal receptions after her impious rhythms and her friends had proclaimed that her dances would increase the gate receipts by about 5,000 pounds, for which the tuberculars would be truly thankful.

“What audacity!” so said the neophytes. “To dance like that when she is on the verge of ruin!”

No one had the slightest doubt but that Lady Diana’s collaboration with this work of Charity would create a sensation. And “All London” was right, because “All London” knew from experience that Banality with haggard eyes—Banality, daughter of Cant and Tradition, had never emanated from the brain of Lady Wynham, that fantastic, undulating, almost snake-like, woman who was born so inappropriately in the Highlands.

I had just told Lord Hopchester that Lady Wynham was not visible but that she would immensely enjoy receiving her admirers after her performance, when Juliette came to say that I was wanted in the dressing-room.

“Madame wishes to ask Monsieur’s advice about something.”

I attacked a barrage of orchids, roses, lilacs, tissue paper and crested cards. I literally jumped over ten or twelve towels smeared with make-up and a kimono stretched out on the floor like the corpse of a Samurai. I thrust aside a hanging and found myself in the presence of Lady Diana.

I have read a good many stern dissertations on the subject of Modesty throughout the ages. I have studied the Anglo-Saxon soul in the works of patented psychologists and in American Bars, in Sterne’s romances and on French railroad trains. But I must confess that the more I studied it the less I knew about Lady Diana’s character. Consequently, I could not suppress a gesture of surprise when I discovered her in a condition of rigorous undress standing before the odoriferous arsenal of her disordered dressing-table.

She asked me, admiring herself in the glass without the least embarrassment, “Would you advise me to put this silk scarf on my hair or to wear this garland of white roses?”

“Those virtuous flowers don’t conform to the paganism of your dances, Lady Diana. If I were in your place I would simply pin that scarf on your glorious golden hair.”

“You know, I believe you are right.… Juliette, arrange this little thing behind my ears.”

She arose. Except for a
cache sexe
no bigger than the hand of a sacristan and held in place by an almost invisible garland of bindweed, two buskins with silver ribbons, and a veil of white mousseline which hung down to her elbows, she was about to hide nothing of herself from 1,500 spectators who were getting more and more impatient every minute on the other side of the curtain.

“Aren’t you afraid,” I strove to suggest, “that the Lord
Chamberlain, who manipulates the scissors of British censorship, will cut his finger—out of sheer emotion?”

“Why, we are with people of the world, my dear boy. This is a private entertainment. Charity is an excuse for everything. And I don’t mind proving conclusively and to everyone that Lady Bloomingswan has been slandering me.”

“What has she said?”

“She has tried to tell whoever would listen that my thighs were shaped like an open umbrella.”

“Then hurry, my dear—Signora Tetranella has just finished singing the Waltz from
Roméo et Juliette
. Harry Blow is on now. Remember, you come next.”

“Oh, don’t be stupid! I am all ready. Go out front, Gerard; listen to what they say while I am doing my number and come back immediately to tell me about it.” And she continued with a defiant look, “So they think I am finished. They already picture me as somebody’s companion, or selling perfume in the Burlington Arcade. I don’t mind giving them a whole fist full of salt right in the eye.
A tout à l’heure, chéri—
”

As I sat down at the back of the theater in an obscure corner, I could not help admiring the courage of this woman, who only the evening before had received the official confirmation of her financial ruin. Three quarters of her entire fortune were about to be swallowed up in that financial catastrophe. And still she could face Fate. She did not hesitate to kick scandalously at that giant known as English Hypocrisy—that wooden giant, a trifle angular, who hides the vulgarity of his body and the colossal proportions of his egotism beneath an impressive morning coat.

The public squirmed a little impatiently. I could hear the bell ring. The footlights changed from gold to blue; the curtain went up slowly. It was a country scene on the Greek order. In
a setting of cypress trees—those vesperal growths which shade the sirens on the shores of the Adriatic—Lady Diana came to view, on bended knee, her head bowed low on her bosom, and her hands clasped before her.

Some women in the orchestra stood up in their excitement. The men, more discreetly, held their breath. There was much whispering and the entire theater manifested its surprise by diverse movements. I heard some disagreeable remarks:

“But she really is naked!—Oh!”

“It is scandalous—”

“No. She is not quite naked. Look at her, Betty, through my opera glasses.”

“Harry, will you be quiet—!”

“Since the Laborites have been in power, anarchy reigns supreme. It’s disgusting!”

Behind me an old beau with side-whiskers, who had evidently been a devil in his day, muttered, “In the time of Prince Albert they would have thrown her out and had her whipped in the middle of Oxford Circus.”

A college youth protested, “Sir, you are insulting a Priestess of Beauty.”

The pitch of the interpolations rose little by little, in spite of the fact that the orchestra was playing the first measures of Grieg’s
Matin
. On the balcony a chair squeaked and a female spectator, with a silver lorgnette, drew herself up indignantly and cried at the top of her lungs:

“Anybody would think that we were at the
Folies Bergères
!”

This decisive declaration brought forth an argument. A gentleman in a box leaned toward the offended lady: “If you weren’t a woman I would box your ears for you.”

But another spectator came to the aid of the wounded virtue: “This lady is right! Come out in the hall a moment—”

“Certainly, sir!”

The two paladins went out. They had the calm and placid air of two citizens of the Latin Quarter, about to break a tooth or put the “singular Siki” out of the way. While all this was going on, the applause was something immense. Lady Diana, as indifferent as a statue, had not even budged. The orchestra leader had cut off the first aria of the
Matin
with a blow of his baton. Already policemen’s helmets were coming in through the doors, like so many black mushrooms. Remarks passed from box to box. Some argued for the eternal prerogative of Art; others waved the flag of offended Propriety. The Duchess of Southminster, who was responsible for the performance, squirmed in her chair, as nervous as a griddle cake on a hot stove. She disputed with the ladies of the Committee, one of whom was a pretty brunette in a corn-colored chiffon frock, who approved of Lady Wynham’s audacity, and another, a dowager, smothered in powder, whose black ostrich plume, stuck in her hair, shook to the rhythm of her protestations.

The sudden arrival of the defenders of the law calmed the fault-finding individuals. The orchestra leader struck his desk vociferously. Grieg’s
Matin
finally arose in a comparative silence—Lady Diana started to dance. The thread of her evolutions did some arabesque embroidery on the motives of the great Norwegian. The most hostile spectators were hushed. They forgot that they had in front of them a Lady of 1927 and that she was shamelessly displaying the elegance of her body, because they were, in spite of who they were, carried back to the marvelous days of pagan Greece. The last chord of the
Matin
expired slowly while Lady Diana knelt once more, her arms spread out, her ecstatic face turned toward the rising sun as though she were saluting a new dawn, whose freshness
would drive out the owls from the balcony and the moles from the orchestra.

The uncontrolled applause which came from every section of the theater soon changed into an astonishing ovation in which the muttering of a few irreconcilables could scarcely be heard. I rushed to the dressing-room. I bumped into a bevy of reporters who were clenching their fists with expectancy. What a chance for the envoys from Fleet Street!

There was a real battle going on outside Lady Diana’s dressing-room—a battle of impassioned words. An hour later I found myself beside her in the limousine, almost buried under the bouquets.

“Gerard,” she said with a triumphant laugh, “I have won! What a scandal! But if you had looked at me through a magnifying glass you would have seen that I was covered with goose flesh. The Duchess of Southminster told me that I had been a great help to the tubercular people but that I would surely be excommunicated. What do I care! They won’t finish discussing my brazenness for at least forty-eight hours.”

“Then you really do enjoy having people talk about you?”

“No, not under ordinary conditions but in the present circumstances, yes. It was absolutely essential for me to do something to get my name into every newspaper in the world.”

“Why?”

“To obscure the news of my impending ruin. I am not ready to admit yet that I am down and out, Gerard. And I almost forgot one ace that I have up my sleeve.”

“Are you talking about the ace of hearts?”

“I am too tired to explain that to you tonight, but tomorrow—tomorrow, Gerard, I shall take you into my confidence.”

“And where is that confidence going to take me?”

“To Berlin.”

Lady Diana’s dream came true with a vengeance the next morning. The entire London Press commented abundantly on the matinée at the Garrick. From the
Times
to the
Daily News
, from the Conservatives to the Liberals—they all gave several columns to the “Pagan Dance.” The
Morning Post
, that official organ of the British aristocracy, neither dared to approve nor to blame. It headed its account this way:
Audacious Exhibition of a Peeress
. The Communist
Daily Herald
, trying to be indifferent to the recreations of important people, felicitated this aristocrat, who openly scoffed at the prejudices of her caste and sacrificed her principles on the altar of Naked Equality.

I found Lady Diana lying in the middle of her boudoir—swimming in an ocean of newspapers—shaking her disordered hair like a playful puppy. She was reading the reports about herself.

“Well,” I said, “if this can’t satisfy you, what more do you want?”

She pointed to the fourth column in the
Daily Mirror
. “Gerard, look at this imbecile who is trying to insinuate that I want to start a school like Loïe Fuller’s. That certainly is a riot. And the
Daily Mail
? Have you seen what they say? They interviewed H. G. Wells to find out whether modern society is gradually returning to the integral nude. Oh, that
is
funny! And the
Daily Graphic
! Look at the photographs. Trying to compare me with the Cnidian Venus and giving our respective measurements. I am a little thinner through the hips, and about an inch and a half taller. The whole world is going to know that I have the form of a goddess and that all I lack is a Zeus to take care of me.”

Lady Diana, in raspberry-colored pajamas, crawled on all fours to the sofa and dragged out another newspaper which had slid underneath.

“Gerard, here is the prize. This will really make you laugh. This reporter says that a proposal is on foot in the House of Commons for a law to regulate the size of costumes on every stage in the United Kingdom—twenty-eight square inches about the navel, to be measured, I suppose, with a compass.”

“Lady Diana! That is rank blasphemy!” I protested, half serious, half laughing.

“Oh, Gerard, my dear! I adore you when you put on that air of a Presbyterian minister who has just sat down on a knitting-needle.”

Then, suddenly becoming very grave, she stood up, led me into her bedroom, closed the door, and sat me down beside her.

“Now, darling, let’s be serious. I told you yesterday that I still had another arrow which would fit my bow before I would admit that I was a ruined woman—that is, one who has to live on an income of no more than ten thousand pounds a year. This hidden resource is so remote that I had almost forgotten it myself. It is worth what it’s worth, but at least it’s worth the gamble. Gerard, do you speak Russian?”

“Very badly!”

She had arisen. She opened a delightful little mahogany desk and took out a quantity of papers wrapped in a green silk handkerchief. She spread the documents out before me and continued:

“The defunct Lord Wynham, my august husband, who is at this moment amusing himself in paradise, at one time, under the Imperial Régime, filled the post of English Ambassador to the Court at St. Petersburg. Due to certain events of which I am still in ignorance, as far as the details are concerned, he received from the government of Nicholas II, in the guise of a personal present, a concession of fifteen thousand acres of
oil land on the slopes of Telav, northeast of Tiflis in Georgia. Lord Wynham had already negotiated with some important financiers to exploit carefully those lands when the revolution wiped out the generosity of which he had been the beneficiary. His fifteen thousand acres were nationalized and the deeds of ownership had no further value. That meant a loss of a few millions for me, his only heir. But the new orientation which the relations of my country are taking with the Communists tempts me to try something.”