Instantly, his mind seized on this new way of angering his neighbours. He was not one to do a thing by halves. As the dancers practised before him, a part of his shrewd brain went into the probable costs of a season of ballet there, while in another part came visions of a matchless décor by Cobb, and Sorya floating in upon it, sur les pointes; he would make it the loveliest thing.
He spoke of his thought to the company as he wished them farewell, and later went to his study to work out some of the details, and to telephone (as was his way), while the idea was hot in him, to poet, painter and musician. There camp a tap at his study door. Sorya and Marianela were there. He rose with a leaping heart and led them in.
“We came to see you,” Sorya said, “because we speak English better than the others, and some of them are a little shy. They ask us to thank you for your kindness to us all and to say how much they enjoyed being in your theatre.”
“They thanked me thoroughly before they went,” he said. “It was a great pleasure to me to have them here. I want to say to you, that I am serious about using the theatre. Now, I have some ideas of doing ballets here in May or June, and I want you both to come to dance for me.”
“We gladly will,” they promised.
“I will ask Mlle. Marianela to repeat some of her triumphs. And I want you to do the Red Waterlilies and to dance the lead in a ballet I have in my mind. I have the idea. I know the men who can work it out. I mean to make the festival here a very splendid thing, and I do want you to be in it.”
“I’d love to be in it,” she said. “If you want some of our company, I’m sure they will be delighted to come here. Pitowski was enchanted with your theatre. Our people are very much better dancers than you might think from seeing them in that taudis yesterday. Pitowski has been very famous and most of them could go to-morrow into the Imperial Ballet if it still existed.”
She thought a moment, while Marianela asked practical questions about who would direct. Presently, Sorya spoke again; she had been watching Frampton with a minute attention. He was unlike anybody she had ever met or heard of; he had come already queerly within the armour.
“There is something that might interest you,” she said. “You may not know that the original Red Waterlilies had what was called the flute scene, which they flung out. The music and the costume designs for it are too beautiful for words. Ortiz has the designs in Paris still, and I expect Kaianovitch still has the flute music. But the two would be frightfully costly, of course. I heard some of the flute music; it is unlike anything ever done. It is for the end of the play where the girl joins the water spirits. All the managements boggled at the cost, so that it has never been done.”
“Well,” he said, “I’m here to do what I can for the arts. I may as well do the thing in style. But this is a little theatre and the designs may be overwhelming to the small stage.”
“They were not meant for a big stage,” she said. The Papillon only seated four hundred and fifty. That made the margin of profit so small.”
“I’ll get you, then, to put me in touch with Ortiz and Kaianovitch.”
“You’ll meet Kaianovitch to-morrow at Sulhampton, if you come there,” she said. “He’s coming there to conduct his Mass at the Abbey.”
“I shall come to Sulhampton,” he said.
Some minutes before the curtain rose on the Red Waterlilies at the Mullples May Festival, Frampton knocked on the door of Sorya’s dressing-room. He carried a great bunch of red carnations. He found her standing in front of her pier-glass, ready to go on. She had some red geranium petals in her fingers; with these she was adding a faint touch of colour to her cheeks. As he entered, the crumpled red frailties fell to the floor. He had never seen her so beautiful.
“I came to wish you good luck,” he said, “A few people are still coming in. You’ll have two minutes still.”
“I’m just gibbering with nerves,” she said.
“You don’t look it. Look here; when I saw you in that barrack at Stubbington that time, I thought you were my Margaret come back. It meant the world to me. Since then, I’ve been coming to care for you, as I hope you know, not any shadow, please believe, but you. The dead are at rest and gone on; but I think she led you to me. I’ve brought you these red flowers. If you can care for me at all, I want you to dance the last scene with one of these flowers between your lips; then I shall know.”
She looked at him curiously, with shining eyes. The call-girl, Marianela’s sister, came tapping at the doors. “Beginners on,” she was saying. The first of the three silver trumpets, which were to give the curtain signal, sounded in the adjacent wing. The passage outside was noisy suddenly with moving feet and rustling costumes.
“Good luck,” Frampton said, taking her hand suddenly. “Good luck; I must cut.”
He slipped out of the door into the passage. Members of the cast, whom he could not recognise in their paints and costumes, were hanging in the wings. He saw Pitowski and Godelof. Godelof’s mouth was working; she was hanging on to two others of the cast, whom he could not name; all three were very nervous.
“Courage,” he said. “It will be all right directly you’re on.”
They looked at him with wan smiles. The two trumpets blew their blast. He slipped through the stage door to the side of the auditorium, and took his seat. He knew that a great many eyes were turned upon him. He heard a girl say:
“That’s Mr. Mansell, just sitting down now.”
The people in the house settled and became tenser; he had given the strictest orders that no member of the audience was to enter the theatre after the second trumpet. There was now no hurried shuffling to seats; all were seated. The house lights went out; the front stage lights flashed on. The three silver trumpeters appeared, one centre, the others in the wings. Lifting their trumpets, they blew the third blowing, with the air of three Rolands scattering paganism for ever. When they disappeared, the orchestra broke out into the prelude.
The history of the Mullples May Festival has been written by another hand. It has been famous, and has made many people famous, dancers, designers, musicians and poets. It was, while it lasted, the most interesting ballet festival in the world; it ran for one fortnight in each year, for seven years.
What it cost Frampton Mansell can never be known; perhaps in all about fifty thousand pounds, for he imported his musicians, dancers and stage hands and had to house and feed them. But that is all history. At the first performance there were present all Little London’s most elegant four hundred, including all London’s critics. Twenty-three Bright Young Things, including Pob and Pinkie, were turned away by the police for attempted gate-crashing. More than seven hundred persons came out from Stubbington and Tatchester to see the cars enter the car-park. The weather was a deep anti-cyclone centred over Oxford.