The Party

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 373, 15 March 1932, Page 12

The Party

(SHORT STOBY.)

By

LOUIS GOLDING.

It was the evening of Mimo Giardini’s farewell party to his friends in Chelsea. No, of course you don’t remember Mimo Giardini. He hasn’t painted a picture since that-evening, five years ago. How quickly the reputation of these meteors flashes by and is extinguished! But I vow that he would have been a fixed star in the heavens of art, if the work of that evil night had not been done. Mimo Giardini, surely you recall an echo of his reputation? He was a little lad who came over from the slums of Naples and became a greengrocer’s assistant. No one could expound the virtues of a cauliflower with more eloquence or tell so succinctly the lifehistory of a vegetable marrow. And then suddenly lie started painting. But with a style, an austerity, a ferocity! That was the time when he was in love with Stella, of course —that red-haired subtle English maiden, the daiic’hter of a sea captain, the daughter of all the Norsemen who ever harried the tangled coasts of East Anglia. She harried the tangled Italian heart of Mimo Giardini. She possessed him. He went up in flame because of her; and the flame of his burning was that marvellous series of paintings of which she was the object and subject, the centre and circumference .... It was Mimo Giardini’s and Stella Hanson’s farewell party to the artistic gentry of Chelsea and Bloomsbury. “You, Esperey?” cried Mimo Giardini to the latest comer. “Stella! Here’s Esperey!” Ste.lla. came radiantly forward, her gown of emerald silk swishing along the studio floor.

All artistic London was there that night, whether it was distinguished for genius, beauty or wealth, or the skill

with which it concealed its entire lack of all three. This was, as I have said, Mimo Giardini’s last party—last party, at least, for two or three years; tomorrow Stella and he were setting off for Morocco. Such a. painter as Mimo Giardini, such an inspiration as Stella, such a terrain as Morocco —would produce a set of paintings, everybody murmured, which was likely to startle the critics more shockingly than anything since Dada ! Yes, it would have stuff in it! Oh yes, clever as it would be, there’s sure to be red blood to it as well as grey cells. Mimo's studio was a blaze of splendour in this grey world. The pageant of the portraits of Stella which hung on the walls and stood about on easels, combined an almost painful naivete with a sort of wild and impertinent sophistication. The paintings existed in an ether at once so ardent and so pure that Rebekah at her well (in whom she Stella) or Leda with her swan (in whom again see Stella) was but the same personage as St. Veronica or Brunnliilde (Stella always), the various aspects of essential womanhood. “But what’s that veiled picture on the easel in the corner?” people were asking. It didn’t take your eye as you came in, for it stood away from the light and drinks. “Stella’s bound to know!” somebody said. “I hear it’s his last work, his farewell gesture! Surely he’s going to let ns see it. He can’t * keep it veiled all night, a darned skeleton at the feast! “I say, Stella, one moment! What’s that veiled picture about, on the easel there?” “Oh, that? I wish I knew. I just don’t. It’s some little fad of his. He’s been awfully solemn and serious about it for months, getting up about five o’clock to have a dab at it! Don’t ask him about it. It makes him quite shirty!”

“Oh, fiddlesticks, Stella! I’ve never known him—oh, hello, here’s himself! Now look here, Mimo, my lad, what’s all this business mean? A mystery picture forsooth? Draw that curtain.” Mimo Giardini smiled. There was something queer about that smile, something twisted (or perhaps there wasn’t. You know how a fellow recreates a thing and supplies all sorts of phantoms from his own imagination). “Draw that curtain? Of course I will. But you must let me choose my time. J won’t have it gfen by artificial light.” “But what about all these? They don’t seem to worry you. Come, I’ll draw it, shall I?” ‘‘You won’t,” said Mimo Giardini shortly. There was no mistaking his decision. “Those others—pah! You could look at them by naphtha flares, they wouldn’t suffer. This is more delicate, oh, much more delicate. I’ve only finished it this very day. We’ll wait for dawn, how do you like that? The very moment the sun rises you can glut your eyes on it. You understand?” He turned away. “Hi, Sara, your lute,” he shouted. “Rosa, the guitar. Hi! Hi! Hi! Partners!” “Stella, may I ask the pleasure of the next?” asked Esperey, with his urbane, curiously unirritating aloofness. “Delighted, Esperey,” she replied with a slight droop of her lovely head. There was a drumming, a tinkling, a twanging, a clanging. Stella was in Esperey’s arms now. They danced exquisitely, but like automata; they might have been Roman puppets. Very slightly, his lips only just moving, Esperey moved his head a shade nearer to Stella’s. “Look at the cub. Look at him prancing there, the sweet little dago. Morocco? Bethnal Green!” Then he lifted his voice slightly so that the next couple could overhear him, if they cared to listen. “But, Stella,” he avowed with debonair innocence, “you’re dancing marvellously to-night. I congratulate myself.” Again he bent close to her. “Do you understand? After the next dance but one—out in the garden! Only for half a minute.” She drooped her eyelids in acquiescence. Ten minutes later, quietly as a ghost, she escaped from the studio. A melancholy moon looked down over the wilted garden. There was a sycamore over against the wall, and a dim figure waiting under it. She glided over toward it. “Austin, oh, my dear!” she said. His arms closed round her. His lips pressed on her own, hot as noon. He tore his lips away. “Listen, we must get down to it. What do you think of this latest stunt? Perfect greengrocery! He’s to end the party in true romantic style. When the holy rays of morning touch his brow —how the little fool sickens me—he’ll unveil the last picture. There’s bound to be a tremendous quack all round him, the little wop blushing modestly at the centre. Sunrise is at 5.10 this morning. We’ll both slip out one minute before that time. There’s a clock, isn’t there, on the shelf near the Tirolese Madonna * All the rest is quite clear?” “One minute before dawn?” “Yes. One kiss more. Now—you go I in. I’ll follow.”

Before three minutes had passed they were absorbed in the flare and flush of colour, the aching rhythms, the plop of corks. More merrily, madly, the guitar twanged, the lute lilted. There was a gramophone. The gramophone raised a ribald snarl. Likfe a burnished dragon fly, the emerald green of Stella flickered and hung. A silk of blue fires darted like a kingfisher.

“ Stella,” cried Mimo reproachfully, “you’re deserting me. Or are you afraid you’ll have «so much of me in Morocco you can turn me down? I won’t be turned down! Let’s dance and dazzle Europe! ” “Look!” someone whispered. “How they cling to each other! They look as if they were parts of each other and would just die if they parted! ” “ Yes! Just like his pictures! You’ve got to know them both before they begin to dawn on you! ”

“ I’m burning to see this last one. Annoying, I suppose, but it’ll make a lovely curtain. He ought to have been a producer.” “He is! That’s just what he is! And yet, it’s all so beautifully ingenuous. He's still a little East End schoolboy. Hello, Mimo! We’re just talking about the picture, the only picture! ” “ There’s only one hour to go before you can see all you like of it. Don’t worry about it. Let’s make the best of this hour. Like StelLa and me, eh Stella? ”

The maddest hour of that mad night foamed like a river in flood. Never had the dancers danced so furiously. Except Esperey. He danced like a delicate machine, not a hair ruffled. Only in a very casual glance did he allow his eye to rest on the clock by the shelf. “Five-ten, morning, did you say?” asked Nina.

“Yes!” said Mimo Giardini, face flushed and eyes shining, with oh, so dark a flame! “Twenty more minutes —twenty more priceless minutes! ” “Only ten more minutes and the bubble’s burst,” said someone. It’s probably a railway poster!” “Only five minutes, Mimo! Get ready, boy! Stand by! ” “Three—two more minutes, Giardini! I can’t bear it! Nigger, a drink! ” Mimo Giardini moved to the easel. Like a swift dream Stella was gone. With the first vaguest glimmer of dawn she was in the garden. “Stella! Stella!” breathed the voice of Esperey. “Here lam! Everything s worked perfectly! The car's waiting, just near .*. .” “Austin, I’m afraid! I’m afraid! ”

“Of that little cur? Kiss me! Afraid? Of the little dago? He's lapping it all up in the studio there! Oh, open his eyes when he discovers ..” “ You won’t move, Esperey,” a voice said, rather cold, rather dead. You are wrong, Esperey, my friend! ” the voice of Mimo Giardini continued. “ You, too, Stella——my sweet. You are wrong! Won’t you both go in front of me back into the studio? I wouldn’t leave you out of the little ceremony for worlds. No, no, Esperey. Not a movement! It’s a nasty little revolver when it gets excited! ”

The green face of Esperey, the staring eyes of the girl, brought into the studio a terror and a silence. “Where's Mimo?” “Esperey? Stella? I say, what’s The bloodless face of the painter appeared. “I’ll be obliged if nobody moves. Nobody, I said! We’ve all waited long enough for the happy ending to the party. I won’t have it spoiled at the right moment. Will you all stand in the

centre of the studio? Thank you! I think I’ve tried to make you understand how very much I consider the veiled picture here my best work. So much so, that I can’t bear the rest of this stuff —all this stuff on the walls. I’m ashamed of it. It’s footling. No one will interrupt me, please. I’m going to destroy all this junk!” “Mimo, Mimo, don’t be a fool. For God’s sake, Mimo!” His white iace had a queer sort of moony light cn it in the first streak of day. His eyes shone like hard glass. “Oh, I’m quite serious. I’ll put a bullet through anyone who interferes. This is my business. And Stella’s!” Slowly, like some priest celebrating some disastrous rite, he passed round the walls, slashing methodically at his pictures, until all their youthful and outrageous glorie? were at an end. He

stood beside the easel where the veiled picture reposed. “I know,” he said, “it looks a little' theatrical. It is! So’s the picture!” He pulled a curtain back. A stupefaction and horror seized the revellers. An odd sort of glutinous shriek toppled from Stella’s lips. Esperey tottered like a man struck by an arrow. Painted with a cunning unworthy of no painter at all, none who had ever lived, you saw Esperey and Stella clasped in a feverish embrace. Oh, there was no doubt it was they—but what change, what devilish revelation was presented here? Her face—he had painted it so often, arrogant as a tigerlily, demure as a pansy—her face was dank as a graveyard weed. Her hair? That turbid and tawny hair was a mass of creatures, crawling and "writhing. . . newts and adders. The face of Esperey was the festering-place of all sin. In each of his sunken eyes, a toad sat with puffed throat, cased in slime.

“I’ve known,” said Mimo Giardini, “oh, my friend, my girl, I’ve known —all these months.” An infinite melancholy and fatigue weighted his eyelids down. He opened them with a start, and shook his head sharply. “In us the differences were to be wiped out. You remember, Stella? There was neither lord nor peasant, neither white nor dark, there was to be only love, only art. There was to be only. . . Ah, well, I’m tired now. I’m finished now. If you want art, there’s my only picture. You can have your bellyful!” He moved to the door. “Where are you going?” a girl whimpered. “I’m going to Morocco!” he said. “Or it may be the slums of Naples. Or maybe the hard hills beyond Naples and the terraced vines. Or I’m going to hell maybe! Goodbye, ladies!” The door closed behind him.