My Friend Pierrot.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVIII, Issue 17, 23 October 1912, Page 42

My Friend Pierrot.

Bi?

C. BRYSON TAYLOR.

Y dance, 1 think. Mi«s Irving!” All srtid Billy, coming up. His col\l I l ar was il w ’Be<l wreck; hifi face 4J *■/ was unbecomingly flushed with his exertions; his red hair lay plastered damply on his forehead the outward and visible signs, these, that he was having a “pimply ripping time.’ He stood planted squarely before Miss Irving, his blue eyes challenging her to deny him his rights, his 'broad shoulders blocking the entrance .of the palm-screen-ed bower wherein Miss Irving and her attendant cavalier had ensconced themeelves. In his evening clothes he looked about as much out of pla e as a bull in a gingham apron. They fitted him, but he did not fit them. In his appearance was someth'*!ng of the grotesque, lor which it was hard to condemn any one feature. His hair was of a painful red, but it was soft and well kempt; his face was blunt and homely, but there was no coarseness in it; his eyes were small and palely blue, but they were steady and kind. His hands were preternaturally big, but they were the hands of a gentleman; and his figure, (boasting no elegance of outline, was deep-chested and roughhewn, and built for rugged strength.

•‘Oh, you, Billy Buttinsky!” jibed Frailey with good-humoured, easy patronage. He was Miss Irving's attendant cavalier, a dapper elegant whom Billy could have punished with one hand tied behind him. Everyone, jibed Billy—just why no one •topped to think. "It’s the fashion —he doesn’t mind. He never knows we’re guying him, he’s such a clown—always playing monkey for the crowd,” Frailey would have said. Miss Irving looked up at Billy, towering above her, thick-set, rumpled, awkward with his untutored strength. She was a slim slip of a girl, cool-eyed, flower-faced, dark-haired; and Billy’s eyes on her were hungry. “Really?” she said demurely. "Then I suppose I’ll have to give it to you, won’t I?” She had acquired to perfection th© latest fashionalble lisp*; the fascination of it in her red mouth had long since been Billy’s undoing. She rose, with a little mono over her shoulder at Frailey, to intimate that as she had promised so she must perform, however hard the duty. It was meant for Frailey alone, but Billy caught it, and misunderstood it, and his heavy face flushed. Such sensitiveness on his part, he know, was foolish: let “the crowd” once suspected that their pin pricks went home, and his life would not be worth living. “It would be ice-cream and cake for them if they knew the truth,” he thought, rather hopelessly, as he followed his captive into the (lancing-room. Here were lights, many voices, the perfume of flowers and women’s laces; over all the strains of the "Valse Bleu.” On the polished floor half a. hundred couples slid and glided and galloped; white shoulders gleamed against black coats; gauzy skirts swirled and slippers twinkled. Billy shouldered a way through the group of men at the doorway. and turned to receive his partner. Tn the full glare of the lights lie looked redder and hotter than over. Miss Irving gathered her skirts daintily in one hand, held out the other to him, and suffered his embrace. At the touch of her bis head whirled: so it was always when he danced with her: exquisite bliss to hold her actually in his arms, exquisite pain to know that it was probably the only way he could ever get her there. He took delight in intricate turns and fdidings through the crowd, for the mere pleasure of feeling her yielding to him. guided* by his strength. Billy himselt hated dancing viciously, for he was not a good dancer but it had its compensations. and if he could hold his heart''* (blight by no other means, he would cheerfully have danced all night. He bumped her into the band stand. •nd into as many couples as he could find: he caromed against a thin man and r fat woman; he was punched in the back and prodded in the ribs and his toes were stepped on, but he was in the heights of idiotic bliss until Miss Irving, nearly torn from his arms by the onslaught of a furiously whirling couple, gasped and said in exasperation: “Oh, Billy, why are you so big!” So it was all spoiled; he was a great,

clumsy clown, tit only to be laughed at, and she was having an awful time. The light went out of "his hot and eager face; he stopped so suddenly that Miss Irving nearly fell. “I’m sorry!” he stammered in anxious contrition. “ I'm nothing but a clumsy lummox', anyhow. Let’s go into the conservatory and cool off.” He had his way, for Miss Irving was left with no breath for objections. The conservatory was dark and quiet ami delightfully cool. Billy mopped his heated brow with a silk handkerchief a half size or so smaller than a tablecloth, found a seat for Miss Irving, and set himself to the task of entertaining hers His chance ' had come—the first time ho had been alone with her for a week. What he wished to say he had prepares! in a neat speech, carefully rehearsed. He knew what he would say ami do; hi' had figured out carefully what she would do and say. She might weep; ho had an uneasy notion that girls wept when they were proposed to.

but he must be prepared for that. She would be shy, of course, and very likely hold him off; he must be very gentle with her and not frighten her with his pleadings. Here he realised with a shock that the speech was gone from him utterly. Not a stammer of it was left. Under the stress of his emotion, his face, already flushed, became empurpled. He wondered how she could be so eool, so demure, so sweetly serene; it seemed impossible that something of his emotion should not communicate itself to her. He fanned her violently, meditating in a crimson anguish of doubt how he would best begin. When cold shivers began crawling down his spinal column at the pall of silence which threatened to settle on them, through sheer nervousness he plunged headlong into speech. " I hope you are having a pleasant lime,” he said loudly, in a perfectly expressionless voice only a trifle huskier than its wont. It was Billy who, playing monkey for the crowd, invariably, with the best intentions in the world, somehow played the down instead, by word or deed, and got himself laughed at for his pains. So here again: trying his best to please, he had started wrong, and she would laugh at him. He began to feel that if any one laughed >'t him again ho could cheerfully comm.*, murder. Miss Irving looked him over calmly, with no idea that the worm was threatening to turn. Billy, you re a goose,” she said lightly. Billy s big hand closed on the fan ho was desperately wield'ng, ami a stick snapped. He turned on her, his perspiring face frightened and eager, his blue eyes very bright. " I've got something to tell you,” ho stammered. His voice gathered headway; he heard it speaking almost without his own volition. Miss Irving began tv look at him in astonishment mingled with some alarm. She knew that he adored her; had seen that ho followed her with worshipful eyes; had been

teased about him until it had become an old story; but for these violent symptoms, apropos of nothing whatever, she was unprepared. “ I’m in love with you,” he announced loudly. "I—Fuf-Florence, I love you! Will you marry me!” He did it very badly, but it was obviously his first attempt. Then he sat back, gripping the fan in both hands, anil looked at her. It was done; he had brought all lie was or hoped to be, his boy’s pure passion, garbed as it might be in its husk of awkward crudity, and laid it at her feet. Yet because he was Billy, the poor Pierrot, unwilling victim of his clown’s mask, he must needs do it in his own way, the clown’s way, the way of Pierrot. But it was done, and his world hung silent until she should speak. Miss Irving struggled a moment. But the combined effects of himself and his speech were too much for her; she gave it up, and laughed—laughed as every one laughed at Billy—poor Billy “playing monkey for the crowd.” , " Billy, you’re such a goose!” she said sweetly. It never occurred to her to take him seriously. No one ever took Billy seriously—and who eould help laughing? He was so adorably funny when he got excited. But Billy was looking at her as though she had struck him in the face. It had never occurred to him that in this, the supreme moment of his life, he would not be taken serious! v.

“I’m glad it amuses you!” he said in an altered voice. " I know you think I’m a clown—everybody calls me one, and I guess 1 look like one. and maybe 1 act like one. You all have laughed at me and quizzed me, and I’m not complaining of that.” He fought desperately against the overwhelming shyness that gripped him, the deep-rooted, dumb shyness of a boy, which is far harder to combat than a girl’s. Never had he dreamed of talking so to any living soul, of himself and his own inmost sacred feelings; he was appalled at his own outbreak. He spoke fast, in a strained and husky voice. " I never seem to do the right thing, nor say the right thing, no matter what I do. I’ve made a thundering ass of myself sometimes —but there are mighty few' who don't do that once in a while. I never say anything about it, of course —being ridiculed, I mean, and having people always laugh at you instead of with you —but sometimes it’s hard not to show that it cuts when they go a bit further than they realise. 1 like to see things going with a snap; and somehow in a crowd there’s always one person who’s got to make ’em go. In our crowd that one always seemed to be me, and I guess people forgot after a while that I was anything else but the clown. And now ”

His hurrying voice stopped as though he realised all at once what he was saying. Another stick of the luckless f.in snapped. “Oh, Billy!” said Miss Irving in confusion. "I’m so sorry! I didn’t know! I—never dreamed you felt like that about it!” Billy smiled at her steadily. “Of course you didn't! Clowns have no business to have feelings, have they? I mean—well, I guess it’s all right.” Ho rose, giving “her no time for what she might have said. The situation was his, undoubtedly, but she met it with a nervous attempt at lightness. “Billy, do you know' ybu’ve proposed to me, and never waited to hear my answer!” He looked down at her, and a shadow came into his hurt blue eyes. “I think I’ve got about, all the answer I need,” he said soberly. “When a girl—when a man ” Again he left his sentence unfinished, and the third stick of the fan snapped.’ Miss Irving rose precipitately. She was very young, .and suddenly she found the situation too much for her. Frailey’s slim and elegant shoulders visible in the crowd outside the conservatory. She fled to him cravenly, with a hasty 'murmur of “this dance engaged,” and danced away with him into the lights ami brightness, leaving Pierrot alone amid the greenery, with the broken fan clutched tightly in his hand. Out in the lights and brightness, Pierrette whirled through her pretty part, flying feet keeping time to the music, busy thoughts keeping time to another tune, "Poor Billy! If he only were not so queer! Why can’t he do things as Mr. Frailey does!” But Pierrot had to do things and say things in hia own blundering way, as

Pierrot always does and suffers for JE because he was born Pierrot and eould not help himself. Pierrot’s part' ’is sometimes no easy one to play, for all its merriment and its grinning mask. It might have been for several centuries that Billy lurked darkly in the conservatory, clinging to the broken fan. He was in no humour to emerge a »d face the more or less innocent inquisition of his friends, to hear their jokes, and be forced into joking on his own account—or else confess why the jokes were "not forthcoming. Coupled went down to supper ami returned; ■dances tripped on to their blithe end;' men and maidens flirted, and the world was very well. From the sight of various promenading couples Billy sought shelter ‘between two tall

and a flowering acacia while he donned his mask to face the world again. Ho sat very quiet in his nook, opening and closing the broken fan. The world had never seen Pierrot with his mask off;] he was learning that when he tried td lift it, the world believed merely that some new buffoon trick was ready for its applause. Abruptly he was aware that a eouple had established themselves beyond the rubber-trees and the flowering acacia; and, perforce, he caught a fragment of their talk. When he realised* that they were Miss Irving ami Frailey, he meditated instant flight. But the only way to escape was to pass them, and in his new mood of bitter shyness this was what lie would not do. "\\ hat'd you do with Billy?” Frailey’s voice asked. “I—think lie must have gone home,” Miss Irving answered. "Silly ass,” said Frailey, cheerfully. In his corner Billv grinned ruefully—it was so very true. “You shouldn’t say such things about Billy,” said Miss diving, with indignation. “He’s an—an awfully dear fellow, and we’ve treated him very badly. I —somehow one can’t help feeling sorry for him ” She broke off with art exclamation. "What is it!” Frailey demanded. Mi-s Irving gave a nervous laugh. * “I—think it was a bug,” she answered. “Yes, a big red bug.” Her tone was odd, but bugs might be provocative of anything from hysterics to swearwords. This it was evident that Frailey knew; he said promptly: “Give me that cushion quick and I'll kill it.” “Funny thing to kill bugs with,” Billy commented inwardly, and wished that he could get a view of the proceedings. But it at once became evident, eyen', without seeing, that Frailey knew what he was about. He shouted “Philopena!” so loudly that Billy jumped. "You’ve loot!” he exulted. “You made the yourself—give-and-take, and the winner to name the penalty. That’s the penalty i'll take—a kins and nothing else.” “I won't do it!” said Miss Irving. “That’s vulgar and we're not children.” Iler voice suddenly became angry. “Mr Frailey, let me go at once!” Billy clenched his lists, his eyes hot. Be heard a little cry from Mi-<s Irving; even as lie pushed back his chair and rose, her voice reached him. imperious, but with a queer little catch in it which went directly to his head. “Billy, gome out of there at once! If

you let this man kiss me. I’ll never speak to you again as long as I live!” Billy had no time for .surprise at this. Jle lunged between the rubber-trees and the acacia, leaving a trail of broken branches to mark his course, into the open space where Miss Irving was standing, flushed and tearful and defiant, and Actually in Frailey is arms. Billy bore down upon them, great, hulking, awk[ward, his blue eyen aflame. ‘•Here, you! Drop that!” he said furiously. Poor Pierrot!—even with the situation in his hands he must mull it somehow. ijSlws Irving gave a halt-hysterical giggle. Frailey laughed. Billy caught him by the collar, and as he released Mins Irving lo defend himself, shook him until he choked and spluttered. In Billy’s hands •he was a reed, a helpless infant. Mis<3 Irving stood by, her hamLs raised to her sea r 1 et cll eek s. ‘’Now. you go!” said Billy, husky with wrath, and propelled his victim violently .doorward. Thereafter, he promptly forgot him, for Mis>-> Irving held out both hands to him, saying—still with the queer little catch in her voice: “Thank you, Billy! If •that little beast had ki.-ried me I should have died.” Billy took the hands and flushed to Bi is hair. “How did you know T was there?” he asked eagerly. Muss Irving drew her hands away and pealed herself on the bench, holding her skirtis aside to make room. lie had

sense enough left to accept the hint, and sat beside her, loaning forward with an elbow on his knee that he might look into her face. ‘’Why, 1 knew you were there nearly

all the time,” she confessed. “I saw you through the—the leaves. It made me jump, and Mr Frailey asked why ” “And you called me a red bug,” said Billy. Miss Irving flushed. “I couldn't think of anything else to say,” she murmured uncomfortably. “Bin sorry.” “Oh. don’t mention it,” said Billy politely, and made a 'move to rise, lie had just remembered that his feelings had been badly hurt and that he was still sore. Miss Irving looked at him under her lashes; a curious glance, half anxious, half humorous, entirely alluring. ‘’Are—you—in such a hurry?” she said faintly, hy. no,” he answered without guile. “X ou—you managed Mr Frailey beautifully,” said Miss Irving, feeling nervously for speech. Billy turned slow eyes of scorn upon her. “Huh—that shrimp!” he said contemptuously. Miss Irving tried again. “ Are you sure you don't want to go and dance?” I wouldn’t keep you for the world——” “No, thanks,” said Billy shortly. lie looked at her in surprise at her incomprehensibility, and found her looking at him. To his amazement she flushed, as ho had never seen a girl'flush before; a slow and heavy crimson that drowned Hie rose of her cheeks and crept to her white forehead. “What's the matter?” he gasped in a panic. Billy,” said Alins Irving, in a voice that fluttered in spite of her, “ if I were v ‘‘ry, very nice, and —and awfully B-sorry, would you propose tn mo again?” Hilly almost turned his back on her. Couldn’t she let up on him even yet?

“And—get laughed at again?” lie said sullenly. “No, thanks. 1 think not!” Quite suddenly he lost his head and his reason; the last straw was too much. “My God, girl, how much more of a fool do you want to make me? Can’t you see it’s gone far enough? It’s no joke to me. whatever it may be to you!” Then he got himself in hand again, and stopped short, crimson with anger and embarrassment. “I beg your pardon!” he said miserably. A heavy silence fell. Out of it Miss Irving said sweetly and unexpectedly: . “ Billy, how old arc you?”Billy stared. “Twenty-eight. Why?" he answered briefly. „ “You might just as well be eight,” said Miss Irving unkindly. ’’ I’m twenty-two, but I never was as young as you are at this instant minute.” Billy answered nothing. lie was unhappy, and wanted nothing so much as to get away. She seemed to delight in his embarrassment, to take pleasure in prolonging it. He glanced at her. Her eyes were downcast, her fingers very busy with the chain which had held her fan. She began to speak, without raising her lashes. “ Then, if you won’t propose to me, I —I suppose I’ll have to propose to you. Oh. Billy, dear, don’t you see what I’m trying to say, you stupid goose? We’ve treated you shamefully, and poked fun at you, and you’ve been so good—and I’ve been sorry for you all the time. You were funny, but —I like you all the better for it—l truthfully do! If I hadn’t run away when I did 1 should have cried. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings ” She stopped to catch breath. Billy got himself to his feet and stared down at her. He. ran a finger around inside his wilted collar, opened his mouth and shut it again, and said thickly:— “ You mean ” “ Yes, oh, yes!” said Miss Irving fervently. She caught herself up. “ No—• oli, no! I don’t mean anything at all! I mean —if this is the way you’re going to act, I’m sorry I spoke!” She rose with a wild glance doorward. Billy stepped between her and escape. “Will you please tell me what’s the matter with you?”, he said steadily. “\Ve can’t both go crazy at once, you know! It rather seems to be your turn now.” Miss Irving laughed, but the laugh broke in a sob. “I’m afraid of you!" she faltered. “If you wouldn’t look so grave—The matter is that I—well.1 —well. 1 will marry you whether you ask me again or not, Now do you understand?” Billy’s face broke into light. He took a stride toward her, stopped short and folded his arms across his chest —simply to keep them from going around her—• and said in a curiously level voice: — “I’m nothing but a silly ass, you know, and an everlasting chump, and a clown that’s always playing monkey for the crowd ” “Billy—don’t!" cried Miss Irving with another sob. “ You’re good and kind — or you’d have hated us for the way we treated you—and 1 don’t care what you He came toward her, and she stood still bravely, flushing rosy red. He took her in his arms, and she raised her hands to his shoulders, leaning against him ever so slightly, yielding to his embrace. So then lie knew that even Pierrot could find his happiness as other men. “It’s better than dancing!” cried Billy in a burst of exultation.