The King of Schnorrers: Grotesques and Fantasies

by Israel Zangwill

  The Semi-Sentimental Dragon.

  The Semi-Sentimental Dragon.]

  There was nothing about the outside of the Dragon to indicate so largea percentage of sentiment. It was a mere every-day Dragon, with theusual squamous hide, glittering like silver armour, a commonplacecrested head with a forked tongue, a tail like a barbed arrow, a pairof fan-shaped wings, and four indifferently ferocious claws, one perfoot. How it came to be so susceptible you shall hear, and then,perhaps, you will be less surprised at its unprecedented andundragonlike behaviour.

  Once upon a time, as the good old chronicler, Richard Johnson,relateth, Egypt was oppressed by a Dragon who made a plaguy to-dounless given a virgin daily for dinner. For twenty-four years the menuwas practicable; then the supply gave out. There was absolutely novirgin left in the realm save Sabra, the king's daughter. As 365 x 24only = 8760, I suspect that the girls were anxious to dodge the Dragonby marrying in haste. The government of the day seems to have beenquite unworthy of confidence and utterly unable to grapple with thesituation, and poor Ptolemy was reduced to parting with the Princess,though even so destruction was only staved off for a day, as virginswould be altogether "off" on the morrow. So short-sighted was theEgyptian policy that this does not appear to have occurred to anybody.At the last moment an English tourist from Coventry, known as George(and afterwards sainted by an outgoing administration sent to hisnative borough by the country), resolved to tackle the monster. Thechivalrous Englishman came to grief in the encounter, but by rollingunder an orange tree he was safe from the Dragon so long as he choseto stay there, and so in the end had no difficulty in despatching thecreature; which suggests that the soothsayers and the magicians wouldhave been much better occupied in planting orange trees than insacrificing virgins. Thus far the story, which is improbable enough tobe an allegory.

  Now many centuries after these events did not happen, a certain worthycitizen, an illiterate fellow, but none the worse for that, made theminto a pantomime--to wit, _St. George and the Dragon; or, HarlequinTom Thumb_. And the same was duly played at a provincial theatre, witha lightly clad chorus of Egyptian lasses, in glaring contradiction ofthe dearth of such in the fable, and a Sabra who sang to them atopical song about the County Council.

  Curiously enough, in private life, Sabra, although her name was Misson the posters, was really a Miss. She was quite as young and prettyas she looked, too, and only rouged herself for the sake of stageperspective. I don't mean to say she was as beautiful as the Egyptianprincess, who was as straight as a cedar and wore her auburn hair inwanton ringlets, but she was a sprightly little body with sparklingeyes and a complexion that would have been a good advertisement to anysoap on earth. But better than Sabra's skin was Sabra's heart, whichthough as yet untouched by man was full of love and tenderness, anddid not faint under the burden of supporting her mother and thehousehold. For instead of having a king for a sire, Sabra had adrunken scene-shifter for a father. Everybody about the theatre likedSabra, from the actor-manager (who played St. George) to the stagedoor-keeper (who played St. Peter). Even her under-study did not wishher ill.

  "INSTEAD OF HAVING A KING FOR A SIRE, SABRA HAD ADRUNKEN SCENE-SHIFTER FOR A FATHER."]

  Needless, therefore, to say it was Sabra who made the Dragonsemi-sentimental. Not in the "book," of course, where his desire toeat her remained purely literal. Real Dragons keep themselves alooffrom sentiment, but a stage Dragon is only human. Such a one may beentirely the slave of sentiment, and it was perhaps to the credit ofour Dragon that only half of him was in the bonds. The other half--andthat the better half--was saturnine and teetotal, and answered to thename of Davie Brigg.

  Davie was the head man on the Dragon. He played the anterior parts,waggled the head and flapped the wings and sent gruesome grunts andpenny squibs through the "firebreathing" jaws. He was a dourmiddle-aged, but stagestruck, Scot, very proud of his rapid rise inthe profession, for he had begun as a dramatist.

  The rear of the Dragon was simply known as Jimmy.

  Jimmy was a wreck. His past was a mystery. His face was a brief recordof baleful experiences, and he had the aspirates of a gentleman. Hehad gone on the stage to be out of the snow and the rain. Not knowingthis, the actor-manager paid him ninepence a night. His wages justkept him in beer-money. The original Sabra tamed two lions, butperhaps it was a greater feat to tame this half of a Dragon.

  Jimmy's tenderness for Sabra began at rehearsal, when he saw a gooddeal of her, and felicitated himself on the fact that they were on inthe same scenes. After a while, however, he perceived this to be adoleful drawback, for whereas at rehearsal he could jump out of hisskin and breathe himself and feast his eyes on Sabra when the Dragonwas disengaged, on the stage he was forced to remain cramped indarkness while Ptolemy was clowning or St. George executing a stepdance. Sabra was invisible, except for an odd moment or so betweenthe scenes when he caught sight of her gliding to her dressing-roomlike a streak of discreet sunshine. Still he had his compensations;her dulcet notes reached his darkness (mellowed by the painted canvasand the tin scales sewn over it), as the chant of the unseen cuckooreaches the woodland wanderer. Sometimes, when she sang that songabout the County Council, he forgot to wag his tail.

  "SOMETIMES, WHEN SHE SANG THAT SONG ABOUT THE COUNTYCOUNCIL, HE FORGOT TO WAG HIS TAIL."]

  Thus was Love blind, while Indifference in the person of Davie Brigglooked its full through the mask that stood for the monster's head.After a bit Jimmy conceived a mad envy of his superior's privileges;he longed to see Sabra through the Dragon's mouth. He was so weary ofthe little strip of stage under the Dragon's belly, which, even if hepeered through the breathing-holes in the patch of paint-disguisedgauze let into its paunch, was the most he could see. One night heasked Davie to change places with him. Davie's look of surprise andconsternation was beautiful to see.

  "Do I hear aricht?" he asked.

  "Just for a night," said Jimmy, abashed.

  "But d'ye no ken this is a speakin' part?"

  "'BUT D'YE NO KEN THIS A SPEAKIN' PART?'"]

  "I did--not--know--that," faltered Jimmy.

  "Where's your ears, mon?" inquired Davie sternly. "Dinna ye hear megrowlin' and grizzlin' and squealin' and skirlin'?"

  "Y--e--s," said Jimmy. "But I thought you did it at random."

  "Thocht I did it at random!" cried Davie, holding up his hands inhorror. "And mebbe also ye thocht onybody could do't!"

  Jimmy's shamed silence gave consent also to this unflinchinginterpretation of his thought.

  "Ah weel!" said Davie, with melancholy resignation, "this is theartist's reward for his sweat and labour. Why, mon, let me tell ye,ilka note is not ainly timed but modulatit to the dramatic eenteresto' the moment, and that I hae practised the squeak hours at a time wi'a bagpiper. Tak' my place, indeed! Are ye fou again, or hae ye tintyour senses?"

  "But you could do the words all the same. I only want to see foronce."

  "And how d'ye think the words should sound, coming from the creature'sbelly? And what should ye see! You should nae ken where to go, Iwarrant. Come, I'll spier ye. Where d'ye come in for the fight withSt. George--is it R 2 E or L U E?"

  "L U E," replied Jimmy feebly.

  "Ye donnered auld runt!" cried Davie triumphantly. "'Tis neither onenor t'other. 'Tis R C. Why, ye're capable of deein' up stage insteadof down! Ye'd spoil my great scene. And ye are to remember I wad bearthe wyte for 't, for naebody but our two sel's should ken the truth.Nay, nay, my mon. I hae my responsibeelities to the management. Ye'reall verra weel in a subordinate position, but dinna ye aspire to morethan beseems your abeelities. I am richt glad ye spoke me. Eh, but itwould be an awfu' thing if I was taken bad and naebody to play thepart. I'll warn the manager to put on an under-study betimes."

  "Oh, but let _me_ be the under-study, then," pleaded Jimmy.

  Davie sniffed scornfully.

  "'Tis a braw thing, ambeetion," he said, "but there's a proverb aboutit ye ken, mebbe."

  "But I'll notice everything you do,
and exactly how you do it!"

  Davie relented a little.

  "Ah, weel," he said cautiously, "I'll bide a wee before speaking tothe manager."

  But Davie remained doggedly robust, and so Jimmy still walked indarkness. He often argued the matter out with his superior,maintaining that they ought to toss for the position--head or tail.Failing to convince Davie, he offered him fourpence a night for theaccommodation, but Davie saw in this extravagance evidence of adetermined design to supplant him. In despair Jimmy watched for achance of slipping into the wire framework before Davie, but theconscientious artist was always at his post first. They held dialogueson the subject, while with pantomimic license the chorus of Egyptianlasses was dancing round the Dragon as if it were a maypole. Theirangry messages to each other vibrated along the wires of theirprison-house, rending the Dragon with intestinal war. Weave yourcloud-wrought Utopias, O social reformer, but wherever men inhabit,there jealousy and disunion shall creep in, and this gaudy canvas tentwith its tin roofing was a hotbed of envy, hatred, and alluncharitableness. Yet Love was there, too--a stranger, purer passionthan the battered Jimmy had ever known; for it had the unselfishnessof a love that can never be more than a dream, that the beloved cannever even know of. Perhaps, if Jimmy had met Sabra before he left offbeing a gentleman--!

  The silent, hopeless longing, the chivalrous devotion yearning dumblywithin him, did not stop his beer; he drank more to drown histhoughts. Every night he entered into his part gladly, knowing himselfelevated in the zoological scale, not degraded, by an assumption thatmade him only half a beast. It was kind of Providence to hide himwholly away from her vision, so that her bright eyes might not besullied by the sight of his foulness. None of the grinning audiencesuspected the tragedy of the hind legs of the Dragon, as blindlyfollowing their leader, they went "galumphing" about the stage. Theinnocent children marvelled at the monster, in wide-eyed excitement,unsuspecting even its humanity, much less its double nature; onlyDavie knew that in that Dragon there were the ruins of a man and themakings of a great actor!

  "Why are ye sae anxious to stand in my shoon?" he would ask, when thehind legs became too obstreperous.

  "I don't want to be in your shoes; I only want to see the stage foronce."

  But Davie would shake his head incredulously, making the Dragon's maskwobble at the wrong cues. At last, once when Sabra was singing, poorJimmy, driven to extremities, confessed the truth, and had themortification of feeling the wires vibrate with the Scotchman's silentlaughter. He blushed unseen.

  But it transpired that Davie's amusement was not so much scornful assceptical. He still suspected the tail of a sinister intention to wagthe Dragon.

  "Nae, nae," he said, "ye shallna get me to swallow that. Ye're an uncopuir creature, but ye're no sa daft as to want the moon. She's abonnie lassie, and I willna be surprised if she catches a coronet inthe end, when she makes a name in Lunnon; for the swells here, thoughI see a wheen foolish faces nicht after nicht in the stalls, are but apuir lot. Eh, but it's a gey grand tocher is a pretty face. In themeanwhiles, like a canny girl, she's settin' her cap at the chief."

  "Hold your tongue!" hissed the hind legs. "She's as pure as an angel."

  "Hoot-toot!" answered the head. "Dinna leebel the angels. It's no anangel that lets her manager give her sly squeezes and saft kisses thatare nae in the stage directions."

  "Then she can't know he's a married man," said the hind legs hoarsely.

  "Dinna fash yoursel'--she kens that full weel and a thocht or twomore. Dod! Ye should just see how she and St. George carry on after mydeath scene, when he's supposit to ha' rescued her and they falla-cuddlin'."

  "You're a liar!" said the hind legs.

  Davie roared and breathed burning squibs and capered about, and Jimmyhad to prance after him in involuntary pursuit. He felt choking in hisstuffy hot black rollicking dungeon. The thought of this bloatedsexagenarian faked up as a _jeune premier_, pawing that sweet littlegirl, sickened him.

  "Dom'd leear yersel!" resumed Davie, coming to a standstill. "I maunbelieve my own eyes, what they tell me nicht after nicht."

  "Then let me see for myself, and I'll believe you."

  "Ye dinna catch me like that," said Davie, chuckling.

  After that poor Jimmy's anxiety to see the stage became feverish. Heeven meditated malingering and going in front of the house, but couldonly have got a distant view, and at the risk of losing his place inan overcrowded profession. His opportunity came at length, but nottill the pantomime was half run out and the actor-manager sought togalvanise it by a "second edition," which in sum meant a new lot ofthe variety entertainers who came on and played copophones beforePtolemy, did card-tricks in the desert, and exhibited trained poodlesto the palm-trees. But Davie, determined to rise to the occasion,thought out a fresh conception of his part, involving three newgrunts, and was so busy rehearsing them at home that he forgot theflight of the hours and arrived at the theatre only in time to takesecond place in the Dragon that was just waiting, half-manned, at thewing. He was so flustered that he did not even think of protesting forthe first few minutes. When he did protest, Jimmy said, "What are youjawing about? This is a second edition, isn't it?" and caracoledaround, dragging the unhappy Davie in his train.

  "I'll tell the chief," groaned the hind legs.

  "All right, let him know you were late," answered the head cheerfully.

  "Eh, but it's pit-mirk, here. I canna see onything."

  "You see I'm no liar. Shall I send a squib your way?"

  "Nay, nay, nae larking. Mind the business or you'll ruin myreputation."

  "Mind my business, I'll mind yours," replied Jimmy joyously, for thelovely Sabra was smiling right in his eyes. A Dragon divided againstitself cannot stand, so Davie had to wait till the beast came off. Tohis horror Jimmy refused to budge from his shell. He begged for justone "keek" at the stage, but Jimmy replied: "You don't catch me likethat." Davie said little more, but he matured a crafty plan, and inthe next scene he whispered:--

  "Jimmy!"

  "Shut up, Davie; I'm busy."

  "I've got a pin, and if ye shallna promise to restore me my richtsafter the next exit, ye shall feel the taste of it."

  "You'll just stay where you are," came back the peremptory reply.

  Deep went the pin in Jimmy's rear, and the Dragon gave such a howlthat Davie's blood ran cold. Too late he remembered that it was notthe Dragon's cue, and that he was making havoc of his own professionalreputation. Through the canvas he felt the stern gaze of theactor-manager. He thought of pricking Jimmy only at the howling cues,but then the howl thus produced was so superior to his own, that ifJimmy chose to claim it, he might be at once engaged to replace him inthe part. What a dilemma!

  Poor Davie! As if it was not enough to be cut off from all thebrilliant spectacle, pent in pitchy gloom and robbed of all his "fat"and his painfully rehearsed "second edition" touches. He felt like oneof those fallen archangels of the footlights who live to bearOphelia's bier on boards where they once played Hamlet.

  Far different emotions were felt at the Dragon's head, where Jimmy'sjoy faded gradually away, replaced by a passion of indignation, aswith love-sharpened eyes he ascertained for himself the true relationsof the actor-manager with his "principal girl." He saw from his coignof vantage the poor modest little thing shrinking before the cowardlyadvances of her employer, who took every possible advantage of thestage potentialities, in ways the audience could not discriminate fromthe acting. Alas! what could the gentle little bread-winner do? ButJimmy's blood was boiling. Davie's great scene arrived: the battleroyal between St. George and the Dragon. Sabra, bewitchingly radiantin white Arabian silk, stood under the orange-tree where the pendentfruit was labelled three a penny. Here St. George, in knightly armourclad, retired between the rounds, to be sponged by the fair Sabra,from whose lips he took the opportunity of drinking encouragement.When the umpire cried "Time!" Jimmy uttered inarticulate cries of realrage and malediction, vomiting his squibs straight at the champion'se
yes with intent to do him grievous bodily injury. But squibs havetheir own ways of jumping, and the actor-manager's face was protectedby his glittering burgonet.

  At last Jimmy and Davie were duly despatched by St. George's trustysword, Ascalon, which passed right between them and stuck out on theother side amid the frantic applause of the house. The Dragon reeledcumbrously sideways and bit the dust, of which there was plenty. ThenSabra rushed forward from under the orange-tree and encircled herhero's hauberk with a stage embrace, while St. George, lifting up hisvisor, rained kiss after kiss on Sabra's scarlet face, and the "gods"went hoarse with joy.

  "Oh, sir!" Jimmy heard the still small voice of the bread-winnerprotest feebly again and again amid the thunder, as she tried towithdraw herself from her employer's grasp. This was the last straw.Anger and the foul air of his prison wrought up Jimmy to asphyxiationpoint. What wonder if the Dragon lost his head completely?

  Davie will never forget the horror of that moment when he felt himselfdragged upwards as by an irresistible tornado, and knew himself for aruined actor. Mechanically he essayed to cling to the ground, but invain. The dead Dragon was on its feet in a moment; in another, Jimmyhad thrown off the mask, showing a shock of hair and a blotchedcrimson face, spotted with great beads of perspiration. Unconscious ofthis culminating outrage, Davie made desperate prods with his pin, butJimmy was equally unconscious of the pricks. The thunder diedabruptly. A dead silence fell upon the whole house--you could haveheard Davie's pin drop. St. George, in amazed consternation, releasedhis hold of Sabra and cowered back before the wild glare of thebloodshot eyes. "How dare you?" rang out in hoarse screaming accentsfrom the protruding head, and with one terrific blow of its rightfore-leg the hybrid monster felled Sabra's insulter to the ground.

  The astonished St. George lay on his back, staring up vacantly at theflies.

  "I'll teach you how to behave to a lady!" roared the Dragon.

  Then Davie tugged him frantically backwards, but Jimmy cavortedobstinately in the centre of the stage, which the actor-manager hadtaken even in his fall, so that the Dragon's hind legs trampledblindly on Davie's prostrate chief, amid the hysterical convulsions ofthe house.

  * * * * *

  Next morning the local papers were loud in their praises of the"Second Edition" of _St. George and the Dragon_, especially of the"genuinely burlesque and topsy-turvy episode in which the Dragon risesfrom the dead to read St. George a lesson in chivalry; a reallyside-splitting conception, made funnier by the grotesque revelation ofthe constituents of the Dragon, just before it retires for the night."

  The actor-manager had no option but to adopt this reading, so had tobe hoofed and publicly reprimanded every evening during the rest ofthe season, glad enough to get off so cheaply.

  Of course, Jimmy was dismissed, but St. George was painfully polite toSabra ever after, not knowing but what Jimmy was in the gallery with abrickbat, and perhaps not unimpressed by the lesson in chivalry he wasreceiving every evening.

  Perhaps you think the Dragon deserved to marry Sabra, but that wouldbe really too topsy-turvy, and the sentimental beast himself was quitesatisfied to have rescued her from St. George.

  But the person who profited most by Jimmy's sacrifice was Davie, whostepped into a real speaking part, emerged from the obscurity of hissurroundings, burst his swaddling clothes, and made his appearance onthe stage--a thing he could scarcely be said to have done in theDragon's womb.

  And so the world wags.