The City of Pleasure: A Fantasia on Modern Themes - Arnold Bennett

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then, to crown his exploits, he takes me up in the balloon, mother—wastes a solid hour.”

      “In the balloon!”

      Ilam recounted the incident of the balloon.

      “And, after all, he lets that impudent journalist go free—absolutely free!”

      “Jos,” said his mother, “it’s a wonder you’re alive, my dear.”

      “It’s a pity Carpentaria’s alive,” rejoined Ilam.

      His mother’s burning eyes met his.

      “That’s just what I’ve been thinking,” she piped calmly.

      Her son’s gaze dropped.

      “Since when?”

      “Since you began grumbling about him, last week but one, my pet.”

      “He’s no use now,” Ilam grumbled. “We’ve carried out all his ideas, and it’s simply a matter of business, and Carpentaria doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘business.’ Just think of his argument about those ads.!”

      “Never mind that, Jos,” Mrs. Ilam put in.

      “He’s only in the way now,” Jos proceeded gloomily.

      “I suppose he wouldn’t retire,” Mrs. Ilam suggested.

      “Retire? Of course he wouldn’t retire—nothing would induce him to retire. He enjoys it—he enjoys annoying me.”

      “Anyway,” said the mother, “you’ll have the satisfaction of a very great success.”

      She looked out of the window at the gardens.

      “Yes,” growled Ilam. “And he gets half the profits. I’ve found all the money, and he hasn’t found a cent. But he gets half the profits. What for? A few ideas—nothing else. He pretends to direct, but he’ll direct nothing except his blessed band. And I reckon we shall clear a profit of ten thousand a week! Half of ten is five.”

      “He only gets half the profits as long as he lives, Jos,” said Mrs. Ilam. “After that—nothing.”

      “Nothing,” agreed Jos, biting cruelly into a hot scone. “But as long as he lives he’s costing me, say, five thousand a week, besides worry.”

      “He mayn’t live long,” Mrs. Ilam ventured. “No, but he may live fifty-years.”

      “Supposing he died very suddenly, Jos,” Mrs. Ilam pursued calmly; “he wouldn’t be the first person that was inconvenient to you who had disappeared unexpectedly.”

      “Mother!” Ilam almost shouted, starting up. “But would he?” Mrs. Ilam persisted.

      “No, he wouldn’t,” muttered Josephus, and his voice trembled.

      Mrs. Ilam blew out the spirit-lamp under the kettle as though she was blowing out Carpentaria. “I’m off,” said Josephus nervously.

      “Wait a moment, child. Ring the bell for me.” A servant entered.

      “Bring me your master’s knitted waistcoat,” said Mrs. Ilam.

      “But, mother, I shan’t want it.”

      “Yes, you will, Jos. There’s no month more treacherous than May. You’ll put it on to please me.”

      He obeyed, bent down to kiss his terrible parent, and departed.

      “Think it over,” she called out after him.

      Ilam stopped.

      “And then, what about his sister?” he said. “Don’t mix up two quite separate things,” Mrs. Ilam responded. “Besides, she isn’t his sister.”

       Table of Contents

      That night the City of Pleasure was illuminated. Eighty thousand tiny electric lamps hanging in festoons from standard to standard lighted the Central Way alone; the façades of all the places of amusement were outlined in fire; the shops glittered; and the cable-cars, as they flashed to and fro, bore the monogram I.C. in electricity on their foreheads. At eight o’clock the thoroughfare was crowded with visitors, and the stream of arrivals was stronger than ever. In the superb restaurants, at all prices (no matter what the price, they were equally superb in decoration), five thousand diners were finishing five thousand dinners, their eyes undisturbed by the presence of advertisements on the walls. The theatre, the music-hall, the circus, the menagerie, the concerts, and the rest of the entertainments, were filling up. In the Amusements Park people shot down railways into water, slid down smooth slopes into mattresses, circled in great wheels, floated in the latest novelties of merry-go-rounds, ascended in the balloon, and practised all the other devices for frittering away eternity, just as though night had not fallen. In the vast court of the Exposition Palace a band was swelling the strains of the newest waltzes to three storeys of loungers and sitters at café-tables, while within the interior of the building men and women wandered about examining the multifarious attractions of the Woman’s Exhibition.

      But the chief joy was the Oriental Gardens, wherein a multitude of over fifty thousand persons had gathered together. The Oriental Gardens were illuminated, but in a different manner from the Central Way. Chinese lanterns were suspended everywhere in the budding trees, giving the illusion of magic precocious flowers that had blossomed there in a single hour, in all the tints of the rainbow and many others entirely foreign to the rainbow. The bandstand alone was picked out in electricity. It blazed in the centre of the gardens like a giant’s crown, and, although yet empty, it formed the main object of attention. Overhead stretched a dark-blue sky, silvered with stars, and the wind had a warm and caressing quality which encouraged sightseers to expose themselves to it to such an extent that the fifteen cafés of the Oriental Gardens, some sheltered, some quite open, but each a centre of light and laughter, were every one crowded with guests. The four thousand chairs surrounding the bandstand were occupied, and also the six thousand other chairs dispersed in various parts of the gardens. The murmur of conversation, the rustle of dresses, the tinkle of glasses, the rumour of uncountable footsteps, rose on the air. The faces of pretty women could be observed obscurely in the delicious gloom, and the glowing scarlet of cigars bobbed mysteriously about like aspecies of restless glow-worm.

      And everybody was conscious of the sensation of the extraordinary and amazing success of the great show. The evening papers had carried the news of the wonderful thing to each suburb of London. These papers gave from hour to hour the number of the persons who had passed the turnstiles, and calculated the number of tons of shillings that Ilam and Carpentaria would have to bank on Monday morning. But the principal thing that struck the evening papers was the complete readiness of the City of Pleasure. No detail of it was unfinished, and all agreed that this phenomenon stood unique in the history of the art of amusing immense crowds. All felt that a new era of amusement enterprise had been ushered in by Ilam and Carpentaria, that everything was changed, and that in the future an enlightened and excessively exacting public would not be satisfied with what had pleased it in the past. And the owners of the old-fashioned resorts trembled in their shoes, and hated Ilam and Carpentaria, while the myriad patrons of Ilam and Carpentaria on that first day flattered themselves that they had personally assisted at the birth of the grand innovation, and thought how they would say to their grandchildren: “Yes, I was present at the opening of the City of Pleasure, and a marvellous affair it was,” and so on, in the manner of grandparents.

      All were expecting Carpentaria, the lion of the show.

      His band was due to perform from eight o’clock to ten, and special bills, posted on the sides of the gilded bandstand and in the cafés, announced: “Carpentaria’s band will play the Balloon Lullaby, the latest composition of Carpentaria, composed this afternoon.”

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