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Why, Jack, in one-half of the marriages in this country no, by George, in two-thirds if the inconsequential, tabulating husband should come home to find a letter like this he'd be dancing a can-can!" Lightbody felt a flood of soul-easing laughter well up within him. He bit his lip and answered: "No!" "Yes." "Pshaw!" "A can-can!"
The dance had begun, and we adjourned to the temple. Within it was a drinking saloon, and all around it was a broad circular platform for the dancers. I backed up against the wall of the temple, and waited. Twenty sets formed, the music struck up, and then I placed my hands before my face for very shame. But I looked through my fingers. They were dancing the renowned "Can-can."
And, in a sudden reaction of mad delight, he began to dance a wild jig in the middle of the room, a jig mingled with bits of can-can and the contortions of the cakewalk and the whirls of a dancing dervish and the acrobatic movements of a clown and the lurching steps of a drunken man.
The dance had begun, and we adjourned to the temple. Within it was a drinking saloon, and all around it was a broad circular platform for the dancers. I backed up against the wall of the temple, and waited. Twenty sets formed, the music struck up, and then I placed my hands before my face for very shame. But I looked through my fingers. They were dancing the renowned "Can-can."
Salome dances, and even the wildest, obscenest type of the "can-can" of the French, in its most promiscuous lascivious forms, were common fare on the varied English stages. But if the stage was filthy and indecent, what could be said of the books! There was not a foulness or obscenity and indecency that was not openly, shamelessly treated in the bluntest of phraseology.
Shouting, swinging noises and a bray of music spurted unintelligibly against the ears of the newcomers. A chlorinated mist, acrid to the eye, and burning to the nose, crawled about the room. Dorn, followed by Lockwood, groped his way through the confusion toward a small vacant table against a wall. From here they watched in silence. A can-can was in progress.
Something approaching a cachinnation of delight closed the professor's contribution to the pandemonium, and eyewitnesses afterwards declared that for a moment the dignified scientist stood on one foot in the opening movement of a can-can. "My wife's diamonds, thank heaven!" cried Sir Benjamin, with the air of a schoolboy who was very well out of a swishing.
"Yes, before I joined that expedition," he said. "It was from there I started." "Yes, of course," I replied. "I remember now. It was a Danish expedition. But what made you chuck up your studies so suddenly?" "Oh! I don't know. I guess I was just about sick of most things. My stars! Look at that little gypsy-girl dancing the can-can; isn't she fresh? Isn't she wonderful?
"Oh don't, oh don't!" said Lady Helen, leaning back exhausted. But Mike went on, though he was hardly able to speak, and told how Muchross and Snowdown had danced the can-can, kicking at the chandelier from time to time, the sweeps keeping time with their implements on the sideboard; the revel finishing up with a wrestling match, Muchross taking the big sweep, and Snowdown the little one.
Any of the staid, respectable, aged people who were there that night can testify to the truth of that statement. There were a good many such people present. I suppose French morality is not of that straight-laced description which is shocked at trifles. I moved aside and took a general view of the can-can.
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