Council of Paris at the bottom of a very long, very deep trench which
had been excavated across a certain street for the accommodation of a
new drain. The guide-rope pursued its course without them, now sweeping
a peaceful citizen off his legs, now covering the occupants of a smart
victoria with mud, now trailing over a roof or coiling serpent-wise
around the base of a block of chimneys. In the distance loomed the
Eiffel Tower, but in answer to De Petoburgh’s repeated requests that he
should steer thither, Bobby Bolsover only groaned. And the airship,
after navigating gracefully over the green ocean of the Bois de
Boulogne, continued her trip over the Longchamps racecourse, veered to
the south at the pleasure of a shifting current of air, and, having
leaked much, began plainly to buckle and bend.
De Petoburgh, uncomfortably conscious of a misspent existence and wasted
opportunities, looked at the back of Mrs. Gudrun’s head, and wondered
whether she knew any prayers.
“The trees are coming awfully close, aren’t they?” said the unconscious
beauty.
“Awfully!” said the Duke, as the capricious motor stopped.
Then Mrs. Gudrun screamed, and Bobby Bolsover, casting his goggles to
the winds, huddled in the bottom of his basket, and the debilitated but
plucky nobleman shut his eyes and thought of his long-dead mother as the
airship hurtled downwards ... crash into the top of the tallest of the
giant oaks in the magnificent park of H.S.H. Prince Gogonof Babouine.
The Prince has the reputation of being excessively hospitable. When the
three passengers recovered from the shaking, the top of a long ladder
pierced the thick foliage beneath the wrecked vessel, and the Prince’s
major-domo, a stout personage in black with a gold chain, came climbing
up with a courteous message from the Prince. Would Madame and M. le Duc
and the other gentleman descend and partake of the second _déjeuner_,
which was on the point of being served, or would they prefer to remain
on board their vessel?
“Stop up here? Does the man take us for angels?” snorted Mrs. Gudrun
indignantly.
The descent was not without danger, but with the aid of De Petoburgh and
the major-domo, she braved and completed it without injury either to her
long celebrated limbs or her famous features. Bobby followed.
The Prince entertained the shipwrecked castaways in princely fashion,
and drove the party back to Paris on his drag, the wonderful yellow
coach with the team of curly Orloffs. And he consented to dine; and that
night Mrs. Gudrun held a reception behind the illuminated balconies of
the Hotel Fritz, while the London newsboys were yelling her familiar
name, and the evening papers containing the most ornamental particulars
of her adventure went off like hot cakes.
According to the most reliable account garnered by our special
correspondent from the lovely lips of the exquisite aëronaut, she had
never quailed in the moment of peril, and, indeed, upon the
distinguished authority of the Hon. R. Bolsover: “One is never
frightened while one can rely upon one’s own pluck!” Nobody interviewed
De Petoburgh, leaning vacuously smiling against the wall. Indeed, he had
developed another of his attacks, and could not have responded with any
coherence.
“Wonderful fellow, Bolsover,” Teddy Candelish gushed, Teddy, all smile
and sparkle, “so brainy and resourceful!”
“Rath’ ...” assented De Petoburgh fragmentarily.
“And Her Nibs—a heroine—positively a heroine!”
“Ra’!” assented De Petoburgh, as the heroine swept by, making
magnificent eyes at the palpably enamored Prince, while Paris murmured
indiscreet admiration.
“And you, Duke, eh? Found it trying to your nerves, they tell me?” Teddy
continued, twirling his golden mustache. “Such trips too costly, eh, to
indulge in often?”
“Ra’!” agreed De Petoburgh, with a glance at the thousand-guinea diamond
fender surmounting the most frequently photographed features in the
world.
SIDE!
Upon the conclusion of the phenomenally brief run of _The Poisoned Kiss_
at the Sceptre Theatre, Mrs. Gudrun, who had sustained the heroic rôle
of Aldapora “with abounding verve and true histrionic inwardness” (to
cull a quotation from the enthusiastic notice which appeared in the
_Theatrical Piffer_), and whose sculpturesque temples throbbed no less
with the weight of the dramatic laurels heaped upon them than with the
heady quality of the champagne with which those laurels had been
liberally drowned—Mrs. Gudrun left the author and the Syndicate, _per_
their Business Representative, exchanging poignant personalities over a
non-existent percentage, and hied her to the Gallic capital for
recreation and repose; bearing in her train the leading man, Mr. Leo De
Boo, a young actor who had chipped the egg of obscurity in the recent
production. De Boo was “a splendid specimen of virile beauty,” according
to the _Greenroom Rag_—all shoulders, legs, nose, and curls, without any
perceptible forehead; and Teddy Candelish, most ubiquitous of
acting-managers, came within an appreciable distance of being
epigrammatic when he termed him “a chronic cad in beautiful boots.” For
more exquisite foot-gloves than those De Boo sported were never seen,
whoever made and gave credit for them; and De Boo was said to have a
different pair for every day in the month and every imaginable change in
the weather.
“Nearly threw up his part in _The Poisoned Kiss_,” said Teddy
afterwards, at the club, “when he discovered that it was to be a
sixteenth-century production; took me aside, and told me in confidence
afterwards, that if he’d been allowed to play Hermango in gray suède
tops with black pearl buttons and patent leather uppers, the piece would
have been a colossal monetary, as well as artistic, success.”
“Schwerlich! Who konn bretend to follow de workings of a mind like dot
jung man’s,” said Oscar Gormleigh, “vidout de assisdance of de
migroscope? Und hof I not known a brima donna degline to go on for
Siebel begause she hodd been kifen brown insdead of violet tights? It
vas a tam gonsbiracy, she svore py all her kodds! In prown legs she
vould groak like von frog mit kvinsy—mit violet she always varble like
de nachtigall. De choke of it vas”—the talented stage-director laid a
hairy finger archly against his Teutonic nose—“dat voman always
groak—not never varble—tights or no tights!”
“De Boo is a rank bounder,” said Candelish decidedly.
“He has pounded from de ranks,” pronounced Gormleigh, “und he vill go on
pounding—each pound so motch higher dan de last von, oontil he drop
splosh into de kutter akain. He who now oggupies a svell mansion-flat in
Biccadilly, _ach ja!_—he vill end vere he bekan—in de liddle krubby
sit-bedding-room over de shabby shop vere dey let out segond hond boogs
on hire mit segond hond furnidure.”
Mrs. Gudrun would have been deeply incensed had she heard this
unlicensed expression of opinion from one whom she had always kept in
his place as a paid underling. For six nights and a matinée she had, in
the character of Aldapora, elected to poison herself in the most painful
manner rather than incur the loss of De Boo’s affections, and, with the
“true histrionic inwardness” so belauded by the _Theatrical Piffer_, she
had identified herself with the part. So she took a blazing comet flight
to Paris with the actor in her train, and paragraphs announcing their
arrival at the Hotel Spitz appeared in the London papers.
“Listen to this, Jane Ann,” said the paternal De Boo, whose name was
Boodie—and when I add that for twenty years the worthy father had been
employed as one of the principal cutters at Toecaps and Heels, that
celebrated firm of West-End bootmakers, it will be understood whence the
son obtained his boots. “To think,” Mr. Boodie continued, “that
Alfred—our Alfred, who sp’iled every particle of leather he set his
knife to, and couldn’t stitch a welt or strap a seam to save his
life—should ever have lived to be called a rising genius!”
“The ways of Providence are wonderful, father!” returned the said
Alfred’s mother dutifully. Mrs. Boodie was an experienced finisher
herself, and had always lamented Alfred’s lack of “turn” in the family
direction. “An’, if I was you, I wouldn’t mention that bit in the paper
to Aphasia Cutts. She’s dreadful jealous over our Alfred, even now,
though he hasn’t bin to see ‘er or wrote for two years. As good as a
break off, I should a-regarded it, ’ad I bin in her place. But she’s
different to what I was.”
“So are all the gals,” said Mr. Boodie with conviction, bestowing upon
his wife a salute flavored with Russia leather and calf.
“Well, I’m sure. Go along, father, do!” said Mrs. Boodie, with a
delighted shove.
But of course Aphasia—so christened by an ambitious mother in defiance
of the expostulations of a timid curate—had already seen and cried over
the paragraph. She had loved Alfred and stood up for him when he was a
plain, stupid boy with an unconquerable aversion to work. She had been
his champion when he grew up, no longer plain, but as pronounced a
loafer as ever. She had given up, in exchange for his loutish
affections, the love of an honest and hard-working man.
“I can’t ’elp it!” she had said; “you can get on without me, and Alfred
can’t, pore chap. His Par calls ’im a waster—I believe ’e’d give ’im the
strap if ’e wasn’t six foot ’igh. But I’ve got ’im an opening in the
theatrical line, through a friend of mine as does fancy braiding at
Buskin’s, the stage shoemaker’s in Covent Garden. It’s only to walk on
as one of the Giant’s boy-babies in the Drury Lane panto.—eighteen pence
a night _and matinées_—but his Mar will be thankful. If only ’is legs
are long enough for the part——”
They were, and from that hour Alfred had embarked on a career. When
entrusted with a line to speak, it was Aphasia who held the grimy slip
of paper on which it was written and aided the would-be actor with
counsel and advice.
“And ’old up your ’ead, do, as if you was proud of yourself, and don’t
bend at the knees; and whether you remember your words or not, throw ’em
out from your chest as if you was proud of ’em. An’ move your arms from
the shoulder like as if you was swimmin’—don’t crook your elbers like a
wooden doll. And throw a bit o’ meanin’ into your eye. You took me to
see that Frenchman, Cocklin ’e calls ’imself; as played the chap with
the boko ’e wouldn’t let the other chaps make game of.... French or
Japanese, they’re both Dutch to me, but I watched Cocklin’s eye, and I
watched ’is ’ands, an’ I could foller the story as if it was print, an’
plainer. I’ve went to see an actor since what folks said was a great
artis’, and if ’e did talk English, ’is eye was as dumb as a boiled
fresh ’addock’s an’ ’s ’ands was like slices of skate. Now say your bit
over again.”
And Alfred said it, this time to the satisfaction of his instructress.
When he got a real part Aphasia coached him, and rode down from
Hammersmith with him on the bus, and was waiting for him at the
stage-door when he came out, the tears of joy undried on her pale
cheeks. And that was the night upon which she first noticed a coldness
in the manner of her betrothed.
“An’ now I’m not good enough for him to wipe his boots on,” she sobbed,
sitting on her bed in the single room lodging off the roaring, clanging
Broadway—“the boots ’is Par cut an’ welted, an’ ’is Mar stitched, an’ I
finished. But I won’t stand in ’is light. I’ve my pride, if I am a
boot-finisher. I’ll see that Mrs. What’s-her-name face to face, an’ ’ave
it out as woman to woman, an’ tell ’er she’s welcome to marry ’im for
me.”
And Aphasia dried her poor red eyes and took off Alfred’s betrothal
ring—a fifteen-carat gold circlet with three real garnets, bought in the
Broadway one blushful, blissful Saturday night—and evicted his
photographs from their gorgeous cheap frames, and made a brown-paper
parcel of these things, with a yellow leather purse with a blue enamel
“A” on it, and tied it up with string.
Perhaps something of her fateful mood was telepathically conveyed to Mr.
Leo De Boo at that moment, for he shivered as he sat at the feet of Mrs.
Gudrun upon the balcony of a private suite at the Hotel Spitz, and
turned up eyes that were large and lustrous at that imperishable image
of Beauty, exhaling clouds of fashionable perfume and upborne on billows
of chiffon and lace. Mrs. Gudrun, who naturally mistook the spasms of a
genuine plebeian British conscience for the pangs of love, lent him her
hand—dazzlingly white, astonishingly manicured, jeweled to the knuckles,
and polished by the devout kisses of generations of worshipers—and De
Boo mumbled it, and tried to be grateful and talk beautifully about his
acting. But this bored Mrs. Gudrun, who preferred to talk about her own.
“I have often felt that myself,” she said—“the conviction that a crowded
audience hung upon my lips and saw only with my eyes, and that I swayed
them as with a magic thingumbob, by the power of a magnetic
personality.”
“It is a mystery,” said De Boo, passing his long fingers through his
clustering curls, “that once in a century or so a man should be born——”
“Or a woman. Marvelous!” agreed Mrs. Gudrun. “Marvelous! the man who
runs the _Daily Tomahawk_ said that when I made my first appearance on
the stage.”
“Genius is a crown of fire,” said De Boo, who had read this somewhere.
“It illuminates the world, yet scorches the wearer to the bone. He——”
“She suffers,” said Mrs. Gudrun, neatly stopping the ball and playing it
on her side. “You may bet she suffers. Hasn’t she got the artistic
temperament? The amount of worry mine has given me you would never
believe. Cluffer, of the _Morning Whooper_, calls me a ‘consolidated
bundle of screaming nerves.’ When I’ve sat down to dinner on the eve of
a first night, De Petoburgh—you’ve met the Duke?—has had to hold me in
my chair while Bobby Bolsover gave me champagne and Angostura out of the
soup-ladle. And I believe I bit a piece out of that. And afterwards—ask
’em both if I wasn’t fairly _esquinte_.”
“But the possessor of an artistic temperament—such as mine—even though
the fairy gift entails the keenest susceptibility to anguish,” quickly
continued De Boo, “enjoys unspeakable compensation in the revelation to
him alone of a kingdom which others may not enter. Looking upon the high
mountains in the blush of dawn, I have shouted aloud with glee——”
“The first time I ever went into a southern Italian orange-grove in full
bloom,” acquiesced Mrs. Gudrun, “the Prince of Kursaal Carle Monto, who
was with me, simply sat down flat. He said Titian ought to have been
alive to paint my face and form against that background.... By the way,
the first act of that new play, the title of which I’ve forgotten, and
which I’ve leased from a scribbling idiot whose name don’t signify,
takes place in a blooming orange-grove. I’ve cast you for the leading
man’s part, Leo, and I hope you will be properly grateful for the
chance, and conquer that nasty habit you have of standing leering at the
audience in all my great moments.”
“Dearest lady,” De Boo argued glibly, “does it not increase the dramatic
poignancy of such moments if the spectators are enabled to read in the
varying expressions pictured on _my_ face the feelings your art
inspires?”
But Mrs. Gudrun was inexorable. “They can read ’em in the back of your
head if they’re anxious,” said she, “or they can take the direct tip
from me. I hope that’s good enough. I don’t see the cherry-bun of
running a theater to be scored off by other people, and so you know! And
now that’s settled, let us go and have stuffed oysters and roast ices at
Noel Peter’s, and see Sarah afterwards in her new tragedy _rôle_. I’m
the only woman she’s really afraid of, you know, and I feel I’m bound to
romp in in front of her before long. She says herself that acting like
mine cannot be taught in a conservatoire, and that I constitute a
complete school in myself. Have you ever seen me play Lady Teazle?”
“Unhappily I have not. It is a loss,” said De Boo, “a distinct loss. By
the way, when I scored so tremendously as Charles Surface at
Mudderpool——”
“Hell is full of men who have scored as Charles Surface at Mudderpool,”
said Mrs. Gudrun crushingly. “That sounds like a quotation, doesn’t it?
Only it must be mine, because I never read. You’re a charming fellow,
and a clever boy, Leo, but, as a friend, let me tell you that you talk
too much about yourself. It’s bad form; and the truly great are
invariably the truly modest. I must save up that epigram for my next
interview, I think. There’s the auto-brougham.”
And De Boo enfolded the renowned form of his manageress in a point lace
and sable wrap, and they went off to Noel Peter’s, and saw La Gr-r-ande
perform.
Rehearsals of the new play, _Pride of Race_, at the Sceptre had scarcely
commenced when in upon Teddy Candelish, laboriously smoking in his
sanctum and opening the morning’s mail, swept Mrs. Gudrun.
“I haven’t a moment to breathe,” she said imperially, accepting the
chair Teddy acrobatically vacated. “Come in, De Petoburgh—come in,
Bobby; you are in the way, but I’m used to it. No, De Petoburgh, that
cellaret’s tabooed; remember what Sir Henry said to you about liqueurs
before lunch. Are there any letters of importance, Teddy, to my cheek?”
“Several bundles of press-cuttings from different firms, thirty or forty
bills, a few tenders from photographers, and—and some love-letters,”
replied Candelish, pointing to some neat piles of correspondence
arranged on the American roll-top desk. “Usual thing—declarations,
proposals, and so forth.”
“Always plenty of those—hey?” chuckled De Petoburgh, sucking a
perfunctory peptoid lozenge in lieu of the stimulant denied.
“Plenty, b’Jove!” echoed Bobby Bolsover.
“Not so many as there used to be,” responded Candelish with tactless
truthfulness, rewarded by the lady with a magnificent glare. “By the
way, there’s one odd letter, from a girl or a woman who _isn’t_ quite a
lady, asking for an interview on private business. Signs herself by the
rummiest name—Aphasia Cutts.” He presented the letter.
“Aphasia?” said Mrs. Gudrun, extending heavily jeweled fingers for the
missive. “Isn’t that what De Petoburgh has when he can only order drinks
in one syllable and his legs take him where he doesn’t want to go? Eh,
Bobby?”
“Yes; but remindin’ the Duke of that always brings on an attack,” said
Bobby solicitously. “Look at him twitchin’ now.... Steady, Peto! Woa-a,
old mannums!”
“Take him for a tatta while I finish the rehearsal,” commanded Mrs.
Gudrun, rising from Teddy’s chair in an upsurge of expensive draperies.
“Write to this Aphasia girl, Teddy, and say I’ll see her to-morrow,
between three and four p. m. After all, the whole-souled adoration of
one’s own sex is worth having,” the lady said, as, heralded by the
rustling of silken robes, the barbaric clash of jeweled ornaments, and
wafts of fashionable perfume, she sailed back to the boards.
When Aphasia got her reply, p.p. Teddy, some hours later, there was very
little of whole-souled adoration in her reception of the missive.
“I s’pose she looks on me as the dirt under her feet, like Alfred. But I
won’t let that put me off makin’ the sacrifice that’s for his good—the
ungrateful thing! I ’ope she’ll make ’im a nice wife, that’s all,” she
sobbed, as she took from her collar-and-cuff drawer the flat brown-paper
parcel containing the garnet ring, the photographs, and the letters. And
she dressed herself in her best, with a large lace collar over a cloth
jacket, and the once fashionable low-necked pneumonia-blouse, to which
the girls of her class so fondly cling, and went to meet the lady whom,
in terms borrowed from the latest penny romance, she called her “haughty
rival.”
Mrs. Gudrun received her with excessive graciousness. A costume
rehearsal was in progress, and the lady was in the hands of her maids
and dressers. “I suppose this is the first time you have ever been
behind the scenes?” she inquired. “Look about you as much as you like,
and then you will be able to say to your friends: ‘I have been in Mrs.
Gudrun’s dressing-room.’ You see, I am in the gown I wear in the first
act. It is by Babin; and if you write for a ladies’ paper, you will
remember to say so, please.”
“I don’t write for any ladies’ paper,” said Aphasia. “I couldn’t spell
well enough—not if they ast me ever so. But it’s a lovely gownd, and I
suppose all that stuff on your face is what makes you look so young an’
’andsome—from a long way off.”
Mrs. Gudrun’s famous features assumed a look of cold displeasure. She
assumed the majestic air that suited her so eminently well, and asked
the young person’s business.
“It’s quite private, and I’ll thank you to send away your maids, if
you’ve no objection,” said the dauntless Aphasia. “The fact is,” she
continued, when the indignant menials had been waved from the apartment,
“as I’ve come to make you a present—a present of a young man——”
“Look here, my good young woman,” began the incensed manageress.
Aphasia suddenly handed her the brown-paper parcel, and the wrath of
Mrs. Gudrun was turned to trembling. She was sure this was an escaped
lunatic. Aphasia profited by the lull in the storm to explain. She had
come to hand over her Alfred—stock, goodwill, and fixtures. He had
forgotten to be off with the old love before he went on with the new,
but the old love bore no malice. All was now over.
“And you may marry ’im whenever you like,” sobbed Aphasia.
“I never heard anything so indecent in the whole course of my life,”
said Mrs. Gudrun, rising in offended majesty. “Marry Mr. De Boo, indeed!
If I had married every leading man I’ve played love-scenes with since I
adopted this profession, I should be a female Brigham Young! ‘In love
with me!’ Perhaps he is; it’s rather a common complaint among the men I
know. As for Mr. De Boo, if he has low connections and vulgar
entanglements, they are nothing to me. Good-day! Stop! You had better
take this parcel of rubbish with you. Dawkins—the stage-door!”
And Aphasia found herself being ushered along the passage. Bewildered
and dazzled by the glaring lights, the excitement and the strangeness,
she ran almost into the arms of De Boo himself as he emerged from his
dressing-room next the manageress’s. Had he overheard? There had been a
curtained-over door on that side. Under his paint his handsome features
were black with rage; he caught the girl’s shoulders in a furious grip,
and spluttered in her ear:
“Damn you! Damn you, you sneaking creature! You have made a pretty mess
of things for me—haven’t you?—with your blab about my father and the
boot-business, and my letters and the ring I gave you. To my dying day
I’ll never speak to you again!”
He threw her from him savagely and strode away.
Aphasia stood outside the theater and shook with sobs. It chanced—or did
not chance, so queer are the vagaries of Destiny—that Ulick Snowle, the
president of the New Stage-Door Club, happened to be passing; he had
just called in at the box-office to privately book the first three rows
of the upper circle on behalf of the club, the Old Stage-Doorers having
secured the gallery. Both clubs were originally one, the Old
Stage-Doorers having thrown off the younger club as the cuttlefish gets
rid of the supernumerary limb which in time becomes another cuttlefish.
And the unwritten compact between both clubs is that if one applauds a
new production, the other shall execrate the same—an arrangement which
contributes hugely to the liveliness of first-nights.
No uninitiated person beholding Ulick, with his shaggy beard, aged
felt-basin hat of Continental make, short nautical coat, and
tight-fitting sporting trousers, would suppose him to be the great
personage he really is. He came up to Aphasia, and bluntly asked her
what was the matter, and if he couldn’t do something? In her
overwhelming woe and desolation, she was like the soda-water bottle of
the glass-ball-stoppered description—once push in the stopper, there is
no arresting the escape of the aërated fluid. She told the sympathizing
Ulick all before he put her into the Hammersmith bus, and when he would
have handed in the fateful brown-paper parcel—“Keep it,” she said, with
a gesture of aversion. “Burn it—chuck the thing in the dustbin. They’re
no manner o’ use to me!” And away she rattled, leaving Ulick Snowle upon
the pavement, in his hands an engine of destruction meet to be used in
the extermination of the unfittest.