"To fill the hour--that is happiness: to fill
The hour and leave no crevice for repentance."
ANON.
"Daddy Brown, this is the girl I spoke to you about; will she do?"
That had been Joan's introduction to the manager of the Brown travelling
company. He was a large man, with his neck set in such rolls of fat that
quick movement was an impossibility. His eyes, small and surrounded by
a multitude of wrinkles, were bloodshot, but for all that excessively
keen. Joan felt as they swept over her that she was being appraised,
classed, and put aside under her correct value in the man's brain. His
hair, which in youth must have grown thick and curly, had fallen off
almost entirely from the top of his head, leaving a small island
sprouting alone in the midst of the baldness. This was known among the
company as "The Danger Mark," for when the skin round it flushed red a
fearful storm was brewing for somebody.
He sat in front of a table littered with papers, in a small, rather
dirty office, the windows of which opened on to Bedford Street. With the
window open, as he kept it, the noise of the Strand traffic was plainly
audible.
He eyed Joan slowly and methodically; then his glance turned back to
Fanny. "What can she do?" he asked heavily.
"Oh, everything," Fanny answered with a little gasp; "and she can share
my dressing-room and all that."
"Humph!" grunted the man; once more his small, shrewd eyes travelled all
over Joan.
"Well, perhaps, she will do." He agreed finally, "Mind you are in time
at the station to-morrow. Cut along now, girls, I am busy."
Fanny was jubilant all the way home. "I thought I should be able to work
it," she bubbled; "it will be fun, honey, to-morrow we are due at
Tonbridge and the tour ends at Sevenoaks. All little places this time.
But mind you, it is the first rung of the ladder for you. Brown's is a
good company to start with. _Country Girl_, _Merry Widow_, _Waltz
Dream_." She ticked them all off on her fingers one by one. "You are
glad about it, aren't you?" she broke off suddenly to ask.
"Of course I am glad," Joan answered quickly, "and it is sweet of you to
have got it for me. Perhaps I am a little nervous; it strikes me one
might get very frightened of Mr. Brown."
"What, Daddy? He is all right if you know how to manage him, and he
won't bother you." Fanny took a quick look at her. "You aren't his
sort."
Was she really glad? Joan pondered the matter over when Fanny had at
last betaken herself to her own room. At any rate she had, as it were,
burnt her boats. She had left the _Evening Herald_, she had told Mrs.
Carew to sublet her rooms. At least it would be good to get away from
London for a bit.
Mrs. Carew had been quite frank and decided in her views on the subject.
"For a young lady like you to go off with the likes of 'er," this
referred to Fanny, "it hardly seems seemly to me, Miss. Not that Miss
Bellairs ain't all right in her own way, but it is not your way. Mark my
words, Miss, you will regret it."
"And if I do," Joan had answered, "I can always leave and come back
here, can't I, Mrs. Carew? I am sure you will always do your best to put
me up even if this room is let."
"If I have a corner; Miss, you shall 'ave it and welcome. Nice and quiet
young lady you have always been, and I know something of young ladies, I
do."
It was evident, even in her efforts to be polite, that she considered
Joan's present line of action to be one of deterioration. Was it, after
all, a wise move, Joan wondered rather vaguely, as she packed away her
few possessions. There was a great deal in Fanny's nature that she
disapproved of, that could at times even fill her with disgust. In
itself, that would merely hold her from ever coming to look at life from
Fanny's standpoint. And perhaps she would find in the existence, which
Fanny claimed to be full of love and laughter, something to satisfy the
dull aching discontent which had wrenched at her heart all this last
summer. Aunt Janet, Uncle John, the old home-life, the atmosphere of
love and admiration, these had been torn from her, she needed something
to take their place.
They met the rest of the company next day at the station. Fanny
introduced them all to Joan, rather breathlessly.
"Mr. Strachan, who plays our hero, and who is the idol of the stalls.
Mr. O'Malley, our comic man. Mr. Whistler, who does heavy father parts,
wig and all. Mr. Jimmy Rolls, who dances on light toes and who prompts
when nothing else is doing. The ladies, honey, take their names on
trust, you will find them out sooner or later."
There were, Joan discovered, eight other ladies in the company. She
never knew more than four of them. Mrs. O'Malley, Grace Binning, a small
soft-voiced girl, Rhoda Tompkins, and Rose Weyland--a very
golden-haired, dark-eyebrowed lady, who had been in some far back
period, so Fanny contrived to whisper, a flame of Brown's.
Of the men, Joan liked Mr. Strachan best; he was an ugly man with very
pleasant eyes and a rare smile that lit up the whole of his face. He
seemed quiet, she thought, and rather apart from the others.
The journey down to Tonbridge proved slightly disastrous. To begin with,
thanks to Daddy Brown himself, the company missed the best train of the
day and had to travel by one that meant two changes. On arrival at
Tonbridge at four o'clock in the afternoon they found that one of the
stage property boxes had gone astray. Considering that they were billed
to appear that evening at eight and the next train did not arrive till
ten-thirty, the prospect was not a promising one.
"Always merry and bright," as Jimmie, the stage prompter, remarked in an
aside to Strachan. "By the way, is it the _Arcadians_ that we are doing
to-night?"
"How the hell can we do anything," growled Daddy Brown, the patch of
skin round his danger-mark showed alarmingly red, "if that box does not
appear. Who was the blasted idiot who was supposed to be looking after
it?"
"Well, it was and it was not me, Sir," Jimmie acknowledged; "the truth
is that I saw it labelled all right and left it with the rest of the
luggage to look after itself. I suppose----"
"Oh, what is the use of talking," Brown broke in impatiently; he had
thrust his hat back on his fiery head, the lines of fat above his collar
shone with perspiration. "You had better go on, all of you, and see
about getting rooms; the first rehearsal is in an hour, box or no box,
and don't you forget it."
"I don't see," wailed Mrs. O'Malley, almost as soon as his back was
turned, "how we are to live through this sort of thing. What is the use
of a rehearsal if none of our things are going to turn up?"
"I guess there will be a performance whether or no," Fanny told her.
"Come along, honey," this to Joan, "seize up your bag and follow me; we
have got to find diggings of sorts before the hour is up."
Joan found, as they trudged from lodging-house to lodging-house, that
the theatrical profession was apparently very unpopular in Tonbridge. As
Fanny remarked, it was always as well to tell the old ladies what to
expect, but the very mention of the word theatre caused a chill to
descend on the prospective landladies' faces. They found rooms finally
in one of the smaller side streets; a fair-sized double bedroom, and a
tiny little sitting-room. The house had the added advantage of being
very near the theatre, which was just as well, for they had barely time
to settle with the woman before they had to hurry off for the rehearsal.
"It won't do to be late," Fanny confided to Joan. "Daddy is in an awful
temper; we shan't get any champagne to-night unless some of us soothe
him down."
At the small tin-roofed theatre supreme chaos reigned upon the stage and
behind it. Daddy Brown, his hat thrown off, his coat discarded, stormed
and raged at everyone within hearing. _The Country Girl_ had replaced
_The Arcadians_ on the bill; it was an old favourite and less
troublesome to stage. Fanny was to play _Molly_; it was a part that she
might have been born for. Daddy Brown won back to his good humour as he
watched her; her voice, clear and sweet, carried with it a certain
untouched charm of youth, for Fanny put her whole heart into her work.
Joan felt herself infected by the other's spirit, she joined in the
singing, laughing with real merriment at her chorus partner. The stage
boards cracked and creaked, the man at the piano watched the performers
with admiring eyes--the music was so familiar that it was quite
unnecessary for him to follow the notes. Daddy Brown and the box office
man, sole occupants of the stalls, saw fit to applaud as the chorus
swung to a breathless pause.
"That's good, that's good," Brown shouted. "Just once more again please,
ladies, then we'll call a rest. Don't want to tire you out before
to-night."
The dance flourished to its second end and Fanny flung herself exhausted
against the wings. Her cough was troubling her again, shaking her thin
body, fighting its way through her tightened throat.
"It's worth it though," she laughed in answer to Joan's remonstrance;
"it is the only time I really live when I am dancing, you see."
The rehearsal dragged out its weary length, but not until Brown had
reduced all the company to such a state of exhaustion that they could
raise no quiver of protest to any of his orders. A man of iron himself,
he extracted and expected from the people under him the same powers of
endurance which he himself possessed. Since Fanny and Joan could not go
home to their lodgings, the time being too short, Strachan escorted them
out to obtain a meal of sorts before the evening's performance. Short of
Daddy Brown's hotel, which stood close to the theatre and which they
were all reluctant to try, there did not appear to be any restaurants in
the neighbourhood and they ended up by having a kind of high tea at a
little baker's. "Eggs are splendid things to act on," Strachan told
Joan.
The girls, however, on their return found a bottle of champagne and two
glasses waiting for them in Fanny's dressing-room. It had been sent with
Mr. Brown's compliments to Miss Bellairs. The sight of it sent up
Fanny's spirits with a bound.
"I did not know how I was going to get through the evening," she
confessed, "but this will put new life into us."
She insisted upon Joan having a glass, and the latter, conscious that in
her present state of tiredness she could hardly stand, far less dance,
sipped a little of the clear, bubbling liquid--sipped till the small
room grew large, till her feet seemed to tread on air, and her eyes
shone and sparkled like the brightest of stars on a dark night.
The theatre after that, the crowded rows of faces, the music and the
thunder of applause--the audience were good-tempered and inclined to be
amused at anything--passed before her like some gorgeous light-flecked
dream. When the soldiers in the back row took up the words of Fanny's
song and shouted the refrain she felt swept along on the wings of
success.
At the fall of the curtain Daddy Brown patted her on the back. He was by
this time radiant with cheerfulness once more.
"You will do, young lady," he said. "We'll have to see if we can't work
in a special dance for you;" and Fanny flung her arms round Joan in wild
joy. "You're made, honey," she whispered, "if Brown has noticed you,
you're made. I always said you could dance."
It was very thrilling and exciting, but the champagne was beginning to
lose its effect. The world was growing grey again. Joan's head throbbed,
and she felt self-consciously inclined to make a fool of herself. She
sat very silent through the supper to which Brown treated the company at
his hotel. There were about twenty people present, nearly all men; Joan
wondered where they had been collected from, and she did not quite like
the look of any of them. Fanny was making a great deal of noise, and
how funny and tawdry their faces looked under the bright light. After
supper there was a dance, the table was pushed aside, and someone--Joan
saw with surprise that it was Daddy Brown--pounded away at a one-step on
the piano. Everyone danced, the men, since there were not enough ladies
to go around, with each other.
Fanny, wilder, gayer than ever, skirts held very high, showed off a new
cake-walk in the centre of the room. Her companion, a young,
weak-looking youth, was evidently far from sober, and the more intricate
the step, the more hopelessly did he become entangled with his own feet,
amidst shouts of amusement from the onlookers.
Joan turned presently--she had narrowly escaped being dragged into the
dance by a noisily cheerful gentleman--to find Strachan standing beside
her. He was watching her with some shade of curiosity.
"Why don't you go home?" he suggested; "it isn't amusing you and I can
see you are tired. We get used to these kind of shows after a time."
"I think I will," Joan agreed; "no one will mind if I do, will they?"
"Not they, most of them are incapable of noticing anything." A cynical
smile stirred on his face. "It is no wonder," he commented, "that we are
known as a danger to provincial towns. You see the state of confusion we
reduce the young bloods to." His eyes passed round the room and came
back to Joan with a shade of apology in them. "A bad night, for your
first experience," he said; "we are not always as noisy as this. Come
along though, I'll see you home, if I may, my rooms are somewhere down
your street."
Joan lay awake long after she had got into bed, and when she did at last
drop off to sleep it was to dream strange, noise-haunted dreams, that
brought her little rest. It was morning, for a faint golden light was
invading the room, when she woke to find Fanny standing at the foot of
the bed. A different Fanny to any Joan had ever seen before, tired and
blowsy-looking, her hair pulled about her face, the colour rubbed in
patches from her cheeks and lips.
"My word, it has been a night;" she stood swaying and peering at Joan.
"It's life though, isn't it, honey?"
Then a wild fit of coughing seized her and Joan had to scramble out of
bed and give what help she could. There was no hope of sleep after that,
and when Fanny had been helped to bed Joan took up a chair to the window
and drew aside the curtain.
Her mind was a tumult of angry thoughts, but her heart ached miserably.
If this was what Fanny called life and laughter, she had no wish to live
it.