The Black Week had just ended; but the humiliation of it lay, as a dead
weight, upon the heart of London. Three crushing reverses in eight
days--Stormberg, Magersfontein, and finally Colenso! There was no
getting rid of the facts, or the meaning of them in respect of
incapacity, blundering, and reckless waste of personal valour. It was a
sorry tale, and one over which Europe at large chuckled. It has been
universally assumed that the English are a serious nation. This is an
error. They are not serious, but indifferent, a nation of
individualists, each mainly, not to say exclusively, occupied with his
own private affairs. With the vast majority unity of sentiment is
suspect, and patriotism a passive rather than an active virtue. But at
this juncture, under the stress of repeated disaster, unity of
sentiment and patriotism--that is, a sense of the national honour and
necessity for the vindication of it--became strongly evident. London
was profoundly and visibly moved. Not with excitement--that came later,
manifesting itself in hysterical outcries of relief--but with a grim
anger and sadness of astonishment that such things could indeed be.
Strangers, passing in the street, looked one another in the eyes
questioningly, a common anxiety forging unexpected bonds of kinship.
The town was curiously hushed, as though listening, always listening,
for those ugly messages rushed so perpetually by cable from overseas.
Men's faces were strained by the effort to hear, and, hearing, to judge
justly the extent and the bearings of both national and individual
damage. Already mourning struck a sensible note in women's dress. If
the Little Englander capered, he was careful to do so at home, or in
meeting-places frequented only by persons likeminded with himself. It
may be questioned whether he is not ever most courageous when under
covert thus; since shooting out of windows or from behind hedges would
appear to be his inherent, and not particularly gallant, notion of
sport. The newsboys alone openly and blatantly rejoiced, dominating the
situation--as on Derby Day or Boat-race Night--and putting a gilded
dome to the horror by yelling highly seasoned lies when truth proved
insufficiently evil to stimulate custom to the extent of his desires.
Depression, as of storm, permeated the social atmosphere. Churches were
full, places of amusement comparatively empty. To laugh seemed an
indiscretion trenching on indecency.
Amid surrounding bravery of imperial purple, cream-colour, and gold,
Poppy St. John sat at the extreme end of the first row of balcony
stalls in the newly opened Twentieth Century Theatre. This was a calm
and secluded spot, since the partition, dividing off the boxes, flanked
it on the right. Partly on this account Poppy had selected it. Partly,
also, because it afforded an excellent view of the left of the stage;
and it was on the left--looking from the body of the house--that the
principal action of the piece, as far as Dot Parris's part was
concerned, took place. Poppy was unattended. She wanted an evening's
rest, an evening free of conversation and effort; but she wanted
something to look at, too, something affording just sufficient
emotional stimulus to keep importunate thought at bay. This the theatre
supplied. It had ceased long ago to tire her. She knew the ways of it
from both sides of the footlights uncommonly well, and loved them
indifferently much. She was a shrewd and cynical critic. Nevertheless,
to go to the play was a sort of going home to her--a home neither very
socially nor morally exalted, perhaps, but one offering the advantages
of perfect familiarity.
Huddled in a black velvet fur-lined sacque, reaching to her feet and
abundantly trimmed with jet embroidery and black lace, she settled
herself in her place. The soft fur was cosey against her bare neck. She
felt chilly. Later she might peel, thereby exhibiting the values of the
rest of her costume. But it was not worth while to do so yet. The first
piece was over, but the house was still a poor one. It might fill up.
She hoped it would for Dot's sake; for few things are more
disheartening than to play to empty benches. But, at present, the
audience was altogether too sparse for it to be worth while to
sacrifice comfort to effect. In point of fact, Poppy was cold from
sheer fatigue. For the last month, to employ her own rather variegated
phraseology, she had racketed, had persistently and pertinaciously been
"going the pace." No doubt they do these things better in France; yet,
as she reflected, provided you are unhampered by prejudice, are fairly
in funds and know the ropes, even grimy fog-bound London is, in this
particular connection, by no means to be sneezed at. And truly Poppy's
autobiography during the said month would have made extremely merry
reading, amounting in some aspects to a positive classic--though of the
kind hardly suited as a basis of instruction for the pupils of a young
ladies' school. Setting aside adventures of a more questionable
character, a positively alarming good luck had pursued her, everything
she touched turning to gold. Even in this hour of financial depression
the market favoured her both in buying and selling. If she put money on
a horse, that horse was sure to win. If she played cards--and she had
played pretty constantly--she inevitably plundered her opponents. This
last alone, of all her doubtful doings, really troubled her; for her
opponents had frequently been youthful, and it was contrary to Poppy's
principles to pluck the but half-fledged chick.
Barring this solitary deflection from her somewhat latitudinarian code
of ethics, she had, on the face of it, ample cause for
self-congratulation. Never had she been more gaily audacious in word or
deed. Never had she been better company, keeping her audience--an
almost exclusively masculine one--in a roar, all the louder perhaps
because of inward defiance of the news from over-seas, the humiliation
of which had now culminated in the disasters of the Black Week. Flame
only shows the brighter for a sombre background. And Poppy, during this
ill-starred period, had been as a flame to her admirers and
associates--a fitful, prankish flame, full of provocation and
bedevilment, the light of it inciting to all manner of wild doings and,
in the end, not infrequently scorching those pretty shrewdly who were
over-bold in warming themselves at the heat of it. For fires of the
sort lighted by Poppy are not precisely such as contribute to the peace
and security of the domestic hearth.
But now she was tired. The fun seemed fun no longer; so that,
notwithstanding her successes, she found herself a prey to
dissatisfaction, discontent, and a disposition to recall all the less
happy episodes of her varied career. She yawned quite loudly, as she
laid opera-glasses and play-bill upon the velvet cushion in front of
her, and pulled the soft fur-lined garment up closer about her
shoulders.
"The first act's safe to be poorish anyhow, and Dot does not come on
till just the end of it. I wonder if I dare go to sleep?" she asked
herself, gently rubbing her eyes. "It would be awfully nice to forget
the whole blooming show, past, present, and to come, for a little while
and plunge in the waters of oblivion. Oblivion with a capital O--a dose
of that's what I want. Beautiful roomy consolation-stakes of a word,
oblivion, if one could only believe in the existence of it--which,
unluckily, some-how I can't."
Here the strains of the orchestra ceased. The lights were turned low in
the body of the house. The curtain went up. As it did so a cold draught
drew from regions behind the stage, laden with that indefinable odour
of gas, glue, humanity, flagged stair and alleyways, paint, canvas,
carpentry, and underground places the sun never penetrates, which
haunts the working part of every theatre. Poppy smiled as she snuffed
it, with a queer mingling of enjoyment and repulsion. For as is the
smell of ocean to the seafarer, of mother-earth to the peasant, of
incense to the priest, so is the smell of the theatre to the player.
Nature may revolt; but the spell holds. Once an actor always an actor.
The mark of the calling is indelible. Even to the third and fourth
generation there is no rubbing it out.
"I suppose it would have been wiser if I had stuck to the profession,"
Poppy commented to herself. "I should have been a leading lady by now,
drawing my thirty to forty pounds a week. I had the root of the matter
in me. Have it still, worse luck; for it's the sort of root which
asserts its continued existence by aching at times like that of a
broken tooth. It was a wrench to give it all up. But then those rotten
plays of his, inflated impossible stuff, which would never
act--couldn't act!--and I carrying them round to manager after manager
and using all the gentle arts I knew to get them accepted. Oh! it was
very dignified, it was very pretty! And then his perpetual persecutions
for money, his jealousy and spite, and his fine feelings, his infernal
superiority--yes, that was what really did the job. Flesh and blood
couldn't stand it. To prove to a woman, at three meals daily, that she
couldn't hold a candle to you in birth, or brains, or education; and
then expect her to slave for you--and make it jolly hot for her if she
didn't, too--while you sat at home and caressed the delusion of your
own heaven-born genius in the only decently comfortable chair in the
house! No, it was not good enough--that it was not."
Poppy surveyed the stage, unseeing, her great eyes wide with unlovely
memories.
"I wonder what's become of him," she said presently. "He hasn't dunned
me for months. Has he found some other poor wretch to bleed? Must have,
I imagine, for he always declared he was on the edge of starvation.
Supposing that was true, though--supposing he has starved?"
Her thought sank away into a wordless reverie of the dreariest
description. Suddenly she roused herself, clenching her hands in her
lap.
"Well, supposing he has, what does it matter to me? If ever a man
deserved to starve, he did, vain, lazy, cowardly, self-seeking jackal
of a fellow. Why in the name of reason should I trouble about
him--specially to-night? But then why, whenever I am a bit done, does
the remembrance of him always come back?"
Poppy yawned again, staring blankly at the persons on the stage,
hearing the sound of their speech but knowing only the sense of her own
thought.
"Why? Because it's like him, because it's altogether in the part. He
was always on the watch for his opportunity; wheedling or
blackguarding, directly he saw one had no fight left in one, till he
got his own way."
She leaned forward, resting her hands on the velvet cushion.
"I am confoundedly tired," she said. "All the same, it's rather
horrible. If the thing came over again, which mercifully it can't, I
should do precisely the same as I did. And yet I'm never quite sure
which of us was really in the right. And, therefore, I suppose just as
long as I live, whenever I'm dished--as I am to-night--I shall work the
whole hateful business through again, and the remembrance of him will
always come back."
She pushed the soft heavy masses of hair up from her forehead with both
hands.
"In the main it was your own fault, de Courcy Smyth, and you know that
it was. Most women would not have held out nearly as long as I did. So
lie quiet. Let me be. Starve, if you've got as far on the downgrade as
that. What do I care? I owe you nothing. You never gave me a child. So
starve, if you must--yes, starve," she said.
Then she gathered herself back into her stall. Her expression changed.
"Ah, there's Dot. They're giving her a reception. Bless them--how
awfully sweet! Hurrah for poor little Dot!" Her hands went up to
applaud. And for the ensuing ten minutes her fatigue was forgotten. She
became absorbed in the action of the piece.