At eleven o'clock that night Glory was putting on her hat and cloak to
return home when the call-boy came to the dressing-room door to say that
the stage manager was waiting to see her. With a little catch, in her
breath, and then with a tightening of the heart-strings, she followed
him to the stage manager's office. It was a stuffy place over the
porter's lodge, approached by a flight of circular iron stairs and
lumbered with many kinds of theatrical property.
“Come in, my dear,” said the stage manager, and pushing away some models
of scenery he made room for her on a sofa which stood by a fast-dying
fire. Then shutting the door, he bobbed his head at her and winked with
both eyes, and said in a familiar whisper:
“It's all right, my dear. I've settled that little matter for you.”
“Do you mean----” began Glory, and then she waited with parted lips.
“It's as good as done, my dear. Sit down.” Glory had risen in her
excitement. “Sit down and I'll tell you everything.”
He had spoken to his management. “Gentlemen,” he had said, “unless I'm
mistaken I've found a prize.” They had laughed. He was always finding
prizes. But he knew what he was talking about, and they had given him
_carte blanche_.
“You think there is really some likelihood, then----” began Glory, with
the catch in her breath again, for her throat was thick and her breast
was heaving.
“Sit down, now do sit down, my dear, and listen.”
He was suave, he was flattering, he was intimate, he was, coaxing. She
was to leave everything to him. Of course, there was much to be done
yet. She had a wonderful voice; it was finer than music. She had style
as well; it was astonishing how she had come by it. Only a dresser,
too--not even in the chorus. But stars were never turned out by Nature.
She had many things to learn, and would have to be coached up carefully
before she could be brought out. He had done it for others, though, and
he could do it for her; and if----
Glory's eyes were shining and her heart was beating like a drum.
“Then you think that eventually--if I work hard--after years
perhaps----”
“You can't do it on your own, my dear, so leave yourself in my hands
entirely, and don't whisper a word about it yet.”
“Ah!” It was like a dream coming true; she could scarcely believe in it.
The stage manager became still more suave and flattering and familiar.
If she “caught on,” there was no knowing what he might not get for
her--ten pounds a week--fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, even fifty
perhaps.
Glory's palpitation was becoming painful, and at the bottom of her
heart there was a certain fear of this sudden tide of fortune, as if
Providence had somehow made a mistake and would as suddenly find it out.
To appease her conscience she began to think of home and how happy she
might make everybody there if God was really going to be so good to her.
They should want for nothing; they should never know a poor day again.
Meantime the stage manager was painting another picture. A girl didn't
go a-begging if he once took her up. There was S----. She was only an
“auricomous” damsel, serving in a tobacconist's shop in the Haymarket
when he first found her, and now where was she?
“Of course, I've no interest of my own to serve, my dear--none whatever.
And there'll be lots of people to tempt you away from me when your name
is made.”
Glory uttered some vehement protest, and then was lost in her dreams
again.
“Well, well, we'll see,” said the stage manager. He was looking at her
with glittering eyes.
“Do you know, my dear, you are a very fine-looking young woman?”
Glory's head was down, her face was flushed, and she was turning her
mother's pearl ring around her finger. He thought she was overwhelmed by
his praises, and coming closer, he said:
“Dare say you've got a good stage figure too, eh? Pooh! Only business,
you know! But you mustn't be shy with me, my dear. And besides, if I am
to do all this for you, you must do something for me sometimes.”
She hardly heard him. Her eyes were still glistening with the far-off
look of one who gazes on a beautiful vision.
“You are so good,” she said. “I don't know what to say, or how to thank
you.”
“This way,” he whispered, and leaning over to her he lifted her face and
kissed her.
Then her poor dream of glory and grandeur and happiness was dispelled
in a moment, and she awoke with a sense of outrage and shame. The man's
praises were flattery; his predictions were a pretence; he had not
really meant it at all, and she had been so simple as to believe
everything.
“Oh!” she said, with the feeble, childish cry of one who has received
a pistol wound in battle. And then she rose and turned to go. But the
stage manager, who was laughing noisily out of his hot red face, stepped
between her and the door.
“My dear child, you can't mean--a trifle like that--!”
“Open the door, please,” she said in her husky voice.
“But surely you don't intend--In this profession we think nothing, you
know----”
“Open the door, sir!”
“Really--upon my word----”
When she came to herself again she was out in the dark back street, and
the snow was hard and dirty under foot, and the wind was high and cold,
and she was running along and crying like a disappointed child.
The bitterest part of it all was the crushing certainty that she had no
talents and no chances of success, and that the man had only painted up
his fancy picture as a means of deceiving her. Oh, the misery of being a
woman! Oh, the cruelty of this great, glorious, devilish London, where a
girl, if she was poor and alone, could live only by her looks!
With God knows what lingering remnant of expectation, but feeling broken
and beaten after her brave fight for life, and with the weak woman
uppermost at last, she had turned toward the hospital. It was nearly
half-past eleven when she got there, and Big Ben was chiming the half
hour as she ascended the steps. Bracing herself up, she looked in at the
porter's door with a face that was doing its best to smile.
“Any letters to-night, porter?”
“Not to-night, miss.”
“No? Well--none to get, none to answer, you know. Happy New Year to
you!”
But there was a sob in her laughter, and the man said: “I'd be sorry to
miss your face, nurse, but if you'll leave your address I'll send your
letters on and save you the journey so late at night.”
“Oh, no-no, there'll be no more letters now, porter, and--I'll not come
again. Here!”
“No, no, miss.”
“Yes, yes, you must.”
She forced a shilling into the porter's hand in spite of his protests,
and then fled from the look in his face which seemed to her to say that
he would like to return her sixpence.
John Storm was lost to her. It was foolishness to go on expecting
to hear from him. Had he not told her that the rule under which the
brothers lived in community forbade them to write and receive letters
except by special permission? But she had expected that something would
happen--some accident, some miracle, she hardly knew what. That dream
was over now; she was alone; it was no use deceiving herself any longer.
She went home by the back streets, for people were peering into her
face, and she thought perhaps she had been crying. Late as it was, being
New Year's Eve, there were groups about every corner, and in some of the
flagged courts and alleys little girls were dancing to the music of the
Italian organ man or turning catherine-wheels. As she was going down
Long Acre a creachy voice saluted her.
“Evening, miss! Going home early, ain't ye?”
It was a miserable-looking woman in clothes that might have been stolen
from a scarecrow.
“Market full to-night, my dear? Look as if the dodgers had been at ye.
Live? I live off of the lane. But lor' bless ye, I've lived in a-many
places! Seen the day I lived in Soho Square. I was on the 'alls then.
Got a bit quisby on my top notes, you know, and took the scarlet
fever--soldier, I mean, my dear. But what's the use of frettin'?
“I likes to be jolly, and I allwiz is. Doing now? Selling flowers
outside the theatres--police is nasty if you've got nothink. Ain't I
going home? Soon as I get a drain of white satin. Wish you luck, my
dear!”
As she came up to the shop in the Turnstile she could hear that it
was noisy with the voices of men and girls, so she turned back through
Lincoln's-Inn Fields and passed down to Fleet Street. It was approaching
twelve o'clock by this time, and streams of people were flowing in
the direction of St. Paul's Cathedral. Glory turned eastward also and
allowed herself to be carried along with the current which babbled and
talked like a river in the night.
Immediately in front of her there was a line of girls walking arm-in-arm
across the width of the pavement. They were factory girls in big hats
with ostrich feathers, and as they skipped along with their free step
they sang snatches of Salvation hymns and music-hall songs. All at once
they gave a shrill peal of laughter, and one of them cried, “Tell me
what it is and I'll give it a nyme.” At the next moment a strange figure
was forging past their line, going westward with long strides. It was
a man in the habit of a monk, with long black cassock and broad-brimmed
hat. Glory caught a glimpse of his face as he passed her. It was a
hungry, eager face, with big, melancholy eyes, and it seemed to her that
she must have seen it before somewhere. The wind was very cold, and the
great cross on the dome of the cathedral stood out like a beacon against
flying clouds.
St. Paul's churchyard was thronged with noisy, happy people, and down to
the last minute before the hour they shouted and joked and laughed. Then
there was a hush, the great crowds seemed to hold their breath as if
they had been a single living creature, and every face was turned upward
to the clock. The clock struck, the bells of the cathedral began to
ring, the people cheered and saluted each other and shook hands on every
side, and then the dense mass broke up.
Glory could have cried for joy of it all--it was so simple, so human,
so childlike. But she listened to the laughter and salutations of the
people about her and felt more lonely than the Bedouin in the desert;
she remembered the bubbling hopes that had carried her through the day,
and her heart fell low; she thought of the letter which she had posted
home on her way to the theatre, and two great tears came rolling from
her eyes.
The face of the monk tormented her, and suddenly she bethought herself
whose face it must have been. It must have been the face of Polly Love's
brother. He belonged to the Bishopsgate Fathers, and had once been a
patient in the hospital, and perhaps he was going there now on some
errand or urgent message--to the doctors or to----
“It was foolish not to leave my address when the porter asked me,” she
thought. She would go back and do so. There could be no harm in that;
and if anything had really happened, if John----
“Happy New Year to you, my dear!”
Somebody in the drifting crowd was standing before her and blocking
the way. It was Agatha Jones in a mock seal-skin coat and big black
hat surmounted by black feathers, and with Charlie Wilkes (with his
diminutive cap pushed back from his oily fringe and pimpled forehead)
leaning heavily on her arm.
“Well, I never! Who'd have thought of meeting you in St. Paul's
churchyawd!”
Glory tried to laugh and to return the salutation over the noises of the
people and the clangour of the bells. And then Aggie put her face close,
as women do who are accustomed to talking in the streets, and said:
“Thought we'd seen the lahst of you, my dear, when you went off that
night sudden. Selling programmes somewhere else now?”
“Something of that sort,” said Glory.
“I'm not. I've been left the old red church this fortnight and more.
Charlie's got me on the clubs. But my word!” turning to Charlie, “it's
her as oughter be there, my dear!”
“She cheeks me out,” said Charlie, “as you'll knock the stuffing out of
Betty Bellman 'erself if you once myke a stawt.”
And Aggie said: “I might get you to do a turn almost any Sunday, if you
like, my dear. There's always somebody as down't come, and they're glad
of an extra turn to tyke the number if she's only clever enough to get a
few 'ands. Going 'ome, dear?”
“Yes,” said Glory.
“Where d'ye live?” said Aggie, and Glory told her.
“I'll call for you Sunday night at eight, and if you down't tyke your
chawnce when you get it, you're a foolisher woman than I thought you
were, that's stright! By-bye!”