When Maggy spoke of the stage she generally meant the Pall Mall Theater.
Just now it was in her thoughts more than any other, perhaps because she
had met Alexandra there, but also because she was inclined to think that
Alexandra and she had made a favorable impression on its stage-manager.
The Pall Mall, De Freyne, its lessee and manager, and the Pall Mall
chorus are a trinity known the world over. Productions at the Pall Mall
invariably enjoy success. Long runs prevail there. That was one of the
reasons why Maggy looked forward to an engagement at that theater.
Another was the pay, rather more than was obtainable elsewhere. In
other respects it offered her no advantages and some drawbacks. She
had, for instance no aspiration to become one of a chorus whose
unrivaled attractions marked it out as a sort of human _delicatessen_
for the consumption of epicurean males. On the other hand, De Freyne
was indifferent to expense on the question of costume, and that had had
considerable weight with Maggy. Like any other pretty girl she reveled
in beautiful clothes, even though they should only be on loan to her for
an hour or two out of the twenty-four. On tour the dresses were often
effective enough at a distance, but either of inferior material or their
pristine freshness considerably depreciated by having seen previous
service in a London theater. That militated against the pleasure of
wearing them. At the Pall Mall everything would be new and the best
that money could buy.
That De Freyne's object in dressing his chorus regardless of cost was a
licentious one, the desire to make his two-score of attractive-looking
girls still more attractive in the eyes of the _jeunesse doree_, who
filled his stalls, was no deterrent to Maggy on her own account. She
did think of it in regard to Alexandra. She wondered whether Alexandra
would be affected by the demoralizing influence of those beautiful
clothes which at the Pall Mall were fashioned to display a girl's
physical charms to the very limit of decency. It ended in her being
almost sorry that Alexandra's innocence and the callousness of an agent
should have sent her to the voice trial.
How Alexandra was to make a good impression on the public by posturing
in the chorus was not explained to her. It was the expression of an
opinion which she could take or leave. In her innocence she made the
common error of imagining that the public chooses its plays, its novels,
its pictures, its music and its actors and actresses for itself. She
did not stop to think that there might be gradations in that public or
that the vast majority of it is deprived of selective taste by the
interested parties who cater for it. Generalizing by the noise the
public makes with its hands when it approves of anything, she argued
that everything it applauds must be good. The noise is there right
enough and the approval is genuine; but that has to be discounted by the
fact that the public has nothing better to approve of. For the
public--the crowd--is a led horse most of the time. It is enormously
manageable. It does what it is told and goes where it is taken. Its
taste has never been given a chance of becoming educated because of the
fare that has been forced upon it. Its purveyors feed it as injuriously
as an ignorant man will a horse. For the want of anything better the
horse will eat what is given it. So with the public. Obviously the
public never has anything to do with the choice of a play. Nobody has
except the man who buys it and puts it on the stage.
Following the simile of the led horse and the proverb that, though you
may take it to the water you cannot make it drink, the public likewise
will once in a way evince the same sort of stubbornness. Then the play
that failed to "go down" is unostentatiously withdrawn, or the pretender
to histrionic laurels unable to obtain them will try his or her luck
again in another piece with another's money behind it.
After all, it is but a question of credulity. Even Alexandra had to
conform to it. She was advised to apply for a place in the chorus and
she did so. With her necessarily vague ideas about the chorus she did
not think of it as anything very dreadful. It did not offer so good a
footing on the stage as she desired, that was all. She did not, for
instance, believe all the disparaging things Maggy said about the stage.
She appreciated that on the stage a girl might be unduly exposed to
temptation, but in her austerity that was no reason for yielding to it.
In her Arcadian purity she could not conceive of circumstances, however
degrading, having any adverse effect on herself. Nor could she credit
Maggy's insistent assertion that without money or influence an actress
must remain in the depths. She believed, as inexperience always does,
that talent is bound to be recognized sooner or later. The creed of the
chorus girl, unspoken, unwritten, was yet hers to learn.
For ten days the two girls heard nothing from the Pall Mall Theater. It
was possible, if not probable, that they might not hear at all.
Meanwhile Maggy went about with Alexandra looking for an engagement in
some other direction. It was a matter of urgency to both of them to get
something to do. Maggy had been out of an engagement for two months.
She was in Mrs. Bell's debt, and she owed money to a doctor. Alexandra
was little better off. As the orphaned daughter of an officer she had a
pension of L40 a year so long as she remained unmarried. But with the
expense she had been put to in coming to town and in spite of the
strictest economy it was not enough to live on.
She could not help being anxious about the future; more so than Maggy.
Maggy, though she chafed at them, was accustomed to bad times: Alexandra
had never struck them before. Hardly had she got over the illusion of
imagining that a small part in a London theater was obtainable than she
found herself in no request even for the chorus. It was terribly
disappointing. They were forever haunting stage-doors and the crowded
waiting rooms of theatrical agencies. For hours every day they wandered
about the Strand and its environs.
But for the prospect of sheer want confronting them they would have been
quite happy. The bond that united them was based on mutual respect as
well as affection. Disappointment and privation only cemented it. In
these days when the stale breakfast egg was a comestible to be shared,
when anything better than canned food became a luxury, their friendship
remained free from any of the pettinesses which generally characterize
the intimacy of people living under conditions of hardship.
The stoicism of a family of soldiers supported Alexandra. She had the
pride of race that refuses to surrender to misfortune. Her grit,
astonishing in one so delicately reared, surprised Maggy. She began to
look up to Alexandra as a being of a superior world in which the
virtues, being Anglo-Indian, were of a particularly high order. She had
a very nebulous conception of the meaning of the term.
Just as Alexandra found it absorbing to listen to Maggy's stage talk,
even though it was humorously misogynistic, so nothing pleased Maggy so
much as to listen to Alexandra's narration of life in an Indian military
station. It sounded to her like a history of the high gods: a medley of
color, warmth and ease, good living and brass bands. She loved to hear
of parades and polo, of the troops of servants, the gymkhanas and
dances, all the social amusements and advantages of the sahib caste.
From habit, Alexandra would use native words when talking of these
things, and Maggy's unaccustomed brain never quite differentiated
between syce, hazari, maidan, ayah, chit, durzi, kitmagar, butti,
tikka-gari and such-like terms in common use with Anglo-Indians. But
they impressed her immensely.
The amount of talk they got through in these early days of their
friendship was stupendous. It helped to relieve the harassing search
after employment and its invariable ill-success.
One morning, three weeks after their first meeting, Maggy sprang out of
bed to gather up two letters which their landlady had pushed under the
door. On the flaps were inspiring words in red lettering.
"Pall Mall Theater! Hooroo! One for each of us!" she cried, and danced
about in her nightdress.
Alexandra, behind an improvised screen formed of a shawl over the towel
rail, was having her morning bath in a zinc tub of inadequate size.
"Open mine," she called. "I'm wet."
She waited anxiously. There came the sound of tearing paper and then
Maggy's voice, raised excitedly:
"Pull that old shawl down, Lexie! If you don't practise on me you'll
die of shyness and no clothes at the Pall Mall. We're engaged!
Rehearsal Thursday. Eleven o'clock!"