He went early in the afternoon, and he found her more cordial than on
Marine Parade, though he gathered that she had been unprepared to see
him so soon. He was shown into a small back parlour reserved for the
family's own use, and when he entered she was in a rocking-chair with
her baby on her lap. At his playful advances it began to cry, and it
wailed continuously while he paid it the usual compliments, and heard
that it was fifteen months old, and christened "Vivian."
"The only one?" he asked, as the noise subsided.
"Yes," she said, "I lost my little girl. How nice of you to remember
your promise! I made sure you'd forget."
"That was very wicked of you. You ought to have known better; didn't I
show you what sort of a memory I've got?"
"Well, really you did! I can't think how you knew me again."
"Why, you haven't changed much," he said, "you were just as good-looking
then."
"Don't be so foolish." She bent over the baby.
"I knew you directly I caught sight of you. You were just coming out of
the house."
"What, this house? Were you passing?"
He nodded, grinning. "And I followed you into Preston Street."
"I saw you in Preston Street," she said. "You came into the
greengrocer's, didn't you?"
"Yes, but first I'd had to wait outside a fishmonger's. Oh, I had a heap
of trouble before I got a chance to speak to you, I can tell you! You
looked so----Lee was 'fraid!"
"Did I?" She gave him instinctively the glance she would have given to a
white man. "Oh, I had no idea who you were, you know. I thought----"
"Thought my admiration infernal cheek, eh? Didn't you look me up and
down when I came to the seat! 'Sir, how dare you?' you meant. _I_
knew!" His jolly laughter shook him, and startled the baby into a fresh
outbreak.
"Well, I was all right when I understood, now wasn't I?--There, there,
pet, suck his ribbons, and let his mummy talk!--Do you know, I've got
something to ask you, Mr. Lee; after you had gone it struck me you
might be able to give me a hint. I want to make use of my voice; I
thought perhaps you would tell me the best way to set about it? I have
written to people already, but they don't answer, and----His mummy will
have to send him away if he isn't quiet."
"Make use of your voice?" he said doubtfully. "Oh yes, I'll help you
with pleasure if there's anything I can do, but what is it you mean?"
"I was thinking of concert singing; only in a small way, of course--I
know I can't expect to do anything marvellous--but I've had a lot of
lessons, and in Liverpool I used to practise hard. My master----If
you'll excuse me for a minute, I'll take Baby upstairs."
He excused her for that purpose readily, and when she came back her
mother was with her. He found that Mrs. Tremlett had altered too, but
in the most surprising way. When he was a lad she had looked quite old
to him, and now she looked only middle-aged. She was the widow of a
novelist who had written such beautiful prose that many people had been
eager to meet him--once. Afterwards they talked less about his prose
than his manners. He had left her, their daughter, a policy for five
hundred pounds, and an album of carefully pasted Press cuttings. During
his life she had suffered with him in furnished apartments; at his
death she took to letting them. She was a well-meaning, weak-natured
creature. For forty years she had related her dream of the previous
night over the breakfast-table, and read the morning paper after supper.
She religiously preserved the reviews, which she had never understood;
believed that Darwin was a monomaniac who said we sprang from monkeys;
and that Mrs. Hemans had written the most beautiful poetry in the world.
"Mother was quite excited when she heard I had seen you," said Mrs.
Harris. "Weren't you, mother?"
"You were a very bad girl. What do you think, Mr. Lee? She came home and
said that a--that a"--she gulped--"a strange man had stopped and spoken
to her. Such a thing to say! And she didn't tell me who it was for ever
so long."
He understood that he had been referred to as a "nigger." She deprecated
her blunder to the younger woman with worried eyes, and the latter
struck in hastily:
"I was just telling Mr. Lee what I want to do, mother. He thinks he
might help me."
"Oh, now I'm sure that's very kind of him indeed! You see, Mr. Lee, it's
not altogether nice for Ownie here, and of course having had a home of
her own, she feels it more still. Well, dear, you do, it's no good
denying it! If she had something to take her out of herself a little it
would be so good for her in every way; and we always thought she would
make money with her voice--it's a magnificent one, really."
Mrs. Harris shrugged her shoulders. "To talk about its being
'magnificent' in front of Mr. Lee is rather funny. But if I could make
even a second-rate position," she went on, "I should be satisfied. I'd
try for an engagement in a comic opera if I thought I could act, but
I'm afraid I should be no good on the stage, and one has to start in
such tiny parts. We had a lady staying with us who used to be in the
profession, and she was telling us how hard the beginning was."
"And do you imagine that concert-engagements are to be had for the
asking?" he said. "Good heavens! But of course you don't know anything
about the musical world--how should you?"
"I don't imagine that they are to be had for the asking," she returned
a shade tartly; "but if one can sing well enough, the platform must be
easier for a woman like me than the stage, by all accounts."
"Accounts," he echoed, "whose accounts? I could give you accounts
that would make your hair stand up. Do you know that professional
singers, with very fine voices, come over from the Colonies to try to
get an appearance here and find they can't do it? They eat up all the
money that they've saved and go back beggared. They go back beaten and
beggared. It is happening all the time. My dear girl, you couldn't make
a living on the concert-stage under five years if you had the voice of
an Angel."
"Not if I had bad luck, I daresay," she muttered.
"I tell you nobody can do it--it isn't to be done. It would take you
five years to earn a bare living if you were a Miracle. The Americans
and Australians try it for two or three and clear out with broken
hearts and empty pockets. It's killing; they starve while they are
struggling to be heard. I'll give you an example; a singer with a
glorious voice came to England--_I_ say it, 'glorious.' I won't mention
his name, it wouldn't be fair; but, mind, this is a fact! He had worked
hard in his own country--they believed in him there; they got up a
benefit for him before he sailed. He had three thousand pounds when
he landed--and he spent every penny trying to get a footing here and
went home in despair.... Do you know that when I give a concert, even
artists who _are_ making a living go to my agent, and offer him twenty,
twenty-five, thirty guineas to be allowed to sing at it?"
"They pay to be allowed to sing?" said Mrs. Tremlett. "But why should
they do that?"
"Because they can't get into a fashionable programme without; and it's
worth paying for. Singers who have been at the game half their lives do
it, I tell you. I'm not supposed to know. _I_ don't get their money;
I leave the agent to engage the people to support me, and if he makes
a bit extra over the affair--well, he forgets to talk to me about it!
But it's a usual thing. 'Easy for a woman'?" He turned to Mrs. Harris
again, and rolled his black head. "Easy? Poor soul! She looks so fine,
doesn't she, when she sweeps down the platform in her satin dress and
lays her bouquet on the piano? Oh, dear Lord! if you knew what she has
gone through to get there. And what it has cost her to get there. And
how she has pigged to buy the bouquet and the satin dress. You think if
you can sing, that's all that's wanted, do you? You can wait and beg for
years before an agent will hear your singing. And when you are heard at
last--if your production is first-rate, and the quality pleases him,
and you are a smart and agreeable woman, and you have found him at the
right moment--he will ask: 'How many pounds' worth of tickets will you
guarantee?'"
"And in spite of everything, some women get on!" she said. "One would
think nobody had ever had an immense success, to hear you talk. One
would think there had never been a Patti, or----"
"Ah, Jehoshaphat! An immense success? With an immense success--when it
comes--you're the cock of the walk. When a woman has made an 'mmense
success' she can fill the Albert Hall, and move the world. She can move
even the English, and hold them breathless in the gallery, though they
have got no chairs and the notices forbid them to sit on the floor. The
singers who make 'immense successes' are the kings and queens. They
mayn't be able to act, or to talk--they may be as stupid as geese;
but God has given them this wonderful power; nobody knows why.... And
sometimes with His other hand He gives them a black skin; nobody knows
why!"
At the unexpected reference to his colour, Mrs. Tremlett started as if
she had been pinched; and her daughter murmured:
"Well, I thought you might be able to do something for me. I see you
only think that I'm very foolish."
"I haven't heard you yet. I just warn you what sort of a life it is at
the beginning. I'd do any blessed thing I could for you. What is your
voice? Come, sing to me now!"
"Oh! not now, Ownie," exclaimed the landlady; "the drawing-room people
are in, dear, and you know they complain so of every sound."
"You are still called 'Ownie,' I see," he said.
"Mother used to call me her 'little own, her little ownie,' when I was
no higher than that, I believe "--she raised her hand about a foot from
the table--"and I have been 'Ownie' ever since; I suppose I shall never
be anything else now, though I was christened 'Lilian Augusta.' My
voice is contralto. I'll sing to you the next time you are here--if the
lodgers are out," she added with a harsh laugh. "One must consider the
lodgers. The lodgers heard Baby crying in the night and were surprised
we didn't keep it in the coal-cellar. At least that's what they seemed
to mean."
"Oh, my dear," protested Mrs. Tremlett feebly, "I'm sure they didn't
mean that. Mrs. Wilcox had gone to bed with a bad headache, and was just
dropping off to sleep. She only said----"
"She complained when she thought it belonged to the dining-rooms;
when she heard it was mine, she was astonished at the impudence of a
landlady's daughter in having a baby. Oh, I'm not finding any fault with
what she said"--but her tone was very resentful--"a lodging-house isn't
the place for a child, I know! It's a little hard on poor Baby, perhaps,
that's all."
Lee felt very glad, when he rose, that the piano had not been opened.
That she was inhabiting a castle in the air he had no doubt whatever,
and he flinched from the task of shattering it. The woman of thirty-two
who had had "a lot of lessons" was now a pathetic as well as an alluring
figure to him; and she did not lose her pathos in the following days,
for he often met her, and she never failed to recur to her desire. In
their earliest meetings she was considerably abashed in walking beside
him, and being conscious of his colour at every step, always declared
herself bound for the least frequented parts. But soon she lost much
of this embarrassment, and even came to take a nervous pride in the
increased attention she attracted. She reminded herself that it was not
as if she were with an ordinary negro, or as if he were a famous negro
who wasn't recognised. Nearly all the people they passed knew he was
Elisha Lee, and there was nothing to be ashamed of in being seen with
him. He looked less repulsive to her, too, on acquaintance. She now
remembered having noticed niggers with much wider nostrils than those
that had looked so wide to her a week ago; and his lips didn't seem to
protrude so much as they had done at first. It was a pity they were
so dark. If it hadn't been for his lips he really would not have been
repugnant at all; there was nothing to make one shudder in a merely
black skin when one grew used to seeing it, and he carried himself
splendidly. As to his ears, if they had only been white, they would have
been the prettiest ears she had ever seen on a man; little delicate
ears, set close to his head. And he could interest her. Like most of
his People, he told a good story well, and he was full of anecdotes of
the musical celebrities. It made her feel nearer to the platform, to be
admitted to the artists' room in his confidences.
But though she hankered after the platform, and spoke of her ambition
daily, she was not an ambitious woman in the sense in which many women
are ambitious who besiege the offices of the musical and dramatic
agents. She was a dissatisfied woman; it was not notoriety she thirsted
for so much as means. She wanted money--the road by which she earned
it was a detail. If somebody had left her an independence, she would
not have been eager to sing at all. Her life was sour to her. As a
schoolgirl she had understood that her prettiness was damaged by her
surroundings; when she was twelve years old she had felt that the
hateful card, printed "Furnished Apartments," in the window ticketed
her "cheap." It was the first card to deteriorate that square that
has fallen from grace. The society in which girls went to dances
and sat on the stairs with rich young men, was as unattainable as a
carriage-and-pair. She had nothing to expect; she looked down on the
tradespeople, and the residents looked down on her. She couldn't even
write novels as her father had done, and hope to escape her environment
in that way.
She had married when she was five-and-twenty--not so soon as she would
have married in happier circumstances; not so well as she would have
married but for the card in the window. She married a furrier. Even this
had been an improvement for her; she wore her first sealskin, and tasted
the joy of comparative extravagance. But the business had failed and the
bankrupt had died; and then there was nothing for her but the Brighton
lodgings again.
It was in his sitting-room in the hotel that she at last sang to Lee.
He had asked her and Mrs. Tremlett to luncheon--wondering how much he
could contrive to spend on it--but the landlady had declared it was
impossible for her to leave the house, and Ownie had come alone--"for
ten minutes, just to hear his opinion."
She had begged him to let her sing the song through without interrupting
her, and he said nothing until she finished. It had hurt him very much
to hear her sing; for a few minutes he had almost forgotten her eyes
and hair. His thick black fingers lingered on the final chord of the
accompaniment with thankfulness and with dismay; he did not know how to
undeceive her.
"Well?" she demanded.
He struck E, F, and F sharp, still hesitating. "You use too much force
there in swelling the tone of your head voice," he said. "Those are your
weak notes--they are mine too. They are the weak notes with all tenors
and sopranos. After G the crescendo is easy enough, but the E, F, and F
sharp are devils."
"You call my voice soprano?" she exclaimed. "Why, my range is----"
"Range? Did your master tell you that the range makes the voice
contralto or soprano? It's the colour of tone, not that." He kept
striking and re-striking the notes without looking at her. She observed
the diamonds on his hands enviously.
"Do you--are you trying to tell me I'm no good?" she asked with a little
gasp.
"You have been badly taught," he said, "awfully badly. I expected it.
Your voice has never been placed."
"Thank you," she said. "It's kind of you to be candid." She was very
pale. "I suppose there's nothing I can do to--to make it all right?"
"I'm afraid not," said Lee.
"And all because I've been badly taught?"
"Oh, I don't say that. It has done harm of course--the natural colour of
the voice isn't there; but I don't think--if you want me to tell you the
truth--I don't think you could ever have done what you hoped under any
circumstances."
There was a long silence. Then she forced a smile, and put out her hand.
"Good-bye," she said.
"You're not going like that? Ah, you make me feel a beast! Do you want
it so much? Think of the hardships you'd have to go through, even if you
could make a start. Cheer up! Things aren't so bad after all."
"Aren't they?" she muttered. She sank into a chair. "Why?"
"You aren't obliged to earn a living--you have a home, anyhow. Plenty of
women haven't that; there are plenty of them worse off than you, I give
you my word!"
"There aren't," she cried, "there's nobody worse off than I am! Some
people are resigned to drig on all their lives and never have enough of
anything. I'm not resigned. I hate the scrimping and scraping, and the
peal of the lodgers' bells, and the drabs of servants who think they can
be impudent to you because you 'let.' I'm sick, sick, sick of it all. I
got away from it once, and now I'm in a back parlour again, with never
a soul to speak to. How would _you_ like it? But you don't know what
loneliness means. How can you understand what I feel--you?"
"Why should you say I can't understand?" he answered. "Because my name
is printed in large letters on the bills, and I've got all that you
want? I haven't got all that _I_ want. Doesn't it strike you that inside
here I may feel all that a white man feels, though no white woman will
ever feel the same for me? Ah, that's news to you, eh? But it's true.
People say of fools like me, 'Oh, he keeps low company, he's happiest
in the gutter.' Liars! Some of us take what we can get, that's all. The
moon we cry for is over our heads, and we make shift with its reflection
in the puddle. I do know what loneliness, means--when I let myself think
about it. Do I think about it often? No, not me, I'm not such a blooming
fool: I enjoy. But the knowledge is there, and the loneliness is worse
than yours. Money? I make pots of money--I never sing under eighty
pounds--money isn't everything. You see these rings? They cost--Lord
knows!--three hundred. I'll give them to you. All of them: here--one,
two, three, four!" He threw them into her lap. "They belong to you now.
Are you quite happy? No, you're not; you still want something. Well,
with me it's the same. _I_ still want something--and I shall go wanting
all my life."
"So shall I," she returned. She picked the rings up one by one, and held
them out to him with a sigh.
"What, you won't keep them?" he inquired. Though his impulse had taken a
theatrical form, it was quite sincere.
"Keep them?" She looked at him amazed. "Do you mean to say you really
gave them to me to keep?"
"Why shouldn't I give them to you? I'll give you anything you like. Go
on, put them on, or--they're too big for you--put them in your pocket.
Yes, I mean it--they're yours."
"Oh," she exclaimed, "I can't keep things from you like----But you're
joking?"
"I mean it," he repeated. "Bless me, why not? I want you to have them.
They're a present."
"You must be mad," she faltered: "I can't accept presents from you.
It's very kind of you--very generous--but it isn't possible."
He extended his hand an inch at the time. She laid them in the yellowish
palm, and watched him slip them over the finger-nails that looked as if
they were bruised. Her heart dropped heavily.
"It wasn't rude to offer them to you, was it?" he asked. "I didn't mean
to offend you, you know."
"I'm not offended," she said. "But--but ladies can't take presents from
men--not valuable presents, hundreds of pounds' worth of rings."
"Mustn't I give you anything?"
The rings magnetised her; she couldn't wrench her gaze from them.
"What for? Are you so sorry for me--the idiot who thought she could
sing?"
"It's not that; it's nothing to do with your singing. Sweets? May I give
you sweets?"
"I"--her eyelids fell--"I suppose so."
"What else?"
"Why should you give me anything at all?"
"Because I want to; because I--like you, Ownie.... Tell me what I can
get for you."
He leant nearer to her. She quivered in realising what he meant. Her
physical impulse was to repel him, and the cravings of her mind tempted
her to let him hope. She hesitated a moment.
"Get me some sweets, then," she said unsteadily. "I must go, or I shall
be late."