Eileen's next place was--as if by contrast--with a much more genteel
family, and a much poorer, though it flew higher socially. It lived in a
house, half in a fashionable London terrace, half in a shabby side
street, and its abode was typical of its ambitions and its means. Mrs.
Lee Carter drew the line clearly between herself and her governess, which
was a blessing, for it meant Eileen's total exclusion from her social
life, and Eileen's consequent enjoyment of her own evenings at home or
abroad, as she wished. This unusual freedom compensated for the hard
work of teaching children in various stages of growth and ignorance how
to talk French and play the piano. Her salary was small, for Mrs. Lee
Carter's ambition to live beyond her neighbours' means was only achieved
by pinching whomever she could. She was not bad-hearted; she simply could
not afford anything but luxuries. Eileen wondered at not being asked
sometimes to perform at her parties, till she found that only celebrities
ever did anything in that house.
This was a period of much mental activity in Eileen's life. The tossing
ocean of London life, the theatres that played Shakespeare, the world of
new books and new thought, her recent perusal of Plato and of man, all
produced fermentation. But every night she knelt by her bedside and said
her "Ave Maria" with a voluptuous sense of spiritual peace, and every
morning she woke with a certain joy in existence and a certain surprise
to find herself again existing. Her old convent-thought recurred. "We
are worked from without--marionettes who can watch their own performance.
And it is very amusing." Once she read of a British action in Afghanistan
against border-tribes, and she wondered if Lieutenant Doherty was in the
fighting. Since she had ceased to be his mother-confessor he had become
very shadowy; his image now rose substantial from the newspaper lines,
and she was surprised to find in herself a little palpitation at his
probable perils. "One's heartstrings, too, are pulled," she thought.
"I don't like it. Marionettes should move, not feel." These reflections,
however, came to her more often anent her family, and the struggles of
her kin for a livelihood touched her more deeply than any love. "We are
like bits of the same shattered body," she thought. "In these cold
English families everybody is another body." She sent most of her salary
to Ireland, and her pocket-money came from singing in the choir on
Sunday.
The bass chorister was a very amusing man. His voice was sepulchral but
his conversation skittish. Eileen's repartees smote him to almost the
only serious respect of his life, and one day he said: "Why, there's
a future in you. Why don't you go on the stage?"
"What nonsense!" But the blood was secretly stirred in her veins. She saw
herself walking along the Black Hole with the programme-girl, but her
point of view had been modified since she had received a similar
suggestion with a shudder. If she could play Rosalind to a great London
audience, the staring men-folk would matter little.
"Why not?" went on the bass tempter. "A humour like yours with such a
voice and such a face!"
"The stage is full of better voices and better faces."
"No, indeed. Why, there isn't a girl at the Half-and-Half--" He stopped
and almost blushed.
She smiled. "Oh, I don't mind your going to such places. What is the
Half-and-Half, a place where they drink beer?"
"Oh, it's just our slang name for a little music-hall that's just between
the East End and the West End, with a corresponding programme."
"Our slang name?"
"Well--" he paused. "If you'll keep it very dark--but of course you
will--I appear there myself."
"You! What do you do?"
"I sing patriotic songs and drinking-songs--"
"Aren't they the same thing in England?"
"Don't say that on the stage or they'll throw pewter pots. They're very
patriotic."
"That's just what I said. What's your name--I suppose you change it?"
"Yes--as I hope you will yours--some day."
"I shan't take yours."
"Nobody arxed you, miss," he said. "And, besides, mine is
copyright--Jolly Jack Jenkins. I make a fiver a week by it."
"A fiver!" The bass chorister suddenly took on an air of Arabian nights.
At this rate she could buy back the family castle. Her struggling
brothers--how they would bless their magician sister--Mick should have
a London practice, Miles a partnership in an engineering firm.
"You come with me and see Fossy," continued Jolly Jack Jenkins.
Eileen declined with thanks. It took a week of Sundays to argue away her
objections--religious, moral, and social. To play Rosalind to fashionable
London was one thing: to appear at a variety theatre or low-class
music-hall, which nobody in her world or Mrs. Lee Carter's had ever heard
of, was another pair of shoes. Yet strange to say, it was the last
consideration that decided her to try. Even if admitted to the boards,
she could make her failure in secure obscurity. It would simply be
another girlish escapade, and she was ripe for mischief after her
long sobriety.
"But even your Mr. Fossy mustn't know my real name or address," she
stipulated.
"Who shall I say you are?"
"Nelly O'Neill."
"Ripping. Flows from the tongue like music."
"Then it's rippling you mean."
"What a tongue! Wait till Fossy sees you."
"Will he ask me to stick it out?"
"Oh, Lord, I wish I had your repartee. But I'm thinking--Nelly
O'Neill--doesn't it give you away a bit?"
"Keeps me a bit, too. I shouldn't like to lose myself altogether--gain
reputation for another woman."
Fossy proved to be a gentleman named Josephs, who in a tiny triangular
room near the stage of the Half-and-Half listened critically to her comic
singing, shook his head and said he would let her know. Eileen left the
room with leaden heart and feet.
"Wait for me a moment, please," Jolly Jack Jenkins called after her,
and she hung about timidly, jostled by dirty attendants and painted
performers. She was reading a warning to artistes that any improper
songs or lines would lead to their instant dismissal, and regretting more
than ever her incompetence for this innocent profession, when she heard
the bass chorister's big breathing behind her.
"Bravo! You knocked him all of a heap."
"Rubbish! Don't try to cheer me."
"You!" Jolly Jack Jenkins opened his eyes. "You taken in by Fossy! He'll
suggest your doing a trial turn next Saturday night when the public are
least critical, you'll make a furore, and he'll offer you two guineas a
week."
"A pleasing picture, but quite visionary. Why, he didn't even ask for an
address to write to!"
"Oh, I dare say he thought care of me would find you. No, don't glower at
me--I don't mean anything wrong."
"I hope you didn't let him misunderstand--"
"You asked me not to let him know too much. Fossy has to do so much with
queer folk--"
"Yes, I saw he had to warn them against improper songs."
Jolly Jack Jenkins exploded in a guffaw.
"I'm sorry I came," said Eileen, in vague distress.
"Fossy isn't," he retorted. "He was clean bowled over. In that Irish
fox-hunting song all the gallery will be shouting 'Tally-ho!' Where did
you pick it up?"
"I didn't _pick_ it up, I _made_ it up for the occasion."
"By Jove! I have to pay a guinea to a bloodsucking composer when _I_ want
a song. Oh, Fossy's spotted a winner this time."
"Why is he called Fossy?"
"I don't know. Nobody knows. I found the name, I pass it on."
"Perhaps it's a corruption of Foxy."
"There! I never thought of that! You _are_ a--!"
The jolly chorister's mouth remained open. But the prophecy that had
already issued from it came true in every detail.