Despite her private stage-fright, Nelly O'Neill, the new serio-comic,
made a big hit. Her innocent roguery was captivating; her virginal
freshness floated over the footlights, like a spring breeze through the
smoky Hall.
"Well, you _are_ an all-round success," cried Jolly Jack Jenkins, pumping
her hand off at the wings, amid a thunder of applause, encores, and
whistles.
"You mean a Half-and-Half!" laughed Nelly through Eileen's tears. She had
given herself to the audience, but how it had given itself in return,
flashing back to her in electric waves its monstrous vitality, its
apparently single life.
The Half-and-Half was one of those early Victorian halls of the people,
with fixed stars and only a few meteors. The popular favourites changed
their songs and their clothes at periodic intervals, but they would
have lost favour if they had not remained the same throughout everything.
A chairman with a hammer announced the turns, and condescendingly
took champagne with anybody who paid for it. Eileen soon became an
indispensable part of this smoky world. She signed an agreement at three
guineas a week for three years, to perform only at the Half-and-Half.
Fossy saw far. Eileen did not. She jumped for joy when she got beyond
eyeshot. She felt herself jumping out of the governess-life. Second
thoughts and soberer footsteps brought doubt. She had intended telling
Mrs. Lee Carter as soon as the trial-performance was over, but now she
hesitated and was lost. Half the charm lay in the secret adventure, the
dare-devilry. Besides, as a governess she had a comfortable home and a
respectable status, and she had already seen and divined enough of the
world behind the footlights to shrink from being absorbed into it. What
fun in the double life! She had never found a single life worth living.
She would belong to two worlds--be literally Half-and-Half. Nelly O'Neill
must only be born at twilight. But she felt she could not be out
uniformly every evening without some explanation.
"Mrs. Lee Carter," she said, "I have to tell you of a peculiar chance of
augmenting my income that has come to me."
Mrs. Lee Carter, wearing plumes and train for a court reception, paled.
"You are not going to leave me!"
The naive exclamation strengthened Eileen's hand.
"I don't quite see how to do otherwise," she said boldly.
"Oh, dear, I wish I could afford more. I know you're worth it."
Eileen thought, "If you'd only give your guests good claret instead of
bad champagne!" But she said, "You are very kind--you have always been
most considerate."
The plumes wagged.
"I try to please all parties."
Nelly O'Neill thought, "And to give too many." Eileen said, "Yes, you've
given me my evenings to myself as it is, and considering the new work is
only in the evenings, I did think of running the two, but I'm afraid--"
"If we lightened your work a little--" interrupted Mrs. Lee Carter,
eagerly.
"I shouldn't so much ask that as to have perfect freedom like a young
man--a latch-key even." Never had Eileen looked more demure and Puritan.
"Oh, I hope you won't be working too late--"
"The people who go there are engaged in the daytime. I'd better be frank
with you; it's an extremely unfashionable place towards the East End, and
I quite understand you may not like me to take it. At the same time I
shall never meet anybody who knows me. In fact, it's a dancing and
singing place."
"Oh!" said Mrs. Lee Carter, blankly. "I didn't know you could teach
dancing, too."
"You never asked me.... Of course, if you prefer it, I could come here as
a day governess and leave after tea.... You see it's a longish journey
home: I'm bound to be late...."
"What's the difference? Come and go as you please.... Of course, you
won't mind using the back door when there's a party ... the
servants...."
For the deception Eileen at first salved her conscience Irish-wise by
sending every farthing to her mother under the deceiving pretext of rich
private pupils. She would not even deduct for cabs. Sometimes she could
not get an omnibus, but she almost preferred to walk till she was
footsore, for both riding and walking were forms of penance. The stuffy
omnibus interior after the smoky Hall was nauseating, and in those days
no lady thought of climbing the steep ladder to the slanting roof. But it
sometimes happened that a crawling cabman coming westward would invite
her to a free ride, and Eileen would accept gratefully, and, moreover,
gain from conversations with her drivers new material for her songs.
This period of her life was almost as amusing as she had anticipated; her
only depressions came from the children of the footlights, and the
necessity of adjusting herself superficially to her environment, under
pain of unpopularity. Her isolation and the privacy of her home-life
already made sufficiently for that. And to be disliked even by those she
disliked Eileen disliked. Her nature needed to wallow in warm admiration.
She got plenty.
When, fifteen months later, she agreed to pay Fossy a hundred pounds
for modifying her contract so as to enable her to appear at other Halls,
she said with a smile, "You deserve it. You are the only man at the
Half-and-Half who hasn't made love to me."
Fossy grinned. "If I had known that, I should have demanded a larger
compensation."
Even the bass chorister had not been able to resist proposing, though his
grief at being refused was short-lived, for he died soon after by a fall
from one of those giant wheels that were the saurians of the modern
cycle. Eileen shed many a tear over Jolly Jack Jenkins.
With the growth of her popularity before and behind the footlights came
heavier calls upon her geniality, and, like a hostess who tries to pay
off her debts in one social lump sum, Eileen got "a Sunday out," and
Nelly gave a lunch at a riverside hotel to a motley company of popular
favourites. It was expensive; for the profession, even in those days,
expected champagne. It was appallingly protracted; for the party, having
no work to do that evening, showed no disposition to break up, and
brandies-and-sodas succeeded one another in an aroma of masculine cigars
and feminine cigarettes. It was noisy and hilarious, and gradually it
became rowdy. The Singing Sisters sang, but not in duet. The Lion
Comique, whose loyal melodies were on every barrel-organ, argued
Republicanism and flourished that day's copy of Reynolds's Newspaper, The
Beauteous Bessie Bilhook--"the Queen of Serio-Comics" was scandalously
autobiographic, and the old plantation songster--looking unreal with his
washed face--was with difficulty dissuaded from displaying his ability to
dance on the table without smashing anything. The climax was reserved for
the demure one-legged gymnast, who suddenly produced a pistol and
discharged it in the air. When the panic subsided, he explained to the
landlord and the company that he was "paying his shot."
"That's a hint for me to discharge the bill," said Nelly, adroitly, and,
thanking everybody effusively for the happiness afforded her, she hurried
home to Oxbridge Terrace, to wash it all away in nursery tea. The young
Lee Carters made a restful spectacle with their shining innocent faces,
and she almost wished they would never grow up.
As her success grew, offers from the pantomimes and even the legitimate
stage began to reach her. But now she would not make the step. At the
Halls she was her own mistress, able to arrange at her own convenience
with orchestras. Even Rosalind would have meant long rehearsals and a
complex interference with her governess-life.
At the theatres, too, to judge by all she heard, a sordid side of the
profession was accentuated. The players played for their own hands, and
even the greatest did not disdain to "queer" the effects of their
subordinates, whenever such effects did not heighten their own. Hamlet
had been known to be jealous of the ghost, and the success of his
sepulchral bass. It was in fact a world of jostling jealousies, as hidden
from the public as the prompter. In the Halls she was her own company and
her own playwright and her own composer. She had her elbows free.
And even here Bessie Bilhook, whose vanity was a byword in Lower Bohemia,
and who had arrogantly assumed the sovereignty of the Serio-Comics,
refused to appear on the same programmes unless her name was printed
twice as large as Nelly O'Neill's, and was further displayed on a board
outside, alone in its nine-inch glory. Again, actresses were recognised
by the newspapers; the Halls had as yet no status. Their performers were
not so photographed; indeed, Eileen refused to sit. She desired this
obscurer form of celebrity. If her fame should ever reach Mrs. Lee
Carter, the game would be nearly up. Her poor mother might even suffer
the shock of it; perhaps the professional future of her brothers would be
injured. Her sedate life had grown as dear as her noisy life, she loved
the transition to the innocent home circle.
Yet in this very domesticity lay a danger. It provoked her to an
ever broader humour on the stage. She let herself go, like a swimmer
emboldened by a boat behind. Eileen O'Keeffe she felt would rescue Nelly
O'Neill if licence carried her too near the falls. It was so irresistibly
seductive, this swift response of the audience to the wink of suggestion.
Like a vast lyre, the Hall vibrated to the faintest breath of
roguishness. Almost in contemptuous mockery one was tempted to
experiment....
One day, in a sudden horror of herself, she pleaded illness and hurried
back to her mother for a holiday.