"I must say I was very happy on the stage," sighed the Countess of
Darlington, lifting the teapot.
The Earl of Armoury's mother threw up her eyes. A shapeless, waddling
woman, the duchess, with a sanctimonious voice. There were elderly
gentlemen who, remembering Flossie's agility with a tambourine at the
old Pavilion, felt reformation to be a sad affair when they looked at
her.
"Not 'happy,'" she said piously, "dazzled--only dazzled, dear Lady
Darlington. Ladies like you and I can't be happy on the stage. It
goes against the grain with you and I."
Lady Darlington pouted. She was provokingly pretty when she pouted.
She had pouted at Darlington on the day he met her.
"But I _was_ happy," she declared.
"You weren't satisfied in your heart; I'm sure you always felt there
was better work to be done?"
"Oh yes, but I hoped to get leading parts in time."
"I mean purer work," explained the duchess, wincing, "social, helpful
work."
Lady Darlington laughed. She was prettier still when she laughed. She
had laughed at Darlington on the day he proposed.
"No, really not," she said frankly, "I never thought about it for a
moment. Do you know, Duchess, I've always wanted to ask you--didn't
you ache to go back to it after you married?"
"Oh never," exclaimed the duchess; "I was grateful to Providence for
letting me get away from it all. Circumstances made me go into the
business, but I was never a pro--I mean to say a 'professional'--by
nature. My father, the captain, died when I was quite a child, and I
had my dear mother to support."
"M'yes," murmured Lady Darlington, looking at the ceiling. "You were
before my time, but of course I've heard.... Perhaps if I had been in
the music-halls _I_ should have been glad to get away from it all," she
added; "I was in the theatres, you know."
"The 'smalls,' I think--I mean to say the 'minor provincial towns?'"
said the duchess a shade tartly; "one of Jenkinson's Number II.
companies, wasn't it?"
"Lots of people considered it was better than the Number I.," returned
Lady Darlington with pride, "and the _Rotherham Advertiser_ said a
voice of such diapason as mine wasn't often heard in musical comedy."
"Such what as yours?"
"Diapason. Won't you have some muffin?"
"They always serve me out so," said the duchess, "but I _will_ have
just a mossel." She regarded her hostess anxiously; "I hope you aren't
going to be mad?" she said.
"I am mad," admitted Rosalind--her name was Rosalind--"mad with the
longing for auld lang syne. If I weren't crazy I shouldn't own it,
because you can't enter into my feelings a bit, but you're the only
woman I meet who ought to be able to understand them. Long? Sometimes
for a treat I tell the servants I'm not at home to anyone, and I shut
myself up and long the tears into my eyes!"
"You cry for the stage? Oh, but, my dear Lady Darlington, you mustn't
give way, you must be firm with yourself. Think, just think, what an
example you'd be setting if you took to it again! In our position we
have the Country to consider. The middle classes say 'What's good
enough for the Aristocracy must be good enough for us.' We have to
consider our influence on those in a humbler sphere."
"I'm not going to take to it again," said Rosalind. "How can I?
Besides, I don't want so much to act--I've no ambition except to be
jolly--it's the life I ache for. I'm dull, dull, dull! I want to be
among the people I remember. My heart turns back to Dixie. I wouldn't
say 'thank you' to be with actors and actresses in London, in the
West-End; they're only imitations of the Lords and Ladies that bore me.
I want to be on the road with a Number II. crowd--yes, and a Number
III. crowd for preference. I want to arrive in a hole-and-corner town
on a Sunday night, and have supper in lodgings, and see stout in a jug
again, and call the landlady 'Ma.' Oh, how soul-stirring it would be
to call a landlady 'Ma!'"
"Lodgings? Look at your drawing-room, with Louis Cans furniture!" said
the duchess admonishingly. "You can't be serious?"
"Serious? I'm pathetic! Of course I should find I had been spoilt for
it--the pleasure wouldn't last; the stout would taste sour soon, and I
should find the landlady impudent, and the lodgings dirty; I daresay I
should wish myself back in St. James' Square before I had been away a
month. But I don't want to give up St. James' Square--I only want a
week-end sometimes as a tonic. That's all I want, just week-ends. If
I could be Rosalind Heath again from Saturday to Monday sometimes, I'd
be Lady Darlington all the rest of the year cheerfully enough."
This was the moment when her Idea was born. As the idea had
consequences, it is noteworthy that this was the moment. If she could
be Rosalind Heath again from Saturday to Monday! She had never debated
the possibility; but why not--why not even for a week? She couldn't
call herself "Rosalind Heath" again, because everybody in Theatre Land
knew that Rosalind Heath had married the Earl of Darlington, but who
among a lowly band of players would know her face? She had not been a
star. All she needed for the freak was a confidante. What had become
of Tattie Lascelles?
Lady Darlington blushed with self-reproach. That she should have to
question what had become of Tattie! She sat, after the duchess had
departed, remembering days when she and Tattie had been bosom friends.
They had shared hopes and lodgings; they had told each other their
peccadilloes, and even their salaries. And now she didn't know where
Tattie was? Could St. James' Square have made her heartless? How had
their correspondence died? ... Ah yes, in Tattie's last letter ages ago
she had asked for the sum of five pounds "just for a fortnight." But
how monstrous of Tattie to feel constrained because she hadn't sent it
back! Who had expected it?
On the seventeenth day of December, when Darlington, looking a
ridiculous object, had boomed away in a new car, of which he was
inordinately proud, Rosalind stole guiltily into a news-agent's. She
would not meet her lord again for a month. Her beautiful eyes
sparkled, and her cheeks were flushed. She tendered two pennies to a
vulgar man, smoking a clay pipe behind the counter, and asked for the
_Stage_. To the happily constituted there can seem nothing calculated
to kindle the emotions in the act of buying a twopenny paper in a
squalid shop, but Rosalind had a temperament, and temperaments play
queer tricks. (See Conrad's.) The tender grace of a day that was dead
hallowed the damp copy of a journal in which she had formerly
advertised that she was "Resting;" the touch of vanished hands sent
little thrills to her heart as her gaze embraced familiar names.
She went back to the drawing-room fire, and read them diligently. Dusk
and a footman crept in before she discovered Miss Tattie Lascelles, but
that artist's announcement leapt to her with the electric light. Miss
Tattie Lascelles informed the kingdom that she was specially engaged to
create the part of "Delicia Potts" in the maritime musical farce
entitled _Little Miss Kiss-And-Tell_, on Blithepoint Pier. The date
chosen for this perfectly unimportant production was Monday, December
22nd. Then Rosalind, who was to go to the Marrables in Leicestershire
for Christmas, wrote Lady Marrable a note of grieved excuse, and
scribbled a letter to Tattie, which began, "Take two bedrooms in
Blithepoint, and don't breathe a word to a soul till you see me."
And though the happily constituted may be sceptical again, she felt
more joyous than she had done for five illustrious years.
Blithepoint is about thirty-three miles by rail from Sweetbay. It is a
grey, bleak place, with the plainest female population in England. On
three hundred days of the year the wind is due east, but on the other
sixty-five it is southeast, and then the residents go about saying what
"lovely weather they're having." Blithepoint is much larger than
Sweetbay, and more fashionable. It is also nearly as dull. Nobody is
aware how much can be spent on being deadly dull until he has stayed in
a Blithepoint hotel. Rosalind was a shade uneasy in the thought that
someone among the visitors might recognise her; she knew that at
Christmas eccentric Londoners occasionally went down there, and wished
afterwards they had been economical and gone to Egypt. But she didn't
falter.
She ran away on Sunday the 21st. She had put on her simplest costume,
and her portmanteau told no tales. To make-believe to the fullest
extent, she travelled in a third-class compartment. Already she was
greatly excited. As the train crawled out of Victoria she could have
clapped her hands.
When she arrived it was eight o'clock, and a bitter evening. The
scramble for luggage kept her shivering on the platform for ten
minutes, and then a fly bumped her through the shuttered town. It was
the hour of local dissipation; on one side of the favourite
thoroughfare the blades of Blithepoint paraded jauntily, crying "Pip,
pip" to stolid-faced young women on the other, who took no notice of
them. Lady Darlington, reckless for sensations, envied these
"roysterers" who could feel devilish gay so innocently.
The cab shaved a corner, and rattled into a neighbourhood of obscure
apartment-houses. Her mutinous heart warmed with sentiment, and she
forgot how cold her pretty feet were. The cab stopped. She saw the
blind of the ground-floor window dragged aside; an impetuous figure
appeared, and vanished. The street-door was pulled wide, and a girl
with a cloud of hair, and a string of barbaric beads dangling to the
waist, flew down the steps and hugged her.
"You trump! You've really come!"
"You duck! How jolly to see you!"
"'Ere, two bob, missie," said the flyman, "when you've done canoodling."
They ran into the parlour, and laughed at each other in the gaslight.
"Take your things off," said Tattie: "let me help you. I hope you'll
like the diggings. I wrote to the swellest address I could hear of,
when I got your letter."
"But you shouldn't have. What for?"
"Well, for you."
"I wanted everything just as it used to be. That was it."
"How funny! But I don't suppose these will strike you as very swagger
after what you've got at home."
"They don't."
"Won't they be good enough?"
"They're heavenly. Oh, Tattie, how good it is to be back! Did anybody
bring in my trunk? 'In the Shade of the Palm,' and a Vocal Folio on
the piano! And professional photographs on the shelf! Oh, let me see
the photographs! 'To Mrs. Cheney from Miss Bijou Chamberlain--wishing
you a Merry Christmas.' Who is she?"
"She was here last week--a Variety artist. She seems to have been
comfortable, as she gave the landlady her photograph. Are you ready
for supper?"
"Stout?"
"Of course."
"In a jug?"
"Well, I thought after what you had come from I had better order
Guinness."
For a moment Rosalind looked downcast. "Ah well, never mind," she
said; "we'll have it in a jug to-morrow."
They drew their chairs to the ham-and-beef, and the landlady brought in
the Guinness.
"Good evening, Ma," said Rosalind, with youth in her bosom.
"Good evening, my dear," said Mrs. Cheney. "You'll be glad of your
supper, I daresay, after your journey?" She put comestibles on the
table in three paper bags. "I was meaning to tell you, Miss Lascelles,
that if you'd like a bit of something hot in the evening when you come
back from the show, you can have it. I'm not one to fuss about hotting
something up. Sundays we let the fire out, but in the week you can
have it and welcome."
"Good business!" said Miss Lascelles. "In some places you 'get it hot'
if you ask for it."
"By rights some places shouldn't take professionals," returned Mrs.
Cheney. "I've 'eard many tales. Miss Chamberlain--her on the
mantelpiece--was telling me that where she was in Brighton they
wouldn't allow her to have her uncle in to see her. Such a quiet,
ladylike gal, too!"
"Can such things be?" cried Rosalind. "Is a poor girl to be cut off
from her own flesh and blood because she's in diggings?"
"Ah, I don't wonder at your asking!" said Mrs. Cheney. "Not, mind
you," she added, "but what letting lodgings over a number of years
makes one a bit suspicious of uncles. I've known a gentleman brought
to these very rooms after the show on three different Monday evenings
as the uncle of three different young ladies. And dreadful taken aback
he was when he see me each time!"
"I'm afraid those were flighty girls," said Rosalind severely.
"Untruthful they was," said Mrs. Cheney, "and so I told 'em. I say
nothing about visitors, I'm not that evil-minded. So long as the lady
pays a bit extra for the gas, and the gentleman don't slam the door
when he goes, I like to think well of everyone. But I 'ate lies."
She drew the cork, and retired; and Rosalind said, "Well, what about
the show, Tat? What sort of part have you got?"
"The part's rather good," said Miss Lascelles.
"Hurrah! What screw?"
"Rotten--thirty-five shillings. I had to take what I could get; I've
been 'out' a long time. They're paying awful salaries in this crowd;
the chorus only get about fifteen bob, I believe--they're half of them
novices."
"I say! Whose crowd is it?"
"It's a Syndicate; nobody ever heard of it before. And the Tenor has
such a cold he could hardly speak at the dress-rehearsal last
night--goodness knows how he's going to sing to-morrow."
"Who is your principal woman?"
"She has backed out; they've put somebody else into the part at the
last minute. And the scenery has still to come down--it's a bit of a
muddle all round. I wish I could have got into a better thing, but I
was so hard up--you ought to have seen where I was lodging! I tried to
get 'shopped' last month as an Extra. That speaks!"
"An Extra? No? Tat! why didn't you write to me?" exclaimed Rosalind
reproachfully.
"Oh, I don't know. I heard the 'great' Miss Hayward wanted thirty
Extra-ladies to go on in the ball scene. It was twenty-five bob a
week--she wanted picked women--it would just have done me. Lil Rayburn
lent me her little squirrel coat and a black velvet hat. I tell you I
looked a treat when I went down! There were three hundred and forty
girls waiting; we were sent across the stage thirty at the time. The
great Hayward sat in the stalls, with her pince-nez up. 'You!' she
said, pointing; 'the one in the squirrel coat!' So I went to her. 'I
think you'll do,' she drawled; 'you know what the money is?'
'Twenty-five, Miss Hayward,' I said, 'isn't it?' 'No, a guinea,' she
said, 'it doesn't matter to _you_.' 'Thank you,' I said, 'I've got to
keep myself out of _my_ salary--_I_ haven't got a man, and a flat!'
Potter, the agent, was in an awful stew--'Oh, you shouldn't have spoken
to Miss Hayward like that!' 'To _hell_!' I said."
"Cat!" cried Rosalind. "Because you were well-dressed?"
"Yes; and if I had gone shabby, she wouldn't have noticed me at all....
You know I've been in the Variety business since you saw me?"
"The music-halls! You haven't?"
"Straight! I was one of the Four Sisters Tarantelle. Jolly good
money--I got five pounds a week when we worked two shows a night; I
never got less than three ten. I can't get it on the stage."
"Why did you give them up? But the tips are very heavy, aren't they?"
"They weren't heavy for _me_, I didn't tip anybody except the dresser.
Chloe made the engagements, so Chloe could pay the tips. Trust this
child! What does make you sick in that business is the comedians, with
the red noses and the umbrellas--they're always after you. There was a
little brute in one show--his wife was in the bill, too; she did
sentimental ballads. Well! how he could let her travel _I_ don't know.
It _was_ her last week, but she wasn't fit to be working so long, we
almost expected any night---- And there he was after me all the time!
'I shall write to you, Tattie--I see you go to Balham, and Walham Green
next week!' 'Who gave you leave to call me "Tattie?"' I said; 'you low
cur, I wish I was a man, to give you a good hiding!' I did pity his
wife. She never spoke to me--she used to pass me in the wings with her
head turned away; I suppose she thought I was as bad as _he_ was. I
said to her one evening when she was ill, 'Can I get you anything,
Miss----' I forget what her name was. 'No, I thank you, Miss
Tarantelle,' she said--like that; wouldn't look at me! I _was_ so
sorry for her. Poor little woman, what a life!"
Rosalind shuddered. After a pause, she said:--
"You're well out of it, dear."
"Except for the money. I expect I'll go back to it as soon as I can.
I had a contract for a year--they wanted the option of renewing for
another year."
"_They_ were to have the option?"
"Yes--all on their side; I didn't think it was good enough to sign
that. So I said I'd like to, but I was going to be married at the end
of the summer."
"You weren't really?"
"Not much! No marriage for me--not in the Profession anyhow!--but lots
of them think a contract doesn't bind you any more if you marry. Lil
Rayburn put me up to that dodge. She lent me her song when the
Tarantelles wanted me--it was a great concession: her big success!
Whenever she doesn't want to sign an option and is afraid to refuse
point-blank, she looks bashful and says she's going to be married at
the end of the summer. She has been going to be married 'at the end of
the summer' for the last nine years!" They turned to the fire, and lit
cigarettes--Rosalind's; she had remembered to put a hundred in her
trunk.
"'What is the use of loving a girl
If the girl don't love _you_?'"
hummed Tattie. The song was just published. "They _are_ fine
cigarettes!
'What is the use of loving a girl
When you know she don't want yer _to_?'
Of course, you have the best of everything now. It does seem curious."
"My having the best of everything?"
"No, your wanting the worst.
'What if she's fair beyond all compare,
And what if her eyes are blue----'
Fancy living in your style, and coming to rooms like these for fun!"
"Oh, Tattie," said Rosalind, "that's just what I did come for! I
haven't any fun at home."
"But I thought in Society they had no end of a good time?"
"So they do, in a way, but it's the wrong way for me--I never rehearsed
for it, I'm not easy in the part; I wasn't meant for high-class comedy.
And I miss you--I've no pal now."
"_I_'ve missed _you_, I can tell you! Oh, the tour after you left,
wasn't that damn dull! The girl I lived with was so 'off'--common.
Well, you can tell _I'm_ a perfect lady--I just said 'damn'--but I
usedn't to, did I? Remember? Good-hearted girl, but she was so horrid
at table. And under that silk blouse--all anyhow! Not that I like to
see a girl with too smart underlinen, I always think it looks fishy;
but hers was--well, if she had been run over one day when we were out,
I'd have been ashamed to own her!"
"Let's go and look up some of the Company, shall we?" said Rosalind.
"What name had I better have?"
"What's the matter with 'Heath?' There are plenty of 'Miss Heaths'
about."
"Yes, but you're sure to let the 'Rosalind' slip, and that will give me
away. Introduce me as 'Miss Daintree.' Do you know where any of the
women are staying?"
"We'll find them on the pier. We always make for the pier on Sunday
evenings when there's a concert; it's something to do. I suppose I'm
to say you're in the Profession?"
"I'm an actress out of an engagement," assented Rosalind, throwing her
cigarette in the fender. "Make haste, or we shall be too late!"
The boards of _Little Miss Kiss-and-Tell_ were big outside the pier.
At the turnstile Miss Lascelles nodded towards them, saying, "In the
Company." The man answered, "All right, Miss; come in through the
gate, then." At the pay-box of the theatre she showed her card,
saying, "Can you oblige me with a couple of seats?" The business
manager answered, "With pleasure, my dear."
The gas-stoves glowed redly, and the theatre was much better warmed
than the majority of theatres in London. They sat down in the third
row of the stalls, and listened to a dispirited soprano who was
supposed to be singing "The Holy City." She was not really singing
"The Holy City;" from beginning to end she articulated not a word save
"Jerusalem." She simply kept her mouth ajar and wailed the air; but
she was successful.
There were only about twenty people in the crimson velvet seats, and
most of these were _Kiss-and-Tell_ people. The others were very young
men, in caps, who bore the sacred music on Sunday evening for the sake
of an advance view of the girls who were to perform on Monday. The
very young men watched the arrivals with much interest, and if the
ladies in the stalls were unattractive, it was said in a Blithepoint
club on Sunday night that the piece on the pier to-morrow was no good.
When the dispirited soprano had finished, the actresses applauded her
warmly, in the hope of cheering her up; and the sixpenny balcony
rattled its umbrellas, in the hope of getting a song more than it had
paid for. Then one of the actresses murmured to Miss Lascelles, "How
badly she holds herself, doesn't she?" and Miss Lascelles presented
"Miss Daintree."
Rosalind soon discovered that nobody was sanguine of _Little Miss
Kiss-and-Tell_ being well received, and--having forgotten something of
the world she was revisiting--it surprised her to note the
light-heartedness of the professionals, who tottered on the brink of
disaster. They were all pitiably poor, they were likely to fall out of
employment at the worst time of year; but they said gaily, "Oh well,
let's hope for the best! It may be all right at night. It's no use
looking on the black side of things." And most of them were totally
dependent on their salaries, though that was not the belief of the very
young men who endured "The Holy City."
Only Miss Jinman, a large, elderly lady who spoke in a bass voice, was
pessimistic. Years ago she had sung in parts of dignity, and hectored
first-rate touring companies; to-day she was engaged for an amorous old
woman in Turkish trousers, whom the low comedian was to pelt with
insults as often as she came on the stage.
"I don't think the piece will last a month," she said to Rosalind, in
her lugubrious bass. "It isn't amusing at all. Vulgar, very vulgar!
I may be too critical; I'm used to such high-class things, as you
know--my notices as 'Buttercup' were immense--but I call it a 'rotter.'
I see a frost, a killing frost, my dear! I keep my opinion to
myself"--she was disseminating it with gusto--"I don't want to give the
others the hump, but I see us all out of a shop till the spring comes."
"Oh, you're always croaking, Miss Jinman," snapped a black-eyed girl
with golden hair. "Give us a chance, do!"
"A chance?" returned Miss Jinman heavily. "Chit, you have no chance.
It's only kindness to tell you so."
"Thanks for being so kind!" said the girl. She had not been long on
the stage. Her married sister kept "Dining Rooms" in Holloway, and
less than a year ago the "artiste" had served as waitress there and
been ordered to "'Urry up with that there Yorkshire-pudden."
"You will never do any better than you're doing," affirmed Miss Jinman.
"And I could say as much to others present if I hadn't too much
consideration for their feelings. To more than one!" she added
significantly. "Look at _me_, with all my experience! And _I_ am
clever, and _I_ can sing; my notices as 'Buttercup' were immense. And
where am I now? On a pier with amateurs--amateurs and novices. I
don't know what the Profession is coming to--it's a very different
thing to what it was when _I_ was in my prime!"
"I expect most things have woke up a bit since then," said the
golden-haired brunette; "the bringing in of railways must have made
such a difference."
"Small-part people were taught to respect the principals," said Miss
Jinman sternly. "Minxes kept their places."
"It's a pity you couldn't keep yours," said the dark one with the
golden locks. But harmony was restored during the next selection by
the band.
There was a little sleet blowing when the audience straggled homeward.
The lights of the Belle Vue Hotel were not put out yet, and carelessly,
Miss Jinman observed that the people inside must be warmer than _she_
was. Rosalind took the hint. It is only in the lowest ranks of the
theatrical profession that the ladies refresh themselves in bars; a
second-rate provincial actress would wither the person who invited her;
but Miss Jinman and Miss Lascelles had adapted their manners to their
company, and it was a very humble Company indeed. So they went into
the Lounge, and sat down.
Another professional lady came in, and inquired generously, "Are you
drinking, girls?"
Miss Lascelles said, "Yes, we've got port wine."
"Serve you right," said the other lady, with a pretty wit.
Though she was on the high road to Prague, Lady Darlington was relieved
to see that the clock pointed to five minutes to ten. When the Lounge
closed, the party shook hands with her heartily, and hoped they would
meet her again in the morning. Distressingly ill-bred of them to drink
port in a smoky bar--not at all the sort of thing I can ask you to
condone. But some of the sirens who had lolled in velvet fauteuils
were financing on coppers until the first week's treasury was paid, and
tea and bread-and-butter was all they had had to support their internal
economies during the day. How amused the very young men in the stalls
would be at my simplicity in believing it!