Eight o'clock had just struck when Conrad arrived at the slum where he
was to spend the evening. The exterior of the hall had no sanguine
air. Four opaque gas globes glimmered over a narrow entrance, and, in
the obscurity, a written appeal affixed by wafers was barely legible.
He made it out to be:
"Help the Poor _Kiss-and-Tell Girls_.
Stranded in the Town through No Fault of their Own.
Show your Sympathy by Patronising us."
Behind a portière a disreputable-looking man, wearing a queer overcoat,
sat at a small table with tickets. He asked, "Sixpence, or a
shilling?" and Conrad said, "A shilling," and the man said, "Front row."
There was a piano on a shallow platform. In lieu of footlights, some
pots of ferns had been disposed at wide intervals. There was no
curtain, but a screen, behind which giggles were audible, turned a
corner of the hall into the most limited of artists' rooms. Those
artists who were not making their toilettes, sat quietly among the
audience. Perhaps two hundred chairs were ranged across the hall, and
about fifty of them were occupied. One of them was occupied by
Rosalind.
"Good evening," she said.
"Good evening," said Conrad. "May I sit down?"
"These are the shilling ones," said she. "Oh, of course, if you
_have_! I'm afraid we're leading you into awful extravagance? ... It
isn't very full?"
"No, I'm sorry. I wish I could have sent some people. Have you got
another concert to-morrow?"
"They're talking about it--they've got the hall very cheap."
"I might take some tickets, and see what I can do with them. I suppose
that would be a good plan, wouldn't it?"
"Perhaps," said Rosalind, doubtfully.
"Why 'perhaps?' I thought it was to help you all?"
"Yes," she answered. "Oh, it's meant to."
"There's a reservation in your manner," he said, "that-- What's the
use of our being such old friends if you don't confide in me?"
"Ah, I didn't think of that," she laughed. "Well, did you see the man
with a coat?"
"I saw him with aversion."
"I thought it would please you! That's the manager, Mr. Quisby."
"Your manager, do you mean?"
"I'm telling you--the manager of the Company that came to grief. The
girls are supposed to have got this up for themselves; but you may have
noticed that you paid your shilling to Mr. Quisby."
"A--ah!" said Conrad. "There seems a weak spot in the business
arrangements. Well, what do you propose?"
A youth in a very shabby tweed suit came on to the platform. He sat
down at the piano, and rattled the introduction to the well-known music
hall song entitled _My Little Baby Boy_. On bounced the golden-haired
brunette. She wore a skirt to the knees, and had made up her face as
if for the glare of a theatre. Her appearance lowered the concert to
the level of a penny gaff. Several women of the shop-keeping class,
hitherto sympathetic, murmured "Oh!" and tightened their mouths.
"Isn't the costume a mistake?" whispered Conrad.
"Do you think so? How would you have dressed her?"
"Well," said Conrad, "a long frock."
"Mm. What sort of frock?"
"Well, I should have made her look quiet, and very--er----"
"Respectable. I know! ... Go on."
"I should have said, 'Be pale, and pathetic!'
"That's right, I wanted them to; but they've all got themselves up
wrong, except my friend Miss Lascelles. Sh!"
The vocalist's blackened eyelids drooped to the paper that she held;--
"'Some folks want power and riches, and really will not
be denied,
And when they've accomplished their object, they are
very far from satisfied;
A fig for your wealth and your power, for riches I care
not a jot;
Contented am I--yes! and happy--I'm quite satisfied
with my lot.'"
"Inappropriate," said Rosalind under her breath, "isn't it?"
The vocalist looked up again, for now she knew the words;--
"'I'm not tired of England, I've no wish to roam,
There's a little six-roomed house that's my home, sweet home;
My house is my castle--who is my pride and joy?
Why! his Royal Highness the King of the Castle, my little baby boy.'"
When she had shrilled the chorus times without number she withdrew, and
Conrad said,
"Can't we go and sit further back where we can talk? Look at all those
chairs over there."
"If you like. What do you think of her?"
"She can't sing."
"Oh, that's a detail. But she doesn't _work_ the song."
"How do you mean?"
"Didn't you feel what she ought to do? Well, of course you wouldn't!
'His Royal Highness the King' line ought to bring the house down.
Wouldn't _I_ make it 'go!'"
"Show me," he begged. "There's nobody looking."
So in the corner that they had found, she hummed the bars, and showed
him.
"Oh, aren't you clever!" he exclaimed. "What a pretty voice you have!
Perhaps you're--er--fond of babies?"
"If you mean 'have I got any children?' no, I haven't. That was an
actress, not a mother. I've no ring on--did you think I was married?"
"Well, you looked so very devoted, I wondered for a moment."
"Are _you_?"
"Suddenly," said Conrad, gazing at her.
"'Suddenly'--what?"
"Devoted."
"I meant 'married,'" she explained.
"I?" he said. "Good heavens!"
"Don't be so astonished!--such a thing has happened to men."
"Yes, but I'm not a marrying man."
"I think most men say they aren't marrying men till they say, 'Will you
marry me?' It's a pity they change their mind so often."
"I have pitied them myself."
"Them?" she said. "The girls, you mean! A man begins to be in love
much sooner than a woman, but he finishes much sooner too."
"Well, that's why marriage was invented," said Conrad. "The man brings
the fervour, and the woman brings the faithfulness. You can't combine
better qualities."
"Yes, and what about his fervour afterwards? He wants to go and be in
love all over again. Haven't I seen? In this profession, travelling
about, a girl often meets a good fellow; I don't say he's often
rich--the ones who mean well are generally hard up. Perhaps he's a
clerk, or something, in the town. He's taken with her from the
'front,' and gets to know her. Then he waits for her at the stage door
every evening, and sees her home, and makes her talk 'shop'--he always
makes her talk 'shop,' that's the fascination to him. After she goes
away, he writes to her, and by-and-by perhaps they marry. They do
sometimes. Of course she's to leave the stage; he generally asks for
that--the kind of man I'm talking about. Well, what's the result?"
"She's sorry she gave it up."
"No, she isn't. There are exceptions--don't I know it! but in most
cases she's only too thankful to give it up. There's no glamour about
it for the girl--_she_ has lived all that out; the 'little six-roomed
house and home sweet home' is the only ambition she has left. It's the
man who finds the marriage dull. He was in love with being in love
with an actress. He liked waiting for that smile over the
footlights--about the middle of the first verse of her solo; it
flattered him to know he was the one man in all the audience who was
going to talk to her directly. When they're married she's just an
ordinary girl--like Miss Smith, and Miss Brown, and the other girls he
knew. The fairy has lost her wings. She's a very good little wife
perhaps, but just a drab little mortal. He says, 'How romantic it used
to be when she was a fairy!'--and goes fairy-catching outside another
stage-door."
"Poor little mortal!"
"Men want romances. When you find them out, the most unlikely men are
romantic; but when you find them out, nine hundred and ninety women in
a thousand are domesticated."
"Are _you_?"
"There are the other ten," laughed Rosalind.... "And I'm not talking
of society women--of course I don't know anything about them; I'm
talking of every-day women, and us. Look at my friend! I suppose
you'd take her for a bohemian through and through? She has had to earn
her living in the Profession since she was sixteen, and she's slangy,
and she'd shock your sort of woman out of her wits. Marriage is the
last thing she thinks of now. But let a man she liked come along!
She'd marry him on two pounds a week, and go through fire and water for
him, and thank heaven for the joy of hanging up the washing in her own
back yard."
Miss Lascelles, with a hint of coon steps, was singing--
"'What is the use of loving a girl
When you know she don't want yer _to_?'"
"I shouldn't have thought it," said Conrad. "She doesn't suggest
domesticity in back yards."
"Does she suggest a boarding-school for young ladies?"
His eyebrows asked a question.
"There was a time when Tattie was among little girls who walked two and
two in Kensington."
"Really? Do you know that hurts, rather? I'm sorry."
"_I_'m sorry," sighed Rosalind. "But her heart's sweet," she added;
"it's only the bloom that has gone." She smiled. "Clap your hands!
She's my pal--you've got to applaud her."
"She's very good," he said, applauding. "I thought she was going to do
a flower song? But I like that one. Isn't it pretty? I like the way
it goes."
"Yes, rag-time--all against the beat. _Don't_ hum it out of tune!" she
said plaintively. "She's going to do the flower song next.
By-the-bye, I may have to introduce you to some of the girls. What
shall I call you?"
"My _name_," Conrad answered deferentially, "is 'Warrener.'"
She bent her head;
"Thank you," said Lady Darlington.
When the concert was over he walked with her as far as Mrs. Cheney's.
Tattie of course was with them. At the foot of the steps Tattie shook
hands with him and went indoors, and he remained a minute saying 'good
night' to Rosalind. The other girl might well have heard all they
said, but the minute had charm to him because the other girl had left
them. It implied something. And underneath, to both these
shuttlecocks of temperament, there was another charm, not defined
yet--to be savoured in the first moments of solitude--the charm of
recapturing a mood of years ago. At a doorstep, late: "You look
tired?" "Oh, it's nothing." A pause. "I shall see you to-morrow?"
"Yes, come in to tea." A whiff of the fragrance of his youth, a touch
of the sentimentality of her girlhood, idealised Corporation Road as
they parted in the fog.
"I wish it were to-morrow! ... Good night."
"Do you? ... Good night."
The old tune was not classical, but it was pretty.