BETTY CONSENTS
Dr. Laffin, in the brighter light of the dressing-room, was revealed
as being a little above middle height, but he was so very thin that he
appeared taller. He was dressed in a funereal black; all the bitter
years Betty had known him he had worn nothing else. A black,
unrelieved except by the thin edge of white collar that showed above
his high cravat, and the occasional appearance of a rim of white cuff
at his wrists.
“Good-evening, child. Why are you not playing?” he asked.
“Because Van Campe has discharged me,” she said recklessly.
To her surprise his face did not change.
“Discharged you? Well, well!” And then, remembering the opportunity
which this piece of news gave to him: “I took a great deal of trouble
to find this position for you. Still… it may be for the best. You will
return home now?”
“No, I shall find other work.”
Sitting down at her dressing-table, he subjected her to a long
scrutiny.
“I shall not be able to make you an allowance this time,” he said.
Betty did not expect that he would.
“I have a little money--” she began.
“Happily, I can save you trouble. I seem to have spent my life--saving
you trouble. It would be wiser if you came home. The house in Camden
Town has not been quite the same since you left. And the other matter
is definitely settled.”
He took from his pocket a printed leaflet, and laid it on the table
before her. She braced herself for the coming struggle. Vulture! He
was all that. Disaster brought him unerringly to the spot; it was as
though her dismissal had been arranged by him for that night.
She read the pamphlet and looked up.
“This is an advertisement of a desk,” she said innocently.
“Mortimer’s Multiple Desk,” he murmured. “There is no desk on the
market like it. But to the outward eye, and at first glance, it
appears to be no different from other desks. Suppose, however, a
beautiful young lady is seen in a shop window sitting at that desk.
Picture the hurrying crowd to whom shop windows are such----”
“You mean that you still have that absurd scheme--that you want me to
sit in a store window… to exhibit myself?”
“It may sound a revolting suggestion to one who is a great actress.”
He mouthed the words with a certain satisfaction. “It may seem almost
a desecration of her art to lower herself to the level of an
exhibition. And yet, what are you but an exhibitor, Elizabeth?”
“Of course, I’ll do nothing of the kind,” she said. Her face was
flushed, her eyes unusually bright. “I told you on Monday night--I
will not do this.”
“The pay is amazingly attractive.” Dr. Laffin was apparently
oblivious to her rising anger. “It is no less than fifteen pounds a
week. Your duties begin at eleven o’clock in the forenoon, and end at
four o’clock in the afternoon.”
“I’ll not do it!”
“I fear you have no choice. I wish it. I, who took you from the
workhouse, where you were supported by charity, and gave you a house,
an education, and the illusion of parenthood.”
“Dr. Laffin, I will do anything in reason. It isn’t necessary to go
over the old ground and tell you that, in spite of the material
advantages you gave me, my life has been wretchedly miserable. I won’t
ask for your help, and I can get a part in De Fell’s new play--he has
half promised me.”
“By the most fortunate chance I have become acquainted with a young
man, who will be of the greatest assistance to you when your
engagement is concluded--he is an authority on the subject of
publicity----”
“Oh!”
In a flash she remembered the objectionable youth who had haunted the
stage door for weeks, and, if she had any doubt at all, it was to be
dispelled immediately.
“My young friend is waiting outside; I will take the liberty of
bringing him in.”
It was the young man; she recognised him immediately. He was not in
evening dress; she would have been surprised if he wore anything so
civilised. His tweed waistcoat was untidy with cigarette ash, his tie
had slipped down, exposing the brass head of a stud, and his hair
needed the attention of a brush.
“I think I’ve met you before, Miss Carew,” he said briskly. “The
doctor asked me to see you about this desk they’re booming. I
understand that your name hasn’t to appear. That is good publicity
wasted----”
“Mr.----?” She paused inquiringly.
“Holbrook--William. Bill to my friends.”
“Mr. Holbrook, I want you to understand that I shall do nothing so
humiliating as you have suggested.”
“I didn’t--” he began, but she signalled him to be silent.
“I have no illusions about my work,” she said. “I am not a brilliant
actress, and I never dreamt that I was. But I have enough respect for
myself and my--my art to reject this suggestion. I have no intention
of sitting in a shop window----”
“Furnished in the semblance of a handsome library,” murmured the
doctor.
“I don’t care how it is furnished. I will not do anything so--so
undignified. It would ruin whatever chance I had in this profession,
and advertise my incompetence.”
Mr. William Holbrook passed his fingers through his untidy hair in
perplexity.
“I am rather surprised,” he said. “I thought the matter was settled,
Miss Carew. ‘Pips’ have only got the publicity end of the desk. We are
the advertising agents, and this stunt is a new one on me.”
She looked at him suspiciously.
“Isn’t this your idea?”
“No, my love.” It was the doctor. “It is not Mr. Holbrook’s idea. It
is mine. Will you excuse me, Mr. Holbrook?--I will see you in the
morning.”
When they were alone, he took up his silk hat, and smoothed the glossy
nap meditatively.
“The window will be set on Tuesday,” he said. “It is in a side street
leading from Piccadilly. A very select neighbourhood.”
“I will not do it,” she said. “I am seeing Mr. De Fell on Monday, and
I hope to open with his new piece.”
“Open by all means,” he said, “and the night you appear there will be
men outside the theatre distributing handbills telling the world that
you are the daughter of a man who was hanged at Oxford Prison for the
murder of your mother.”
The girl turned white.
“You would not dare… it would be cowardly, brutal… you would not
dare!”
Dr. Laffin never smiled. When he was amused, the skin about his eyes
wrinkled for a second, as it wrinkled now. With that slow
deliberation, which marked his every movement, he put his hand in his
breast pocket and took out a leather case.
“I have never shown you this,” he said, and unfolded a newspaper
cutting. “Listen!
“‘This morning at nine o’clock, James Setherby Caren, a butler, of
Nash Terrace, Bath, suffered the extreme penalty of the law at Oxford
jail, to which he had been transferred after his sentence at the Bath
Assizes. It will be remembered that Caren, who had been drinking
heavily, shot his wife in a moment of drunken frenzy. The child,
Elizabeth, who was such a pathetic figure at the trial, is now an
inmate of Bath Workhouse. Caren, who expressed his penitence for his
crime, walked firmly to the scaffold, and death was instantaneous. The
man, who seems to have been above the average order of intelligence,
enjoyed some local fame as an inventor.’
“You were rather young to remember the trial,” he said, “but I dare
assert that you remember how a disinterested physician rescued you
from a pauper home, and gave you the advantages of an education?”
She did not answer. Young as she had been, she remembered that
vividly. Remembered the pallid man in the dock, the red-robed judge,
the bustle of the little court-house. She recalled a chill morning
when the workhouse matron had come to her and patted her head kindly
and given her an apple. There was a little gutter child in the same
dormitory, who, when the matron had gone, pointed a skinny finger at
her, and shrieked:
“Her father got hung this morning!”
She did not know what “getting hung” meant at the time--she knew it
was something very final, because the matron told her, to her relief,
that she would never see the big, wicked man who beat her mother any
more. For this she was glad, but she wanted to see her mother, and
cried and cried at nights because there was no rough hand to hold
hers, and no thin, weary voice to tell her fairy stories.
“I will dispel any mistaken ideas you may have as to my motive,” the
doctor went on. “You were an experiment: I wanted to see how
impressionable was the plastic mind of childhood. As an experiment you
were a failure. You have now an opportunity of repaying me for the
care I have shown and the expense I have incurred on your behalf. The
desk you will advertise was one of your late father’s precious
inventions. It is valueless.”
She shuddered, in spite of herself.
“You will do as I wish?”
“If I do this, it will be the last service I will render you.”
“Not the last. There is yet one more--a negative service. Now and for
ever you will forget that I was ever stopped on Dartmoor one stormy
night. You understand? You will forget also about a certain gold
buckle you saw. If you ever speak to a living soul about that, you
will speak no more!”