Part 2
Scrambling up the remaining stairs with alacrity, she knocked.
A maid with her head wreathed in curl-papers answered the door, surveying the visitor first through a muslin blind.
Miss Sinquier pulled out a card.
“Is Mrs. Bromley in?” she asked.
The woman gazed at her feet.
“Mrs. Bromley’s gone!” she replied.
“I suppose she won’t be long?”
“She’s in Elysium.”
“At the——?”
“Poor Mrs. Bromley’s dead.”
“Mrs. Bromley _dead._..?”
“Poor Mrs. Bromley died last night.”
Miss Sinquier staggered.
“Impossible!”
“Perhaps you’d care to come in and sit down?”
Miss Sinquier hesitated.
“No, no, not if ... _is_? Oh!” she stammered.
“She was taken quite of a sudden.”
“One can hardly yet believe it!”
“She’ll be a loss to her world, alas, poor Betty Bromley will.”
Miss Sinquier swallowed.
“I should like to attend the funeral,” she said.
“There’s no funeral.”
“No funeral?”
“No invitations, that is.”
Miss Sinquier turned away.
The very ground under her seemed to slide....
Mrs. Bromley dead!
Why, the ink of her friendly note seemed scarcely dry!
On the pavement once more she halted to collect herself.
Who was there left at all?
At Croydon, there was a conservatoire, of course—
She felt a little guilty at the rapidity of the idea.
Woolgathering, she breasted the traffic in St. Martin’s Lane.
She would turn the situation over presently more easily in the Park.
Instinctively, she stopped to examine a portrait of Yvonde Yalta in the open vestibule of the Dream.
She devoured it: Really...? Really? She resembled more some Girton guy than a great coquette.
All down the street indeed, at the theatre doors, were studies of artists, scenes from current plays.
By the time she found herself back in Piccadilly Circus again Miss Sinquier was nearly fainting from inanition.
She peered around.
In Regent Street, she reflected, almost certainly, there must be some nice tea-shop, some cool creamery....
How did this do?
“The Café Royal!”
Miss Sinquier fluttered in.
By the door, the tables all proved to be taken.
Such a noise!
Everyone seemed to be chattering, smoking, lunching, casting dice, or playing dominoes.
She advanced slowly through a veil of opal mist, feeling her way from side to side with her parasol.
It was like penetrating deeper and deeper into a bath.
She put out her hand in a swimming, groping gesture, twirling as she did so, accidentally, an old gentleman’s moustache.
Thank heaven! There, by that pillar, was a vacant place.
She sank down on to the edge of a crowded couch, as in a dream.
The tall mirrors that graced the walls told her she was tired.
“Bring me some China tea,” she murmured to a passing waiter, “and a bun with currants in it.”
She leaned back.
The realization of her absolute loneliness overcame her suddenly.
Poor Mrs. Bromley, poor kindly little soul!
The tears sprang to her eyes.
It would have been a relief to have blotted her face against some neighbouring blouse or waistcoat and to have had a hearty cry.
“Excuse me, may I ask you to be so good——”
Just before her on the table was a stand for matches.
With a mournful glance she slid the apparatus from her in the direction of an adolescent of a sympathetic, somewhat sentimental, appearance, who, despite emphatic whiskers, had the air of a wildly pretty girl.
To have cherished such an one as a brother! Miss Sinquier reflected, as the waiter brought her tea.
While consuming it, she studied the young man’s chiselled profile from the corners of her eyes.
Supporting his chin upon the crook of a cane, he was listening, as if enthralled, to a large florid man, who, the centre of a small, rapt group, was relating in a high-pitched, musical voice, how “Poor dear Chaliapin one day had asked for Kvass and was given Bass. And that reminds me,” the speaker said, giving the table an impressive thump, “of the time when Anna Held—let go.”
Miss Sinquier glowed.
Here were stage folk, artists, singers ... that white, thin girl in the shaggy hat opposite was without doubt a temperament akin.
She felt drawn to speak.
“Can you tell me how I should go to Croydon?” she asked.
The words came slowly, sadly almost....
“To Croydon?”
“You can’t go to Croydon.”
“Why not?”
The young man of the whiskers looked amused.
“When we all go to Spain to visit Velasquez——”
“Goya——!”
“Velasquez!”
“Goya! Goya! Goya!”
“... We’ll set you on your way.”
“Goose!”
“One goes to Croydon best by Underground,” the pale-looking girl remarked.
Miss Sinquier winced.
“Underground!”
Her lip quivered.
“Is there anything the matter?”
“Only——”
Folding her arms upon the table she sank despairingly forward and burst into tears.
“Poor Mrs. Bromley!” she sobbed.
“In the name of _Fortune._...” The pale young woman wondered.
“What has Serephine said? What has Mrs. Sixsmith done?”
“Monstrous tease!”
The stout man wagged a finger.
“Wicked!” he commented.
The lady addressed kindled.
“I merely advised her to go Underground. By tube.”
“Oh God,” Miss Sinquier shook.
“It’s hysteria. Poor thing, you can see she’s overwrought.”
“Give her a _fine;_ _un bon petit cognac._”
“Waiter!”
“Garçon.”
“Never mind, Precious,” the fat man crooned. “You shall ride in a comfy taxi-cab with me.”
“No; indeed she shan’t,” Mrs. Sixsmith snapped. “You may rely on me, Ernest, for that!”
Rejecting the proffered spirits with a gesture, Miss Sinquier controlled her grief.
“It’s not _often_ I’m so silly,” she said.
“There, there!”
“Excuse this exhibition....”
Mrs. Sixsmith squeezed her hand.
“My poor child,” she said, “I fear you’ve had a shock.”
“It’s over now.”
“I’m so glad.”
“You’ve been very good.”
“Not at all. You interest me.”
“Why?”
“Why? Why?... I’m sure I can’t say _why_! But directly I saw you....”
“It’s simply wonderful.”
“You marched in here for all the world like some great coquette.”
“You mean the Father Christmas at the door?”
“Tell me what had happened.”
In a few words Miss Sinquier recounted her tale.
“My dear,” Mrs. Sixsmith said, “I shouldn’t think of it again. I expect this Mrs. Bromley was nothing but an old procuress.”
“A procuress?”
“A stage procuress.”
“How dreadful it sounds.”
“Have you no artistic connections in town _at all_?”
“Not really....”
“Then here, close at hand ... sitting with you and me,” she informally presented, “Is Mr. Ernest Stubbs, whose wild wanderings in the Gog-magog hills in sight of Cambridge, orchestrally described, recently thrilled us all. Next to him—tuning his locks and twisting his cane—you’ll notice Mr. Harold Weathercock, an exponent of calf-love parts at the Dream. And, beyond, blackening her nose with a cigarette, sprawls the most resigned of women—Miss Whipsina Peters, a daughter of the famous flagelist—and a coryphée herself.”
Miss Peters nodded listlessly.
“Toodle-doo,” she murmured.
“As a coryphée, I suppose her diamonds are a sight?”
“A sight!” Mrs. Sixsmith closed her eyes. “They’re all laid up in lavender, I fear.”
“In lavender?”
“Pledged.”
“Oh, poor soul.”
“Just now you spoke of a necklace of your own ... a pearl rope, or something, that you wish to sell.”
“Unhappily I’m obliged.”
“I’ve a notion I might be of service in the matter.”
“How?”
“Through an old banker-friend of mine—Sir Oliver Dawtry. Down Hatton Garden way and throughout the City he has enormous interests. And I should say _he_ could place your pearls—if anyone could!”
“Do you think he’d be bothered?”
“That I’ll undertake.”
“Does he live in town?”
“In a sense: he has a large house in the Poultry.”
“Of course I should be willing to show him my pearls.”
“Sir Oliver is offering me a little dinner to-night. And I should be happy for you to join us.”
“Oh?... I think I scarcely dare!”
“Rubbish. One must be bolder than that if one means to get on!”
“Tell me where you dine.”
“At Angrezini’s. It’s a little restaurant ... with a nigger band. And you sing between the courses.”
“Will Mr. Sixsmith be there?”
“My dear, Mr. Sixsmith and I don’t live together any more.”
“Forgive me.”
“That’s all right....”
Miss Sinquier’s eyes grew dim.
“Used he to act?” she asked.
“_Act!_”
“I seem to have heard of him.”
Mrs. Sixsmith looked away.
“Are you coming, Serephine?” her neighbour asked.
“Are you all off?”
The florid man nodded impressively.
“Yes ... we’re going now....” he said.
“What are Whipsina’s plans?”
Miss Peters leaned closely forward over several pairs of knees.
“I shall stay where I am,” she murmured, “and perhaps take a nap. There’s sure to be a tremendous exodus directly.”
Miss Sinquier rose. “I’ve some shopping,” she said, “to do.”
“Until this evening, then.”
“At what o’clock?”
“At 8.”
“On arrival, am I to ask for you?”
“Better ask for Sir Oliver—one never knows.... And I might perhaps happen to be late.”
“But you won’t be? You mustn’t....”
“I will explain whatever’s needful by telephone to Sir Oliver now. And during dinner,” Mrs. Sixsmith bubbled, “while the old gentleman picks a quail, we will see what we can do!”
“How can I express my thanks...?”
“The question of commission,” Mrs. Sixsmith murmured with a slight smile, “we will discuss more fully later on.”
VII
SUBJECTIVE. On a rack in the loom. Powerless oneself to grasp the design. Operated on by others. At the mercy of chance fingers, unskilled fingers, tender fingers; nails of all sorts. Unable to progress alone. Finding fulfilment through friction and because of friction. Stung into sentiency gradually, bit by bit—a toe at a time.
After all there was a _zest_ in it; and who should blame the raw material should an accident occur by the way....
Careless of an intriguing world about her, Miss Sinquier left her hotel, just so as to arrive at Angrezini’s last.
“For Thou knowest well my safety is in _Thee_,” she murmured to herself mazily as her taxi skirted the Park.
Having disposed of her Anne teapot for close on seventy pounds, she was looking more radiant than ever in a frail Byzantine tunic that had cost her fifty guineas.
“Thy Sally’s safety,” she repeated, absently scanning the Park.
Through the shadowy palings it slipped away, abundantly dotted with lovers. Some were plighting themselves on little chairs, others preferred the green ground: and beyond them, behind the whispering trees, the sky gleamed pale and luminous as church glass.
Glory to have a lover too, she reflected, and to stroll leisurely-united through the evening streets, between an avenue of sparkling lamps....
Her thoughts turned back to the young man in the Café Royal.
“Of all the bonny loves!” she breathed, as her taxi stopped.
“Angrezini!”
A sturdy negro helped her out.
“For Thou knowest very well——” her lips moved faintly.
The swinging doors whirled her in.
She found herself directly in a small bemirrored room with a hatch on one side of it, in which an old woman in a voluminous cap was serenely knitting.
Behind her dangled furs and wraps that scintillated or made pools of heavy shade as they caught or missed the light.
Relinquishing her own strip of tulle, Miss Sinquier turned about her.
Through a glass door she could make out Mrs. Sixsmith herself, seated in a cosy red-walled sitting-room beyond.
She was looking staid as a porcelain goddess in a garment of trailing white with a minute griffin-eared dog peeping out its sheeny paws and head wakefully from beneath her train.
At sight of her guest Mrs. Sixsmith smiled and rose.
“Sir Oliver hasn’t yet come!” she said, imprinting on Miss Sinquier’s youthful cheek a salute of _hospitality._
“He hasn’t? And I made sure I should be last.”
Mrs. Sixsmith consulted the time.
“From the Bank to the Poultry, and from the Poultry on...; just consider,” she calculated, subsiding leisurely with Miss Sinquier upon a spindle-legged settee.
“You telephoned?”
“I told him all your story.”
“Well?”
“He has promised me to do his utmost.”
“He will?”
“You should have heard us. This Mrs. Bromley, he pretends.... Oh, well ... one must not be too harsh on the dead.”
“Poor little woman.”
“Let me admire your frock.”
“You like it?”
“I never saw anything so waggish.”
“No, no, _please_——!”
“Tell me where they are!”
“What?”
“I’m looking for your pearls.”
“They’re in my hair.”
“Show me.”
“I’ll miss them terribly.”
“Incline!”
“How?”
“More.”
“I can’t!”
“They’re very nice. But bear in mind one thing——”
“Yes?”
Mrs. Sixsmith slipped an encircling arm about Miss Sinquier’s waist.
“Always remember,” she said, “to a City man, twelve hundred sounds less than a thousand. Just as a year, to you and me, sounds more than eighteen months!”
“I’ll not forget.”
“Here is Sir Oliver now.”
Through the swing doors an elderly man with a ruddy, rather apoplectic face, and close-set opaque eyes, precipitantly advanced.
“Ladies!”
“‘Ladies’ indeed, Sir Oliver.”
“As if——”
“Monster.”
“Excuse me, Serephine.”
“Your pardon rests with Miss Sinquier,” Mrs. Sixsmith said with melodious inflections as she showed the way towards the restaurant. “Address your petitions to her.”
In the crescent-shaped, cedar-walled, cedar-beamed room, a table at a confidential angle had been reserved.
“There’s a big gathering here to-night,” Sir Oliver observed, glancing round him, a “board-room” mask clinging to him still.
Miss Sinquier looked intellectual.
“I find it hot!” she said.
“You do.”
“I find London really very hot.... It’s after the north, I suppose. In the north it’s always much cooler.”
“Are you from the north?”
“Yes, indeed she is,” Mrs. Sixsmith chimed in. “And so am _I_,” she said. “Two north-country girls!” she added gaily.
Sir Oliver spread sentimentally his feet.
“The swans at Blenheim; the peacocks at Warwick!” he sighed.
“What do you mean, Sir Oliver?”
“Intimate souvenirs....”
“I should say so.... Swans and peacocks! I wonder you’re prepared to admit it.”
“Admit it?”
“Outside of _Confessions_, Sir Oliver.”
Miss Sinquier raised a hurried hand to her glass.
“No, no, no, no, no, no wine!” she exclaimed. “Something milky....”
“Fiddlesticks. Our first little dinner.”
“Oh, Sir Oliver.”
“And not, I trust, our last!”
“I enjoy it so much—going out.”
Mrs. Sixsmith slapped her little dog smartly upon the eyes with her fan.
“Couch-toi,” she admonished.
“What can fret her?”
“She fancies she sees Paul.”
“Worthless fellow!” Sir Oliver snapped.
“I was his rib, Sir Oliver.”
“Forget it.”
“I can’t forget it.”
“J-j-j——”
“Only this afternoon I ran right into him—it was just outside the Café Royal....”
“Scamp.”
“He looked superb. Oh, so smart; spats, speckled trousers, the rest all deep indigo. Rather Russian.”
“Who?”
“My actor-husband, Paul. There. One has only to speak his name for Juno to jerk her tail.”
“With whom is he at present?”
“With Sydney Iphis.”
“We went last night to see Mrs. Starcross,” Sir Oliver said.
“She’s no draw.”
“I long to see her,” Miss Sinquier breathed.
“I understand, my dear young lady, you’ve an itch for the footlights yourself.”
Miss Sinquier began eating crumbs at random.
“God knows!” she declared.
“C’est une âme d’élite, Sir Oliver.”
“You’ve no experience at all?”
“None.”
Sir Oliver refused a dish.
“We old ones ...” he lamented. “Once upon a time, I was in closer touch with the stage.”
“Even so, Sir Oliver, you still retain your footing.”
“Footing, f-f-f——; among the whole demned lot, who persists still but, perhaps, the Marys?”
“Take the Marys. A word to them; just think what a boon!”
“Nothing so easy.”
Miss Sinquier clasped her hands.
“One has heard of them often, of course.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Mary have won repute throughout the realm,” Mrs. Sixsmith impressively said, wondering (as middlewoman) what commission she should ask.
“Mrs. Mary, I dare say, is no longer what she was!”
“Mrs. Mary, _aujourd’hui_, is a trifle, perhaps, full-blown, but she’s most magnetic still. And a warmer, quicker heart never beat in any breast.”
“In her heyday, Sir Oliver—but you wouldn’t have seen her, of course.”
The baronet’s eyes grew extinct.
“In my younger days,” he said, “she was comeliness itself ... full of fun. I well recall her as the ‘wife’ in _Macbeth;_ I assure you she was positively roguish.”
“Being fairly on now in years,” Miss Sinquier reflected, “she naturally wouldn’t fill very juvenile parts—which would be a blessing.”
“She too often does.”
“She used to make Paul ill——” Mrs. Sixsmith began, but stopped discreetly. “Oh, listen,” she murmured, glancing up towards the nigger band and insouciantly commencing to hum.
“What is it...?”
“It’s the _Belle of Benares_—
“‘_My other females all yellow, fair or black, To thy charms shall prostrate fall, As every kind of elephant does To the white elephant Buitenack. And thou alone shall have from me, Jimminy, Gomminy, whee, whee, whee, The Gomminy, Jimminy, whee._’”
“Serephine, you’re eating nothing at all.”
“I shall wait for the patisserie, Sir Oliver.”
“Disgraceful.”
“Father Francis forbids me meat; it’s a little novena he makes me do.”
“‘_The great Jaw-waw that rules our land, And pearly Indian sea, Has not such_ ab-solute _command As thou hast over me, With a Jimminy, Gomminy, Gomminy, Jimminy, Jimminy, Gomminy, whee._’”
“Apropos of pearls ...” Sir Oliver addressed Miss Sinquier, “I look forward to the privilege before long of inspecting your own.”
“They’re on her head, Sir Oliver!”
Sir Oliver started as a plate was passed unexpectedly over him from behind.
“Before approaching some City firm, it’s possible Lady Dawtry might welcome an opportunity of acquiring this poor child’s jewels for herself,” Mrs. Sixsmith said.
“Lady Dawtry!”
“Why not?”
“Lady Dawtry seldom wears ornaments; often I wish she would.”
“I wonder you don’t _insist._”
Sir Oliver fetched a sigh.
“Many’s the time,” he said, “I’ve asked her to be a little more spectacular—but she won’t.”
“How women do vary!” Mrs. Sixsmith covertly smiled.
“To be sure.”
“My poor old friend...?”
Sir Oliver turned away.
“I notice Miss Peters here to-night,” he said.
“Whipsina?”
“With two young men.”
“_Un trio n’excite pas de soupçons_, they say.”
“They do....”
“Have you a programme for presently, Sir Oliver?”
“I’ve a box at the Kehama.”
Miss Sinquier looked tragic.
“It’ll have begun!” she said.
“At a variety, the later the better as a rule.”
“I never like to miss _any_ part.”
“My dear, you’ll miss very little; besides it’s too close to linger over dinner long.”
“Toc, toc; I don’t find it so,” Sir Oliver demurred.
Mrs. Sixsmith plied her fan.
“I feel very much like sitting _à la_ Chaste Suzanne, in the nearest ice-pail!” she declared.
VIII
MARY LODGE, or Maryland, as it was more familiarly known, stood quite at the end of Gardingore Gate, facing the Park.
Half-way down the row, on the Knightsbridge side, you caught a glimpse of it set well back in its strip of garden with a curtain of rustling aspen-trees before the door.
Erected towards the close of the eighteenth century as a retreat for a fallen minister, it had, on his demise, become the residence of a minor member of the reigning Royal House, from whose executors, it had, in due course, passed into the hands of the first histrionic couple in the land.
A gravel sweep leading between a pair of grotesquely attenuated sphinxes conducted, via a fountain, to the plain, sober façade in the Grecian style.
Moving demurely up this approach some few minutes prior to the hour telegraphically specified by the mistress of the house, Miss Sinquier, clad in a light summer dress, with a bow like a great gold butterfly under her chin, pulled the bell of Mary Lodge.
Some day others would be standing at her own front gate, their hearts a-hammer....
A trim manservant answered the door.
“Is Mrs. Mary...?”
“Please to come this way.”
Miss Sinquier followed him in.
The entrance hall bare but for a porphyry sarcophagus containing visiting cards, and a few stiff chairs, clung obviously to royal tradition still.
To right and left of the broad stairway two colossal battle-pictures, by Uccelli, were narrowly divided by a pedestalled recess in which a frowning bust of Mrs. Mary as Medusa was enshrined.
Miss Sinquier, following closely, was shown into a compartment whose windows faced the Park.
“Mrs. Mary has not yet risen from lunch,” the man said as he went away. “But she won’t be many minutes.”
Selecting herself a chair with a back suited to the occasion, Miss Sinquier prepared to wait.
It was an irregular planned, rather lofty room, connected by a wide arch with other rooms beyond. From the painted boiseries hung glowing Eastern carpets, on which warriors astride fleet-legged fantastic horses were seen to pursue wild animals, that fled helter-skelter through transparent thickets of may. A number of fragile French chairs formed a broken ring about a Louis XVI bed—all fretted, massive pillars of twisted, gilded wood—converted now to be a seat. Persian and Pesaro pottery conserving “eternal” grasses, fans of feathers, strange sea-shells, bits of Blue-John, blocks of malachite, morsels of coral, images of jade littered the _guéridons_ and _étagères._ A portrait of Mrs. Mary, by _Watts_, was suspended above the chimney-place, from whence came the momentous ticking of a clock.
“The old girl’s lair, no doubt!” Miss Sinquier reflected, lifting her eyes towards a carved mythological ceiling describing the Zodiac and the Milky Way.
Tongue protruding, face upturned, it was something to mortify her for ever that Mrs. Mary, entering quietly, should so get her unawares.
“Look on your left.”
“Oh?”
“And you’ll see it; in trine of Mars. The Seventh House. The House of _Marriage._ The House of Happiness.”
“Oh! Mrs. Mary!”
“You’re fond of astrology?”
“I know very little about the heavenly bodies.”
“Ah! _Don’t_ be too impatient there.”
Miss Sinquier stared.
Mrs. Mary was large and robust, with commanding features and an upright carriage. She had a Redfern gown of “navy” blue stuff infinitely laced. One white, long hand, curved and jewelled, clung as if paralysed above her breast.
Seating herself majestically, with a glance of invitation to Miss Sinquier to do the same, the eminent actress appraised her visitor slowly with a cold, dry eye.
“And so you’re his ‘little mouse’...!”
“Whose?”
“Sir Oliver’s ‘second Siddons.’”
“Indeed——”
“Well, and what is your forte?”
“My forte, Mrs. Mary?”
“Comedy? Tragedy?”
“Either. Both come easy.”
“You’ve no bent?”
“So long as the part is good.”
“‘Sarah’! Are you of Jewish stock?—Sarahs sometimes are!”
“Oh dear, no.”
“Tell me something of the home circle. Have you brothers, sisters?”
“Neither.”
“Is your heart free?”
“Quite.”
“The Boards, I believe, are new to you?”
“Absolutely.”
“Kindly stand.”
“I’m five full feet.”
“Say, ‘Abyssinia.’”
“Abyssinia!”
“As I guessed....”
“I was never there.”
“Now say ‘Joan.’”
“Joan!”
“You’re Comedy, my dear. Distinctly! And now sit down.”
Miss Sinquier gasped.
“You know with us it’s Repertoire, I suppose?”
“Of course.”
“In parts such as one would cast Jane Jacks you should score.”
“Is she giving up?”
“Unfortunately she’s obliged. She’s just had another babelet, poor dear.”
“What were her parts?”
“In _Bashful Miss Bardine_ the governess was one of them.”
“Oh!”
“And in _Lara_, she was the orphan. That part should suit you well,” Mrs. Mary murmured, rising and taking from a cabinet a bundle of printed sheets.
“Is it rags?”
“Rags?”
“May she——; is she allowed Evening dress?”
“Never mind about her dress. Let me hear how you’d deliver her lines,” Mrs. Mary tartly said, placing in Miss Sinquier’s hands a brochure of the play.
“I should like to know my cue.”