Part 3
“A twitter of birds is all. You are now in Lord and Lady Lara’s garden—near Nice. Begin.”
“_How full the hedges are of roses!_”
“Speak up.”
“_How full the hedges are of roses! What perfume to be sure._”
“And don’t do that.”
“The directions are: ‘_she stoops._’”
“Continue!”
“What’s next?”
“A start.”
“_Oh! Sir Harry!_”
“Proceed.”
Miss Sinquier lodged a complaint.
“How can I when I don’t know the plot?”
“What does it matter—the plot?”
“Besides, I feel up to something stronger.”
Mrs. Mary caressed the backs of her books.
“Then take the slave in _Arsinoe_ and I’ll read out the queen.”
“These little legs, Mrs. Mary, would look queerly in tights.”
“Think less of your costume, dear, do; and learn to do what you’re told. Begin!”
“Arsinoe opens.”
“Arsi——? So she does. You should understand we’re in Egypt, in the halls of Ptolemy Philadelphus, on the banks of the River Nile. I will begin.
_Cease.... Cease your song. Arisba! Lotos! THANKS._
_And for thy pains accept this ivory pin...._
_Shall it be said in many-gated Thebes_
_That Arsinoe’s mean?_
_The desert wind...._
_Hark to’t!_
_Methinks ’twill blow all night;_
_Lashing the lebbek trees anent Great Cheops’ Pyre;_
_Tracing sombre shadows o’er its stony walls._
_Within the wombats wail_
_Tearing the scarabs from Prince Kamphé’s tomb._
_His end was sudden ... strangely so;_
_Osiris stalks our land. Kamphé and little Ti (his daughter—wife)_
_Both dead within a week. Ah me, I fear_
_Some priestly treachery; but see! What crouching shape is this?... Peace, fool!_”
“_I did not speak.... Oh, Queen._”
“_ENOUGH. Thou weariest me._”
“_I go!_”
“_Yet stay! Where is thy Lord?_”
“_Alas! I do not know._”
“_Then get ye gone—from hence!_”
“_I shall obey._”
“... Wail it!” Mrs. Mary rested.
“Wail what, Mrs. Mary?”
“Let me hear that _bey_: O-bey. Sound your menace.”
“I shall o-bey.”
“_O beating heart_, Mrs. Mary paced stormily the room, _Tumultuous throbbing breast. Alas! how art thou laden?..._”
She turned.
“Slave!...”
“Me, Mrs. Mary?”
“Come on. Come on.”
“Slave’s off.”
“Pst, girl. Then take _the Duke_!”
“_Fairest_——”
“_High Horus!... What! Back from Ethiopia and the Nubean Army! Is’t indeed Ismenias...?_”
“_Listen._”
“_Hast deserted_ Ptolemy?”
“_Fairest_——”
“_O Gods of Egypt_——”
“Someone wants you, Mrs. Mary.”
“Wants me?”
“Your chauffeur, I think.”
“The car, M’m,” a servant announced.
“Ah!” she broke off, “An engagement, I fear. But come and see me again. Come one day to the theatre. Our stage-door is in Sloop Street, an _impasse_ off the Strand.” And Mrs. Mary, gathering up her skirts, nodded and withdrew.
IX
“BLACK her great boots! Not I,” Miss Sinquier said to herself as she turned her back on Mary Lodge to wend her way westward across the Park.
She was to meet Mrs. Sixsmith at a certain club on Hay Hill towards dusk to learn whether any tempting offer had been submitted Sir Oliver for her pearls.
“If I chose I suppose I could keep them,” she murmured incoherently to herself as she crossed the Row.
It was an airless afternoon.
Under the small formal trees sheltering the path she clapped her sunshade to, and slackened speed.
The rhododendrons, in vivid clumps of new and subtle colours brushing the ground, were in their pride. Above, the sky showed purely blue. She walked on a little way towards Stanhope Gate when, overcome by the odoriferous fragrance of heliotropes and xenias, she sank serenely to a bench.
Far off by the Serpentine a woman was preaching from a tree to a small audience gathered beneath. How primeval she looked as her arms shot out in argument, a discarded cock’s-feather boa looped to an upper bough dangling like some dark python in the air above.
Miss Sinquier sat on until the shadows fell.
She found her friend on reaching Hay Hill in the midst of muffins and tea.
“I gave you up. I thought you lost,” Mrs. Sixsmith exclaimed, hitching higher her veil with fingers super-manicured, covered in oxydized metal rings.
“I was dozing in the Park.”
“Dreamy kid.”
“On my back neck I’ve such a freckle.”
“Did you see Mammy Mary?”
“I did.”
“Well?”
“Nothing; she offered me Miss Jacks’ leavings.”
“Not good enough.”
“What of Sir Oliver?”
“I hardly know how to tell you.”
“Has he——?”
Mrs. Sixsmith nodded.
“He has had an offer of two thousand pounds,” she triumphantly said, “for the pearls alone.”
“Two thousand pounds!”
“Call it three o’s.”
“Okh!”
“Consider what commercial credit that means....”
“I shall play Juliet.”
“Juliet?”
“I shall have a season.”
“Let me take the theatre for you.”
“Is it a dream?”
“I will find you actors—great artists.”
“Oh, God!”
“And, moreover, I have hopes for the silver, too. Sir Oliver is enchanted with the spoons—the Barnabas spoon especially. He said he had never seen a finer. Such a beautiful little Barny, such a rapture of a little sinner as it is, in every way.”
Miss Sinquier’s eyes shone.
“I’ll have that boy.”
“What—what boy?”
“Harold Weathercock.”
“You desire him?”
“To be my Romeo, of course.”
“It depends if the Dream will release him.”
“It must! It shall!”
“I’ll peep in on him and sound him, if you like.”
“We’ll go together.”
“Very well.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“In Foreign-Colony Street. He and a friend of his, Noel Nice, share a studio there. Not to paint in, alas! It’s to wash.”
“What?”
“They’ve made a little laundry of it. And when they’re not acting actually, they wash. Oh! sometimes when Mr. Nice spits across his iron and says Pah! it makes one ill.”
“Have they any connection?”
Mrs. Sixsmith bent her eyes to her dress.
“Mr. Sixsmith often sent them things ... little things,” she said. “His linen was his pride. You might annex him, perhaps. He’s played Mercutio before.”
“Is he handsome?”
“Paul? He’s more interesting than handsome. _Unusual_, if you know....”
“What _did_ you do to separate?”
“I believe I bit him.”
“You did!”
“He ran at me with the fire-dogs first.”
“I suppose you annoyed him?”
“The cur!”
“Something tells me you’re fond of him still.”
From her reticule Mrs. Sixsmith took a small note-book and made an entry therein.
“... The divine Shakespeare!” she sighed.
“I mean to make a hit with him.”
“Listen to me.”
“Well?”
“My advice to you is, hire a playhouse—the Cobbler’s End, for example—for three round months at a reasonable rent, with a right, should you wish, to sub-let.”
“It’s so far off.”
“Define ‘far off.’”
“Blackfriars Bridge.”
“I’ve no doubt by paying a fortune you could find a more central position if you care to wait. The Bolivar Theatre, possibly——; or the Cone.... At the Cone, there’s a joy-plank from the auditorium to the stage, so that, should you want to ever, you can come right out into the stalls.”
“I want my season at once,” Miss Sinquier said.
Mrs. Sixsmith toyed with her rings.
“What do you say,” she asked, “to making an informal début (before ‘royal’ auspices!) at the Esmé Fisher ‘Farewell’ coming off next week?”
“Why not!”
“Some of the stage’s brightest ornaments have consented to appear.”
“I’d like particulars.”
“I’ll send a note to the secretary, Miss Willinghorse, straight away,” Mrs. Sixsmith murmured, gathering up her constant Juno beneath her arm, and looking about her for some ink.
“Send it later, from the Café Royal.”
“I can’t go any more to the Café Royal,” Mrs. Sixsmith said. “I owe money there.... To all the waiters.”
“Wait till after we’ve seen the Washingtons.”
“The Washingtons? Who are they?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Besides, I’ve a small headache,” Mrs. Sixsmith said, selecting herself a quill.
“What can I do to relieve it?” Miss Sinquier wondered, taking up a newspaper as her friend commenced to write.
Heading the agony list some initials caught her eye.
“_S——h S——r._ Come back. All shall be forgiven,” she read.
“I can’t epistolize while you make those _unearthly_ noises,” Mrs. Sixsmith complained.
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Where are we going to dine?”
“Where is there wonderful to go?”
“How about a grill?”
“I don’t mind.”
“The Piccadilly? We’re both about got up for it.”
Miss Sinquier rolled her eyes.
“The Grill-room at the Piccadilly isn’t going to cure a headache,” she remarked.
X
TO watch Diana rise blurred above a damp chemise from a fifth-floor laundry garden in Foreign-Colony Street, Soho, had brought all Chelsea (and part of Paris) to study illusive atmospherical effects from the dizzy drying-ground of those versatile young men, Harold Weathercock and Noel Nice.
Like a necropolis at the Resurrection, or some moody vision of Blake, would it appear under the evanescent rays of the moon.
Nighties, as evening fell, would go off into proud Praxiteles—torsos of Nymphs or Muses: pants and ready-mades, at a hint of air would pirouette and execute a phantom ballet from Don John.
Beyond the clothes lines was a Pagoda, set up in an extravagant mood, containing a gilded Buddha—a thorn and a symbol of unrighteousness to a convent of Ursulines whose recreation yard was underneath.
Here, at a certain hour when the Mother Superior was wont to walk round and round her preserves, a young, bewhiskered man frequently would come bearing ceremonial offerings of rice or linen newly washed, and falling flat before the shrine would roll himself about and beat the ground as if in mortal anguish of his sins before her fascinated eye. Here, too, from time to time, festivities would take place—sauteries (to a piano-organ), or convivial _petits soupers_ after the play.
An iron ladder connected the roof with the work and living-rooms below.
Ascending this by the light of the stars, Mrs. Sixsmith and the _New Juliet_, gay from a certain grill, audaciously advanced, their playful screams rendered inaudible by the sounds of a tricksome waltz wafted down to them from the piano-organ above.
Items of linen nestling close to a line overhead showed palely against the night like roosting doves.
“Help.... Oh! she’s falling,” Mrs. Sixsmith screamed. “Are you there, Mr. Nice?”
“Give me your hand,” Miss Sinquier begged.
“Should she rick her spine....”
“Whew-ps!” Miss Sinquier exclaimed, scrambling to the top.
London, beyond the frail filigree cross on the Ursulines’ bleached wall, blazed with light. From the Old Boar and Castle over the way came a perfect flood of it. And all along the curved river-line from Westminster to St. Paul’s glittered lamps, lamps, lamps.
Folding an arm about her friend’s “wasp” waist, Mrs. Sixsmith whirled her deftly round to a wild street air:
“_I like your ways, I like your style, You are my darling_——”
she hummed as the organ stopped.
“Come to finish the evening?”
A small, thick-set, grizzled man with dark æsthetic eyes and a pinkish nose, the result maybe of continuously tinting it for music-hall purposes, addressed the breathless ladies in a broad, inquiring voice.
“Is that _you_, Mr. Smee?” Mrs. Sixsmith asked, surprised.
“Call me ‘Shawn.’”
“We’ve only come on business.”
“Don’t! You make me laf.”
“Then—do it,” Mrs. Sixsmith serenely said, resting her left knee against an empty keg of beer.
“They’re not back from the theatre yet.”
“Turn for us till they come.”
Mr. Smee dashed from a crimpled brow a wisp of drooping hair.
“By your leave, ladies,” he said, “I’ll just slip across to the Old Boar and Castle and sample a snack at the bar.”
“Don’t run off, Mr. Smee. You really mustn’t. On tiles, they say, one usually meets with _cats._”
“Oh, my word.”
Mrs. Sixsmith placed a hand to her hip in the style of an early John.
“How long is it—say—since we met?” she inquired. “Not since my wedding, I do believe.”
“What’s become of those kiddy bridesmaids you had?” Mr. Smee warily asked.
“Gerty Gale and Joy Patterson?—I’m sure I don’t know.”
“Oh, my word.”
“Well, how goes the world with _you_, Mr. Smee?”
“So-so. I’ve been away on tour. Mildred Milson and Co. Oh! my Lord—it was. No sooner did we get to Buxton—down in Derbyshire—than Miss Milson fell sick and had to be left behind.”
“What was wrong with her?”
“Exposure.... On Bank Holiday some of the company hired a three-horse char-à-banc and drove from Buxton over to Castleton Caves—my hat. What hills!—and from there we went to take a squint at Chatsworth, where Miss Milson came over queer.”
“And how does Mrs. Smee?”
“So-so.”
“One never sees her now.”
“There she sits all day, reading Russian novels. Talk of gloom!”
“Really?”
“Oh, it is!”
“Well.... I’m fond of thoughtful, theosophical reading, too, Mr. Smee,” Mrs. Sixsmith said. “Madame Blavatsky and Mrs. Annie Besant are both favourites with me.”
Mr. Smee jerked an eloquent thumb.
“Who have you brought along?”
“She’s a special pal of mine.”
“Married?”
“Mon Dieu,” Mrs. Sixsmith doubtfully said. “Je _crois_ que c’est une Pucelle.”
“Never!” Mr. Smee, completely mystified, hazarded.
“Fie donc. Comme c’est _méchant._”
“Wee, wee.”
Mrs. Sixsmith tittered.
“She’s going into management very soon.”
“Swank?”
“We seek a Romeo, Mr. Smee.”
“Now, now...!”
“Don’t look like that, Mr. Smee—nobody’s asking you,” Mrs. Sixsmith murmured.
Mr. Smee scratched reflectively his head.
“Who is it you’re after?” he asked.
“We fancied Mr. Weathercock might suit.”
“God has given him looks, but no brains,” Mr. Smee emphatically declared. “No more brains than a cow in a field.”
“His is indeed a charming face,” Mrs. Sixsmith sighed. “And as to his brains, Mr. Smee—why, come!”
“Who’s to create the countess?” he asked.
“Lady Capulet? It’s not determined yet.”
“Why not canvass the wife?”
“Has she been in Shakespeare before?”
“From the time she could toddle; in a _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, when not quite two, she was the Bug with gilded wings.”
“Pet!”
“Sure....”
Mrs. Sixsmith clasped prayerfully her hands.
“And in Mr. Smee,” she said, “I see the makings of a fine Friar Lawrence!”
“How’s that?”
“With a few choice _concetti._”
“Faith!”
“I see the lonely cell, the chianti-flask, the crucifix....”
“Gosh!”
“I see Verona ... the torrid sky ... the town ascending, up, up, up. I hear the panting nurse. She knocks. Your priest’s eyes glisten. She enters, blouse-a-gape—a thorough coster. You raise your cowl.... Chianti? She shakes her head. Benedictine? No! no! A little Chartreuse, then? Certainly not! Nothing.... You squeeze her waist. Her cries ‘go through’ Lady Capulet and her daughter in the distant city on their way to mass. Romeo enters. So!” Mrs. Sixsmith broke off as Mr. Weathercock and a curly-headed lad, followed by a swathed woman and a whey-faced child, showed themselves upon the stairs.
Mrs. Sixsmith sought Miss Sinquier’s arm.
“Listen to me, my darling!” she said.
“Well?”
“Write.”
“What?”
“Write.”
“Why?”
“Because I fear we intrude.”
“Intrude?” Harold Weathercock exclaimed, coming up. “I assure you it’s a treat....”
Mrs. Sixsmith threw a sidelong, intriguing glance across her shoulder.
“Who’s the cure in plaits?” she demanded.
“It’s Little May Mant—she’s seeing her sister home.”
“Oh!... Is that Ita?” Mrs. Sixsmith murmured, stepping forward to embrace Miss “Ita Iris” of the Dream.
Miss Sinquier swooped.
“I’m having a season,” she, without further preamble, began. “And I want to persuade you to join....”
“Principal?”
“Yes.”
“I should like to play for you,” Mr. Weathercock said.
“Harold!”
Miss Mant addressed him softly.
“Well?”
“Honey husband....”
“Hook it!”
“Give me a cigarette.”
“Mary!” her sister called.
“Quick! ’cos of Ita.”
“Mary Mant.”
Miss Mant tossed disdainfully an ultra large and “pasty”-faced head.
“Why must you insult me, Ita?” she bitterly asked. “You _know_ I’m Miss Iris.”
“I know you’re Miss Mant.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m _not._”
“I tell you, you are!”
“Liar!”
“M-A-N-T!”
“Oh, stow it,” Mr. Smee said. “Put it by.”
“I’m Réné Iris.”
“Réné Rats.”
Mrs. Sixsmith looked detached.
“Is that a wash-tub?” she asked.
“Certainly.”
“What’s that odd thing floating, like the ghost of a child unborn?”
“It belongs to Mrs. Mary.”
“There’s a rumour—she refuses a fortune to show herself in Revue.”
“With her hearse-horse tread....”
“Sh——. Harold worships her.”
“Oh, no.”
“He sees things in her that we don’t, perhaps.”
“To some ideas,” Mrs. Sixsmith said, “I suppose she’s very blooming still....”
“If it wasn’t for her figure, which is really a disgrace.”
Miss Iris smiled.
She had a tired mouth, contrasting vividly with the artificial freshness of her teeth.
“When I reach my zenith,” she declared, “it’s Farewell.”
“Shall you assist at poor Esmé Fisher’s?”
“A couple of songs—that’s all.”
Mrs. Sixsmith looked away.
“Naturally,” Miss Sinquier was saying, “one can’t expect instantly to be a draw. More than—perhaps—just a little!”
“With a man who understands in the Box Office....”
“Someone with a big nose and a strong will, eh?”
Mr. Nice lifted a rusty iron and wiped it across his leg.
“In my opinion,” he said, “to associate oneself with a sanctified classic is a huge mistake. And why start a season on the tragic tack?”
“Because——”
“Suppose it’s a frost?”
“Oh!”
“Suppose your venture fails. Suppose the thing’s a drizzle.”
“What then?”
“There’s a light comedy of mine that should suit you.”
“Of yours!”
“Appelled _Sweet Maggie Maguire._”
“Tell me why she was sweet, Mr. Nice,” Mrs. Sixsmith begged.
“Why she was sweet? I really don’t know.”
“Was she sentimental...?”
“She was an invalid. A bed-ridden beauty ... and, of course, the hero’s a Doctor.”
“Oh! my word!”
“Is there anyone at home?” A tired voice came thrilling up from below.
“Who comes?”
Mrs. Sixsmith started.
“It sounds to me like my husband,” she said, with an involuntary nervous movement of the hands.
“I forgot,” Mr. Weathercock said. “He mentioned he might blow in.”
“Oh!”
“I’d take to my heels!” Miss Iris advised.
Mrs. Sixsmith stood transfixed.
The moonlight fell full on her, making her features look drawn and haggard.
XI
LIKE wildfire the rumour ran. The King had knighted—he had knighted—by what accident?—Mr. Mary, in lieu of Mr. Fisher, at Mr. Fisher’s own farewell. In the annals of the stage such an occurrence was unheard of, unique.
The excitement in the green-room was intense.
“M-m! He is not de first to zell is birs-r-rite for a mess of porridge!” Yvonde Yalta, the playgoers’ darling, remarked as she poised with an extravagant play of arms, a black glittering bandeau on her short flaxen hair.
“A mess of pottage!” someone near her said.
“You correct me? Ah, sanx! I am so grateful, so—_so_ grateful,” the charming creature murmured as she sailed away.
From the auditorium came a suppressed titter.
The curtain had risen some few minutes since on Mlle. Fanfette and Monsieur Coquelet de Chaussepierre of the Théâtre Sans Rancune in the comedietta, _Sydney, or There’s No Resisting Him._
“It’s extraordinary I’ve never seen a man knighted,” a show-girl twittered, “and I’ve seen a good deal....”
“How do they do them?”
“Like this,” a sparkling brunette answered, bestowing a sly pat on the interlocutress with the back of a brush.
“Of all the common——!”
“Ladies! Ladies!”
“Who was in front at the time?”
“I was!” Mrs. Sixsmith said, who had just peeped in to exchange a few words with her friend.
“You were?”
“I was selling sweets in the vestibule and saw it all. Really! If I live to be an old woman I shan’t forget it. Mr. Mary—_Sir Maurice_—was in the lobby chatting with Sylvester Fry of the _Dispatch_, when the Royal party arrived. The King instantly noticed him and sent one of his suite, quite unpremeditatedly, it seemed, to summon him, and in a trice ... Oh! ... and I _never_ saw the Queen look so charming. She has a gold dress turning to white through the most exquisite gradations....”
Mrs. Sixsmith was overcome.
“A-wheel,” Miss Sinquier’s dresser disrespectfully said, “how was the poor man to tell? Both the blighters—God forgive me—are equally on their last legs.”
Miss Sinquier shivered.
“Is it a good house?” she inquired.
“Splendid. Outside they’re flying five ‘full’ boards.... There’s not a single vacant place. Poor Sydney Iphis gave half a guinea for a seat in the slips.”
“Are you here all alone?”
“I’m with Sir Oliver Dawtry,” Mrs. Sixsmith replied, “except when I’m running about!... Can I sell anyone anything?” she inquired, raising sonorously her voice. “Vanilla! Caramel! Chocolate!... Comfits,” she warbled.
“What have you netted?”
“Eighteenpence only, so far;—from such an angel!”
“Comfits, did you say?” a round-faced, piquant little woman asked.
“Despite disguise! If it isn’t Arthurine Smee!”
The actress displayed astonishment.
Nature had thrown up upon her lip and cheek two big blonde moles that procured to her physiognomy, somehow or other, an unusual degree of expression.
“My husband has been waiting to hear from you,” she said, “as agent to this _Miss Sin——_, the new star with the naughty name, and from all I could make out I understand it would be likely to be a _Double Engagement._”
“This is Miss Sinquier,” Mrs. Sixsmith exclaimed.
Miss Sinquier blinked.
“Have you done it much?” she asked.
“Often.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere.”
“For example?”
“I may say I’ve played Pauline and Portia and Puck....”
“Mother-to-Juliet I fear’s the best I’ve to offer.”
Mrs. Smee consulted enigmatically the nearest mole in reach of her tongue.
“Were I to play her in ‘good’ preservation,” she inquired, “I suppose there’d be no objection?”
“Why, none!”
“Just a girlish touch....”
“Mrs. Smee defies time,” Mrs. Sixsmith remarked.
“My dear, I once was thought to be a very pretty woman.... All I can do now is to urge my remains.”
Miss Sinquier raised a forefinger.
Voices shivering in altercation issued loudly from a private dressing-room next door.
“What’s up?”
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” the wardrobe-mistress entering said. “Sir Maurice and Mr. Fisher are passing sharp words with a couple of pitchforks.”
“What!”
“The ‘Farm-players’ sent them over from the Bolivar for their Pig-sty scene—and now poor Mr. Mary, _Sir M’riss_, and Mr. Fisher are fighting it out, and Mrs. Mary, _her ladyship_, has joined the struggle.”
“Murder!” called a voice.
“Glory be to God.”
Mrs. Sixsmith rolled her eyes.
“Da!” she gasped, as Lady Mary, a trifle dazed but decked in smiles, came bustling in.
“Oh, Men! Men! Men!” she exclaimed, going off into a hearty laugh. “Rough, angelic brutes...!”
She was radiant.
She had a gown of shot brocade, a high lace ruff and a silver girdle of old German work, that had an ivory missal falling from it.
“Quarrelsome, quarrelling kings,” she stuttered, drifting towards a toilet-table—the very one before which Miss Sinquier was making her face.
On all sides from every lip rose up a chorus of congratulations.
“Viva, Lady Mary!”
Touched, responsive, with a gesture springing immediately from the heart, the consummate Victorian extended impulsive happy hands.
“God bless you, dears,” she said.
“Three cheers for Lady Mary!”
The illustrious woman quashed a tear.
“Am I white behind?” she asked.
“Allow me, milady,” the wardrobe-mistress wheezed.
“I fancy I heard a rip...!”
“There must have been quite a scrimmage.”
From the orchestra, a melodious throb-thrum-throb told a “curtain.”
“Lady Mary—_you_, Mum,” a call-boy chirped.
“Me?”
“Five minutes.”
Lady Mary showed distress.
“For goodness sake, my dear,” she addressed Miss Sinquier, “do leave yourself alone. I want the glass.”
But Miss Sinquier seemed engrossed.
At her elbow a slip of a “Joy-baby” was holding forth with animation to Mrs. Sixsmith and Mrs. Smee.