Part 5

“Ah, Julie ...” Mrs. Sixsmith sighed, when the door opening gently was followed by the entry of Mrs. Smee.

“Am I disturbing you?” she asked.

“No, come in.”

“I want to tell you, my husband isn’t himself.”

“He’s ill?”

“He’s not himself.”

“In what way?”

“It’s a hard thing for a wife to confess. But for a première he’s nearly always in wine.”

“Is he ... _much_?”

“I never knew him like it!”

Mrs. Sixsmith examined her nails.

“So violent?” she ventured.

“He’s more confused, dear, than violent,” Mrs. Smee explained. “He seems to think we’re doing _The Tempest;_ Romeo’s tanned breast he takes for Ferdinand’s. ‘Mind, Ferdy, boy,’ I heard him say, ‘and keep the —— out.’ Whereupon, his mind wandered to the Russian plays I love, and he ran through some of Irina’s lines from _The Three Sisters_: ‘My soul,’ you know she says, ‘my soul is like an expensive piano which is locked and the key lost.’ Ah, there’s for you; Shakespeare never wrote that. He couldn’t. Even by making piano, spinet. Oh, Russia! Russia! land of Tchekhov, land of Andrief, of Solugub, of Korelenko, of Artzibashef—Maria Capulet salutes thee! And then my man was moved to sing. His love, she was in Otaheite.... But as soon as he saw me he was back at _The Tempest_ again, calling me Caliban, Countess, and I don’t know what.”

“Oh, how disgraceful.”

“After the performance I’ll pop home—Home!—in a drosky and shut him out.”

“Meanwhile?”

“He’ll pass for a Friar. The Moujik!”

“Still....”

“He’ll probably be priceless; the masses always love the man who can make them laugh.”

Miss Sinquier moved restlessly towards the door and looked out.

All was activity.

Plants for the balcony set of a rambling, twining nature, together with a quantity of small wicker cages labelled “Atmospherics,” and containing bats, owls, lizards, etc., were in course of being prepared.

The manageress knit her brows.

“Miss Marquis,” she called, “instead of teasing the animals, I suggest you complete your toilet.”

“... She’d better look sharp!”

Mrs. Smee consulted her notes.

“She reminds me more of a nurse-maid than a nurse,” she murmured. “Not what _I_ should have chosen for Juliet at all.”

“Perhaps not.”

“Miss Marquis has no stage presence. And such a poor physique—she’s too mean.”

“Anyway, Sally’s got fine men. I never saw finer fellows. Even the Apothecary! Fancy taking the fatal dose from a lad like that; he makes me want to live.”

Mrs. Smee purred.

“To have interesting workmates is everything,” she said. “Hughie Huntress, as Producer, seemed quite stunned at the subtle material at his disposal.... In fact, he realized from the first, he told me, he _couldn’t_ ‘produce’ all of it.”

Mrs. Sixsmith lowered her voice.

“Where did Sally find her Balthasar,” she asked, “and where did she secure her Tybalt?”

“My dear Mrs. Sixsmith, I’m not in the management’s secrets, remember, so much as you!”

“Or who put her in the way of Sampson and Gregory? And _where_ did she get her Benvolio?”

“Through an agent, I don’t doubt.”

Mrs. Sixsmith threw a sidelong probing glance in the direction of the door. Already in her heart she felt herself losing her hold. Had the time inevitably come to make out the score?

Through the open door came a squeal.

“Sally, the owls!”

“Leave them, Réné,” Miss Sinquier ordered.

“_Dearest_, what diddlies; one has a look of old Sir Oliver!” Miss Mant declared, coming forward into the room.

Clad in a pair of striped “culottes,” she had assumed, notwithstanding sororal remonstrance, the conspicuous livery of Paris.

“I just looked in to thank you, darling,” she began, “for all your sweetness and goodness.... Oh Sally, when I saw the playbill with my name on it (right in among the gentlemen!) I thought I should have died. Who could have guessed ever it would be a breeches part?”

“Turn round.”

“Such jealous murmurings already as there are; a-citizen-of-Verona—an envious super without a line, whispered, as I went by, that my legs in these tissue tights had a look of forced asparagus.”

“Nonsense.”

“Of course: I knew that, Sally. But devil take me. How I’ll hate going back into virginals again; these trousers spoil you for skirts.”

“Sprite.”

“And I’d a trifling triumph too, darling, which I chose to ignore: just as I was leaving my dressing-room, Jack Whorwood, all dressed up for Tybalt, accosted me with a fatuous easy smile. ‘I want your picture, Miss Iris, with your name on it,’ he said. ‘_Do_ you?’ I said. ‘I do,’ he said. ‘Then I fear you’ll have to,’ I said. Oh, he was cross! But all the while, Sally, he was speaking I could feel the wolf....”

“Better be careful,” Mrs. Sixsmith snapped.

“As if I’d cater to his blue besoigns!”

“Réné, Réné?”

“Although I snubbed him,” Miss Iris murmured, stooping to examine upon the toilet-table a beribboned aeroplane filled with sweets, “he looked _too_ charming!”

Mrs. Smee chafed gently her hands.

“I must return to my Friar,” she said.

“He is saying the grossest, the wickedest things!”

“Mr. Smee’s sallies at times are not for young ears,” Mrs. Smee loftily observed. “His witticisms,” she added, “aren’t for everyone.”

“My friend, Miss Tird, who came to watch me dress, was quite upset by his cochônneries!”

“Although your little friend appears scarcely to be nine, she seems _dazed_ by her sex and power,” Mrs. Smee unfavourably commented.

“I’ll have to go, I suppose,” Miss Sinquier sighed, “and see how matters stand.”

“Prenez garde: for when making up, he mostly makes a palette of his hand,” Mrs. Sixsmith said. “I happen to know—because one day he caught hold of me.”

Mrs. Smee protruded her tongue and drew it slowly in.

“Hist!” she exclaimed.

Along the corridor the call-boy was going his rounds.

“First act beginners,” chirped he.

Miss Sinquier quivered.

“... Soften all hostile hearts and let them love me ...” she prayed.

XVI

THE sound of rain-drops falling vigorously upon the glass roof awoke her. A few wind-tossed, fan-shaped leaves tinged with hectic autumnal colours spotted marvellously the skylight without, half-screening the pale and monotonous sky beyond.

With a yawn she sat up amid her pillows, cushioning her chin on her knees.

After the last night’s proceedings the room was a bower of gardenia, heliotrope, and tuberose, whose allied odours during slumber had bewildered just a little her head.

Flinging back the bed-clothes, she discovered as she did so a note.

“Sally,” she read, “Should you be conscious before I return, I’m only gone to market, cordially yours, R. Iris. Such mixed verdicts! I’ve arranged the early papers on your dressing-table. I could find no reference to me. This morning there were rat-marks again, and part of a mangled bat.”

“Oh, those ‘atmospherics’!” Miss Sinquier complained, finding somnolently her way into the inner room.

Here all was Italy—Even the gauze-winged aeroplane filled with sweets had an air of a silver water-fly from some serene trans-Alpine garden.

Dropping to a fine _cassoni_ she perused with contracted brows a small sheaf of notices, the gist of which bore faint pencilled lines below.

“Her acting is a revelation.”

“We found her very refreshing.”

“There has been nothing like it for years.”

“Go to the Source.”

“An unfeminine Juliet.”

“A decadent Juliet.”

“... The Romeo kiss—you take your broadest fan.”

“The kiss in Romeo takes only fifteen minutes.... ‘Some’ kiss!”

“The Romeo kiss will be the talk of the town.”

“A distinctive revival.”

“I sat at the back of the pit-stalls and trembled.”

“Kiss——”

“The last word in kisses.”

“Tio, Tio, Io! Io! jug—jug!”

“Shakespeare as a Cloak.”

“A smart Juliet.”

“An immoral Juliet.”

“Before a house packed to suffocation——”

“Among those present at the Source last night were”—she looked—“were, Queen Henriette Marie, Duchess of Norwich, Dismalia Duchess of Meath-and-Mann, Lady Di Flattery, Lord and Lady Newblood, Mr. and Lady Caroline Crofts, Sir Gottlieb and Lady Gretel Teuton-Haven, ex-King Bomba, ex-King Kacatogan, ex-Queen of Snowland, ex-Prince Marphise, Hon. Mrs. Mordecai, Lady Wimbush, Lord and Lady Drumliemore, Sir John and Lady Journeyman, Lord and Lady Lonely, Lady Harrier, Feodorowna Lady Meadowbank, Lady Lucy Lacy, Duchess of Netherland and _Lady Diana Haviours_, Miss Azra, Miss Christine Cross, Sir Francis and Lady Four, Madame Kotzebue, Comtesse Yvonde de Tot, Mlle. de Tot, Duque de Quaranta, Marquesa Pitti-Riffa and Sir Siegfried Seitz.”

So ... she sneezed, all was well!

A success: undoubtedly.

“Oh God! How quite ... _delicious_!” she murmured, snatching up a Cinquecento cope transformed to be a dressing-gown, and faring forth for an airing upon the stage.

At that hour there wasn’t a soul.

The darkened auditorium looked wan and eerie, the boxes caves.

The churchyard scene with its unassuming crosses, accentuating the regal sepulchre of the Capulets (and there for that), showed grimly.

“Wisht!” she exclaimed, as a lizard ran over her foot.

Frisking along the footlights, it disappeared down a dark trap hole.

Had Réné been setting more traps? Upon a mysterious mound by a jam-jar full of flowers was a hunk of cheese.

She stood a moment fascinated.

Then bracing herself, head level, hands on hips, she executed a few athletic figures to shake off sleep.

Suddenly there was a cry; a cry that was heard outside the theatre walls, blending half-harmoniously with the London streets.

XVII

THE rich trot of funeral horses died imperceptibly away.

Looking out somewhat furtively from beneath her veil, Mrs. Sixsmith could observe only a few farmers conversing together beneath the immemorial yews of S. Irene.

It was over.

There was nothing left to do but to throw a last glance at the wreaths.

“From the artists and staff of the Source Theatre as a trifling proof of their esteem”—such the large lyre crushing her own “Resurgam.” And there also was the Marys’ with their motto: “All men and women are merely players. They have their exits and their entrances.” And the “Heureuse!” tribute by the sexton’s tools—she craned—was Yvonde _de_ Yalta’s, it appeared.

“Yvonde de Yalta!”

Mrs. Sixsmith gulped.

“You grieve?”

Canon Sinquier stood beside her.

“I——” she stammered.

“So many tributes,” he said.

“Indeed, sir, the flowers are extremely handsome.”

“So many crowns and crosses, harps and garlands.”

“One has to die for friends to rally!”

“Were you in her company?”

“I, Canon?... I never was on the stage in my life!”

“No?”

“My husband never would listen to it: he holds with Newman.”

“... I don’t recollect.”

“Besides, I’m no use at acting at all.”

“You knew my poor daughter well?”

“I was her protégée ... that is ... it was _I_ who tried to protect her,” Mrs. Sixsmith replied.

“My dear madam.”

“Oh, Canon, why was her tomb not in Westminster where so many of her profession are? I was reading somewhere only the other day there are more _actresses_ buried there than Kings!”

“It may be so.”

“Here ... she is so isolated ... so lost. Sally loved town.”

“Tell me,” he begged, “something of her end.”

“Indeed, sir——”

“You’re too weary?”

“Oh, I _hate_ a funeral, Canon! Listening to their Jeremiads.”

“You shall take my arm.”

“Her father was her cult, Canon.... In that she resembled much the irresistible Venetian—_Catarina Dolfin-Tron._”

“Sally seldom wrote.”

“Her time, you should remember, was hardly her own.”

“Tell me something,” he insisted, “of her broken brilliance.”

“Only by keening her could I hope to do that.”

“One would need to be a Bion. Or a Moschus....”

“We laid her star-like, in the dress-circle—out on Juliet’s bier ... Mr. and Mrs. Smee and her dresser watched ... Berinthia ... Sylvester ... came. I cannot loose from mind one of the scene-shifters said to me, ‘How bonny she looked on the bloody balcony.’”

“My poor darling.”

“On the evening of her dissolution, I regret to say there was a most unseemly fracas in the foyer—some crazy wretch demanding back her money, having booked her place in advance; every one of the staff in tears and too unstrung to heed her. Had it been a box, Canon; or even a stall! But she only paid four shillings.”

“Was there anything on my poor child’s mind distressing her at all?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“No little affair...?”

“No....”

“Nothing?”

“Your girl was never loose, Canon. She was straight. Sally was straight ... at least,” Mrs. Sixsmith added (with a slight shrug) ... “to the best of my knowledge, she was!”

“In a life of opportunity....”

“Ah, sh——, sir, sh——!”

“Had my daughter debts?”

“Indeed she had ... she owed me money. Much money. But I won’t refer to that.... Sally owed me one thousand pounds.”

“She owed you a thousand pounds?”

“She was infinitely involved.”

“Upon what could she spend so much?”

“Her clothes,” Mrs. Sixsmith replied with a nervous titter, “for one thing, were exquisite. All from the atelier of the divine Katinka King....”

“King?”

“She _knew_! Puss! The white mantilla for the Balcony scene alone cost her close on three hundred pounds.”

“And where, may I ask, is it now?”

“It disappeared,” Mrs. Sixsmith answered, a quick red shooting over her face, “in the general confusion. I hear even,” she murmured with a little laugh, “they even filched the till!”

“What of the little _ingénue_ she took to live with her?”

“May Mant? Her sister is sending her to school—if (that is) she can get her to go!”

“It was her inadvertence, I take it, that caused my daughter’s death.”

“Indeed, sir, yes. But for her—she had been setting traps! She and a girl called Tird: a charming couple!”

“Oh?”

“Your daughter and she used frequently to take their meals in the boxes, which made, of course, for mice. There was a well, you know, below the stage.”

“So she wrote her mother.”

Mrs. Sixsmith fumbled in the depths of a beaded pouch.

“There was a letter found in one of her jacket-pockets, Canon,” she said. “Perhaps you might care to have it.”

“A letter? From whom?”

“A young coster of Covent Garden, who saw your daughter at a stage-farewell.”

“Be so good, dear lady, as to inform me of its contents.”

“It’s quite illiterate,” Mrs. Sixsmith murmured, putting back her veil and glancing humorously towards the grave.

“DEAR MISS,

“I seed you at the Fisher Mat. on Friday last and you took my heart a treat. I’m only a young Gallery boy—wot’s in the flower trade. But I knows wot I knows—And you’re It. Oh Miss! I does want to see you act in Juliet in your own butey-ful ouse, if only you ad a seat as you could spare just for me and a pal o’ mine as is alright. I send you some red cars sweet and scenty fresh from Covent Market, your true-gone

“BILL.

“Hoping for tickets.”

“Poor lad. Sally would have obliged him, I feel sure,” Canon Sinquier said.

“Alas, what ephemeral creatures, Canon, we are.”

“We are in His hands.”

“She knew that. Sally’s faith never forsook her.... Oh, Canon, some day perhaps I may come to you to direct me. I’m so soul-sick.”

“Is there no one in London to advise you?”

“Nobody at all.”

“Indeed? You astonish me.”

“I’m perfectly tired of London, Canon!”

“Your husband, no doubt, has his occupation there.”

“My husband and I are estranged....”

“You’ve no child?”

“Alas, Canon! I often think ... sometimes ... I would like to adopt one. A little country buttercup! Really ... a dog, even the best of mannered—isn’t very _comme il faut._”

“You seek a boy?”

“Mer-cy _no_! Nothing of the sort.... You quite mistake my meaning.”

“Your meaning madam was obscure.”

“I imply a girl ... a blonde! And she’d share with me, sir, every facility, every advantage. Her education should be my care.”

“What is your age?”

“From thirteen——”

“An orphan?”

“Preferably.”

“I will discuss the affair presently with my wife,” Canon Sinquier said, turning in meditation his steps towards the wicket-gate.

“Before leaving your charming city, Canon, I should like beyond everything to visit the episcopal Palace: Sally used often to speak of the art-treasures there.”

“Art-treasures?”

“Old pictures!”

“Are you an amateur of old pictures?”

“Indeed I am. My husband once—Paul—he paid a perfect fortune for a Dutch painting; and will you believe me, Canon! It was only of the back view of a horse.”

“A Cuyp?”

“A Circus—with straw-knots in its tail. It used to hang in Mr. Sixsmith’s study; and there it always was! Frankly,” she added, brushing a black kid glove to her face, “I used sometimes to wish it would kick.”

“If you’re remaining here any length of time, there are some portraits at the Deanery that are considered to be of interest, I believe.”

“Portraits!”

“Old ecclesiastical ones.”

“Oh, Canon?”

“Perhaps you would come quietly to dinner. At which of our inns are you?”

“I’m at the Antelope.”

“I know that my girl would have wished our house to be open to you. You were her friend. Her champion....”

“Dear Canon—don’t ... don’t: You mustn’t! She’s at peace. Nothing can fret her. Nothing shall fret her ... ever now. And, you know, as a manageress, she was liable to vast vexations.”

“My poor pet.”

“She’s _hors de combat_: free from a calculating and dishonest world; ah, Canon!”

“We shall expect you, then, dear Sally’s friend, to dinner this evening at eight,” Canon Sinquier murmured as he walked away.

Mrs. Sixsmith put up a large chiffon sunshade and hovered staccato before the dwindling spires and ogee dome of S. Irene.

It was one of the finest days imaginable. The sun shone triumphantly in the midst of a cloudless sky.

She would loiter awhile among the bougainvilleas and dark, spreading laurels of the Cathedral green, trespassing obtusely now and then into quiet gardens, through tall wrought-iron gates.

New visions and possibilities rare rose in her mind.

With Sally still, she could do a lot. Through her she would be received with honours, into the courtly circles of the Close.

Those fine palatial houses, she reflected, must be full of wealth ... old Caroline plate and gorgeous green Limoges: Sally indeed had proved it! The day she had opened her heart in the Café Royal she had spoken of a massive tureen _too heavy even to hold._

Mrs. Sixsmith’s eyes grew big.

Her lost friend’s father wished for anecdotes; anecdotes of her “broken brilliance”; he should have them. She saw herself indulging him with “Salliana,” wrapped in a white lace mantilla of old Mechlin lace.

An invitation from Canon and Mrs. Sinquier should be adroitly played for to-night: “And once in the house!...” she schemed, starting as a peacock, a symbol of S. Irene, stretched from a bougainvillea shrouded wall its sapphire neck at her as if to peck.

Her thoughts raced on.

On a near hill beyond the river reach, the sombre little church of S. Ann changed to a thing of fancy against a yellowing sky.

From all sides, seldom in unison, pealed forth bells. In fine religious gaiety struck S. Mary, contrasting clearly with the bumble-dumble of S. Mark. S. Elizabeth and S. Sebastian in Flower Street seemed in high dispute, while across the sunset water S. Ann-on-the-Hill did nothing but complain. Near by S. Nicaise, half-paralysed, and impotent, scarcely shook. Then triumphant, in a hurricane of sound S. Irene hushed the lot.

Mrs. Sixsmith fetched a long, calm breath.

It was already the hour he had said.

“And my experience tells me,” she murmured, as she took her way towards the Deanery, “that with opportunity and time he may hope to succeed to Sir Oliver.”

● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book. ○ Text that: was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_); had extra character spacing by “plus” signs (+stretched+).