Part 14

"Your cough doesn't seem to go," he said. "People in the stalls don't want to be reminded of graveyards. It's rather suggestive. You ought to see a doctor."

"I'll find out who my panel doctor is," she said.

"I should prefer you to go to Bernard Meer. Son of the late Sir Morton Meer, you know. Like his father, he's a throat specialist, and not given to charging fees to members of the profession. Say you're at the Pall Mall and mention my name when you see him."

She was reluctant to do as De Freyne wished, but he was insistent, and she promised to call at the Wimpole Street address which he gave her. It seemed rather absurd to go to a specialist for a bottle of cough mixture. She took her slight throat affection as a matter-of-course, a cold induced by the draughts on the stage and the change of temperature to which she was exposed after leaving the theater at night.

When, therefore, she presented herself next morning in Wimpole Street she was in a very apologetic frame of mind. A full waiting-room, testifying to the doctor's importance, did not help to restore her confidence. She was the last to arrive and had a long time to wait. When her turn came to enter the consulting room she was more nervous than she had been when making her first appearance on the stage. She had pictured Dr. Meer as an elderly man, and her discomfiture was all the greater when she found him to be a young one, not over thirty. It may have been prudish--in some respects she was apt to suffer from excess of delicacy--but she had a maidenly dread of the physical examination which she knew she would have to undergo. Hardly had the door closed behind her when she felt that the specialist's keen gray eyes had X-rayed through her sable coat and made a mental photograph of her slightly protruding collarbones.

Schooled to read faces, he saw how nervous she was and wondered at it. Nervousness in De Freyne's young ladies was something of an anachronism.

"Well, what's wrong?" he asked cheerfully.

"Only a cold," she replied. "It seems ridiculous to bother you."

He smiled. For so young a man and an unmarried one his manner was reassuringly paternal. It was not artificial pretentiousness, but genuine and natural to him.

"You ought not to be in the habit of catching cold in such a gorgeous fur coat. We'll have it off, please."

Bereft of the garment, her fragility was evident enough. Bernard Meer admired slight women; but this girl's physique struck him as too delicate for stage-work. He thought, too, that he detected signs of privation in her face. Why that should be when apparently she could afford to dress so expensively was a puzzle to him. He sounded her carefully.

"There's nothing much the matter, is there?" she asked, when he had done.

"Not at present. But you're too thin. You want looking after, coddling. Are you very keen on the stage?"

"I don't find it altogether alluring," she made answer a little reluctantly; "but I can't afford to give it up."

"That isn't absolutely necessary. Only--well, the luxuries that the average woman can easily do without are essential to you. Get the person who gave you those furs to treat you to a few guinea jars of turtle soup and--"

Alexandra's flaming face made him stop.

"The lady who gave them to me is dead," she said quietly.

A little while ago she would have resented Meer's words as an intentional insult. Now she knew that her connection with the stage had suggested them to him. Probably he meant nothing offensive. As a matter of fact he did not. Still, for some reason which she could not define, she felt hurt that he should have thought it necessary to convey what he did.

She felt, too, that his scrutiny was not entirely that of the physician. She sensed the man in it. Had she also been aware that he was admiring her--a circumstance of which his impassive face gave no indication--and that he was pleasantly surprised to find her free from a weakness common to the general run of De Freyne's beauties, her perturbation would have been greater than it was.

"The trouble with you," he said with friendly intent, "is mainly want of proper nourishment. Please forgive the question, but--are you hard up?"

"No, not at present. At least, not very. I was rather, before I went back to the Pall Mall."

"Back? You were there before?"

"Yes."

He seemed to be thinking.

"Are you in the chorus?"

"I used to be. Now I have a small part."

"But not much in the way of salary?"

"Thirty-five shillings a week. But I have forty pounds a year of my own besides. I should be quite reasonably well off if it were not for the many little things I have to find for the theater. I ought not to complain. There are thousands of girls far worse off than I am."

"And you live--where?"

He made a note of the address.

"Your appetite?" was the next question. "For instance, what did you have for breakfast this morning?"

"Tea, and bread and butter ... and there was an egg."

"The usual sort of egg?" he augmented cynically.

"A little more than usual," she replied with a faint smile.

"I see. And I suppose you will have lunch at a bunshop?"

"Yes. Please don't look so prejudiced. Some bunshops are quite satisfying places. One sees plenty of men there as well as women."

"That's so. Anaemic clerks who should be eating a good midday meal to make up for an indifferent supper at night, and girls who need meat contenting themselves with coffee and a roll, or perhaps pastry! Now I'm going to write you a prescription. Mind you get it made up and take it. Let me see you again three days from now. If you don't come I shall visit you. Seriously, you need to take care of yourself."

He stopped the protest that rose to her lips, gave her the prescription, and, again impressing on her the necessity of coming to report progress, let her go. Why he, who had never previously felt any hankering after an actress, should want to see more of a stray girl, and one of De Freyne's at that, was more than he could explain to himself.

Alexandra kept the appointment and several others after it. Her first shyness vanished. Meer disguised his personal interest in her because he wanted to benefit her professionally. Not until he had practically cured her throat trouble did he give her any indication of his real feelings.

"I think you'll be all right now if you take care of yourself," he told her one morning.

"I've given you a lot of trouble," she rejoined gratefully.

She placed two guineas on a side table. He picked up the coins and handed them back to her.

"Certainly not."

"But--please? You can't do it for nothing."

"I haven't done it for nothing. If you want to recompense me, you can quite easily. I should be honored if you will lunch with me. Will you?"

"But," she hesitated, "I don't go out to lunch with anybody--ever."

"That's why I said I should be honored if you would. Come, we're quite friends. I've seen you four times for ten minutes!"

She wanted to accept. After all, as she had expressed it to Maggy when Woolf had asked her out, there was no harm in lunching with a man. She was reminded of that opinion, now that it applied to herself. She wanted to accept Meer's invitation, but was held back by a suspicion of what these lunches, suppers and dinners were meant to lead to. Men seemed to think that a girl on the stage could be bought for the price of a dinner! And then, in her indecision, she looked at Meer, saw the friendly eagerness in his face, and let reason give way to inclination.

"I don't want to refuse," she said.

Five minutes later they were on their way to the Carlton. Meer would have preferred enjoying her society in a less popular place, but there was a matinee that day and the Pall Mall was so close to the great restaurant.

When Alexandra knew where they were bound for diffidence seized on her. Maggy might be there. If she were, and saw her with a man, what would she think? Alexandra felt that there could be no two answers to that question. She entered the big, rose-colored room in fear and trembling.

Maggy, however, was not lunching at the Carlton that day. But Lander, the composer of Alexandra's new song, saw her and carried the news to De Freyne.

"Who do you think was lunching with Bernard Meer at the Carlton to-day?" he began.

"No woman," answered De Freyne. "He hates 'em. Thinks they've got fluff in their heads instead of brains, and that's why they're so light-headed. Told me so himself."

"It was a woman for all that. Nobody less than little Hersey! And, by Jove, it was quite fascinating to watch her. At first she hardly spoke a word; but before long she might have been alone with him in the restaurant. She seemed to have clean forgotten everybody else in the place. And he was just as taken up with her. They couldn't take their eyes off one another. Wonder what it means?"

"Oh, nothing. You've got hold of the wrong end of the stick, my dear chap. Why, she only met the fellow a fortnight ago. I sent her to him. Meer wouldn't look at one of my lot, except professionally."

However, when he saw Alexandra that evening he chaffed her.

"I hear you were lunching with Meer to-day," he said. "Was that part of his prescription?" Something in her face so entirely pure and at the same time so piteous, made him refrain from saying more. He had once seen much the same expression in his own daughter's face when she had shyly told him that some one had proposed to her and was coming for his consent. "Damn it all," he reflected. "She's going to fall in love like any ordinary girl!" Aloud he said, "Meer isn't a marrying sort, you know."

Alexandra bent her head as she passed him.

Bernard Meer was in the stalls that night. She saw him looking at her. Once he smiled, and, trembling, she smiled back, and despised herself for smiling, since now like nearly all the others she had "a friend" in the house.

XXXVII

Prince's was filling up for supper. The diapason of many voices, the tinkle of silver and glass, merged pleasantly with the music of the band; the sound was like a paean of praise to Amphitryon.

Maggy and Woolf occupied a table at the end of the room opposite the balcony. The latter had been back about ten days, and Maggy was happy again. She lived so entirely in the present that she had actually and honestly forgotten to tell him about her visit to Purton Towers. Of Chalfont she had seen nothing more. Woolf so filled her thoughts that, for once, she was even out of touch with Alexandra. A minute or two at night between entrances and exits was all they were able to give to one another. Then Maggy's one subject was "her Fred," and Alexandra's reserve kept her silent about Bernard Meer.

"Look over there," said Woolf rather suddenly. His straying eyes, ever in search of youth and beauty, had lit on a face he knew.

"Where?" asked Maggy, gazing about at random.

"On your left. Four tables away."

Maggy gave a start of astonishment when at last she discerned Alexandra with a man, a highly-presentable man, rather stern of face, good-looking and comparatively young. Her Lexie with a man! She stared, tongue-tied.

"See her?" asked Woolf, and broke the spell of silence that held her.

Maggy in her excitement half rose from her chair and called a greeting to Alexandra. Until then, the latter, though fully prepared to see Maggy in such a place, had been unaware of her presence. At the sound of her voice she looked up, nodded and smiled. Meer, turning to see who had attracted her attention, gave Maggy a glance full of interest. It was evident to him that she and Alexandra were something more than mere acquaintances.

"What a striking-looking girl," he said. "Who is she?"

"Her name is Maggy Delamere," replied Alexandra. "We used to live together at Sidey Street."

"And now?"

"She has a flat," she said with a little constraint.

"Is she on the stage?"

"Yes. At the Pall Mall. Haven't you noticed her? She's in the front row."

"I didn't know De Freyne had any married women in his chorus," said Meer thoughtfully.

"But Maggy isn't married," began Alexandra, and then stopped in confusion, suspecting that he must have seen the conspicuously broad wedding ring on Maggy's left hand, just as she herself could see it. She crumbled her bread nervously.

"Are you in favor of that sort of thing?" Meer asked abruptly, showing that he had been following her line of thought.

"It's very usual--on the stage," she answered evasively.

"You don't condemn it."

"I don't condemn my friend, if that's what you mean."

"But do you condone it?" he persisted.

"Oh, how can I tell you? It's a question of what one feels individually," she countered desperately. "With a woman it doesn't necessarily mean that she has chosen that way.... Sometimes she has no alternative."

"You mean that your friend would rather be married?"

"Much rather."

After a pause he said: "Then what is your opinion of a man who only offers a woman love without marriage?"

"Not a very high one. I couldn't respect him," she replied, greatly embarrassed. "It seems such an unfair advantage to take of a girl who has more than enough of unfair things to contend with already. I--I would rather not talk about it, if you don't mind."

It seemed to her that he was deliberately sounding her code of morality before making the proposition which she felt was imminent if she continued to see him. She could no longer disguise from herself that he wanted her, and that her own instinct was not one of flight. Had she met him before she had gone on the stage she would have estimated his feelings toward her correctly, seen that he was honorably attracted to her. But her recent experiences had distorted her views about courtship. Her heart would have beaten to a different tune had she known that his motive in questioning her about Maggy was merely to ascertain her opinion on a matter which, owing to her connection with the stage, must be familiar to her. After her expressed desire to avoid it he let it drop, and turned to another, more vital to himself and her, on which he had made up his mind to speak to her that evening.

"How long must you and I go on like this?" he asked in an undertone, full of suppressed feeling.

Her heart thumped in her throat so that she could not answer.

"I mean," he said, "that it's not very satisfying seeing you so occasionally. It's true we haven't known one another very long as time goes, but it has been long enough for me to realize my own feelings. I want you. Those three words mean everything that a man can say to a woman. What is your answer?"

The surge of feeling, the thrill she experienced as he said "I want you," left her in no doubt as to her own emotions. She not only loved, she loved without reservation, with a magnitude so huge that it seemed as though a transport of yearning were being pumped into her by some external Titanic force. And it came from him, the man facing, close to her. She heard the clarion cry of sex for the first time in a crowded restaurant, where she could not even cover her face with her hands and so hide her besieged virginity from the sight of men. She could only sit still and feel her shame creeping into her face. Maggy, glancing her way every now and then, saw the agitation that was moving her and thought she was going to faint.

"Lexie's ill!" she whispered anxiously, and was about to get up and go to her.

Woolf's hand detained her. He had been watching Meer, and also seen Alexandra's face.

"Sit still," he commanded.

"But she's going to faint!"

"Not she!"

"Then--what's the matter with her?"

"_Can't you see?_" he chuckled.

Maggy gasped. Lexie, of all people--at last! It was as if she saw a huge warm wave gathering, gaining speed, advancing on the game little swimmer and bearing her off captive.

XXXVIII

Alexandra sat on the edge of her bed. In the little room with the cistern the temperature was bitterly cold, but she was insensible to it.

He had said wonderful things. He had said she was beautiful.... By the light of the candle she peered into the glass, trying to see her face as he had seen it. Perhaps it was the effect of the two great plaits of dark hair that hung framing it, or of a certain new softness in her eyes, of something knowledgeable that she had not seen there before, but she felt that she was looking at herself for the first time unveiled.

Her hands went to her nightgown, holding it to her; then, as involuntarily, they loosened.

Shyly, as though she were not alone, she gazed back at the dim reflection in the mirror and knew that girlhood was behind her, that she was no longer, as Kipling's little maid,

"A field unfilled, a web unwove, A bud withheld from sun or bee, An alien in the courts of Love, And priestess of his shrine is she."

All rosy, she blew out the light.

XXXIX

Next morning Maggy was round at Sidey Street. She felt that confidences were in the air. If Alexandra was not dying to impart them she at least was "all of a twitter" to hear them.

"Lexie," she cried, bursting in, "don't have any secrets from me. Who is he?"

Alexandra was in the act of writing a letter. She looked up apathetically.

"You mean the man I was with last night?" she said. "I'm not going to see him any more, so we won't talk about him."

"Oh, yes, we will! Why, I do believe you're writing to him now!"

"You can read what I've written."

Thus invited, Maggy looked over her shoulder. Alexandra had begun a stilted little note to Bernard Meer in which she briefly refused to meet him any more.

"I don't think you'll post it," said Maggy shrewdly. "It doesn't ring true. Besides, what do you want to run away from him for? He looked just the sort of man one could trust, not a bit like the stage-door pest kind."

She cross-examined Alexandra, dragged from her the few bald details of her half-dozen meetings with Meer.

"Of course you're in love with him," she declared. "I saw it in your face. If I hadn't been so taken up with Fred I should have found out things before last night. Lexie, what's going to happen?"

The tone in which Maggy asked the question showed that she expected a particular answer, that she would be surprised if it were not the one which followed the line of least resistance. It set Alexandra wavering.

"Oh, Maggy," she said desperately, "if any one had told me a few months ago that I should ever have had to fight against that sort of temptation I should have died of shame! All last night I lay awake hating and despising myself, and all the time I was trying to find excuses for myself. I never thought love would come like this, taking one unawares, giving one no time to prepare for it. If I ever let myself think of it at all it was as of some fragrant and beautiful little plant that one could watch shoot and grow and bud--"

"Instead of that it's gone and done a kind of Mango trick like I saw at St. George's Hall once--sprouted up into a full-grown tree while you waited, or rather while you didn't wait. I daresay love might have come as you picture it, Lexie, if you'd stayed at home. Plants grow faster in a forcing-house; and the stage is, well--a hot-bed. If you're really in love you might as well try and get away from it as from an express train when it's bowled you over. After all, there's just a chance you won't get scrunched to pieces if you take it lying down."

For the hundredth time in the last twelve hours Alexandra found herself wondering whether she dared follow Maggy's example, and give herself to the man she loved. If she did, what would be the outcome of it? How long would such an affection, at least on the man's part, last? Always those old set views of hers about life and morality rose up to haunt her indecision. Was she, after all, to recant, give up the fight, own herself beaten?

"Poor old Lexie," murmured Maggy, taking her hand after a long silence.

"Maggy,"--Alexandra held her eyes questioningly--"tell me honestly: do you in any way regret what you did? You know why I want to know."

Maggy looked within herself.

"No," she answered thoughtfully, "I don't. I do admit there's one thing that spoils it, makes it different to being married. You often wonder at night, or first thing in the morning, sometimes even in daytime, whether it's one day nearer the end or how far off the end is. I'm prepared for Fred to get tired of me one day, though I hope it won't come for years and years. But so long as he's straight over it I'll meet him half way. I'll go to my own funeral, and not sniffle. It wouldn't be reasonable to refuse to take the consequences. You've got to choose for yourself. I believe it's the only way for us girls on the stage. With most of us marriage is an accident. Only go into it with your eyes open. Leave out the fairy-tale notion that 'they lived happily ever afterwards,' or at least half of it. Thank goodness for the 'happily,' and be satisfied with it."

"If only I could get right away," murmured Alexandra. "Here I feel hunted down. I sit and think and think and get weaker and weaker. And this room and the street simply shriek to me to leave them."

"I know all the symptoms, dear. They're new to you, but I've had them over and over again. The funny part is, Lexie, now it's come to the point I feel different about you. Although I was always telling you to climb over the garden wall to the little boy next door, now that you're half way up I'm afraid to give you a push. You might drop into something you didn't expect.... Oh, Lexie, pet, in my mind's eye I only see you dressed in white and orange blossoms. It's a damned shame you shouldn't have them.... And yet, if you don't, it may be worse later on, because you know as well as I do that you can't do any good on the stage all by yourself, and it's better to have the man you'd have married if you'd been given the chance than one you don't care a rap about except for what he can give you. It all sounds so muddley when I try and put things into words, but I know what I mean myself."

She stayed a little longer, but, after this, they both instinctively kept to the shallows of conversation, avoiding the depths. When she had gone, Alexandra, as Maggy had prophesied, tore up her letter. She took a fresh sheet and without hesitating wrote, "Just when you wish--Alexandra."

Then she went out and posted it, and, having betrayed herself, came home and wept bitterly.

XL