Part 6

"No," was the regretful reply. "But I often forget I'm not. There's not much difference when you're fond of a man. You get to love him so much that you don't feel the law could bring you any closer. All the same I'd like to be married to him really. I'd like to look after his clothes, and keep his things tidy--and have his children." She flushed and got up rather hurriedly. "Ready? Come along!"

In the narrow hall they encountered Mrs. Bell. She had been lying in wait, and now advanced with her be-ringed and not over-clean hand outstretched.

"Always pleased to see you, Miss Delamere," she beamed. "I'm sure Miss Hersey's been quite lost without you. No chance of your coming back to us, I suppose?" She smiled knowingly.

"You never know," said Maggy lightly. "Here's something to--buy shrimps with," she supplemented, winking at Alexandra.

Mrs. Bell gave an astonished and delighted look at the coin before her fingers closed on it.

"Well, you are a dear! I always did say you had a heart of gold--"

"Not when my purse had only coppers in it," Maggy laughed.

"What did you give her? She looked quite surprised," Alexandra inquired directly the street door had shut.

"A sovereign."

"But why?"

"Swank, my dear. Get in."

The car moved off.

"How do you like it?" she asked. "It's a Primus. Fred's got an interest in them. I wish he'd make me an agent. He's had my photo taken in one for an ad. They've got electric starting and lighting and only cost two-seventy-five. Lean back, dear. Isn't it comfy? Oh, I wonder what you'll think of my flat. You'll like the bathroom, I know. Hot water service at any time of the day or night. That's in the prospectus."

Alexandra laughed.

"May I have a bath?"

"Of course. Whenever you like. I thought you'd ask."

She could not contain her pride in her new home. Alexandra, unable to help contrasting it with her own poor room, liked its light daintiness, its exquisite tidiness. Maggy would have delighted in doing the whole work of a cottage of her own in the country. She was by nature domesticated. The personal touch was everywhere visible about the flat, especially to Alexandra who knew her. Maggy had a mania for crochet work. It was to be seen in all directions. Towels, mats, chair covers, everything that could have crochet sewn on to it was so ornamented. A large open workbox, crammed to overflowing with a medley of fancy-work, testified to the hours she gave to her needle and the many directions in which she made use of it. A mongrel terrier gave them a violent welcome as they came in, and a dissipated-looking cat blinked at them lazily from the sofa where it lay on a cushion. Maggy introduced the two animals.

"This is Mr. Onions," she said. "I saw him eating one out of a dustbin and brought him here. He was starved, Lexie. Now he lives on the fat of the land, like me. And he's no breed, like me. Neither is Mrs. Slightly. She's Slightly because she's slightly soiled, and never will clean herself, and she's called 'Mrs.' because she's not married, but ought to be. Isn't it curious, Lexie? Slightly and Onions are absolute gutter-snipes, but they've taken to cushions and cream as if they'd never known anything else. Fred can't bear them. He wanted me to have a Pekinese with a pedigree, but _I_ haven't a pedigree, so I don't want an animal with one. Slightly and Onions are such grateful devils, too. Would you really like a bath now? After you've had it we'll have tea. China tea at four and six a pound, my dear! Think of that! I believe I could drink tea dust and enjoy it if I knew it was expensive."

While Alexandra luxuriated in her bath, reckless for once of the quantity of water she used, Maggy took the opportunity of providing something exceptional in the way of tea. It began with poached eggs and finished with strawberries and cream. Maggy was not a bit hungry; she had lunched late with Woolf. But she knew Alexandra had been denying herself food and would eat heartily so long as she could do so in company. So she crammed loyally, ignoring the physical discomfort it inflicted on her.

Finally she put Alexandra into the most comfortable of her chairs and drew another close to it. Onions lay at her feet, Slightly was curled on her lap.

"Now tell me what you've been doing to get an engagement," she said.

"There's nothing to tell. No luck anywhere, that's all."

Maggy sighed. "I wish you could live here. That's impossible, I know. But why be so proud? Let me lend you a few pounds."

"I can't. I've not used the money you left. I meant to give it back to you, but I forgot."

"You make me angry. Isn't my money good enough? I'm sorry, Lexie. You've got such cracked ideas."

Alexandra decided to be frank.

"It isn't that," she said. "I would take your money if I dared and be grateful for it. I would sooner borrow from you than from any one. But if I began to borrow, even from you, I should find it more difficult to keep straight. I've never said as much to anybody before, but I don't want you to think I won't take it because it's you who are offering it."

"I think I know what you mean. Once you've taken the first step you're afraid you'll go on slithering. But you've got to take some sort of step to get a job. De Freyne said we were shabby, Lexie; but if he could see you now! What's the use of being nearly the same size as your best friend if you won't let her lend you a dress or two? Answer me that. That's not borrowing. That oughtn't to hurt your pride. We used to swop things. And I've got a dress and a hat, and a pair of shoes in the other room that are too small for me. You must have them, Lexie. No one'll look at you as you are. When managers see a girl looking shabby they only think of the reputation of their stage-door. If you'll just let me give you a leg-up toward a job! Let me drive you round to the agencies in the car instead of walking. I won't take 'no.' It's Maggy's call this time."

She prevailed in the end, forced the new frock on Alexandra and the shoes that were too small; stuffed other things into the parcel when she wasn't looking--a veil and some gloves, a pot of Bovril from her sideboard, a tin of biscuits, a bottle of scent and other things. Alexandra found them all when she got home. They dropped out of the most unexpected places. There was a box of chocolates in one sleeve, some very nice soap in another. A silk petticoat was wrapped round a bottle of lemon squash. It was so like Maggy's indiscriminate largesse. Where she loved, she was constrained to give, always with both hands. Before Alexandra left she showed her a photograph.

"Fred," she said. "Isn't he handsome? He's got one white tuft in his black hair. I wish you knew him, Lexie." Alexandra had all along been afraid she was going to say that. "I wish you _would_ meet him." Her voice was wistful. "I'm so proud of you. I've talked about you to him such a lot. I believe if he were to see you he'd--think more of me," she added humbly.

"Doesn't he think a lot of you?" asked Alexandra, surprised. She put down the photo. The face, handsome, albeit brutal, did not appeal to her.

"In a way. But I don't think he really believes you're a lady ... that a lady would be real friends with me. It's difficult to explain."

Alexandra felt sure she would not like Woolf. She instantly resented what she suspected must be his attitude toward Maggy.

"You'd be doing me a favor," Maggy said. "Would you mind very much?"

Alexandra shrank from meeting Woolf because instinctively she guessed the kind of man he was. The photograph almost told her. It showed her a man, not a gentleman, yet whose money bought him the right of way amongst gentlemen, the type of man who would assume that every woman, not a lady, had her price. She felt sorry for Maggy.

"I will meet him if you're very keen about it," she said at length. It seemed so grudging, so ungrateful to refuse the one thing required of her. Maggy would have done, had done, more than that for her. She acknowledged the concession now with a spontaneous hug.

"I'll fix a day. We'll have lunch together," she said. "It makes me so happy, Lexie, to think I've got you again--my friend. Men say women can't be friends. They don't know. Have another look round before you go. You do think it nice, don't you? Fred's taken it on a three years' agreement."

"Is he married?" asked Alexandra suddenly.

"No."

"Then surely he might marry you."

"He would never marry me," said Maggy. "I don't talk about it. I don't think of it. If he thought I'd got such an idea in my head I don't believe he'd want me any longer. He'd hate to be tied down to anything or anybody for longer than a three years' agreement."

An oppression fell on Alexandra. The room, which had been flooded by the afternoon sun, was in shade now. It looked colder, less intimate. One saw that it was a room whose furniture had been provided _en bloc_ by a Company--the Company that owned the flats. There was no individual taste about it. There was nothing permanent about it. It was not a home, and was not meant to be one.

"But after three years--" Alexandra began anxiously.

Maggy shut her eyes.

"If you ever love a man," she said, "you'll know one doesn't think in years. One simply feels--in minutes."

XIV

Alexandra did not have to avail herself of Maggy's offer of her car for the purpose of visiting the various agencies. That evening she received a post-card from Stannard requesting her to call on Mrs. Hugh Lambert at her house in South Kensington. Mrs. Lambert's name was familiar to her as that of the wife of a leading actor-manager on whose stage she was never seen. She toured the provinces with plays of her own, while he remained in London or visited New York, in both of which cities he was the idol of a vast number of impressionable women.

You could hardly pick up an illustrated paper without finding Hugh Lambert's photograph in it. You could buy picture post-cards of him at every shop where such things are on sale--full-face, in profile, in costume, out of costume, head and shoulders, half-length, full-length. How he was able to devote so much time to being photographed and yet get a reasonable amount of sleep was a mystery that did not seem capable of explanation. He was immensely popular and very good-looking in an effeminate way. Before arriving at the dignity of actor-management his talent for poetic interpretation had been freely recognized. But success had spoilt him. Now he was mannered. Costume parts were his hobby. The story went that, at one of his dress-rehearsals in which he was figuring as a Roman general in gilded armor, he asked a lady present what she thought of his appearance, and that her answer had been: "Oh, Mr. Lambert, what a girl you are for clothes!"

As Lambert's reputation had increased, so that of his wife had diminished. At one time she had promised to develop into an actress of renown. But for some reason difficult to understand she never quite succeeded. The critics said she lacked "personal magnetism," that touch of attractiveness that gets the actress's individuality across the footlights. The fact remains that she failed to please the public in the big roles that fell to her in her husband's productions. London dropped her, and Hugh Lambert's name blazed alone in colored electric lights across the front of his theater.

Then came a whisper of his marital infidelity. The couple separated. From this time onwards Mrs. Lambert was seldom seen on the London stage.

Her career was a disappointing one. None knew it better than herself. Technically and emotionally she was a finer actress than her husband's leading lady, finer indeed than most of the leading ladies of other managers. That she became a great attraction in the Provinces was nothing to her. She loathed the Provinces, their inadequate theaters, their inferior hotels, and the incessant traveling. At thirty-five she found herself as it were back at the collar-work of her earlier days of struggle, and without its compensations. Then, conjugal affection and the stimulus of ambition still unachieved had made touring bearable and often enjoyable because she shared it with Lambert.

Now she was alone.

She hated the sordid manufacturing towns and their unsophisticated audiences, the eternal sameness of the self-vaunted watering-places, the dull spas where fashionable frequenters of the pump room would condescend to patronize her whom they would not pay to see in London. She was a tired woman.

To her came Alexandra at eleven o'clock on the morning appointed. She had quite forgotten, until her maid brought her up the card, that she had asked Stannard to find her a small-part actress who would also be useful as a companion. She saw Alexandra at once.

The impression the latter first got of her was a pathetic one. She never forgot it. Mrs. Lambert was sitting up in bed. The small oval of her face was too pale for health, and her dark hair accentuated her look of fragility. On the dressing-table lay a rich copper-colored transformation.

"I hope you don't mind seeing me in bed," she said. "I hate keeping people waiting. It's so selfish. In my time I've sat on dress-baskets outside dressing-room doors waiting for hours till some selfish wretch took it into his head to see me, although he'd made an appointment and knew perfectly well I was there. I vowed I'd never treat any one in the same way. Sit down somewhere and tell me about yourself. What have you done?"

"Very little," Alexandra confessed. "I'm almost an amateur."

Mrs. Lambert made a wry face. "Not a moneyed one, I hope?"

"I've got forty pounds a year."

"Officer's daughter's pension?"

"Yes." Alexandra looked surprised. "How did you know?"

"I'm one myself. Officer's daughters can't do much when they're left stranded. They teach if they're ugly and sensible enough, and they go on the stage if they're sufficiently pretty and foolish. How long have you been at it?"

"Three months."

"And how long in an engagement?"

"I rehearsed for three weeks at the Pall Mall in the chorus.... I wasn't wanted."

"I don't wonder. I can't quite see a girl like you in the Pall Mall chorus. You must have had rather an unpleasant time of it there. Were you worried by men? Before I married I used to wear a wedding ring. In my innocence, I thought it would be something of a protection, but it had quite a contrary effect." She gave Alexandra a sympathetic look. "Would you really like to come on tour with me?"

"Mr. Stannard didn't say what you required," said Alexandra. "Perhaps you won't think I'm experienced enough."

"Well, I want some one to thread ribbons through my underclothes, to sleep in my room when I see bogies, and play a small part--a servant flicking chairs. I can't promise that it will increase your theatrical reputation, but perhaps when you leave me, some minor manager might be induced to give you a decent part on the strength of your having been in Mrs. Hugh Lambert's company. You'll go about with me. I'll pay all hotel expenses and give you thirty shillings a week. If you're hard up for clothes, say so. I've always got a lot more than I want, and as I send them to the Theatrical Ladies' Guild you needn't feel under any obligation about taking them. I hope you'll decide to come. I should like you to. You won't be overworked and I'll treat you decently. I'm not a cat."

"I'd love to come if you'll have me."

"Well, we'll consider it arranged then. Stannard will see to the contract. The tour is for three months. I leave town in about a fortnight, but you might as well come and stop here in the meantime. We shall get to know each other and rub corners off. Would you care to? Then come back to-night, somewhere about six. You can help me with my shopping and packing. I'll keep you busy!" She held out a thin artistic hand.

There was no maid in the hall, so Alexandra opened the door to let herself out. A man stood on the steps, about to ring the bell. He was thirty or so, of an aristocratic type. They both hesitated for a moment. Then he asked:

"Can you tell me if Mrs. Lambert is in?"

"Yes--I think so," she said.

"Would you mind telling her I'd like to take her to lunch. I'll wait if she isn't down yet."

"Yes, certainly," said Alexandra. It struck her that he seemed to be aware of the late hours she kept. It argued intimacy. "What name shall I say?"

"Oh--Chalfont."

She went upstairs again, knocked at the door, and found Mrs. Lambert with the morning's papers on the bed. She was reading of her husband's projected departure for America with his successful repertoire. There were tears in her eyes.

"I shall have to take to glasses," she said, looking up. "I can't read without weeping. What is it?"

"Mr. Chalfont is downstairs. He wants to know if you will lunch with him."

"Please tell Lord Chalfont," said Mrs. Lambert in a low voice, "that it's the anniversary of my separation from my husband, and that I'm lunching on my heart. But he can come to dinner to-night if he likes. Ask him to put you in a taxi."

She returned to the newspapers.

XV

"Lexie's coming to lunch to-morrow," Maggy informed Woolf. "We must give her a good one, Fred, and you'll behave, won't you, D.D.?"

"D.D." in Maggy's language of love stood for Dearest Darling. She was not free from the modern, time-saving habit, set by trade advertisements and the halfpenny papers, of abbreviating words in common use down to their lowest denomination.

"So she's woken up to the fact that there may be something to be got out of you," yawned Woolf.

"I wish you wouldn't talk like that, Fred. Lexie couldn't be on the make-haste. She's not made that way."

"Sounds as if she's too good and uninteresting to live."

"She isn't uninteresting. You'll like her. She's very pretty. Do be good and do me credit."

"Well ... I like that!" Woolf stared at her, half-amused.

"I mean, don't say the things you say to me. She's sensitive."

"My dear girl, don't teach me how to talk to women. Judging by what you've told me I'm inclined to think your copybook Lexie is a deep 'un. I don't think I'll come, anyway."

"Oh, but you must. I've asked her on purpose to meet you. I want her to see what a duck you are, and to like you, and not to think me bad just because I let you wipe your shoes on me."

She slipped to the ground and sat at his feet. Woolf liked her in her devoted moods. Like many another unworthy man, adulation gave him peculiar satisfaction. Maggy was rarely flippant now. She loved Woolf with a passion that almost frightened her. It was not a passion of the mind. He dominated her in other ways. She was too transparent to hide how much she cared. She gave too much. It was her pleasure, when she knew he was going to stay several hours with her, to take off his shoes and put on the pumps which with a few other things he kept at the flat.

She commenced to unlace his shoes now. Then she dragged his pumps from under the sofa, kissing them first before she put them on his feet.

"You funny creature. What makes you do that?" he asked, well enough aware of her reason, but desirous of extracting an expression of it.

"Because I adore you. I feel like Mary Magdalene or whoever it was who broke the precious ointment all over her Master's feet. Oh, yes, I know who it was. But do you think she wouldn't have done it just the same if He had been an ordinary man? He was _her_ lord. She never thought of Him as everybody's Lord. That isn't blasphemy. It's love."

"You don't know how I love you," she went on ardently. "Men think they know how to love, but they never love as a woman loves. I love you so much that first of all I wish I had been your mother, so that I might have held you in my arms when you were tiny and given you dill water for your tummy aches, and bathed and powdered you.... And next I wish I had been your twin sister to have grown up with you.... And next I wish I had been the first woman in your life.... And next I wish.... Oh, and I'm thankful to be--just yours." She sat up, and went on in rather a tense voice. "I wonder if you'll ever get tired of me. Could you, Fred?"

"Well, I'm not yet." He gave a playful pull at her loosened hair.

"And treat me like men treat the A.F.'s in story-books."

"What's an A.F.?"

"Abandoned female, you goose. That's what I am. And when you've finished with me will you leave me to starve in a garret while you live in a mansion with a beautiful and good wife? And will I haunt your doorstep and throw vitriol in your belovedest face?"

"What nonsense you're talking, Maggy."

"It isn't all nonsense. It isn't only in the story-books that women do that. They do it in real life too. I read about a case in the paper not long ago, and the judge asked the girl why she did it. She answered 'Because I love him.' The silly judge said: 'That's a funny way of showing love,' and there was laughter in Court, in brackets. Laughter in Court! I expect it sounded to that girl like laughter in hell. I know what she must have felt. I daresay she lived so long with the man and loved him so much that she felt as good as his wife. Then when he left her, she must have gone mad, poor thing."

She got up and stood in front of him, looking very sweet and alluring.

"How long will you love me, I wonder?" she mused.

Woolf drew her on to his knees.

"So long as you look like you do now."

"You mean so long as I'm pretty? Wouldn't you love me if I looked like poor Mrs. Slightly? She's losing her fur."

"What's the matter with Mrs. Slightly?" he asked.

He did not care for Maggy's mongrel pets, and his tone was not encouraging. It put Maggy on her guard. She had a premonition that it would be best to hide Mrs. Slightly's secret until it could no longer be hidden.

"I'm not quite sure," she said.

"Where is she?"

"I left her in the bathroom. I'll get her. She hasn't had her supper yet."

She went out of the room. Woolf heard her calling the cat softly, then came a smothered exclamation, and she called to him eagerly, excitedly.

"Oh, Fred! Fred! Come here! Come and _look_!"

He followed her. She was standing before Mrs. Slightly's basket. The cat was purring, its eyes half-shut, tired after the tremendous function of motherhood. Six little rat-like, squirming bodies lay against her own.

"Six of them!" breathed Maggy triumphantly. "Aren't they lovely! Wasn't it worth going on the tiles for, Mrs. Dearest? The cat's cradle is full, full!"

Woolf disengaged her arm from his.

"It's disgusting," he said angrily. "You ought to have got rid of her before this, or--or kept her in. You can't keep the kittens. They'll have to be drowned."

Maggy looked at him blankly.

"Aren't you pleased?" she asked, surprised.

"Pleased! At a sight like that! Besides, you told me a lie. I won't have lies. You must have known before you went to the theater that the cat had had kittens--"

"I didn't. Oh, how dare you say so! Do you think I'd have gone out and left her all these hours without any milk by her side if I'd guessed they were coming so soon?"

She flew off, and came back with a saucer of bread and milk. She put it on the floor and went down on her hands and knees beside the newly-born animals. There was a rapt expression on her face.

"I don't think I'll stop," said Woolf huffily, and moved to the door.

He expected that she would call him back, but to his surprise she did not even look up. She was wholly absorbed with the natural phenomenon. For the first time in their intercourse she was oblivious of his presence. She did not even hear him go. She knelt entranced.

At last a sigh broke from her. She became articulate.

"Oh, you babies!" she whispered. "Oh, you little, little things!"

XVI