IV.
The Oriental, on Boxing Night, was like a baker's oven for temperature, and an unopened sardine-barrel for populousness. The East-end had poured its rollicking multitudes into the vast theatre, which seethed over with noisy vitality. There was much traffic in ginger beer, oranges, Banbury cakes, and "bitter." The great audience roared itself hoarse over old choruses with new words. Lucy Gray, as Prince Prettypet, made an instant success. The mashers of the Oriental ogled her in silent flattery. Her clear elocution, her charming singing voice, her sprightly dancing, her chic, her frank vulgarity, when she "let herself go," took every heart captive. Every heart, that is, save one, which was filled with sickness and anguish, and covered with a veil of fine linen. The heir of the house of Redhill cowered at the back of the O.P. stage-box—the only place in the house disengaged when he drove up in a mistaken dress-suit. It was the first time he had seen Prince Prettypet since the merry tea-party, and he did not know why he was seeing her now. He hoped she did not see him. She pirouetted up to the front of his box pretty often during the evening, and several times hurled ancient wheezes at the riotous funnymen from that coign of vantage. Spoken so near his ear, the vulgar jokes tingled through him like lashes from a whip. Once she sang a chorus, winking in his direction. But that was the business of the song, and impersonal. He saw no sure signs of recognition, and was glad.
THE ORIENTAL ON BOXING NIGHT.
When, during the gradual but gorgeous evolution of the Transformation Scene, he received a note from her, he remained glad. It ran, "The bearer will take you behind. I have no one to see me home. Always your friend—Lucy." He went "behind," following his guide through a confusion of coatless carpenters waving torches of blue and green fire from the wings, and gauzy, highly coloured Whitechapel girls ensconcing themselves in uncomfortable attitudes on wooden pedestals, which were mounting and descending.
Georgie Spanner was bustling about, half crazed, amid a hubbub perfectly inaudible from the front; but he found time to scowl at Frank, as that gentleman stumbled over the pantaloon and fell against a little iron lever, whose turning might have plunged the stage in darkness. Frank found Lucy in a tiny cellar with whitewashed walls and a rough counter, on which stood a tin basin and a litter of "make up" materials. She had "changed" before he came. It was the first time for years he had seen her in her true womanly envelope. Assuredly she had grown far lovelier, and her face was flushed with triumph; otherwise it was the old Lucy. The Prince was washed off with the paint.
Frank's eyes filled with tears. How hard he had been on her! Nay, had he not misjudged her? She looked so frail, so little, so childish, what guile could she know? It was all mere surface-froth on her lips! How narrow to set up his life, his ideals, as models, patterns! The poor little thing had her own tastes, her own individuality! How hard she worked to earn her own living! He bent down and kissed her forehead, remorsefully, as one might kiss an overscolded child. She drew his head down lower and kissed him—passionately—on the lips. "Let us wait a little," she said, as he spoke of sending for a hansom. "Sloman, the lessee, gives a little supper on the stage after the show—he'll be annoyed if I don't stay. He'll be delighted to have you."
The pantomime had gone better than anyone had expected. It had been insufficiently rehearsed, and though everybody had said "it'll be all right at night"—in the immemorial phrase of the profession—they had said it more automatically than confidently. Consequently everyone was in high feather, and agreeably surprised at the accuracy of the prophesying. Even Georgie Spanner ceased to scowl under the genial influences of success and Sloman's very decent champagne. The air was full of laughter and gaiety, and everybody (except the clown) cracked jokes. The leading ladies made themselves pleasant, and did not swear. Everybody seemed to have acquired a new respect for Lucy, seeing her with such a real Belgravian swell. Probably she would soon have a theatre of her own.
It was the Prig's first excursion into Bohemia, and he thought the natives very civil-spoken, naïve, and cordial. Frank had no doubt now that Lucy was right, that he was a Prig to want to redeem mankind. And the conviction that he lacked worldly wisdom was sealed for aye.