Conrad in Quest of His Youth: An Extravagance of Temperament

by Leonard Merrick

CHAPTER XIII

"I must say I was very happy on the stage," sighed the Countess of Darlington, lifting the teapot.

The Earl of Armoury's mother threw up her eyes. A shapeless, waddling woman, the duchess, with a sanctimonious voice. There were elderly gentlemen who, remembering Flossie's agility with a tambourine at the old Pavilion, felt reformation to be a sad affair when they looked at her.

"Not 'happy,'" she said piously, "dazzled—only dazzled, dear Lady Darlington. Ladies like you and I can't be happy on the stage. It goes against the grain with you and I."

Lady Darlington pouted. She was provokingly pretty when she pouted. She had pouted at Darlington on the day he met her.

"But I was happy," she declared.

"You weren't satisfied in your heart; I'm sure you always felt there was better work to be done?"

"Oh yes, but I hoped to get leading parts in time."

"I mean purer work," explained the duchess, wincing, "social, helpful work."

Lady Darlington laughed. She was prettier still when she laughed. She had laughed at Darlington on the day he proposed.

"No, really not," she said frankly, "I never thought about it for a moment. Do you know, Duchess, I've always wanted to ask you—didn't you ache to go back to it after you married?"

"Oh never," exclaimed the duchess; "I was grateful to Providence for letting me get away from it all. Circumstances made me go into the business, but I was never a pro—I mean to say a 'professional'—by nature. My father, the captain, died when I was quite a child, and I had my dear mother to support."

"M'yes," murmured Lady Darlington, looking at the ceiling. "You were before my time, but of course I've heard.... Perhaps if I had been in the music-halls I should have been glad to get away from it all," she added; "I was in the theatres, you know."

"The 'smalls,' I think—I mean to say the 'minor provincial towns?'" said the duchess a shade tartly; "one of Jenkinson's Number II. companies, wasn't it?"

"Lots of people considered it was better than the Number I.," returned Lady Darlington with pride, "and the Rotherham Advertiser said a voice of such diapason as mine wasn't often heard in musical comedy."

"Such what as yours?"

"Diapason. Won't you have some muffin?"

"They always serve me out so," said the duchess, "but I will have just a mossel." She regarded her hostess anxiously; "I hope you aren't going to be mad?" she said.

"I am mad," admitted Rosalind—her name was Rosalind—"mad with the longing for auld lang syne. If I weren't crazy I shouldn't own it, because you can't enter into my feelings a bit, but you're the only woman I meet who ought to be able to understand them. Long? Sometimes for a treat I tell the servants I'm not at home to anyone, and I shut myself up and long the tears into my eyes!"

"You cry for the stage? Oh, but, my dear Lady Darlington, you mustn't give way, you must be firm with yourself. Think, just think, what an example you'd be setting if you took to it again! In our position we have the Country to consider. The middle classes say 'What's good enough for the Aristocracy must be good enough for us.' We have to consider our influence on those in a humbler sphere."

"I'm not going to take to it again," said Rosalind. "How can I? Besides, I don't want so much to act—I've no ambition except to be jolly—it's the life I ache for. I'm dull, dull, dull! I want to be among the people I remember. My heart turns back to Dixie. I wouldn't say 'thank you' to be with actors and actresses in London, in the West-End; they're only imitations of the Lords and Ladies that bore me. I want to be on the road with a Number II. crowd—yes, and a Number III. crowd for preference. I want to arrive in a hole-and-corner town on a Sunday night, and have supper in lodgings, and see stout in a jug again, and call the landlady 'Ma.' Oh, how soul-stirring it would be to call a landlady 'Ma!'"

"Lodgings? Look at your drawing-room, with Louis Cans furniture!" said the duchess admonishingly. "You can't be serious?"

"Serious? I'm pathetic! Of course I should find I had been spoilt for it—the pleasure wouldn't last; the stout would taste sour soon, and I should find the landlady impudent, and the lodgings dirty; I daresay I should wish myself back in St. James' Square before I had been away a month. But I don't want to give up St. James' Square—I only want a week-end sometimes as a tonic. That's all I want, just week-ends. If I could be Rosalind Heath again from Saturday to Monday sometimes, I'd be Lady Darlington all the rest of the year cheerfully enough."

This was the moment when her Idea was born. As the idea had consequences, it is noteworthy that this was the moment. If she could be Rosalind Heath again from Saturday to Monday! She had never debated the possibility; but why not—why not even for a week? She couldn't call herself "Rosalind Heath" again, because everybody in Theatre Land knew that Rosalind Heath had married the Earl of Darlington, but who among a lowly band of players would know her face? She had not been a star. All she needed for the freak was a confidante. What had become of Tattie Lascelles?

Lady Darlington blushed with self-reproach. That she should have to question what had become of Tattie! She sat, after the duchess had departed, remembering days when she and Tattie had been bosom friends. They had shared hopes and lodgings; they had told each other their peccadilloes, and even their salaries. And now she didn't know where Tattie was? Could St. James' Square have made her heartless? How had their correspondence died? ... Ah yes, in Tattie's last letter ages ago she had asked for the sum of five pounds "just for a fortnight." But how monstrous of Tattie to feel constrained because she hadn't sent it back! Who had expected it?

On the seventeenth day of December, when Darlington, looking a ridiculous object, had boomed away in a new car, of which he was inordinately proud, Rosalind stole guiltily into a news-agent's. She would not meet her lord again for a month. Her beautiful eyes sparkled, and her cheeks were flushed. She tendered two pennies to a vulgar man, smoking a clay pipe behind the counter, and asked for the Stage. To the happily constituted there can seem nothing calculated to kindle the emotions in the act of buying a twopenny paper in a squalid shop, but Rosalind had a temperament, and temperaments play queer tricks. (See Conrad's.) The tender grace of a day that was dead hallowed the damp copy of a journal in which she had formerly advertised that she was "Resting;" the touch of vanished hands sent little thrills to her heart as her gaze embraced familiar names.

She went back to the drawing-room fire, and read them diligently. Dusk and a footman crept in before she discovered Miss Tattie Lascelles, but that artist's announcement leapt to her with the electric light. Miss Tattie Lascelles informed the kingdom that she was specially engaged to create the part of "Delicia Potts" in the maritime musical farce entitled Little Miss Kiss-And-Tell, on Blithepoint Pier. The date chosen for this perfectly unimportant production was Monday, December 22nd. Then Rosalind, who was to go to the Marrables in Leicestershire for Christmas, wrote Lady Marrable a note of grieved excuse, and scribbled a letter to Tattie, which began, "Take two bedrooms in Blithepoint, and don't breathe a word to a soul till you see me."

And though the happily constituted may be sceptical again, she felt more joyous than she had done for five illustrious years.

Blithepoint is about thirty-three miles by rail from Sweetbay. It is a grey, bleak place, with the plainest female population in England. On three hundred days of the year the wind is due east, but on the other sixty-five it is southeast, and then the residents go about saying what "lovely weather they're having." Blithepoint is much larger than Sweetbay, and more fashionable. It is also nearly as dull. Nobody is aware how much can be spent on being deadly dull until he has stayed in a Blithepoint hotel. Rosalind was a shade uneasy in the thought that someone among the visitors might recognise her; she knew that at Christmas eccentric Londoners occasionally went down there, and wished afterwards they had been economical and gone to Egypt. But she didn't falter.

She ran away on Sunday the 21st. She had put on her simplest costume, and her portmanteau told no tales. To make-believe to the fullest extent, she travelled in a third-class compartment. Already she was greatly excited. As the train crawled out of Victoria she could have clapped her hands.

When she arrived it was eight o'clock, and a bitter evening. The scramble for luggage kept her shivering on the platform for ten minutes, and then a fly bumped her through the shuttered town. It was the hour of local dissipation; on one side of the favourite thoroughfare the blades of Blithepoint paraded jauntily, crying "Pip, pip" to stolid-faced young women on the other, who took no notice of them. Lady Darlington, reckless for sensations, envied these "roysterers" who could feel devilish gay so innocently.

The cab shaved a corner, and rattled into a neighbourhood of obscure apartment-houses. Her mutinous heart warmed with sentiment, and she forgot how cold her pretty feet were. The cab stopped. She saw the blind of the ground-floor window dragged aside; an impetuous figure appeared, and vanished. The street-door was pulled wide, and a girl with a cloud of hair, and a string of barbaric beads dangling to the waist, flew down the steps and hugged her.

"You trump! You've really come!"

"You duck! How jolly to see you!"

"'Ere, two bob, missie," said the flyman, "when you've done canoodling."

They ran into the parlour, and laughed at each other in the gaslight.

"Take your things off," said Tattie: "let me help you. I hope you'll like the diggings. I wrote to the swellest address I could hear of, when I got your letter."

"But you shouldn't have. What for?"

"Well, for you."

"I wanted everything just as it used to be. That was it."

"How funny! But I don't suppose these will strike you as very swagger after what you've got at home."

"They don't."

"Won't they be good enough?"

"They're heavenly. Oh, Tattie, how good it is to be back! Did anybody bring in my trunk? 'In the Shade of the Palm,' and a Vocal Folio on the piano! And professional photographs on the shelf! Oh, let me see the photographs! 'To Mrs. Cheney from Miss Bijou Chamberlain—wishing you a Merry Christmas.' Who is she?"

"She was here last week—a Variety artist. She seems to have been comfortable, as she gave the landlady her photograph. Are you ready for supper?"

"Stout?"

"Of course."

"In a jug?"

"Well, I thought after what you had come from I had better order Guinness."

For a moment Rosalind looked downcast. "Ah well, never mind," she said; "we'll have it in a jug to-morrow."

They drew their chairs to the ham-and-beef, and the landlady brought in the Guinness.

"Good evening, Ma," said Rosalind, with youth in her bosom.

"Good evening, my dear," said Mrs. Cheney. "You'll be glad of your supper, I daresay, after your journey?" She put comestibles on the table in three paper bags. "I was meaning to tell you, Miss Lascelles, that if you'd like a bit of something hot in the evening when you come back from the show, you can have it. I'm not one to fuss about hotting something up. Sundays we let the fire out, but in the week you can have it and welcome."

"Good business!" said Miss Lascelles. "In some places you 'get it hot' if you ask for it."

"By rights some places shouldn't take professionals," returned Mrs. Cheney. "I've 'eard many tales. Miss Chamberlain—her on the mantelpiece—was telling me that where she was in Brighton they wouldn't allow her to have her uncle in to see her. Such a quiet, ladylike gal, too!"

"Can such things be?" cried Rosalind. "Is a poor girl to be cut off from her own flesh and blood because she's in diggings?"

"Ah, I don't wonder at your asking!" said Mrs. Cheney. "Not, mind you," she added, "but what letting lodgings over a number of years makes one a bit suspicious of uncles. I've known a gentleman brought to these very rooms after the show on three different Monday evenings as the uncle of three different young ladies. And dreadful taken aback he was when he see me each time!"

"I'm afraid those were flighty girls," said Rosalind severely.

"Untruthful they was," said Mrs. Cheney, "and so I told 'em. I say nothing about visitors, I'm not that evil-minded. So long as the lady pays a bit extra for the gas, and the gentleman don't slam the door when he goes, I like to think well of everyone. But I 'ate lies."

She drew the cork, and retired; and Rosalind said, "Well, what about the show, Tat? What sort of part have you got?"

"The part's rather good," said Miss Lascelles.

"Hurrah! What screw?"

"Rotten—thirty-five shillings. I had to take what I could get; I've been 'out' a long time. They're paying awful salaries in this crowd; the chorus only get about fifteen bob, I believe—they're half of them novices."

"I say! Whose crowd is it?"

"It's a Syndicate; nobody ever heard of it before. And the Tenor has such a cold he could hardly speak at the dress-rehearsal last night—goodness knows how he's going to sing to-morrow."

"Who is your principal woman?"

"She has backed out; they've put somebody else into the part at the last minute. And the scenery has still to come down—it's a bit of a muddle all round. I wish I could have got into a better thing, but I was so hard up—you ought to have seen where I was lodging! I tried to get 'shopped' last month as an Extra. That speaks!"

"An Extra? No? Tat! why didn't you write to me?" exclaimed Rosalind reproachfully.

"Oh, I don't know. I heard the 'great' Miss Hayward wanted thirty Extra-ladies to go on in the ball scene. It was twenty-five bob a week—she wanted picked women—it would just have done me. Lil Rayburn lent me her little squirrel coat and a black velvet hat. I tell you I looked a treat when I went down! There were three hundred and forty girls waiting; we were sent across the stage thirty at the time. The great Hayward sat in the stalls, with her pince-nez up. 'You!' she said, pointing; 'the one in the squirrel coat!' So I went to her. 'I think you'll do,' she drawled; 'you know what the money is?' 'Twenty-five, Miss Hayward,' I said, 'isn't it?' 'No, a guinea,' she said, 'it doesn't matter to you.' 'Thank you,' I said, 'I've got to keep myself out of my salary—I haven't got a man, and a flat!' Potter, the agent, was in an awful stew—'Oh, you shouldn't have spoken to Miss Hayward like that!' 'To hell!' I said."

"Cat!" cried Rosalind. "Because you were well-dressed?"

"Yes; and if I had gone shabby, she wouldn't have noticed me at all.... You know I've been in the Variety business since you saw me?"

"The music-halls! You haven't?"

"Straight! I was one of the Four Sisters Tarantelle. Jolly good money—I got five pounds a week when we worked two shows a night; I never got less than three ten. I can't get it on the stage."

"Why did you give them up? But the tips are very heavy, aren't they?"

"They weren't heavy for me, I didn't tip anybody except the dresser. Chloe made the engagements, so Chloe could pay the tips. Trust this child! What does make you sick in that business is the comedians, with the red noses and the umbrellas—they're always after you. There was a little brute in one show—his wife was in the bill, too; she did sentimental ballads. Well! how he could let her travel I don't know. It was her last week, but she wasn't fit to be working so long, we almost expected any night—— And there he was after me all the time! 'I shall write to you, Tattie—I see you go to Balham, and Walham Green next week!' 'Who gave you leave to call me "Tattie?"' I said; 'you low cur, I wish I was a man, to give you a good hiding!' I did pity his wife. She never spoke to me—she used to pass me in the wings with her head turned away; I suppose she thought I was as bad as he was. I said to her one evening when she was ill, 'Can I get you anything, Miss——' I forget what her name was. 'No, I thank you, Miss Tarantelle,' she said—like that; wouldn't look at me! I was so sorry for her. Poor little woman, what a life!"

Rosalind shuddered. After a pause, she said:—

"You're well out of it, dear."

"Except for the money. I expect I'll go back to it as soon as I can. I had a contract for a year—they wanted the option of renewing for another year."

"They were to have the option?"

"Yes—all on their side; I didn't think it was good enough to sign that. So I said I'd like to, but I was going to be married at the end of the summer."

"You weren't really?"

"Not much! No marriage for me—not in the Profession anyhow!—but lots of them think a contract doesn't bind you any more if you marry. Lil Rayburn put me up to that dodge. She lent me her song when the Tarantelles wanted me—it was a great concession: her big success! Whenever she doesn't want to sign an option and is afraid to refuse point-blank, she looks bashful and says she's going to be married at the end of the summer. She has been going to be married 'at the end of the summer' for the last nine years!" They turned to the fire, and lit cigarettes—Rosalind's; she had remembered to put a hundred in her trunk.

"'What is the use of loving a girl
If the girl don't love you?'"

hummed Tattie. The song was just published. "They are fine cigarettes!

'What is the use of loving a girl
When you know she don't want yer to?'

Of course, you have the best of everything now. It does seem curious."

"My having the best of everything?"

"No, your wanting the worst.

'What if she's fair beyond all compare,
And what if her eyes are blue——'

Fancy living in your style, and coming to rooms like these for fun!"

"Oh, Tattie," said Rosalind, "that's just what I did come for! I haven't any fun at home."

"But I thought in Society they had no end of a good time?"

"So they do, in a way, but it's the wrong way for me—I never rehearsed for it, I'm not easy in the part; I wasn't meant for high-class comedy. And I miss you—I've no pal now."

"I've missed you, I can tell you! Oh, the tour after you left, wasn't that damn dull! The girl I lived with was so 'off'—common. Well, you can tell I'm a perfect lady—I just said 'damn'—but I usedn't to, did I? Remember? Good-hearted girl, but she was so horrid at table. And under that silk blouse—all anyhow! Not that I like to see a girl with too smart underlinen, I always think it looks fishy; but hers was—well, if she had been run over one day when we were out, I'd have been ashamed to own her!"

"Let's go and look up some of the Company, shall we?" said Rosalind. "What name had I better have?"

"What's the matter with 'Heath?' There are plenty of 'Miss Heaths' about."

"Yes, but you're sure to let the 'Rosalind' slip, and that will give me away. Introduce me as 'Miss Daintree.' Do you know where any of the women are staying?"

"We'll find them on the pier. We always make for the pier on Sunday evenings when there's a concert; it's something to do. I suppose I'm to say you're in the Profession?"

"I'm an actress out of an engagement," assented Rosalind, throwing her cigarette in the fender. "Make haste, or we shall be too late!"

The boards of Little Miss Kiss-and-Tell were big outside the pier. At the turnstile Miss Lascelles nodded towards them, saying, "In the Company." The man answered, "All right, Miss; come in through the gate, then." At the pay-box of the theatre she showed her card, saying, "Can you oblige me with a couple of seats?" The business manager answered, "With pleasure, my dear."

The gas-stoves glowed redly, and the theatre was much better warmed than the majority of theatres in London. They sat down in the third row of the stalls, and listened to a dispirited soprano who was supposed to be singing "The Holy City." She was not really singing "The Holy City;" from beginning to end she articulated not a word save "Jerusalem." She simply kept her mouth ajar and wailed the air; but she was successful.

There were only about twenty people in the crimson velvet seats, and most of these were Kiss-and-Tell people. The others were very young men, in caps, who bore the sacred music on Sunday evening for the sake of an advance view of the girls who were to perform on Monday. The very young men watched the arrivals with much interest, and if the ladies in the stalls were unattractive, it was said in a Blithepoint club on Sunday night that the piece on the pier to-morrow was no good.

When the dispirited soprano had finished, the actresses applauded her warmly, in the hope of cheering her up; and the sixpenny balcony rattled its umbrellas, in the hope of getting a song more than it had paid for. Then one of the actresses murmured to Miss Lascelles, "How badly she holds herself, doesn't she?" and Miss Lascelles presented "Miss Daintree."

Rosalind soon discovered that nobody was sanguine of Little Miss Kiss-and-Tell being well received, and—having forgotten something of the world she was revisiting—it surprised her to note the light-heartedness of the professionals, who tottered on the brink of disaster. They were all pitiably poor, they were likely to fall out of employment at the worst time of year; but they said gaily, "Oh well, let's hope for the best! It may be all right at night. It's no use looking on the black side of things." And most of them were totally dependent on their salaries, though that was not the belief of the very young men who endured "The Holy City."

Only Miss Jinman, a large, elderly lady who spoke in a bass voice, was pessimistic. Years ago she had sung in parts of dignity, and hectored first-rate touring companies; to-day she was engaged for an amorous old woman in Turkish trousers, whom the low comedian was to pelt with insults as often as she came on the stage.

"I don't think the piece will last a month," she said to Rosalind, in her lugubrious bass. "It isn't amusing at all. Vulgar, very vulgar! I may be too critical; I'm used to such high-class things, as you know—my notices as 'Buttercup' were immense—but I call it a 'rotter.' I see a frost, a killing frost, my dear! I keep my opinion to myself"—she was disseminating it with gusto—"I don't want to give the others the hump, but I see us all out of a shop till the spring comes."

"Oh, you're always croaking, Miss Jinman," snapped a black-eyed girl with golden hair. "Give us a chance, do!"

"A chance?" returned Miss Jinman heavily. "Chit, you have no chance. It's only kindness to tell you so."

"Thanks for being so kind!" said the girl. She had not been long on the stage. Her married sister kept "Dining Rooms" in Holloway, and less than a year ago the "artiste" had served as waitress there and been ordered to "'Urry up with that there Yorkshire-pudden."

"You will never do any better than you're doing," affirmed Miss Jinman. "And I could say as much to others present if I hadn't too much consideration for their feelings. To more than one!" she added significantly. "Look at me, with all my experience! And I am clever, and I can sing; my notices as 'Buttercup' were immense. And where am I now? On a pier with amateurs—amateurs and novices. I don't know what the Profession is coming to—it's a very different thing to what it was when I was in my prime!"

"I expect most things have woke up a bit since then," said the golden-haired brunette; "the bringing in of railways must have made such a difference."

"Small-part people were taught to respect the principals," said Miss Jinman sternly. "Minxes kept their places."

"It's a pity you couldn't keep yours," said the dark one with the golden locks. But harmony was restored during the next selection by the band.

There was a little sleet blowing when the audience straggled homeward. The lights of the Belle Vue Hotel were not put out yet, and carelessly, Miss Jinman observed that the people inside must be warmer than she was. Rosalind took the hint. It is only in the lowest ranks of the theatrical profession that the ladies refresh themselves in bars; a second-rate provincial actress would wither the person who invited her; but Miss Jinman and Miss Lascelles had adapted their manners to their company, and it was a very humble Company indeed. So they went into the Lounge, and sat down.

Another professional lady came in, and inquired generously, "Are you drinking, girls?"

Miss Lascelles said, "Yes, we've got port wine."

"Serve you right," said the other lady, with a pretty wit.

Though she was on the high road to Prague, Lady Darlington was relieved to see that the clock pointed to five minutes to ten. When the Lounge closed, the party shook hands with her heartily, and hoped they would meet her again in the morning. Distressingly ill-bred of them to drink port in a smoky bar—not at all the sort of thing I can ask you to condone. But some of the sirens who had lolled in velvet fauteuils were financing on coppers until the first week's treasury was paid, and tea and bread-and-butter was all they had had to support their internal economies during the day. How amused the very young men in the stalls would be at my simplicity in believing it!