CHAPTER XXVII
ETTA ROMNEY'S RETURN
It would have been about half-past one upon the afternoon of a gloomy November day, some three months after Gavin Ord set out for Roumania, that a hansom cab was driven up to the stage-door of the Carlton Theatre, the Lady Evelyn, wearing heavy black furs and a motor veil, which entirely hid her face from the passers-by, alighted timidly and offered the cabman a generous fare. Deaf to the man's effusive assurance that he had no other ambition in life but to drive the same fare back to the place whence she came, Evelyn entered the narrow alley wherein the stage-door is situated and at once asked the stage-door keeper if Mr. Charles Izard was or was not within the house? The simple question provoked an answer that might have satisfied a diplomatist but helped Evelyn not at all.
"Maybe he is, maybe he ain't. It depends on who wants him. Now, you take a word from me, miss. Say to yourself, Shall I go and have dinner with the Prince of Wales this afternoon or shall I not? That'll answer you and leave old Jacob Briggs to finish his pipe in peace, he being the father of widows, likewise of orphans."
Jacob, it was plain, had but just lunched and was more affable than upon any less benign occasion. He sat with his back to a bill which announced the concluding nights of that dismal play "Oliver Cromwell—a comedy, by Rowland Wales," and he smoked a pipe with that which the ancient Weller would have called an "uncommon power of suction." Here, said he, is another of 'em, meaning thereby another candidate for histrionic honors which twenty-five shillings a week should reward. Jacob knew how to deal with them; "but," said he, "when I've got my dinner in me then I'm a blessed lamb." So he addressed Evelyn "humorous-like" and did not lose his patience even when she would not go away.
"I must see Mr. Izard to-day. I am sure he will wish to see me. If you would take my name into the theatre——"
Jacob Briggs, pulling the pipe to the right side of his mouth, ate a smile as though it were good butter.
"Perhaps he was agoing to send a carriage and pair for yer, miss, or a motor kar. That's wot he does ordinary to such young ladies as you. Now, I shouldn't wonder if you don't think as you can play Miss Fay's part better'n she herself. I've seed a many and most of 'em do. But, lord, I'm too good-natured to take much notice on it. Tryin's tryin', says I, and if you ask for a sufferin (sovereign), who knows as you mayn't get a shilling. Wot you've got to do, miss, is to go round to the horfiss. They'll soon turn you out of that, and better for you in the long run——"
"And yet you used not to think so when I was playing Di Vernon, Mr. Briggs."
The smile left Jacob's face as though some one had hit him. He slipped down the board until he came near to sitting on the pavement. Speech did not immediately assist him, and he could mutter nothing else but the mystic and entirely irrelevant phrase, "D—n my uncle!" which he continued to repeat until he had scrambled to his feet and doffed his carpenter's cap.
"Good Lord, Miss Romney, if you'd have said so, why, I'd have pulled the theatre down for ye, and willing. Mr. Izard now—he won't be glad neither. 'Briggs,' says he to me, 'she'll come back some day just as sure as Mrs. Briggs'—but that's neither here nor there, miss. He's over at the tavern now and Mr. Lacombe with him. Let me say the word and he'll come back in a fire-engine——"
Evelyn protested that she did not desire the word to be said; but would wait in the auditorium and announce herself to the great man. Understanding that the "tavern" really meant the Carlton Hotel and that there was a rehearsal of a new and modern play at two o'clock, she entered the theatre and sat, her veil undrawn, in the wings, whereby from time to time the acquaintances of old time must pass her. So dark was it that she feared no recognition. Those who came in and out, pinched girls who had lunched off a sponge-cake and a cup of cocoa; heavy-jowled men whose mid-day refreshment had been distilled from juniper; sleek youths with a new rendering of Hamlet in their pockets—the success, the fortunes, the hopes, the disappointments of each chained his tongue and directed his eyes to that man or woman alone who had the patience and the good-nature to hear a recital of them. None paid attention to Evelyn, or as much as remarked her presence in the sombre light. Even little Dulcie Holmes passed her by unnoticed; and as for the melancholy Lucy Grey, she was too full of her own troubles so much as to think of anyone else's. "I wish I were dead," she had just said to Dulcie—and this was as much as to say, "I have no part in the new play, and God knows how I shall pay for my lodging."
Evelyn had a little difficulty in restraining herself from declaring her identity to the girls; but an incurable love of dramatic effect came to her aid and, perhaps, the vain desire to be discovered more worthily by that great man, Mr. Charles Izard. Aware that she was waiting there as the humblest suppliant for the theatre's favors, she perceived presently that the iron door between stage and auditorium stood open; and, slipping through, she entered a stage-box and there waited in better security. One by one now the "stars" entered the theatre and took up their positions upon the dimly-lighted stage. A chatter of conversation arose, amidst which the stage-manager's voice could be heard in heated argument with a lady whose part had been cut. All waited for the great man; and when he appeared a hush fell as though upon a transformation scene in a country pantomime. Lo, he had come—fresh from a long cigar and a bottle of what he called "noots"—meaning the excellent wine of Burgundy known as Nints. What bustle, what activity upon the part of the underlings now! How busy the principals appear to be! How white in the gloom are the faces of the girls, who lately spoke of fortune and furs and a furore of applause!
The new play was also a new entertainment. It appeared to Evelyn to be a hash-up of drama and ballet, with a comedy scene in each act, introduced for the sole purpose of exploiting a lady who could imitate wild animals. That it might succeed in an age which has almost forgotten the bombastics of the ancient drama, and cares not a straw what an entertainment may be called so long as it is amusing and provokes a rhythmical nodding of heads, was very probable. Mr. Izard, at least, had few doubts about the success of it; and yet he could have wished it otherwise. "They ask me to elevate the people," he would remark in confidential moments—"why, sir, the people that want elevating had better go up in elevators. I'm here to run a theatre, not a Tower of Babel, and that's so. Just walk round to some of these fine-mouthed folk and ask them what they will pay down in dollars for the good of humanity and the British stage. If you can buy a ten-cent collar with the proceeds of that hat-box, I'll set a stone up to your memory. No, sir, the world's too tired to think. Give 'em a great actress and they don't have to think. That's what I'm looking for, like a man who's dropped a thousand-dollar scarf-pin on the beach at Atlantic City. Since Etta Romney walked out—but what's the good of talking about that? When she comes back I'll begin to think about the people's good health again. Sir, she made the rest of them look like thirty cents, and that's gospel truth."
The confession would end with a sigh and a new application to the business of tragic-burlesque-comedy. Smarting from the pink lash of a half-penny evening paper, which had, in a leading article that afternoon, cast italicized reflections upon "the porcine Paladius of the people's palaces," the great man was in no very pleasant mood; and this he made manifest directly rehearsal began. Scarcely a dozen lines had been repeated before the leading lady was in tears and the old stock actor sulking at a public-house round the corner. Ladies at twenty-three shillings a week heard themselves addressed in terms which implied their fitness for the position of dummies in a side-show. The stage-manager would infallibly have been visited with blindness if the great man's appeals to unknown powers had been heard. When calm fell, Izard settled himself frettingly in a stall and there simmered a long while in silence. Not for half an hour did an exclamation escape him, and then it came almost involuntarily. He seemed to be waging a battle between his contempt for the leading lady and his fear that she would walk out of the house; and the latter being worsted, he cried aloud, almost like one in despair:
"Etta Romney—Etta Romney—what, in God's name, keeps you out of my theatre!"
A dead silence fell. Everyone was awed by the real pathos of this regret, drawn from a man who had never been the servant of a sentiment. And when a musical voice answered him from the stage-box, opposite prompt, then, indeed, did Charles Izard come as near to collapsing as ever he had done in his unemotional life.
"Nothing keeps me, Mr. Izard. I am here."
"Etta Romney, by God!" he exclaimed, and in the same breath he told them that the rehearsal was over.