For the rest, the time had probably passed when, in any sense of the word, she could be said to be "afraid" of Lumsden. He stood before her imagination now in all his pleasant power, holding open the gates of the fairyland to which he had the golden key, encouraging, inviting her to enter. Once through the gates, she had no doubt of her ability to justify and to repay. That money can discharge any obligation was just one of the obscuring simplicities of her youth. Another was that a stigma attached to the acceptance of money or money's visible worth. Beyond a cab-fare, she would have shrunk from such a thing as from actual dishonor; yet that money, to the extent of many hundreds of pounds, was being risked upon her untested power to please gave her only a very vague sense of indebtedness. It is true that to Bryan's personal interest she referred, with a completeness that was a little unfair to Mr. Dollfus's really kind heart, the ameliorations in her hard task—the warm dressing-room, the polite seriousness with which her views were entertained by the leader of the orchestra, the chair in the wings at rehearsals. She even fancied that she could detect a conspiracy to keep the seamy side of theatrical life from her. Mr. Lavigne, the stage-manager, never swore in her presence, though from her dressing-room she often heard language whose very volume implied profanity reverberate like stage thunder through the dark empty auditorium.
When general rehearsals began in March, among her new comrades upon the draughty, echoing boards, who stood blowsy or haggard in the perverse up-thrown light and exchanged the knowing, raffish jargon of their craft, there was abundant discussion as to her precise position, but no doubt at all. It is a pitiful thing to relate, but Bryan even got the credit of the clothes in which poor foolish Mrs. Barbour had sunk the profits of her enterprise. Fenella's dress had always possessed sophistication, and although by this time she was "economizing," enough of elegance remained from the old life to wreck her character in the new. But where she was now such things were a common-place. The misconception even was of use to her in one way. It removed her from the envy of those who were struggling upward on the strength of mere talents. Seen from the wings, her dancing made little impression upon a race not prone to enthusiasm, and notoriously bad judges of their own craft. She was to have the lime-light, the big letters on the bills, the "fat"—that was enough. She was hors concours, a thing apart. The latest recruit might dream, and did dream, of having the same chance some day. A strange thing, that it should be not so much "luck" which failure resents as the crown upon hard work.
By an unhappy coincidence, the first dress rehearsal was called upon the day when her spirits were at lowest ebb. The night before, her mother, unable to keep the secret locked up in her breast any longer, had exposed with tears and incoherent self-reproach, the whole disastrous domestic situation. It was all mismanagement, muddle, abused confidence, rights signed away for a tithe of their value, mortgages and life assurances effected in the interests of people whose one service seemed to have been to draw the strangling net a little tighter. Fenella closed the eyes of her mental vision firmly and wisely against the disastrous prospect. She let her mother have her cry out upon her shoulder.
"No, dear; of course I'm not angry with you, or only a tiny bit for letting me be a foolish over-dressed little pig all these years. We'll give up this great big house before it's swallowed all that's left and move into a smaller one. They must give us something for the lease. And I've got Lady Anne's money coming to me in two years. We can raise something on that now. I'll speak to Mr. Dollfus about it. And Mr. Lavigne told me the Dime Duchess comes on early in May; then I shall begin to draw salary, and all our troubles will be over. And, mummy, you must give those disgusting people upstairs notice. Never mind what they owe. Turn them out! I'll live in a garret with you, dear, but I won't have our home turned into a common lodging-house."
But, for all her brave words, her own spirits sank. Was she so sure of success, after all? To have so much depending upon it was only a reason the more for misgiving. Dancing seemed to be in the air. The flaming posters that met her eye on every side, of women in one stage or another of uncoveredness, filled her with nausea. Nothing depresses true genius so much as to feel that an inspiration with which they could deal worthily is given broadcast, under various mean forms of impulse or emulation, to those whose touch can only degrade. It is a failing so like unworthy envy that even to be forced to admit it to oneself is demoralizing.
When she reached the theatre a drama that was no part of the Dime Duchess was in progress. Miss Enid Carthew stood down centre. Her dress was Doucet and her hat Virot. Her sable coat was open at the throat and a diamond collier streamed blue fire on her agitated bosom. Her arm, thrust through a muff whose tails swept the dusty stage, was akimbo on her slender hip. She had a pretty, dissipated, sour face and a quantity of fair hair.
"Oh! I can't have it at all, Mr. Dollfus," she was saying, evidently not for the first time, biting her lips and tapping the stage with her foot. The manager, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets, his back to the footlights, straddled his legs in a truculent manner.
"You can't haf it!" he repeated, derisively. "Well, can yer lump it? Ah! Think yer the only tin can in the alley, dontcher, eh? Think you're de manachment, ain't it? I tell you once for all: I bills who I like, unt I bills 'em as big's I like. Now then—ah! eh?"
"You can tell all this to my solicitor," said Miss Carthew, loftily.
The word seemed to goad Mr. Dollfus to frenzy. He took a stride forward and shook a brown, ringed finger within an inch or two of Miss Carthew's Grecian profile.