CHAPTER X
“THE STAR TURN.”
Claudia had never been behind the scenes of a theatre, and she found the va et vient, the bustle and hurry of a music-hall almost bewildering, so that she received the vaguest impressions of her journey through to the front. She felt, rather than saw, the gloomy floor space behind the set littered with properties, all looking very ludicrous and childish. A man was evidently doing a song and patter turn to judge from the guffaws from the front of the house. She could see above her head men up in the flies controlling the limelight and the curtain, all of whom were in their shirt-sleeves. In fact, Jack was the only conventionally dressed person she had seen since she entered the theatre.
She was hurried along to a small door, which she found gave access to the house—Jack was evidently known to the man in charge, who nodded familiarly and called him “Capting”—and having descended some dusty, red-covered steps, she found herself suddenly in a little box in full view of the audience. Her first impression was that she had never seen so many people so tightly squeezed together before, and so intent on the comedian with the red nose and battered silk hat who was holding forth from the middle of the stage. All the theatres she had ever seen had been more or less roomy, but these people reminded her of an old-fashioned solid bouquet, except that there was practically no colour in the house. In a West-End theatre various bits of colour strike the eye, especially in the stalls and dress-circle; but as the curtain descended to great applause she saw that the house was a study in black and white—the clothing black, the faces white. There must have been some bits of colour, but they did not show. Her second impression was that she had never before realized how toiling humanity in a mass can smell. It was the odour of toil and scanty bathing, mingled with the inevitable orange and the reek of gas.
A number went up in the slot at the side—twelve—the star turn of the evening, The Girlie Girl.
The orchestra struck up one of her popular songs, and the audience, and especially the gallery boys—they looked to Claudia as though they were hanging on the ceiling by their eyelashes like flies—began to cheer and beat time to the music. She happened to glance at Jack, and she was amused to see a complacent smile taking the place of the dumbly-worried look he had been wearing since the episode of the pendant.
“They adore her,” he whispered. “She believes in making friends with the gallery boys. She says it’s the secret of her success.... I say, Claud, what could I do about that beastly pendant? She doesn’t see things as we do. She’s like a blessed babe, or a savage, in some things.”
A huge burst of cheering stopped any further conversation, and Claudia found herself looking down at her sister-in-law laughing and kissing her hands to the gallery. In the limelight she looked extraordinarily pretty and alive, and there was no man present that could have failed to see the gamine charm of her, though he might not have wanted to espouse her. Her blue eyes laughed in a friendly fashion at the house and her pretty feet began to dance to the measure while she waved aloft a sort of d’Orsay walking-stick tied up with green and orange ribbons.
Her voice, though sweet—unusually sweet for the music-halls—was nothing wonderful, and Claudia detected already signs of hard wear. She had a few particularly good notes in her top register, but it was not for her voice that she was so applauded. There was an air of infectious gaiety, a “I-like-you-and-you-like-me” camaraderie that made the vapid song and words—how incredibly bad the words were!—seem amusing.