“He came forward with a life-like walk and smile. ‘Oh, how do you do, my dear Mrs. Richmansworth?’ he said” (page 95).
“Oh, don’t go on like that!” said the girl brokenly. “You’ll make me cry if you do. What’s happened, Mr. Danby?”
The little man shook himself angrily. He was ashamed of himself. He didn’t know that he had become so weak, so unstrung, so little master of himself.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve never cried before. It was your recognising me. I didn’t think any one could recognise me as I am now. It was overwork, overstrain, three halls a night—I couldn’t stand it. I tried to struggle on, but it was no use. I earned my living as a funny man. Can you imagine what it means to a funny man to find that his jokes don’t go? Can you imagine what it meant for me to stand waiting in the wings for my number to go up, trembling all over with fear and fright, and then to face the public that used to roar with delight, and get a few scattered hands? Oh, those awful nights! The crowd, no longer my friends, who struck matches and talked. The look of pity on the face of the conductor, and the few words from the stage door when I crept away: ‘Never mind, Mr. Danby; can’t always expect to knock ’em, y’know.’ Do you wonder that I fretted myself into an illness? Do you wonder that I’ve been creeping about the country, afraid to face the managers? I’m done. I’m a funny man gone unfunny. I’m the Dick Danby that can’t get his laughs.”
The girl listened to this painful confession with intense sympathy. She too had earned a hard living on the music-hall stage. She too knew what it was to fail in her anxious endeavour to win applause. She too was at that moment tramping to London in search of work, with only a few shillings between the lodging-house and the Salvation Army shelter. There was something very different between her case and Richard Danby’s. She was an insignificant member of a large army of music-hall artistes whose place was always at the very beginning or the very end of the programme. When she had the good fortune to be in work, her salary was a bare living wage, and it was only by stinting herself of the few luxuries of life that she could put by a few pounds for a rainy day. Dick Danby’s case was utterly—almost ludicrously—different. His salary for years had been large enough to take her breath away. He had earned more in a week than she had earned in a year. His health had broken down, and his nerves and confidence had left him, but, at any rate, he was not faced, or likely to be faced, with starvation and the Embankment, and other terrors that were unmentionable.
“Don’t take it to heart, Mr. Danby,” she said cheerily. “You’ll get better, never fear, and knock ’em again. And, until then, you can be a country gentleman, and enjoy yourself. Think of all the money you’ve made!”
Danby gave a curious little laugh.
“And spent,” he said. “Money? Oh, yes, I made money—money to burn—and I burnt it—in the usual way. I thought my day would go on for ever, but, like other thoughtless fools, I made a mistake. It came to a sudden end.”
“But—but you don’t mean to tell me that you haven’t saved, Mr. Danby?”