Next night, just about half-past ten, Stella Steele gay, laughing, with one portion of her lithe body clothed in the smartest of ultra costumes by a famous French couturière, the remainder of her figure either silk-encased or undraped, bounded off the stage of the popular theatre near Leicester Square, and fell into the arms of her grey-haired dresser.
It was Saturday night, and the “house,” packed to suffocation, were roaring applause.
“Lights up!” shouted the stage-manager, and Stella, holding her breath and patting her hair, staggered against the scenery, half-fainting with exhaustion, and then, with a fierce effort, tripped merrily upon the stage and smilingly bowed to her appreciative and enthusiastic audience.
The men in khaki, officers and “Tommies,” roared for an encore. The revue had “caught on,” and Stella Steele was the rage of London. Because she spoke and sang in French just as easily as she did in English, her new song, in what was really a very inane but tuneful revue—an up-to-date variation of musical comedy—had already been adopted in France as one of the marching songs of the French army.
From paper-seller to Peer, from drayman to Duke: in the houses of Peckham and Park Lane, in Walworth and in Wick, the world hummed, sang, or drummed out upon pianos and pianolas that catchy chorus which ran:
Dans la tranchée...
La voilà, la joli’ tranche:
Tranchi, trancho, tranchons le Boche;
La voilà, la joli’ tranche aux Boches,
La voilà, la joli’ tranche!
As she came off, a boy handed her a note which she tore open and, glancing at it, placed her hand upon her chest as though to stay the wild beating of her heart.
“Say yes,” was her brief reply to the lad, who a moment later disappeared.
She walked to her dressing-room and, flinging herself into the chair, sat staring at herself in the glass, much to the wonder of the grey-haired woman who dressed her.
“I’m not at all well,” she said to the woman at last. “Go and tell Mr Farquhar that I can’t go on again to-night. Miss Lambert must take my place in the last scene.”