XI
LIKE wildfire the rumour ran. The King had knighted—he had knighted—by what accident?—Mr. Mary, in lieu of Mr. Fisher, at Mr. Fisher’s own farewell. In the annals of the stage such an occurrence was unheard of, unique.
The excitement in the green-room was intense.
“M-m! He is not de first to zell is birs-r-rite for a mess of porridge!” Yvonde Yalta, the playgoers’ darling, remarked as she poised with an extravagant play of arms, a black glittering bandeau on her short flaxen hair.
“A mess of pottage!” someone near her said.
“You correct me? Ah, sanx! I am so grateful, so—sograteful,” the charming creature murmured as she sailed away.
From the auditorium came a suppressed titter.
The curtain had risen some few minutes since on Mlle. Fanfette and Monsieur Coqueletde Chaussepierre of the Théâtre Sans Rancune in the comedietta,Sydney, or There’s No Resisting Him.
“It’s extraordinary I’ve never seen a man knighted,” a show-girl twittered, “and I’ve seen a good deal....”
“How do they do them?”
“Like this,” a sparkling brunette answered, bestowing a sly pat on the interlocutress with the back of a brush.
“Of all the common——!”
“Ladies! Ladies!”
“Who was in front at the time?”
“I was!” Mrs. Sixsmith said, who had just peeped in to exchange a few words with her friend.
“You were?”
“I was selling sweets in the vestibule and saw it all. Really! If I live to be an old woman I shan’t forget it. Mr. Mary—Sir Maurice—was in the lobby chatting with Sylvester Fry of theDispatch, when the Royal party arrived. The King instantly noticed him and sent one of his suite, quite unpremeditatedly, it seemed, to summon him, and in a trice ... Oh! ... and Ineversaw the Queen look so charming. She has a golddress turning to white through the most exquisite gradations....”
Mrs. Sixsmith was overcome.
“A-wheel,” Miss Sinquier’s dresser disrespectfully said, “how was the poor man to tell? Both the blighters—God forgive me—are equally on their last legs.”
Miss Sinquier shivered.
“Is it a good house?” she inquired.
“Splendid. Outside they’re flying five ‘full’ boards.... There’s not a single vacant place. Poor Sydney Iphis gave half a guinea for a seat in the slips.”
“Are you here all alone?”
“I’m with Sir Oliver Dawtry,” Mrs. Sixsmith replied, “except when I’m running about!... Can I sell anyone anything?” she inquired, raising sonorously her voice. “Vanilla! Caramel! Chocolate!... Comfits,” she warbled.
“What have you netted?”
“Eighteenpence only, so far;—from such an angel!”
“Comfits, did you say?” a round-faced, piquant little woman asked.
“Despite disguise! If it isn’t Arthurine Smee!”
The actress displayed astonishment.
Nature had thrown up upon her lip and cheek two big blonde moles that procured to her physiognomy, somehow or other, an unusual degree of expression.
“My husband has been waiting to hear from you,” she said, “as agent to thisMiss Sin——, the new star with the naughty name, and from all I could make out I understand it would be likely to be aDouble Engagement.”
“This is Miss Sinquier,” Mrs. Sixsmith exclaimed.
Miss Sinquier blinked.
“Have you done it much?” she asked.
“Often.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere.”
“For example?”
“I may say I’ve played Pauline and Portia and Puck....”
“Mother-to-Juliet I fear’s the best I’ve to offer.”
Mrs. Smee consulted enigmatically the nearest mole in reach of her tongue.
“Were I to play her in ‘good’ preservation,” she inquired, “I suppose there’d be no objection?”
“Why, none!”
“Just a girlish touch....”
“Mrs. Smee defies time,” Mrs. Sixsmith remarked.
“My dear, I once was thought to be a very pretty woman.... All I can do now is to urge my remains.”
Miss Sinquier raised a forefinger.
Voices shivering in altercation issued loudly from a private dressing-room next door.
“What’s up?”
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” the wardrobe-mistress entering said. “Sir Maurice and Mr. Fisher are passing sharp words with a couple of pitchforks.”
“What!”
“The ‘Farm-players’ sent them over from the Bolivar for their Pig-sty scene—and now poor Mr. Mary,Sir M’riss, and Mr. Fisher are fighting it out, and Mrs. Mary,her ladyship, has joined the struggle.”
“Murder!” called a voice.
“Glory be to God.”
Mrs. Sixsmith rolled her eyes.
“Da!” she gasped, as Lady Mary, a trifle dazed but decked in smiles, came bustling in.
“Oh, Men! Men! Men!” she exclaimed,going off into a hearty laugh. “Rough, angelic brutes...!”
She was radiant.
She had a gown of shot brocade, a high lace ruff and a silver girdle of old German work, that had an ivory missal falling from it.
“Quarrelsome, quarrelling kings,” she stuttered, drifting towards a toilet-table—the very one before which Miss Sinquier was making her face.
On all sides from every lip rose up a chorus of congratulations.
“Viva, Lady Mary!”
Touched, responsive, with a gesture springing immediately from the heart, the consummate Victorian extended impulsive happy hands.
“God bless you, dears,” she said.
“Three cheers for Lady Mary!”
The illustrious woman quashed a tear.
“Am I white behind?” she asked.
“Allow me, milady,” the wardrobe-mistress wheezed.
“I fancy I heard a rip...!”
“There must have been quite a scrimmage.”
From the orchestra, a melodious throb-thrum-throb told a “curtain.”
“Lady Mary—you, Mum,” a call-boy chirped.
“Me?”
“Five minutes.”
Lady Mary showed distress.
“For goodness sake, my dear,” she addressed Miss Sinquier, “do leave yourself alone. I want the glass.”
But Miss Sinquier seemed engrossed.
At her elbow a slip of a “Joy-baby” was holding forth with animation to Mrs. Sixsmith and Mrs. Smee.
“That was one of my dreams,” she was saying, “and last night again I had another—in spite of a night-light, too! It began by a ring formed of crags and boulders enclosing a troop of deer—oh, such a herd of them—delicate, distinguished animals with little pom-pom horns, and some had poodles’ tails. Sitting behind a rhododendron bush was an old gentleman on a white horse; he never moved a muscle. Suddenly I became aware of a pack of dogs.... And then, before my very eyes, one of the dogs transformed itself into a giraffe....”
“You must have been out to supper.”
“It’s true I had. Oh, it was a merry meal.”
“Who gave it?”
“Dore Davis did: to meet her betrothed—Sir Francis Four.”
“What’s he like?”
“Don’t ask me. It makes one tired to look at him.”
“Was it a party?”
“Nothing but literary-people with their Beatrices.... My dearthe scum! Half-way through supper, Dore got her revolver out and began shooting the glass drops off her chandelier.”
“I should like to see her trousseau,” Mrs. Sixsmith sighed.
“It isn’t up to much. Anything good she sells—on account of bailiffs.”
“Pooh! She should treat them allen reine.”
Mrs. Smee looked wise.
“Always be civil with bailiffs,” she said; “never ruffle them! If you queen a sheriff’s officer remember there’s no getting rid of him. He clings on—like a poor relation.”
“Oh, well,” Mrs. Sixsmith replied, “I always treat the wormsen reine, not,” she added wittily, “that I ever have....”
Miss Sinquier twirled herself finally about.
“There,” she murmured, “I’m going out into the wings.”
“When’s your call?”
“After Lady Mary.”
For her unofficial first appearance she was resolved to woo the world with a dance—a dance all fearless somersaults and quiveringbattements;a young Hungarian meanwhile recording her movements sensitively upon a violin.
She was looking well in an obedient little ballet skirt that made action a delight. Her hair, piled high in a towering toupee, had a white flower in it.
“Down a step and through an arch,” a pierrette who passed her in the corridor directed her to the stage.
It was Miss Ita Iris of the Dream.
Miss Sinquier tingled.
How often on the cold flags of the great church at home had she asked the way before!
“Oh, Lord,” she prayed now, “let me conquer. Let me! Amen.”
She was in the wings.
Above her, stars sparkled lavishly in a darkling sky, controlled by a bare-armed mechanic who was endeavouring, it seemed, to deliver himself of a moon; craning froma ladder at the risk of his life, he pushed it gently with a big soft hand.
Miss Sinquier turned her eyes to the stage.
The round of applause accorded Lady Mary on her entry was gradually dying away.
From her shelter Miss Sinquier could observe her, in opulent silhouette, perfectly at her ease.
She stood waiting for the last huzzas to subside with bowed head and folded hands—like some great sinner—looking reverently up through her eyelashes at the blue silk hangings of the Royal box.
By degrees all clatter ceased.
Approaching the footlights with a wistful smile, the favourite woman scanned the stalls.
“Now most of you here this afternoon,” she intimately began, “I will venture to say, never heard of Judy Jacock. I grant you, certainly, there’s nothing very singular in that; for her life, which was a strangely frail one, essentially was obscure. Judy herself wasobscure.... And so that is why I say you can’t have ever heard of her!... Because she was totally unknown.... Ah, poor wee waif! Alas, she’s dead now. Judy’s among the angels ... and the beautifullittle elegy which, with your consent, I intend forthwith to submit, is written around her, around little Judy, and around her old Father, her ‘Da’—James, who was a waiter. And while he was away waiting one day—he used to wipe the plates on the seat of his breeches!—his little Judy died. Ah, poor old James. Poor Sir James. But let the poet,” she broke off suddenly, confused, “take up the tale himself, or, rather—to be more specific!—herself.For the lines that follow, which areinédit, are from the seductive and charming pen of Lady Violet Sleepwell.”
Lady Mary coughed, winked archly an eye, and began quite carelessly as if it were Swinburne:
“I neverknewJames Jacock’s child....I knew hehada child!The daintiest little fairy that ever a father knew.She was all contentment....”
“I neverknewJames Jacock’s child....I knew hehada child!The daintiest little fairy that ever a father knew.She was all contentment....”
“I neverknewJames Jacock’s child....I knew hehada child!The daintiest little fairy that ever a father knew.She was all contentment....”
“I neverknewJames Jacock’s child....
I knew hehada child!
The daintiest little fairy that ever a father knew.
She was all contentment....”
Miss Sinquier looked away.
To her surprise, lurking behind a property torso of “a Fawn,” her pigtails roped with beads of scarlet glass, was Miss May Mant.
“Tell me what you are up to?” she asked.
“Sh——! Don’t warn Ita!”
“Why should I?”
“I dodged her. Beautifully.”
“What for?”
“If she thought I was going on the stage, she’d be simply wild.”
“Are you?”
“I intend tacking on in the Pope’s Procession.”
“That won’t be just yet.”
“Oh, isn’t it wonderful?”
“What?”
“Being here.”
“It’s rather pleasant.”
“Can you feel the boards?”
“A little.”
“They gorightthrough me. Through my shoes, up my legs, and at my heart they sting.”
“Kiss me.”
“I love you.”
“Pet.”
“Do I look interesting?”
“Ever so.”
“Would you take me for a Cardinal’s comfort?”
Lady Mary lifted up her voice:
“Come, Judy, the angel said,And took her from her little bed,And through the air they quickly spedUntil they reached God’s throne;So, there, they dressed her all in white,They say she was a perfect sight,Celestial was her mien!”
“Come, Judy, the angel said,And took her from her little bed,And through the air they quickly spedUntil they reached God’s throne;So, there, they dressed her all in white,They say she was a perfect sight,Celestial was her mien!”
“Come, Judy, the angel said,And took her from her little bed,And through the air they quickly spedUntil they reached God’s throne;So, there, they dressed her all in white,They say she was a perfect sight,Celestial was her mien!”
“Come, Judy, the angel said,
And took her from her little bed,
And through the air they quickly sped
Until they reached God’s throne;
So, there, they dressed her all in white,
They say she was a perfect sight,
Celestial was her mien!”
“Lady Violet Sleepwell admires Ita.”
“Indeed.”
“She’s a victim to chloral.”
“Rose-coiffed stood J.Amid the choir,Celestial-singing!”
“Rose-coiffed stood J.Amid the choir,Celestial-singing!”
“Rose-coiffed stood J.Amid the choir,Celestial-singing!”
“Rose-coiffed stood J.
Amid the choir,
Celestial-singing!”
The august artiste glowed.
“Ita thinks she drinks.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” Miss Sinquier replied, covering her face with her hands.
Through her fingers she could contemplate her accompanist’s lanky figure as he stood in the opposite wing busily powdering his nose.
The moment, it seemed, had come.
Yet not quite—the public, who loved tradition, was determined on obtaining an encore.
Lady Mary was prepared to acquiesce.
Curtseying from side to side and wafting kisses to the gods, she announced:
“The Death of Hortense; byDesire.”