XIII
AN absence of ventilation made the room an oven and discouraged sleep. Through the width of skylight, in inert recumbence, she could follow wonderingly the frail pristine tints of dawn. Flushed, rose-barred, it spread above her with fantastic drifting clouds masking the morning stars.
From a neighbouring church a clock struck five.
Miss Sinquier sighed; she had not closed her eyes the whole night through.
“One needs a blind,” she mused, “and a pane——.” She looked about her for something to throw.
Cinquecento, Italian things—a chest, a crucifix, a huge guitar, a grim, carved catafalque all purple sticks and violet legs (Juliet’s) crowded the floor.
“A mess of glass ... and cut my feet ...;” she murmured, gathering about her anégligéof oxydized knitted stuff and sauntering out towards the footlights in quest of air.
Notwithstanding the thermometer, she could hear Miss May Mant breathing nasally from behind her door.
The stage was almost dark.
“Verona,” set in autumn trees, looked fast asleep. Here and there a campanile shot up, in high relief, backed by a scenic hill, or an umbrella-pine. On a column in the “Market Place” crouched a brazen lion.
An acrobatic impulse took her at the sight of it.
“Sono pazza per teSi!Sono pazza, pazza, pazza ...Pazza per amore,”
“Sono pazza per teSi!Sono pazza, pazza, pazza ...Pazza per amore,”
“Sono pazza per teSi!Sono pazza, pazza, pazza ...Pazza per amore,”
“Sono pazza per te
Si!Sono pazza, pazza, pazza ...
Pazza per amore,”
she warbled, leaping lightly over the footlights into the stalls.
The auditorium, steeped in darkness, felt extinguished, chill.
Making a circuit of the boxes, she found her way up a stairway into the promenade.
Busts of players, busts of poets, busts of peris, interspersed by tall mirrors in gilt-bordered mouldings, smiled on her good-day.
Sinking to a low, sprucely-cushioned seat, she breathed a sigh of content.
Rid of the perpetual frictions of the inevitablepersonnel, she could possess the theatre, for a little while, in quietude to herself.
In the long window boxes, tufts of white daisies inclining to the air brought back to mind a certain meadow, known asBasings, a pet haunt with her at home.
At the pond end, in a small coppice, doves cried “Coucoussou-coucoussou” all the day long.
Here, soon a year ago, while weaving herself a garland (she was playing at being Europa with the Saunders’ Fifeshire bull; flourishing flowers at it; tempting it with waving poppies; defying it to bear her away from the surrounding stagnance), the realization of her dramatic gift first discovered itself.
And then, her thoughts tripped on,hecame: the Rev. George—“just as I was wondering to whom to apply”—and drew all Applethorp to S. Ann-on-the-Hill by the persuasive magnetism of his voice; largely due—so he said—to “scientific production.” To theBromley Breath! He never could adequately thank Elizabeth, Mrs. Albert Bromley, for all she had done. No; because words failed.... Her Institute, for him, would be always “top-o’-the-tree,” and when asked, by her, “What tree?” he had answeredwith a cryptic look: “She trains them for the stage.”
Dear heart! How much he seemed to love it. He had known by their green-room names all the leading stars, and could tell on occasion, little anecdotes of each.
It was he who narrated how Mrs. Mary (as she was then), on the first night ofGulnara, Queen of the Lattermonians, got caught in the passenger-lift on the way from her dressing-room to the stage and was obliged to allow her understudy to replace her, which with the utmostéclatshe did, while Mrs. Mary, who could overhear the salvos from her prison, was driven quite distraught at a triumph that, but for the irony of things, would most certainly have been hers.
Miss Sinquier sighed.
“Which reminds me,” she murmured, fixing her eyes upon the storied ceiling, “that I’ve no one at all, should anything happen to me.”
She lay back and considered the inchoate imagery painted in gouache above her.
Hydropic loves with arms outstretched in invitation, ladies in hectic hats and billowingsilks, courtiers, lap-dogs, peacocks, etc., all intermingled in the pleasantest way.
As she gazed a great peace fell upon her. Her eyelids closed.
“Breakfast!”
Miss May Mant woke her with a start.
“Oh!”
“I laid it to-day in the stalls.”
“Extraordinary child.”
“Crumbs in the boxes, I’ve noticed, encourage mice.... They must come from the spring, I think, under the stage.”
“One ought to set a trap!”
“Poor creatures ... they enjoy a good play, I expect, as much as we do,” Miss Mant murmured, setting down the kettle she was holding and lowering her cheek graciously for a kiss.
“Well?”
“You were asleep.”
“Was I horrid?”
“You looked too perfectly orchidaceous.”
“Orchidaceous?”
“Like the little women of Outa-Maro.”
Miss Sinquier sat up.
“What is there for breakfast?” she asked.
“Do you like porridge?”
“Oh, Réné!”
Miss Mant raised a bare shoulder and crushed it to an ear.
“Really,” she remarked, “I’m at a loss to know what to give you, Sally; I sometimes ask myself what Juliet took....”
“Why, potions.”
“Itatakes tea luke with a lemon; and it makes hersocross.”
“Disgusting.”
“À la Russe.”
“Is she still away?”
“Yes.... She writes from a toy bungalow, she says, with the sea at the very door and a small shipwreck lying on the beach.”
“What of Paris?”
“I’m Page to him, you said so!”
“With her consent.”
“Oh, Ita hates the stage. She’s onlyon itof course to make a match ...; she could have been an Irish countess had she pleased, only she said it wasn’t smart enough, and it sounded too Sicilian.”
“Everyone can’t be Roman.”
“... Oh, she’s such a minx. In her letter she writes, ‘I don’t doubt you’ll soon growtired of the Sally-Sin Theatre and of dancing attendance on the Fair Sink.’”
“Cat.”
“And her Manting ways just to annoy. Mant, Mant, Mant! She does it to humiliate. Whenever the Tirds are in earshot she’s sure to begin.”
“The Tirds?”
“Llewellyn and Lydia. Lydia Tird has an understanding with my big brother. Poor lad! Just before I left home he took the name of Isadore: Isadore Iris. Oh, when Ita heard! Bill Mant she said and made Llewellyn laugh.”
“Oh!”
“And now that Mrs. Sixsmith ‘Mants’ me almost as much as Ita.”
“Why do you dislike her so much?”
“Cadging creature!”
“Réné?”
“Limpet.”
“Réné?”
“Parasite.”
“Réné——!”
“Scavenger.”
“Basta!”
“I know all about her.”
“What do you know?”
“If I tell you, I’ll have to tell you in French.”
“Then tell me in French.”
“Elle fait des cornes à son mari!”
“What next?”
“She’sdivorcée!”
“Poor soul.”
“Out atBois St. Jean—St. John’s Wood—she has a villa.”
Miss Sinquier got up.
“Anyway,” she murmured.
“Oh, Sally....”
“Well?”
“You do love me?”
“Why,of course.”
“Let’s go presently to a Turkish bath—after rehearsal.”
“Not to-day.”
“... Just for a ‘Liver Pack’?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because ... and when you’re out, don’t, dear, forget a mousetrap!”