And she found Maggy in before her. Maggy had made tea, she had taken off Alexandra's hat and knelt down and drawn off her shoes....Alexandra put down her cup and stretched out her hand across the table. Maggy took it and gave it a squeeze."There's a bit of poetry I learnt once," she said. "I say it whenever I feel the limit. It's a sort of psalm."All's well with the world, my friend,And there isn't an ache that lasts;All troubles will have an end,And the rain and the bitter blasts.There is sleep when the evil is done,There's substance beneath the foam;And the bully old yellow sun will shineTill the cows come home!""Can't you see 'em in your mind's eye, Lexie dear, a string of them—brown ones with soft eyes—their heads moving from side to side, coming down the long lane just round the turning ... and the sun shining behind them through clouds.... Cheer up, ducky!"VIIIMaggy said very little about Woolf. On certain topics there was a barrier of silence between the two girls, imposed by Alexandra. Maggy was disposed to be utterly unreserved, crude. Brought up in stage surroundings she had heard undiscussable things talked of openly all her life. Alexandra showed such distaste for laxity of speech that Maggy now refrained from touching on the subject of sex almost entirely. Had she been unreserved about Woolf, his conversation with her and her own attitude toward him, she would have had to show herself in a light that Alexandra would have disliked and certainly not understood.Maggy was never quite sure in her mind whether Alexandra was very cold by nature or completely reserved. She, herself, belonged to the type of woman, not a rare one, who can discuss her marital relations with others with a frankness that no man would ever dream of employing when speaking of his wife to his most intimate friend. Alexandra, except under extraordinary stress, would be as secretive as a man. To discuss sexual emotions or indulge in speculation about them with another girl was a thing quite foreign to her. At school she had, in that sense, been a being apart, while the other girls whispered in corners. Instinctively she shrank from having her mind contaminated by second-hand knowledge of the most vital and delicate functions of nature.Her upbringing had been different from Maggy's. Maggy's mind had been forced prematurely on the hot-bed of theatrical laxity. Alexandra's life, up till the last year, had been one of calm and sweet companionship with an adored mother. She had lived a healthy, normal existence, met men of her own class who would no more have dreamt of thinking irreverently of her than of their own mothers or sisters. She was aware that strong passions, illicit unions, and trouble and misery resulting from immorality, did exist in the world. She read of these things in newspapers and the books that were never kept from her; but these passions and unions and dissolving of unions seemed things that did not touch her class.She came into active collision with them for the first time when she went on the stage. She could not shut her eyes to the condition of things there any more than she could shut her ears to the sordid language of the girls in their common dressing room. But it made her ashamed to be a woman, a being of the same sex. These girls thought of men only in one way. The men whom they spoke of as their "boys" or their "friends" were certainly not any coarser in mind than the girls themselves. They had no more reserves of speech than factory-hands. There were exceptions here and there, but being exceptions they were negligible as a power of reform.Some girls attained their positions legitimately, she knew; but how few? One could count them on the fingers of one hand. Every one of them had had some one, a mother or a father to look after them, a father who waited at the stage-door every night, a comfortable home. They had been dressed well by their people. Though in the chorus, they had never known its strain and stress, for they had not been of it. Its hardships and temptations had, so to speak, been screened from them, and they had been curiously impervious to its language. Hence it was that their reputations had not suffered.Even out of musical comedy how few illustrious names were unassociated with scandal. Alexandra had heard the true story of how one of England's most prominent actresses was selected for her first important part—that of a courtesan. An actress sufficiently convincing in the role could not be found, till at last the author of the play exclaimed in exasperation: "Well, if we can't get the actress, let's have the woman." The equivalent had been lauded by the Press and the public, and the author's fees had not appreciably diminished!Alexandra knew now that her own chance of succeeding through hard work or any talent she might possess was about one in a thousand. She learnt of the many capable actors and actresses—some of them more than capable—who were touring the provinces year after year, and would wear out their souls and their lives touring the provinces. It was more than a hard struggle for the women: women were scarcely given a fighting chance.Yet all she could do was to fight, fight all the time so as not to drop out; to make a bare living, not to lose sight of ambition's pinnacle while she was forced to dwell in the plains of penury. But as regards Maggy she would not influence her one way or the other. Maggy would have to decide for herself.During the ensuing week they were less together than they had ever been. In the morning Maggy was at the theater while Alexandra went the round of the stage-doors to see if there was a chance of her being taken on. Very often they did not meet till after the show in the evening. For the first two nights Alexandra had gone to meet Maggy and had walked back with her; but now Maggy came home in Woolf's car. She said nothing about him. Alexandra asked no questions.IX"I've got something to show you," Woolf said. "Hop in."Maggy got into the car. She had been lunching with Woolf at his house. He always sent her to Sidey Street in his car, but never went there with her. He hated slums and mean streets. He had been born and bred in them and had had enough of them."Coming too?" she asked."Yes. I'm going to take you to see something I've just fixed up. I want to know what you think of it. It's a flat.""Oh."He got in beside her and set the car going. Maggy had been holding him at arm's length all the afternoon. He was getting a little tired of the pursuit and intended it should end. He could not associate Maggy with protracted virtue. If she persisted in this pose—for he thought it was a pose—he would lose interest in her. He had told her as much at lunch."Oh, rubbish!" Maggy had responded, munching at a pear that only a rich man could afford to buy out of season. "Courting's a change for you.""It's too much trouble. In business I work hard. I know what I want and I go on till I get it. With women I don't want hard work. Besides, unripe fruit is sour. It's best when it's ready to fall.""Then you've come under the wrong tree," she said cheekily.But she knew that the fruit was trembling on its stem—ripe."About this flat," she said, when they were on their way, "are you thinking of moving?""No."Woolf turned and looked at her intently. She could not face the searching in his eyes; she blushed and was angry with herself."I don't see what you want my opinion for, anyway," she said, to cover her confusion."It's funny, but I do."He said no more. Maggy's thoughts occupied her for the rest of the drive. She sat back in her seat, out of contact with Woolf. When he was close to her, or his clothing touched her, a breathless sensation assailed her, sapping her strength.The flat he took her to see was a furnished one in Bloomsbury, small but attractive in her eyes. It contained a bedroom, a bathroom and a sitting room. Meals were obtainable at a reasonable price in a restaurant attached to the building. The rooms had every appearance of being lived in. There were flowers in sitting room and bedroom, magazines, a box of chocolates: on the bedroom dressing-table was a brand-new silver toilette set and brushes. Among the pictures on the walls, framed in black and gold, were several studies of female figures in the nude. The electric lights were rose-shaded.Maggy was entranced with the place. She forgot her defensive attitude and showed frank pleasure in all she saw. She fingered the silver brushes lovingly, smelt the flowers, munched a chocolate.The white-tiled bathroom with its plated fittings appealed to her strongly."Hot and cold!" she murmured. "Not in bits but all at once. Scrummy!""What are you talking about?" said Woolf, amused."In Sidey Street we have a foot-bath and wash in bits," she explained frankly. "I've dreamt of baths like this. I've never had one."She turned on the taps with the fascination of a child, and watched the water run."So you like it all?""I should just think I did!"She perched on the edge of the bath, swinging a foot."You've really taken it?""For three years.""Who's coming to it?""It's for a good girl.""You mean for a bad girl," she pouted."She'll be good—to me.""Well, I hope she'll like it."He took her two hands. "So do I, Maggy. She's said so, anyway.""Meaning me?"He nodded."You've taken it on the chance that I'll come?""It's got to be completely furnished. If it wasn't you it would probably be some one I didn't care about half so much. But it's going to be you, isn't it, Maggy?""For three years!" Her voice trembled. "And after? What happens when the agreement's run out? Has the girl got to be like the flat—taken on by some one else? There was a play, wasn't there, a few years ago, called 'Love and What Then?' It didn't last long."She got up and went back into the sitting room. Woolf followed her."Won't you trust me and come?""If I came I should come without trusting you. I'm not the kind that tiles herself in. I suppose I should let things rip.""Well, it's yours for the taking. Only you've got to decide—now."And suddenly Maggy's defenses broke down. She felt the frail bulwarks of her unsheltered girlhood crumbling around her."It wouldn't be for the bathroom or the bedroom or what you'd give me," she said huskily."Wouldn't it?"His arms were about her."No," she whispered. "It's you."Woolf gave her a little Yale key."Here it is. Let yourself in when you want to take possession."He had tea sent up from the restaurant and they had it together in the cosy sitting room. Maggy was very subdued. She would go back to Sidey Street only to pack the few personal possessions she treasured. She hoped, was almost sure, Alexandra would be out. She dared not face her just yet."I'll bring you back after the show to-night," Woolf reminded her when they parted. "Don't forget I've given you the key.""I've given you more than a key," said Maggy.X"Lexie, I feel a beast, but I've got to go. You'll never understand. That's why I've said so little about him. Woolf, I mean. It isn't only what he can give me, though it does mean something too. I'm wrong somewhere, I suppose. I don't think about it like you do. And it's all right for girls like me. Perhaps it's the only thing. You'll never want to see me again. That's the one part that doesn't bear thinking about. I don't suppose you'll believe I care a hang for you now, but I do, even though it's too late to go on living with you if I wanted to. The other thing was stronger, that's all. I had a little Persian cat once. I used to let her out for exercise on a string because I was afraid of losing her. But she got out when I wasn't looking all the same and disappeared for three days. She couldn't help it, poor dear. It was just her nature. I expect I'm like that cat. I was bound to go on the tiles. You'll think that vulgar. I am vulgar all through. That's the difference between us."You've been the best chum in the world, dear. I can't thank you properly. I'm a rotter. I've left my cash on the dressing-table. I don't want it. Fred Woolf will be looking after me. Take it, do please. What's the use of starving when you needn't. Good-by, Lexie. You may not believe it, but I'm crying and Idocare."MAGGY."XIMrs. Bell came into the room with the supper tray. It was mostly tray. The supper consisted of two cups of cocoa, half a loaf of bread and an atom of butter. She gave her lodger an inquisitive glance as she spread the tablecloth. Alexandra had Maggy's letter in her hand, and her face was woefully sad."You need not lay for two," she said quietly. "Miss Delamere won't be here in future."The bald statement was sufficient for Mrs. Bell. Ever since the day when Maggy had been brought to her door in a private car she had more or less been prepared for this dénouement. The association of chorus-girls and cars in her experience had but one meaning: a rise for the former in the plane of life with a concomitant and much-to-be-desired acceleration of the pace at which it may be lived."I'm glad she's found a friend," she observed cheerfully. "She's the sort that's made for a man to look at. Have you seen her chap yet, Miss Hersey?""I don't want to talk about Miss Delamere's affairs," winced Alexandra."You're upset, I can see. I'm not denying it's hard to see a friend carried off like that." Mrs. Bell Bell shook her head deprecatingly. "It's a trying place, the stage. I wouldn't go back to it myself, not if I was paid like a Pavlova. I'd rather toil and moil for Mr. Bell downstairs all the days of my life." And having thus asserted her claim to respectability, conjugal endurance and a taste for sour grapes, with admirable conciseness she felt she was privileged to ask another question: "Have you got a shop yet, dear?""No, it's the wrong time of year.""You can't wait till the autumn?""No.""Then what'll you do?""I'm not thinking of myself just now. It doesn't matter," said Alexandra wearily."I know. You're bothering your poor head about Miss Delamere. Don't you fret. She's got some one to look after her. That's better than looking after yourself. I daresay she's sleeping in a creep de sheeny nightdress to-night with real lace on her pillows.""Don't talk like that!" Alexandra shuddered."Well, it's no good trying to walk clean on a muddy road. Drink your cocoa while it's hot, dearie. If you're on the stage you must go on like the angels in heaven, doing what Rome does, where there's very little marriage or giving in marriage." Mrs. Bell's metaphor was mixed, but her views were definite. "That's why I would rather see my own girl lying here at my feet dead and smiling in her coffin than in the profession. She's a respectable upper housemaid," she finished comfortably, as she closed the door behind her.Alexandra tried to eat a little dry bread. The butter was rancid. She ended by giving up the attempt. Her throat ached. She leant her head on the table. It ached as much as her heart and throat did. Her whole body was permeated with the pain of unshed tears.Maggy had gone.Except for the letter, which was final enough, it was difficult to realize. She had not even taken her box, only a small handbag. Her possessions had been so pitifully meager. Her wooden-backed brush and a metal comb were still on the dressing-table, but the cheap German silver powder box and her rouge and cream pots were gone; there was the nightdress case on her bed in the crochet work that was Maggy's hobby with the big badly-worked M in washed-out greens and pinks. Wrapped in a little screw of paper was the money she had left behind. She had taken Alexandra's photograph, and for some reason she had turned the face of her own to the wall.A wild desire came to Alexandra to run out, late as it was, go to Maggy and bring her back. Then she remembered that she did not even know where Maggy was. She was gone and that was all; swallowed up in the immensity of London; captured by some man unknown.The realization that Maggy had deliberately stolen away at the call of exigency hurt her acutely. Passion had never touched Alexandra. Just now she could only feel impatience with one who was moved by it to extremes. But mingled with the distaste for a thing she could not comprehend was compassion for her friend. Some part of Maggy must be suffering, sorry. No woman surrenders herself without some secret, sacred regret.She sat thinking, trying not to think, for hours. Finally, she undressed and, in the darkness, said her prayers. She felt they were futile, childish.... She turned her face to the wall so that she should not see the ghostly outline of Maggy's narrow, empty bed.As the hours passed and sleep did not come she began to wonder if it were not all a dream. The idea took hold of her. Of course, Maggy had not gone....She sat up and spoke her name across the darkness."Maggy!"Although there was no answer, the tantalizing obsession was still upon her. She got out of bed and crossed over to Maggy's, feeling above the coverlet for the comforting touch of the warm, sleepy body. The coverlet was flat, the sheets cool. Maggy had gone.She groped her way back to her own bed, and at last tears came, and with tears, sleep.By the morning, the sharp edge of her feelings was somewhat blunted. She was still sorry, but not passionately sorry. Those who have wept for their dead with the poignancy of first grief experience much the same dulling of the emotions. It precedes the inevitable resignation, without which they could not again take up the lonely burden of life.Maggy was lost to her, as lost to her as if she had died. She had not the consolation of knowing that she would see her again, alive, exuberantly happy, unregretting, and that this feeling would pass. She did not know then that across the barrier of her frailty Maggy would hold out her strong, young, eager hands, and that she, Alexandra, would grasp them in unalterable love and friendship.She put away the money Maggy had wanted her to take until she could give it back to her, and directly she had had her breakfast, started for the theatrical agents' offices. They opened at ten. She had small hope of obtaining anything at any of them. The principals did not know her by sight. When one of them made an occasional dart into the waiting room and gave a quick glance round she was only "one of a crowd."At such times there would be a little stir and scrimmage amongst the men and women in which she would not share. Men would elbow women, women elbow men in their efforts to catch the agent's eye or better still his sleeve. And he would shake them off in a precipitate passage from his own room to that of his partner's at the other end of the waiting room. Alexandra knew his short, little, staccato, stock sentences by heart."Nothing for you to-day, dear." (Shake her off.)"Sorry, my dear, I can't stop." (Shake her off.)"No, my dear, I—oh, it's you. Stop behind. I'll see you later." (Pressure of the hand.)"Nothing in your line to-day, old fellow." (Shake him off.)Perhaps a fleeting look at Alexandra, so that she was in doubt as to whether she had been noticed or not.Then the crowd would wait on, lessened by the few who lost heart and went on to other agencies. The assembly varied little in any of these refuges of the out-of-works. There you would find every specimen of stageland: the sprightly young man with an eye stimulated hopefully by sherry from the adjacent Bodega, dressed in the last fashionable suit left from his wardrobe, his waistcoat pocket bulging with pawntickets; the old actor with a blue chin, a red nose and a kindly smile, unctuously imparting the latest "wheeze" to a brother comedy-merchant; the hard-eyed woman of forty, rouged, smelling of spirits and patchouli, consumed with inward wrath because of the refusal of managers to entertain her applications for youthful parts; the fresh-looking girl with an air of country lanes and a pigtail, who nevertheless was bred and born at Stratford-at-Bow; the seedy advance-agent, vainly trying to adopt a managerial air; the plump and cheery chorister with no ambitions beyond thirty shillings a week and a long pantomime run; her male compeer nourishing a secret belief that he could "wipe the floor" with every tenor on the boards.Eleven, twelve, one o'clock, and still the patient crowd would linger on in the agents' offices, chattering intermittently, giggling occasionally, desperately anxious all the same, eyes ever glancing toward the two shut doors.At one would come the unwelcome news, spoken by the young man who kept the accounts and made out the contracts:"Mr. Whitehead's gone to lunch. Won't be back to-day. No use waiting."How quickly the room emptied! Alexandra did not know that a goodly proportion of its habitués would quickly foregather for consultation and refreshment in Rule's or the Bodega, where the atmosphere was redolent of alcoholic odors, curiously aromatic, sonorous with sustained conversation and the low chuckle of the comedians.One saw the same faces again after the luncheon hour, at Denton's, at Hart's, at Paul Stannard's, a little less hopeful, a little more tired as the day went on.Paul Stannard had got Alexandra her engagement at De Freyne's. She went to him again now. She liked him. He was a gentleman by birth, had drifted on to the stage, loathed it, could not get free of it, and ended by running a theatrical agency with fair success. He did not call all girls "dear," only the ones that liked it, and was more accessible to the rank and file than most agents."I thought I had fixed you up with De Freyne," he said. "His show's in for a long run. Couldn't stick it?""Mr. De Freyne told me to go."Alexandra was tired. She could hardly stand."Sit down," invited Stannard. "Up against it?""Well, I've nothing to do. It's serious.""I'm sorry." He turned over the leaves of a big book on his desk. "And I can't help you. Nothing's doing, except a sextette for Rio.""Can't I go?" she asked eagerly."My God, no!"He put his hands in his pockets and surveyed her compassionately. Belonging as he did to the class that shelters its women it still hurt him to see women engaged in fighting for bread. It was more desperate still when they fought for honor too, or held it above the price of bread."Why did you send me to the Pall Mall if you knew they wouldn't want—any one straight-laced?""I can't ask every girl who comes to me for a job to sign an affidavit concerning her morals. Why are you on the stage at all if you've got different ideas to the others? You haven't an earthly. Might as well buy a toothbrush.""Buy a toothbrush?""To sweep out an Augean stable." He scribbled some addresses on a half sheet of paper. "There's just a chance these aren't filled up. Mention my name. I don't hold out any hope, though." He hesitated for a minute. "Are you bound to go on at this? Haven't you a home to go to?""I'm bound to go on," she said, trying to keep the desperate note out of her voice."Well, good luck." Stannard held open the door for her."Poor devil!" he said as he shut it.XIIAll the names which Stannard had given her were those of minor managers. It was late in the season and their companies would in all probability be made up and booked for the road. Still she went to them. There was a bare chance that one of them might have a vacancy. For two hours she hung about their offices waiting for an interview, only to waste her time in the end. "Full up" was the answer she got to each application. The last place she called at was situated in a block of buildings off Shaftesbury Avenue. As she left it a door facing her on the opposite side of the passage opened and a man in a frock coat and silk hat came out. He stopped short, looked her up and down and spoke."Excuse me, but are you out of an engagement?""Yes," she replied, a last glimmer of hope flickering within her, the silk hat suggesting something managerial.The stranger's next words confirmed her in this idea."I believe you're the very person I've been looking for for a week. The question is, can you sing?""Yes.""Then come in."He threw the door open again and followed her in. The room contained two chairs, a desk, a small grand piano, one or two playbills on the walls and several diagrams of the larynx, looking not unlike a map of the tube railways."This is my practise room and therefore bare," he explained. "It's bad to sing in a room blocked up with furniture. Breaks up the voice, you know. By the way, my name's Norburton—Gerald Norburton. You may have heard of it," he added modestly.Alexandra had heard of it. The name was that of a singer of some repute."Oh, then, you're not an agent," she said, a little disappointed."Lord, no." The idea seemed to amuse him. "Fact of the matter is this: my friend, Maurice Haines, wrote to me the other day—here's his letter—asking me to find him a likely girl for a sketch he has booked at the Palace. He'd engaged some one, but she's just gone in for appendicitis. Funny thing, appendicitis. Has it ever occurred to you—" The blank look in Alexandra's face constrained him to keep to business. "So he appeals to me, thinking that as a singer I might know some one likely. But I didn't—not until I saw you. If you can sing it's a sure thing." He read from the letter he had been searching for."'She must be tall and dark and a lady. Youth essential. Of course she must have a well-trained voice, but previous experience doesn't matter. I'll look in next week, and if you know a girl who will do, for heaven's sake have her round. The sketch is booked for the next six months, first here and then in the leading provincial towns. I'll pay ten pounds a week for the right woman.'"What do you think of that?""It seems to me it depends on my voice," said Alexandra."That's it. Do you mind singing me something? Here's a pile of songs. Pick out one you know."She found a song. Norburton played the accompaniment. She had an idea she was singing well and hoped he would think so. When she finished, she had the impression that he was not satisfied."I'm afraid you're disappointed," she said, with foreboding."No, not exactly. You've a nice voice. You want to know how to pitch it better. As it is it won't carry. I believe I could teach you in five days, before Haines comes round.""I couldn't expect you to do that.""But Idoteach," he laughed. "Do you doubt my capability? I assure you that besides being a public singer I get three guineas for every half-hour lesson I give.""What I meant was," said Alexandra, "that I couldn't expect you to coach me for nothing, and I couldn't pay enough to make it worth your while."He appeared to think."I want to do my best for Haines," he said. "Look here. I'll give you five lessons—one every day for ten minutes—and you can pay me what you can afford, five shillings a lesson, say."She colored. "That's charity.""No. I really want to help Haines."Now Alexandra had little more than five shillings in her purse. The next quarterly payment of her annuity would not be due for a fortnight. In the meantime all she possessed was some old jewelry that had belonged to her mother. There was the money Maggy had left behind her, but she was not going to touch that."I should like you to teach me. It's very good of you," she said. "Would you take this instead of money? It's worth a little more than five five-shilling lessons." She tendered him a ring with a single pearl in an antique setting. A pawnbroker would have lent her five pounds on it. She was anxious that he should take the ring. It would make her feel less under an obligation to him.Apparently he appreciated her feelings."That's very pretty of you," he said. "It fits my little finger, too. Would you rather I took it?" There was a shade of reluctance in his voice."Much rather.""Well, thank you very much. Now I must pull you through by a little teaching. Can you have your first lesson now? No time like the present, is there? Stand in the corner over there to the right. Now, sing 'ah' on middle C. Keep your tongue well down. Give it room—give it room! Swell it out! You'll do very well," he said, after ten minutes. "To-morrow, same time. I'll drop Haines a line. Don't thank me, please."Another girl came in as Alexandra went out. She heard Norburton tell her she was early."Have you heard from Mr. ——" She thought the name mentioned was Haines, but argued she must have been mistaken. The girl was fair and short, not at all the type Norburton's friend wanted. Alexandra assumed she must be one of the singer's private pupils, and thought no more about her.For the next four days she came for her lessons, and at the end of that time Norburton told her he was quite satisfied with the result."Haines will be here to-morrow at eleven," he told her. "Don't worry, you'll get the engagement."All the same she did worry. She pinned her hopes on it. She had curtailed her food down to the irreductible minimum. Privation showed in her looks. She was not a big eater, but her physique demanded good and nourishing food, which now she never got. She wanted new shoes and gloves badly. These she could not manage to do without indefinitely. She began to lose confidence in herself in these days. She knew her appearance was noticeably shabby, and that she was getting the delicate look that employers dislike. One cannot say to the man from whom one is hoping for an engagement: "I'm pale, but I'll look better when I can afford to feed myself properly. My clothes are shabby, but they would be in rags if I hadn't looked after them as if they were priceless brocades. And I'm not poor and hungry and out of an engagement because I've no talent, but because I've certain principles that I've brought to the wrong place. Give me a chance and don't ask anything else of me."At five minutes to eleven the next day she was in Shaftesbury Avenue. Outside Mr. Norburton's door some ten or twelve girls were waiting. They looked a mixed lot, all of them anxious, poor and shabby."He told me ten," said one of them, "and he's not here yet.""I've been here since half-past nine," said another.One bold spirit rapped sharply on the door.As a result one next to it bearing a brass plate and a solicitor's name was opened and a man put his head out and angrily demanded:"Who's making that row? If you're waiting to see the fellow who had that room, he's gone. Went away yesterday afternoon.""Meaning Mr. Norburton?" asked one of the girls."I don't know what his name was. He's gone, anyhow. It's no good waiting about and making a noise."He shut the door. The girls stared at one another blankly."I want to know the meaning of this," said one of them truculently. "P'raps the caretaker can tell us." She clattered down the stone stairs, and half a dozen of the others followed her.A fair girl standing next to Alexandra spoke to her."Did you want to see Mr. Norburton too?""Yes, but I'm afraid I shan't." Alexandra felt faint."I don't think we shall either. It's my belief we've been done. Did he give you lessons?""Five.""I had five, too," nodded the girl. "Two pounds I paid the blighter. He said I'd suit Mr. Haines a treat. Read me a letter saying he wanted a fair girl with a good figure and contralto voice— What's that? It was a 'tall and dark' to you! My hat! What didyoupay?""I gave him a pearl ring.""O-oh!" Her eyes went round. "I saw it on his finger. Then you were hard up?""I had the ring, but not the money to pay him.""And I had the money. And I haven't got it now."One of the girls who had gone to make enquiries below came up again."Thought I'd come and tell you," she panted. "It's true. He's gone, right enough. The piano was hired and it's been fetched away. He's done seventeen of us, the beast! His name isn't Norburton at all, but Easton or Weston, I forget which. If the real Mr. Norburton or Maurice Haines heard what he'd been up to they'd prosecute him. He's just been using their names to cod us. Oh, I'd like to—to—" The unspoken threat tailed off in a resigned sigh. "Well, there's a voice-trial at Daly's at 11.30. I'm off."Alexandra did not move. She was dazed. The other girls melted away, all but one little creature in black who commenced to sob."Don't cry," said Alexandra, touched by her grief. "You must try and forget the disappointment."The girl raised streaming eyes. She was very plain and wore her hair frizzed out all round her head. The fingers through which her tears had been trickling were red and work-worn."I paid him f-four pounds in gold," she wept. "And he s-said my voice was g-good enough to get me the engagement. And I've given notice at the place I'm at on the strength of it, and now I'll have to go back and ask to be kept on. Makes me ashamed of myself, it does, after what I said to the mistress about gettin' ten pounds a week on the stage. And now f-four pounds of good money gone!""Haven't you any left?""I've got eleven saved, but it would have been fifteen," sniffed the girl. She took it hardly that she had to pay so heavily for her experience."Well, then, cheer up," said Alexandra. "I haven't got fifteen shillings.""Not in the world?""Not in the world.""But you're a lady!""Am I?" asked poor Alexandra. Tears were not far from her own eyes now. The girl saw them, and the fount of her own dried up in her compassion for a disappointment that must be even greater than her own because of the actual need behind it. A lady, and with less than fifteen shillings in the world! Why, she had always been able to earn nearly ten shillings a week, without counting her board and keep. She had always been able to count on regular employment, plenty of food and a fairly comfortable bed; and until she had been dazzled by the magnificent prospect of ten pounds a week and still more by the idea of becoming a "star actress," she had been fairly contented with her life. She wished she had never seen that catch advertisement in the newspaper."I shouldn't think any more about the stage if I were you," advised Alexandra."I shan't," was the resolute answer. "It's no good, is it?""Not a bit of good."The girl hesitated."Do you mind telling me," she said, "if it's very bad. The girls on it, I mean.""It's difficult sometimes for them to be good," was Alexandra's qualified reply."That's pretty much what our milkman says. He had a wife he divorced that used to go on the stage once a year in pantomime."Alexandra smiled wanly. She was getting accustomed to the democratic atmosphere of the stage, where social differences are inexistent. The dragging in of the milkman's wife was only a sharp-cut illustration of the lengths to which the leveling-down process could go. The life had robbed her of all surprise at the necessity of having to rub shoulders with ex-shopgirls and the like; but this was the first time she had found herself on terms of equality with a domestic servant."Dessay I'm well out of it," said the girl philosophically. "I hope you'll get on, miss."As she passed Alexandra she stopped, making believe to pick up something that was not there."Oh, look what you've dropped!" she exclaimed, holding out two half-crowns.Alexandra had come out that morning with only a few pence."It isn't mine," she disclaimed. "If you look in your purse you'll probably find it's your own money."The girl made a pretense of doing so."No, that it isn't," she insisted. "It must be yours, right enough.""But it can't be."Before she could anticipate the movement, the girl slipped past her and raced down the stairs. Alexandra followed as fast as she could. But the girl was too quick for her. She was nowhere to be seen when Alexandra reached the street.Only then did she comprehend the meaning of the generous subterfuge. She stood staring down at the money in her hand—two half-crowns, given her by a servant!
And she found Maggy in before her. Maggy had made tea, she had taken off Alexandra's hat and knelt down and drawn off her shoes....
Alexandra put down her cup and stretched out her hand across the table. Maggy took it and gave it a squeeze.
"There's a bit of poetry I learnt once," she said. "I say it whenever I feel the limit. It's a sort of psalm.
"All's well with the world, my friend,And there isn't an ache that lasts;All troubles will have an end,And the rain and the bitter blasts.There is sleep when the evil is done,There's substance beneath the foam;And the bully old yellow sun will shineTill the cows come home!"
"All's well with the world, my friend,And there isn't an ache that lasts;All troubles will have an end,And the rain and the bitter blasts.
"All's well with the world, my friend,
And there isn't an ache that lasts;
And there isn't an ache that lasts;
All troubles will have an end,
And the rain and the bitter blasts.
And the rain and the bitter blasts.
There is sleep when the evil is done,There's substance beneath the foam;And the bully old yellow sun will shineTill the cows come home!"
There is sleep when the evil is done,
There's substance beneath the foam;
There's substance beneath the foam;
And the bully old yellow sun will shine
Till the cows come home!"
Till the cows come home!"
"Can't you see 'em in your mind's eye, Lexie dear, a string of them—brown ones with soft eyes—their heads moving from side to side, coming down the long lane just round the turning ... and the sun shining behind them through clouds.... Cheer up, ducky!"
VIII
Maggy said very little about Woolf. On certain topics there was a barrier of silence between the two girls, imposed by Alexandra. Maggy was disposed to be utterly unreserved, crude. Brought up in stage surroundings she had heard undiscussable things talked of openly all her life. Alexandra showed such distaste for laxity of speech that Maggy now refrained from touching on the subject of sex almost entirely. Had she been unreserved about Woolf, his conversation with her and her own attitude toward him, she would have had to show herself in a light that Alexandra would have disliked and certainly not understood.
Maggy was never quite sure in her mind whether Alexandra was very cold by nature or completely reserved. She, herself, belonged to the type of woman, not a rare one, who can discuss her marital relations with others with a frankness that no man would ever dream of employing when speaking of his wife to his most intimate friend. Alexandra, except under extraordinary stress, would be as secretive as a man. To discuss sexual emotions or indulge in speculation about them with another girl was a thing quite foreign to her. At school she had, in that sense, been a being apart, while the other girls whispered in corners. Instinctively she shrank from having her mind contaminated by second-hand knowledge of the most vital and delicate functions of nature.
Her upbringing had been different from Maggy's. Maggy's mind had been forced prematurely on the hot-bed of theatrical laxity. Alexandra's life, up till the last year, had been one of calm and sweet companionship with an adored mother. She had lived a healthy, normal existence, met men of her own class who would no more have dreamt of thinking irreverently of her than of their own mothers or sisters. She was aware that strong passions, illicit unions, and trouble and misery resulting from immorality, did exist in the world. She read of these things in newspapers and the books that were never kept from her; but these passions and unions and dissolving of unions seemed things that did not touch her class.
She came into active collision with them for the first time when she went on the stage. She could not shut her eyes to the condition of things there any more than she could shut her ears to the sordid language of the girls in their common dressing room. But it made her ashamed to be a woman, a being of the same sex. These girls thought of men only in one way. The men whom they spoke of as their "boys" or their "friends" were certainly not any coarser in mind than the girls themselves. They had no more reserves of speech than factory-hands. There were exceptions here and there, but being exceptions they were negligible as a power of reform.
Some girls attained their positions legitimately, she knew; but how few? One could count them on the fingers of one hand. Every one of them had had some one, a mother or a father to look after them, a father who waited at the stage-door every night, a comfortable home. They had been dressed well by their people. Though in the chorus, they had never known its strain and stress, for they had not been of it. Its hardships and temptations had, so to speak, been screened from them, and they had been curiously impervious to its language. Hence it was that their reputations had not suffered.
Even out of musical comedy how few illustrious names were unassociated with scandal. Alexandra had heard the true story of how one of England's most prominent actresses was selected for her first important part—that of a courtesan. An actress sufficiently convincing in the role could not be found, till at last the author of the play exclaimed in exasperation: "Well, if we can't get the actress, let's have the woman." The equivalent had been lauded by the Press and the public, and the author's fees had not appreciably diminished!
Alexandra knew now that her own chance of succeeding through hard work or any talent she might possess was about one in a thousand. She learnt of the many capable actors and actresses—some of them more than capable—who were touring the provinces year after year, and would wear out their souls and their lives touring the provinces. It was more than a hard struggle for the women: women were scarcely given a fighting chance.
Yet all she could do was to fight, fight all the time so as not to drop out; to make a bare living, not to lose sight of ambition's pinnacle while she was forced to dwell in the plains of penury. But as regards Maggy she would not influence her one way or the other. Maggy would have to decide for herself.
During the ensuing week they were less together than they had ever been. In the morning Maggy was at the theater while Alexandra went the round of the stage-doors to see if there was a chance of her being taken on. Very often they did not meet till after the show in the evening. For the first two nights Alexandra had gone to meet Maggy and had walked back with her; but now Maggy came home in Woolf's car. She said nothing about him. Alexandra asked no questions.
IX
"I've got something to show you," Woolf said. "Hop in."
Maggy got into the car. She had been lunching with Woolf at his house. He always sent her to Sidey Street in his car, but never went there with her. He hated slums and mean streets. He had been born and bred in them and had had enough of them.
"Coming too?" she asked.
"Yes. I'm going to take you to see something I've just fixed up. I want to know what you think of it. It's a flat."
"Oh."
He got in beside her and set the car going. Maggy had been holding him at arm's length all the afternoon. He was getting a little tired of the pursuit and intended it should end. He could not associate Maggy with protracted virtue. If she persisted in this pose—for he thought it was a pose—he would lose interest in her. He had told her as much at lunch.
"Oh, rubbish!" Maggy had responded, munching at a pear that only a rich man could afford to buy out of season. "Courting's a change for you."
"It's too much trouble. In business I work hard. I know what I want and I go on till I get it. With women I don't want hard work. Besides, unripe fruit is sour. It's best when it's ready to fall."
"Then you've come under the wrong tree," she said cheekily.
But she knew that the fruit was trembling on its stem—ripe.
"About this flat," she said, when they were on their way, "are you thinking of moving?"
"No."
Woolf turned and looked at her intently. She could not face the searching in his eyes; she blushed and was angry with herself.
"I don't see what you want my opinion for, anyway," she said, to cover her confusion.
"It's funny, but I do."
He said no more. Maggy's thoughts occupied her for the rest of the drive. She sat back in her seat, out of contact with Woolf. When he was close to her, or his clothing touched her, a breathless sensation assailed her, sapping her strength.
The flat he took her to see was a furnished one in Bloomsbury, small but attractive in her eyes. It contained a bedroom, a bathroom and a sitting room. Meals were obtainable at a reasonable price in a restaurant attached to the building. The rooms had every appearance of being lived in. There were flowers in sitting room and bedroom, magazines, a box of chocolates: on the bedroom dressing-table was a brand-new silver toilette set and brushes. Among the pictures on the walls, framed in black and gold, were several studies of female figures in the nude. The electric lights were rose-shaded.
Maggy was entranced with the place. She forgot her defensive attitude and showed frank pleasure in all she saw. She fingered the silver brushes lovingly, smelt the flowers, munched a chocolate.
The white-tiled bathroom with its plated fittings appealed to her strongly.
"Hot and cold!" she murmured. "Not in bits but all at once. Scrummy!"
"What are you talking about?" said Woolf, amused.
"In Sidey Street we have a foot-bath and wash in bits," she explained frankly. "I've dreamt of baths like this. I've never had one."
She turned on the taps with the fascination of a child, and watched the water run.
"So you like it all?"
"I should just think I did!"
She perched on the edge of the bath, swinging a foot.
"You've really taken it?"
"For three years."
"Who's coming to it?"
"It's for a good girl."
"You mean for a bad girl," she pouted.
"She'll be good—to me."
"Well, I hope she'll like it."
He took her two hands. "So do I, Maggy. She's said so, anyway."
"Meaning me?"
He nodded.
"You've taken it on the chance that I'll come?"
"It's got to be completely furnished. If it wasn't you it would probably be some one I didn't care about half so much. But it's going to be you, isn't it, Maggy?"
"For three years!" Her voice trembled. "And after? What happens when the agreement's run out? Has the girl got to be like the flat—taken on by some one else? There was a play, wasn't there, a few years ago, called 'Love and What Then?' It didn't last long."
She got up and went back into the sitting room. Woolf followed her.
"Won't you trust me and come?"
"If I came I should come without trusting you. I'm not the kind that tiles herself in. I suppose I should let things rip."
"Well, it's yours for the taking. Only you've got to decide—now."
And suddenly Maggy's defenses broke down. She felt the frail bulwarks of her unsheltered girlhood crumbling around her.
"It wouldn't be for the bathroom or the bedroom or what you'd give me," she said huskily.
"Wouldn't it?"
His arms were about her.
"No," she whispered. "It's you."
Woolf gave her a little Yale key.
"Here it is. Let yourself in when you want to take possession."
He had tea sent up from the restaurant and they had it together in the cosy sitting room. Maggy was very subdued. She would go back to Sidey Street only to pack the few personal possessions she treasured. She hoped, was almost sure, Alexandra would be out. She dared not face her just yet.
"I'll bring you back after the show to-night," Woolf reminded her when they parted. "Don't forget I've given you the key."
"I've given you more than a key," said Maggy.
X
"Lexie, I feel a beast, but I've got to go. You'll never understand. That's why I've said so little about him. Woolf, I mean. It isn't only what he can give me, though it does mean something too. I'm wrong somewhere, I suppose. I don't think about it like you do. And it's all right for girls like me. Perhaps it's the only thing. You'll never want to see me again. That's the one part that doesn't bear thinking about. I don't suppose you'll believe I care a hang for you now, but I do, even though it's too late to go on living with you if I wanted to. The other thing was stronger, that's all. I had a little Persian cat once. I used to let her out for exercise on a string because I was afraid of losing her. But she got out when I wasn't looking all the same and disappeared for three days. She couldn't help it, poor dear. It was just her nature. I expect I'm like that cat. I was bound to go on the tiles. You'll think that vulgar. I am vulgar all through. That's the difference between us.
"You've been the best chum in the world, dear. I can't thank you properly. I'm a rotter. I've left my cash on the dressing-table. I don't want it. Fred Woolf will be looking after me. Take it, do please. What's the use of starving when you needn't. Good-by, Lexie. You may not believe it, but I'm crying and Idocare.
"MAGGY."
XI
Mrs. Bell came into the room with the supper tray. It was mostly tray. The supper consisted of two cups of cocoa, half a loaf of bread and an atom of butter. She gave her lodger an inquisitive glance as she spread the tablecloth. Alexandra had Maggy's letter in her hand, and her face was woefully sad.
"You need not lay for two," she said quietly. "Miss Delamere won't be here in future."
The bald statement was sufficient for Mrs. Bell. Ever since the day when Maggy had been brought to her door in a private car she had more or less been prepared for this dénouement. The association of chorus-girls and cars in her experience had but one meaning: a rise for the former in the plane of life with a concomitant and much-to-be-desired acceleration of the pace at which it may be lived.
"I'm glad she's found a friend," she observed cheerfully. "She's the sort that's made for a man to look at. Have you seen her chap yet, Miss Hersey?"
"I don't want to talk about Miss Delamere's affairs," winced Alexandra.
"You're upset, I can see. I'm not denying it's hard to see a friend carried off like that." Mrs. Bell Bell shook her head deprecatingly. "It's a trying place, the stage. I wouldn't go back to it myself, not if I was paid like a Pavlova. I'd rather toil and moil for Mr. Bell downstairs all the days of my life." And having thus asserted her claim to respectability, conjugal endurance and a taste for sour grapes, with admirable conciseness she felt she was privileged to ask another question: "Have you got a shop yet, dear?"
"No, it's the wrong time of year."
"You can't wait till the autumn?"
"No."
"Then what'll you do?"
"I'm not thinking of myself just now. It doesn't matter," said Alexandra wearily.
"I know. You're bothering your poor head about Miss Delamere. Don't you fret. She's got some one to look after her. That's better than looking after yourself. I daresay she's sleeping in a creep de sheeny nightdress to-night with real lace on her pillows."
"Don't talk like that!" Alexandra shuddered.
"Well, it's no good trying to walk clean on a muddy road. Drink your cocoa while it's hot, dearie. If you're on the stage you must go on like the angels in heaven, doing what Rome does, where there's very little marriage or giving in marriage." Mrs. Bell's metaphor was mixed, but her views were definite. "That's why I would rather see my own girl lying here at my feet dead and smiling in her coffin than in the profession. She's a respectable upper housemaid," she finished comfortably, as she closed the door behind her.
Alexandra tried to eat a little dry bread. The butter was rancid. She ended by giving up the attempt. Her throat ached. She leant her head on the table. It ached as much as her heart and throat did. Her whole body was permeated with the pain of unshed tears.
Maggy had gone.
Except for the letter, which was final enough, it was difficult to realize. She had not even taken her box, only a small handbag. Her possessions had been so pitifully meager. Her wooden-backed brush and a metal comb were still on the dressing-table, but the cheap German silver powder box and her rouge and cream pots were gone; there was the nightdress case on her bed in the crochet work that was Maggy's hobby with the big badly-worked M in washed-out greens and pinks. Wrapped in a little screw of paper was the money she had left behind. She had taken Alexandra's photograph, and for some reason she had turned the face of her own to the wall.
A wild desire came to Alexandra to run out, late as it was, go to Maggy and bring her back. Then she remembered that she did not even know where Maggy was. She was gone and that was all; swallowed up in the immensity of London; captured by some man unknown.
The realization that Maggy had deliberately stolen away at the call of exigency hurt her acutely. Passion had never touched Alexandra. Just now she could only feel impatience with one who was moved by it to extremes. But mingled with the distaste for a thing she could not comprehend was compassion for her friend. Some part of Maggy must be suffering, sorry. No woman surrenders herself without some secret, sacred regret.
She sat thinking, trying not to think, for hours. Finally, she undressed and, in the darkness, said her prayers. She felt they were futile, childish.... She turned her face to the wall so that she should not see the ghostly outline of Maggy's narrow, empty bed.
As the hours passed and sleep did not come she began to wonder if it were not all a dream. The idea took hold of her. Of course, Maggy had not gone....
She sat up and spoke her name across the darkness.
"Maggy!"
Although there was no answer, the tantalizing obsession was still upon her. She got out of bed and crossed over to Maggy's, feeling above the coverlet for the comforting touch of the warm, sleepy body. The coverlet was flat, the sheets cool. Maggy had gone.
She groped her way back to her own bed, and at last tears came, and with tears, sleep.
By the morning, the sharp edge of her feelings was somewhat blunted. She was still sorry, but not passionately sorry. Those who have wept for their dead with the poignancy of first grief experience much the same dulling of the emotions. It precedes the inevitable resignation, without which they could not again take up the lonely burden of life.
Maggy was lost to her, as lost to her as if she had died. She had not the consolation of knowing that she would see her again, alive, exuberantly happy, unregretting, and that this feeling would pass. She did not know then that across the barrier of her frailty Maggy would hold out her strong, young, eager hands, and that she, Alexandra, would grasp them in unalterable love and friendship.
She put away the money Maggy had wanted her to take until she could give it back to her, and directly she had had her breakfast, started for the theatrical agents' offices. They opened at ten. She had small hope of obtaining anything at any of them. The principals did not know her by sight. When one of them made an occasional dart into the waiting room and gave a quick glance round she was only "one of a crowd."
At such times there would be a little stir and scrimmage amongst the men and women in which she would not share. Men would elbow women, women elbow men in their efforts to catch the agent's eye or better still his sleeve. And he would shake them off in a precipitate passage from his own room to that of his partner's at the other end of the waiting room. Alexandra knew his short, little, staccato, stock sentences by heart.
"Nothing for you to-day, dear." (Shake her off.)
"Sorry, my dear, I can't stop." (Shake her off.)
"No, my dear, I—oh, it's you. Stop behind. I'll see you later." (Pressure of the hand.)
"Nothing in your line to-day, old fellow." (Shake him off.)
Perhaps a fleeting look at Alexandra, so that she was in doubt as to whether she had been noticed or not.
Then the crowd would wait on, lessened by the few who lost heart and went on to other agencies. The assembly varied little in any of these refuges of the out-of-works. There you would find every specimen of stageland: the sprightly young man with an eye stimulated hopefully by sherry from the adjacent Bodega, dressed in the last fashionable suit left from his wardrobe, his waistcoat pocket bulging with pawntickets; the old actor with a blue chin, a red nose and a kindly smile, unctuously imparting the latest "wheeze" to a brother comedy-merchant; the hard-eyed woman of forty, rouged, smelling of spirits and patchouli, consumed with inward wrath because of the refusal of managers to entertain her applications for youthful parts; the fresh-looking girl with an air of country lanes and a pigtail, who nevertheless was bred and born at Stratford-at-Bow; the seedy advance-agent, vainly trying to adopt a managerial air; the plump and cheery chorister with no ambitions beyond thirty shillings a week and a long pantomime run; her male compeer nourishing a secret belief that he could "wipe the floor" with every tenor on the boards.
Eleven, twelve, one o'clock, and still the patient crowd would linger on in the agents' offices, chattering intermittently, giggling occasionally, desperately anxious all the same, eyes ever glancing toward the two shut doors.
At one would come the unwelcome news, spoken by the young man who kept the accounts and made out the contracts:
"Mr. Whitehead's gone to lunch. Won't be back to-day. No use waiting."
How quickly the room emptied! Alexandra did not know that a goodly proportion of its habitués would quickly foregather for consultation and refreshment in Rule's or the Bodega, where the atmosphere was redolent of alcoholic odors, curiously aromatic, sonorous with sustained conversation and the low chuckle of the comedians.
One saw the same faces again after the luncheon hour, at Denton's, at Hart's, at Paul Stannard's, a little less hopeful, a little more tired as the day went on.
Paul Stannard had got Alexandra her engagement at De Freyne's. She went to him again now. She liked him. He was a gentleman by birth, had drifted on to the stage, loathed it, could not get free of it, and ended by running a theatrical agency with fair success. He did not call all girls "dear," only the ones that liked it, and was more accessible to the rank and file than most agents.
"I thought I had fixed you up with De Freyne," he said. "His show's in for a long run. Couldn't stick it?"
"Mr. De Freyne told me to go."
Alexandra was tired. She could hardly stand.
"Sit down," invited Stannard. "Up against it?"
"Well, I've nothing to do. It's serious."
"I'm sorry." He turned over the leaves of a big book on his desk. "And I can't help you. Nothing's doing, except a sextette for Rio."
"Can't I go?" she asked eagerly.
"My God, no!"
He put his hands in his pockets and surveyed her compassionately. Belonging as he did to the class that shelters its women it still hurt him to see women engaged in fighting for bread. It was more desperate still when they fought for honor too, or held it above the price of bread.
"Why did you send me to the Pall Mall if you knew they wouldn't want—any one straight-laced?"
"I can't ask every girl who comes to me for a job to sign an affidavit concerning her morals. Why are you on the stage at all if you've got different ideas to the others? You haven't an earthly. Might as well buy a toothbrush."
"Buy a toothbrush?"
"To sweep out an Augean stable." He scribbled some addresses on a half sheet of paper. "There's just a chance these aren't filled up. Mention my name. I don't hold out any hope, though." He hesitated for a minute. "Are you bound to go on at this? Haven't you a home to go to?"
"I'm bound to go on," she said, trying to keep the desperate note out of her voice.
"Well, good luck." Stannard held open the door for her.
"Poor devil!" he said as he shut it.
XII
All the names which Stannard had given her were those of minor managers. It was late in the season and their companies would in all probability be made up and booked for the road. Still she went to them. There was a bare chance that one of them might have a vacancy. For two hours she hung about their offices waiting for an interview, only to waste her time in the end. "Full up" was the answer she got to each application. The last place she called at was situated in a block of buildings off Shaftesbury Avenue. As she left it a door facing her on the opposite side of the passage opened and a man in a frock coat and silk hat came out. He stopped short, looked her up and down and spoke.
"Excuse me, but are you out of an engagement?"
"Yes," she replied, a last glimmer of hope flickering within her, the silk hat suggesting something managerial.
The stranger's next words confirmed her in this idea.
"I believe you're the very person I've been looking for for a week. The question is, can you sing?"
"Yes."
"Then come in."
He threw the door open again and followed her in. The room contained two chairs, a desk, a small grand piano, one or two playbills on the walls and several diagrams of the larynx, looking not unlike a map of the tube railways.
"This is my practise room and therefore bare," he explained. "It's bad to sing in a room blocked up with furniture. Breaks up the voice, you know. By the way, my name's Norburton—Gerald Norburton. You may have heard of it," he added modestly.
Alexandra had heard of it. The name was that of a singer of some repute.
"Oh, then, you're not an agent," she said, a little disappointed.
"Lord, no." The idea seemed to amuse him. "Fact of the matter is this: my friend, Maurice Haines, wrote to me the other day—here's his letter—asking me to find him a likely girl for a sketch he has booked at the Palace. He'd engaged some one, but she's just gone in for appendicitis. Funny thing, appendicitis. Has it ever occurred to you—" The blank look in Alexandra's face constrained him to keep to business. "So he appeals to me, thinking that as a singer I might know some one likely. But I didn't—not until I saw you. If you can sing it's a sure thing." He read from the letter he had been searching for.
"'She must be tall and dark and a lady. Youth essential. Of course she must have a well-trained voice, but previous experience doesn't matter. I'll look in next week, and if you know a girl who will do, for heaven's sake have her round. The sketch is booked for the next six months, first here and then in the leading provincial towns. I'll pay ten pounds a week for the right woman.'
"What do you think of that?"
"It seems to me it depends on my voice," said Alexandra.
"That's it. Do you mind singing me something? Here's a pile of songs. Pick out one you know."
She found a song. Norburton played the accompaniment. She had an idea she was singing well and hoped he would think so. When she finished, she had the impression that he was not satisfied.
"I'm afraid you're disappointed," she said, with foreboding.
"No, not exactly. You've a nice voice. You want to know how to pitch it better. As it is it won't carry. I believe I could teach you in five days, before Haines comes round."
"I couldn't expect you to do that."
"But Idoteach," he laughed. "Do you doubt my capability? I assure you that besides being a public singer I get three guineas for every half-hour lesson I give."
"What I meant was," said Alexandra, "that I couldn't expect you to coach me for nothing, and I couldn't pay enough to make it worth your while."
He appeared to think.
"I want to do my best for Haines," he said. "Look here. I'll give you five lessons—one every day for ten minutes—and you can pay me what you can afford, five shillings a lesson, say."
She colored. "That's charity."
"No. I really want to help Haines."
Now Alexandra had little more than five shillings in her purse. The next quarterly payment of her annuity would not be due for a fortnight. In the meantime all she possessed was some old jewelry that had belonged to her mother. There was the money Maggy had left behind her, but she was not going to touch that.
"I should like you to teach me. It's very good of you," she said. "Would you take this instead of money? It's worth a little more than five five-shilling lessons." She tendered him a ring with a single pearl in an antique setting. A pawnbroker would have lent her five pounds on it. She was anxious that he should take the ring. It would make her feel less under an obligation to him.
Apparently he appreciated her feelings.
"That's very pretty of you," he said. "It fits my little finger, too. Would you rather I took it?" There was a shade of reluctance in his voice.
"Much rather."
"Well, thank you very much. Now I must pull you through by a little teaching. Can you have your first lesson now? No time like the present, is there? Stand in the corner over there to the right. Now, sing 'ah' on middle C. Keep your tongue well down. Give it room—give it room! Swell it out! You'll do very well," he said, after ten minutes. "To-morrow, same time. I'll drop Haines a line. Don't thank me, please."
Another girl came in as Alexandra went out. She heard Norburton tell her she was early.
"Have you heard from Mr. ——" She thought the name mentioned was Haines, but argued she must have been mistaken. The girl was fair and short, not at all the type Norburton's friend wanted. Alexandra assumed she must be one of the singer's private pupils, and thought no more about her.
For the next four days she came for her lessons, and at the end of that time Norburton told her he was quite satisfied with the result.
"Haines will be here to-morrow at eleven," he told her. "Don't worry, you'll get the engagement."
All the same she did worry. She pinned her hopes on it. She had curtailed her food down to the irreductible minimum. Privation showed in her looks. She was not a big eater, but her physique demanded good and nourishing food, which now she never got. She wanted new shoes and gloves badly. These she could not manage to do without indefinitely. She began to lose confidence in herself in these days. She knew her appearance was noticeably shabby, and that she was getting the delicate look that employers dislike. One cannot say to the man from whom one is hoping for an engagement: "I'm pale, but I'll look better when I can afford to feed myself properly. My clothes are shabby, but they would be in rags if I hadn't looked after them as if they were priceless brocades. And I'm not poor and hungry and out of an engagement because I've no talent, but because I've certain principles that I've brought to the wrong place. Give me a chance and don't ask anything else of me."
At five minutes to eleven the next day she was in Shaftesbury Avenue. Outside Mr. Norburton's door some ten or twelve girls were waiting. They looked a mixed lot, all of them anxious, poor and shabby.
"He told me ten," said one of them, "and he's not here yet."
"I've been here since half-past nine," said another.
One bold spirit rapped sharply on the door.
As a result one next to it bearing a brass plate and a solicitor's name was opened and a man put his head out and angrily demanded:
"Who's making that row? If you're waiting to see the fellow who had that room, he's gone. Went away yesterday afternoon."
"Meaning Mr. Norburton?" asked one of the girls.
"I don't know what his name was. He's gone, anyhow. It's no good waiting about and making a noise."
He shut the door. The girls stared at one another blankly.
"I want to know the meaning of this," said one of them truculently. "P'raps the caretaker can tell us." She clattered down the stone stairs, and half a dozen of the others followed her.
A fair girl standing next to Alexandra spoke to her.
"Did you want to see Mr. Norburton too?"
"Yes, but I'm afraid I shan't." Alexandra felt faint.
"I don't think we shall either. It's my belief we've been done. Did he give you lessons?"
"Five."
"I had five, too," nodded the girl. "Two pounds I paid the blighter. He said I'd suit Mr. Haines a treat. Read me a letter saying he wanted a fair girl with a good figure and contralto voice— What's that? It was a 'tall and dark' to you! My hat! What didyoupay?"
"I gave him a pearl ring."
"O-oh!" Her eyes went round. "I saw it on his finger. Then you were hard up?"
"I had the ring, but not the money to pay him."
"And I had the money. And I haven't got it now."
One of the girls who had gone to make enquiries below came up again.
"Thought I'd come and tell you," she panted. "It's true. He's gone, right enough. The piano was hired and it's been fetched away. He's done seventeen of us, the beast! His name isn't Norburton at all, but Easton or Weston, I forget which. If the real Mr. Norburton or Maurice Haines heard what he'd been up to they'd prosecute him. He's just been using their names to cod us. Oh, I'd like to—to—" The unspoken threat tailed off in a resigned sigh. "Well, there's a voice-trial at Daly's at 11.30. I'm off."
Alexandra did not move. She was dazed. The other girls melted away, all but one little creature in black who commenced to sob.
"Don't cry," said Alexandra, touched by her grief. "You must try and forget the disappointment."
The girl raised streaming eyes. She was very plain and wore her hair frizzed out all round her head. The fingers through which her tears had been trickling were red and work-worn.
"I paid him f-four pounds in gold," she wept. "And he s-said my voice was g-good enough to get me the engagement. And I've given notice at the place I'm at on the strength of it, and now I'll have to go back and ask to be kept on. Makes me ashamed of myself, it does, after what I said to the mistress about gettin' ten pounds a week on the stage. And now f-four pounds of good money gone!"
"Haven't you any left?"
"I've got eleven saved, but it would have been fifteen," sniffed the girl. She took it hardly that she had to pay so heavily for her experience.
"Well, then, cheer up," said Alexandra. "I haven't got fifteen shillings."
"Not in the world?"
"Not in the world."
"But you're a lady!"
"Am I?" asked poor Alexandra. Tears were not far from her own eyes now. The girl saw them, and the fount of her own dried up in her compassion for a disappointment that must be even greater than her own because of the actual need behind it. A lady, and with less than fifteen shillings in the world! Why, she had always been able to earn nearly ten shillings a week, without counting her board and keep. She had always been able to count on regular employment, plenty of food and a fairly comfortable bed; and until she had been dazzled by the magnificent prospect of ten pounds a week and still more by the idea of becoming a "star actress," she had been fairly contented with her life. She wished she had never seen that catch advertisement in the newspaper.
"I shouldn't think any more about the stage if I were you," advised Alexandra.
"I shan't," was the resolute answer. "It's no good, is it?"
"Not a bit of good."
The girl hesitated.
"Do you mind telling me," she said, "if it's very bad. The girls on it, I mean."
"It's difficult sometimes for them to be good," was Alexandra's qualified reply.
"That's pretty much what our milkman says. He had a wife he divorced that used to go on the stage once a year in pantomime."
Alexandra smiled wanly. She was getting accustomed to the democratic atmosphere of the stage, where social differences are inexistent. The dragging in of the milkman's wife was only a sharp-cut illustration of the lengths to which the leveling-down process could go. The life had robbed her of all surprise at the necessity of having to rub shoulders with ex-shopgirls and the like; but this was the first time she had found herself on terms of equality with a domestic servant.
"Dessay I'm well out of it," said the girl philosophically. "I hope you'll get on, miss."
As she passed Alexandra she stopped, making believe to pick up something that was not there.
"Oh, look what you've dropped!" she exclaimed, holding out two half-crowns.
Alexandra had come out that morning with only a few pence.
"It isn't mine," she disclaimed. "If you look in your purse you'll probably find it's your own money."
The girl made a pretense of doing so.
"No, that it isn't," she insisted. "It must be yours, right enough."
"But it can't be."
Before she could anticipate the movement, the girl slipped past her and raced down the stairs. Alexandra followed as fast as she could. But the girl was too quick for her. She was nowhere to be seen when Alexandra reached the street.
Only then did she comprehend the meaning of the generous subterfuge. She stood staring down at the money in her hand—two half-crowns, given her by a servant!