As they stood together, while Joan was opening the door with her latch key, he put his hand for a moment over hers.
"Good-bye, Pierrette," he said, "I am sorry you won't have anything to do with me. I should have made you happy and given you a good time. Sometimes it is a pity to aim too high; you are apt to miss things altogether."
Fanny was waiting in Joan's room when she got back,tucked up in her favourite position in the arm-chair. She had been away for the last ten days on one of her periodical trips. "My!" she gasped, disentangling herself to greet the other; "what roses, honey! Straight from the country, aren't they, and a car—I can hear it buzzing outside. Is it your young man?" She paused on the thought tip-toe with excitement, her eyes studying Joan across the flowers she had seized. "And is he straight? the other sort won't do for you; you would hate yourself in a week."
Joan subsided on to the bed, taking off her hat with hands that shook over the task.
"No," she answered, "he is not straight, Fanny; but it doesn't matter, because I have finished with him. Take away the flowers with you, will you? they seem to have given me a headache."
Fanny dropped the roses in a shower and trod them under foot as she ran to Joan. "He has hurt you;" she spoke fiercely, flinging her arms round the other girl. "God, how I hate men at times! He has hurt you, honey."
"Only my pride," Joan admitted; but the tears so long held back came in a flood now; she laid her head down on Fanny's shoulder and sobbed and sobbed.
The other girl waited till the storm had passed; then she rose to her feet and bundling the roses together with an aggressive movement opened the door and flung them out into the passage.
"I have got an idea," she said; "you have been about fed up with office for months past. Well, why not chuck it? Come with me. I have got a job in a show that is going on tour next week. There is room in the chorus, I know; come with me, won't you?"
Her earnestness made Joan laugh. "What shall I come as, Fanny? I cannot sing, and I have never acted in my life."
"That is nothing," Fanny went on impatiently. "Youare young, you are pretty; you can dance, I suppose, and look nice. I can get you taken on to-morrow, for old Daddy Brown, that is the manager, is a friend of mine, and while he is a friend he will do anything for me. Oh, come, do come." She caught hold of Joan's hands. "It will be great, we shall be together, and I will show you that there is fun in life; fun, and love, and laughter."
She was laughing herself hysterically, her figure seemed poised as if for an instant outbreak into the dance she spoke of. Joan watched her with envious eyes. Fanny's philosophy in life was so plain to see. She took things that came her way with eager hands; she seemed to pass unscathed, unsullied, through the dregs of life and find mirth in the dreariest surroundings. And to-day Landon had broken down one more barrier of the pride which kept Joan's feet upon the pathway of self-respect. Of what use were her ideals since they could not bring her even one half hour's happiness? The road stretched out in front of her empty and sunless.
These thoughts swept through her mind almost in the space of a second. Then she rose quickly to her feet.
"I'll come, Fanny," she said; "it really amounts to turning my back on a battle; still I will come."
Anon.
"Daddy Brown, this is the girl I spoke to you about; will she do?"
That had been Joan's introduction to the manager of the Brown travelling company. He was a large man, with his neck set in such rolls of fat that quick movement was an impossibility. His eyes, small and surrounded bya multitude of wrinkles, were bloodshot, but for all that excessively keen. Joan felt as they swept over her that she was being appraised, classed, and put aside under her correct value in the man's brain. His hair, which in youth must have grown thick and curly, had fallen off almost entirely from the top of his head, leaving a small island sprouting alone in the midst of the baldness. This was known among the company as "The Danger Mark," for when the skin round it flushed red a fearful storm was brewing for somebody.
He sat in front of a table littered with papers, in a small, rather dirty office, the windows of which opened on to Bedford Street. With the window open, as he kept it, the noise of the Strand traffic was plainly audible.
He eyed Joan slowly and methodically; then his glance turned back to Fanny. "What can she do?" he asked heavily.
"Oh, everything," Fanny answered with a little gasp; "and she can share my dressing-room and all that."
"Humph!" grunted the man; once more his small, shrewd eyes travelled all over Joan.
"Well, perhaps, she will do." He agreed finally, "Mind you are in time at the station to-morrow. Cut along now, girls, I am busy."
Fanny was jubilant all the way home. "I thought I should be able to work it," she bubbled; "it will be fun, honey, to-morrow we are due at Tonbridge and the tour ends at Sevenoaks. All little places this time. But mind you, it is the first rung of the ladder for you. Brown's is a good company to start with.Country Girl,Merry Widow,Waltz Dream." She ticked them all off on her fingers one by one. "You are glad about it, aren't you?" she broke off suddenly to ask.
"Of course I am glad," Joan answered quickly, "and it is sweet of you to have got it for me. Perhaps I am a little nervous; it strikes me one might get very frightened of Mr. Brown."
"What, Daddy? He is all right if you know how to manage him, and he won't bother you." Fanny took a quick look at her. "You aren't his sort."
Was she really glad? Joan pondered the matter over when Fanny had at last betaken herself to her own room. At any rate she had, as it were, burnt her boats. She had left theEvening Herald, she had told Mrs. Carew to sublet her rooms. At least it would be good to get away from London for a bit.
Mrs. Carew had been quite frank and decided in her views on the subject.
"For a young lady like you to go off with the likes of 'er," this referred to Fanny, "it hardly seems seemly to me, Miss. Not that Miss Bellairs ain't all right in her own way, but it is not your way. Mark my words, Miss, you will regret it."
"And if I do," Joan had answered, "I can always leave and come back here, can't I, Mrs. Carew? I am sure you will always do your best to put me up even if this room is let."
"If I have a corner; Miss, you shall 'ave it and welcome. Nice and quiet young lady you have always been, and I know something of young ladies, I do."
It was evident, even in her efforts to be polite, that she considered Joan's present line of action to be one of deterioration. Was it, after all, a wise move, Joan wondered rather vaguely, as she packed away her few possessions. There was a great deal in Fanny's nature that she disapproved of, that could at times even fill her with disgust. In itself, that would merely hold her from ever coming to look at life from Fanny's standpoint. And perhaps she would find in the existence, which Fanny claimed to be full of love and laughter, something to satisfy the dull aching discontent which had wrenched at her heart all this last summer. Aunt Janet, Uncle John, the old home-life, the atmosphere of love and admiration, these had been torn from her, she needed something to take their place.
They met the rest of the company next day at the station. Fanny introduced them all to Joan, rather breathlessly.
"Mr. Strachan, who plays our hero, and who is the idol of the stalls. Mr. O'Malley, our comic man. Mr. Whistler, who does heavy father parts, wig and all. Mr. Jimmy Rolls, who dances on light toes and who prompts when nothing else is doing. The ladies, honey, take their names on trust, you will find them out sooner or later."
There were, Joan discovered, eight other ladies in the company. She never knew more than four of them. Mrs. O'Malley, Grace Binning, a small soft-voiced girl, Rhoda Tompkins, and Rose Weyland—a very golden-haired, dark-eyebrowed lady, who had been in some far back period, so Fanny contrived to whisper, a flame of Brown's.
Of the men, Joan liked Mr. Strachan best; he was an ugly man with very pleasant eyes and a rare smile that lit up the whole of his face. He seemed quiet, she thought, and rather apart from the others.
The journey down to Tonbridge proved slightly disastrous. To begin with, thanks to Daddy Brown himself, the company missed the best train of the day and had to travel by one that meant two changes. On arrival at Tonbridge at four o'clock in the afternoon they found that one of the stage property boxes had gone astray. Considering that they were billed to appear that evening at eight and the next train did not arrive till ten-thirty, the prospect was not a promising one.
"Always merry and bright," as Jimmie, the stage prompter, remarked in an aside to Strachan. "By the way, is it theArcadiansthat we are doing to-night?"
"How the hell can we do anything," growled Daddy Brown, the patch of skin round his danger-mark showed alarmingly red, "if that box does not appear. Who was the blasted idiot who was supposed to be looking after it?"
"Well, it was and it was not me, Sir," Jimmie acknowledged; "the truth is that I saw it labelled all right andleft it with the rest of the luggage to look after itself. I suppose——"
"Oh, what is the use of talking," Brown broke in impatiently; he had thrust his hat back on his fiery head, the lines of fat above his collar shone with perspiration. "You had better go on, all of you, and see about getting rooms; the first rehearsal is in an hour, box or no box, and don't you forget it."
"I don't see," wailed Mrs. O'Malley, almost as soon as his back was turned, "how we are to live through this sort of thing. What is the use of a rehearsal if none of our things are going to turn up?"
"I guess there will be a performance whether or no," Fanny told her. "Come along, honey," this to Joan, "seize up your bag and follow me; we have got to find diggings of sorts before the hour is up."
Joan found, as they trudged from lodging-house to lodging-house, that the theatrical profession was apparently very unpopular in Tonbridge. As Fanny remarked, it was always as well to tell the old ladies what to expect, but the very mention of the word theatre caused a chill to descend on the prospective landladies' faces. They found rooms finally in one of the smaller side streets; a fair-sized double bedroom, and a tiny little sitting-room. The house had the added advantage of being very near the theatre, which was just as well, for they had barely time to settle with the woman before they had to hurry off for the rehearsal.
"It won't do to be late," Fanny confided to Joan. "Daddy is in an awful temper; we shan't get any champagne to-night unless some of us soothe him down."
At the small tin-roofed theatre supreme chaos reigned upon the stage and behind it. Daddy Brown, his hat thrown off, his coat discarded, stormed and raged at everyone within hearing.The Country Girlhad replacedThe Arcadianson the bill; it was an old favourite and less troublesome to stage. Fanny was to playMolly; it was apart that she might have been born for. Daddy Brown won back to his good humour as he watched her; her voice, clear and sweet, carried with it a certain untouched charm of youth, for Fanny put her whole heart into her work.
Joan felt herself infected by the other's spirit, she joined in the singing, laughing with real merriment at her chorus partner. The stage boards cracked and creaked, the man at the piano watched the performers with admiring eyes—the music was so familiar that it was quite unnecessary for him to follow the notes. Daddy Brown and the box office man, sole occupants of the stalls, saw fit to applaud as the chorus swung to a breathless pause.
"That's good, that's good," Brown shouted. "Just once more again please, ladies, then we'll call a rest. Don't want to tire you out before to-night."
The dance flourished to its second end and Fanny flung herself exhausted against the wings. Her cough was troubling her again, shaking her thin body, fighting its way through her tightened throat.
"It's worth it though," she laughed in answer to Joan's remonstrance; "it is the only time I really live when I am dancing, you see."
The rehearsal dragged out its weary length, but not until Brown had reduced all the company to such a state of exhaustion that they could raise no quiver of protest to any of his orders. A man of iron himself, he extracted and expected from the people under him the same powers of endurance which he himself possessed. Since Fanny and Joan could not go home to their lodgings, the time being too short, Strachan escorted them out to obtain a meal of sorts before the evening's performance. Short of Daddy Brown's hotel, which stood close to the theatre and which they were all reluctant to try, there did not appear to be any restaurants in the neighbourhood and they ended up by having a kind of high tea at a little baker's. "Eggs are splendid things to act on," Strachan told Joan.
The girls, however, on their return found a bottle ofchampagne and two glasses waiting for them in Fanny's dressing-room. It had been sent with Mr. Brown's compliments to Miss Bellairs. The sight of it sent up Fanny's spirits with a bound.
"I did not know how I was going to get through the evening," she confessed, "but this will put new life into us."
She insisted upon Joan having a glass, and the latter, conscious that in her present state of tiredness she could hardly stand, far less dance, sipped a little of the clear, bubbling liquid—sipped till the small room grew large, till her feet seemed to tread on air, and her eyes shone and sparkled like the brightest of stars on a dark night.
The theatre after that, the crowded rows of faces, the music and the thunder of applause—the audience were good-tempered and inclined to be amused at anything—passed before her like some gorgeous light-flecked dream. When the soldiers in the back row took up the words of Fanny's song and shouted the refrain she felt swept along on the wings of success.
At the fall of the curtain Daddy Brown patted her on the back. He was by this time radiant with cheerfulness once more.
"You will do, young lady," he said. "We'll have to see if we can't work in a special dance for you;" and Fanny flung her arms round Joan in wild joy. "You're made, honey," she whispered, "if Brown has noticed you, you're made. I always said you could dance."
It was very thrilling and exciting, but the champagne was beginning to lose its effect. The world was growing grey again. Joan's head throbbed, and she felt self-consciously inclined to make a fool of herself. She sat very silent through the supper to which Brown treated the company at his hotel. There were about twenty people present, nearly all men; Joan wondered where they had been collected from, and she did not quite like the look of any of them. Fanny was making a great deal of noise, andhow funny and tawdry their faces looked under the bright light. After supper there was a dance, the table was pushed aside, and someone—Joan saw with surprise that it was Daddy Brown—pounded away at a one-step on the piano. Everyone danced, the men, since there were not enough ladies to goaround, with each other.
Fanny, wilder, gayer than ever, skirts held very high, showed off a new cake-walk in the centre of the room. Her companion, a young, weak-looking youth, was evidently far from sober, and the more intricate the step, the more hopelessly did he become entangled with his own feet, amidst shouts of amusement from the onlookers.
Joan turned presently—she had narrowly escaped being dragged into the dance by a noisily cheerful gentleman—to find Strachan standing beside her. He was watching her with some shade of curiosity.
"Why don't you go home?" he suggested; "it isn't amusing you and I can see you are tired. We get used to these kind of shows after a time."
"I think I will," Joan agreed; "no one will mind if I do, will they?"
"Not they, most of them are incapable of noticing anything." A cynical smile stirred on his face. "It is no wonder," he commented, "that we are known as a danger to provincial towns. You see the state of confusion we reduce the young bloods to." His eyes passed round the room and came back to Joan with a shade of apology in them. "A bad night, for your first experience," he said; "we are not always as noisy as this. Come along though, I'll see you home, if I may, my rooms are somewhere down your street."
Joan lay awake long after she had got into bed, and when she did at last drop off to sleep it was to dream strange, noise-haunted dreams, that brought her little rest. It was morning, for a faint golden light was invading the room, when she woke to find Fanny standing at the foot of the bed. A different Fanny to any Joan had ever seenbefore, tired and blowsy-looking, her hair pulled about her face, the colour rubbed in patches from her cheeks and lips.
"My word, it has been a night;" she stood swaying and peering at Joan. "It's life though, isn't it, honey?"
Then a wild fit of coughing seized her and Joan had to scramble out of bed and give what help she could. There was no hope of sleep after that, and when Fanny had been helped to bed Joan took up a chair to the window and drew aside the curtain.
Her mind was a tumult of angry thoughts, but her heart ached miserably. If this was what Fanny called life and laughter, she had no wish to live it.
W. S. Blunt.
All the way up the river from the Nore after they had picked up the pilot the ship moved through a dense fog. A huge P. & O. liner, heavily laden with passengers and mails, she had to proceed cautiously, like some blind giant, emitting every two minutes a dolorous wail from her foghorns.
"Clear the way, I am coming," was the substance of the weird sound, and in answer to it shrill whistles sounded on all sides, from small fleets of fishing-boats, coal hulks, and cargo boats bound from far-off lands.
"We are here too," they panted in answer; "don't run us down, please."
It was eerie work, even for the passengers, who remained in blissful ignorance of the danger of their situation. By rights the ship should have been in dock before breakfast; they had planned the night before that an early dawn should see them awake and preparing to land; yet here was eleven o'clock, and from what the more hardy of them couldlearn by direct questioning of those in authority, they had not as yet passed Canvey Island. Dick Grant, ship's doctor and therefore free of access to inquirers, underwent a searching examination from all and sundry. The P. & O. regulations are, that the officers shall not talk or in any way become friendly with any of the passengers; the ship's doctor and the purser share the responsibility of looking after their clients' comfort, well-being, and amusement. On occasions such as a fog, when the hearts of passengers are naturally full of questions as to where they are, how long will the fog last, is there any danger, and ought we to have on our life-belts, these two afore-mentioned officials have a busy time. Dick felt that Barton, the purser in question, had played him rather a shabby trick, for Barton had asserted that the work of sorting out passengers' luggage and seeing to their valuables would confine him to his office till the ship docked, which excuse left Dick alone to cope with the fog-produced situation.
Dick had been at sea now for close on two years. He had shifted from ship to ship, had visited most of the ports in the near and far East. This was his last voyage; he was going to go back and take up life in London. From Marseilles he had written to Mabel telling her to expect him the week-end after they got in.
His journeyings had given him many and varied experiences. The blue eyes had taken unto themselves some of that unwavering facing of life which seems to come almost always into the eyes of people who spend their lives upon the sea. He had learned to be patient and long-suffering with the oddities of his patients, passengers who passed through his hands on their brief journeyings; he had seen the pathos of the sick who were shipped with the full knowledge that they would die ere the first port was reached, simply because the wistful ache of home-sickness would not allow them to rest. Home-sickness! Dick had known it keep a man alive till the grey cliffs of Dover grew out of the sea and he could fall back dead and satisfied.
Board ship throws people together into appalling intimacy; Love springs full-winged into being in the course of an afternoon; passion burns at red-heat through drowsy, moon-filled nights. Almost wilfully, to begin with, Dick had flung himself into romance after romance; perhaps unknown to himself, he sought to satisfy the hunger of heart which could throb in answer to a dream, but which all reality left untouched. He played at love lightly; he had an ingrained reverence for women that even intercourse with Anglo-Indian grass-widows and the girl who revels in a board-ship flirtation was unable altogether to eradicate. He made love, that is to say, only to those women who first and openly made love to him; but it is to be doubted whether even the most ardent of them could boast that Dicky Grant had ever been in love with them. They slipped out of his ken when they disembarked at their various ports, and the photographs with which they dowered him hardly served to keep him in mind of their names. And a certain weariness had grown up in his heart; he felt glad that this was to be his last voyage. He had put in two good crowded years, but he was no nearer realizing his dream than he had been on the day when Mabel had said to him: "Did you think I should not know when you fell in love?"
Dick was thinking of this remark of Mabel's as he stood by himself for the time being, right up by the front of the ship peering into the fog, and with the thought came a memory of the girl with the brown eyes who had stood to face him, her hands clenched at her sides, as she told her piteous tale. Piteous, because of its very bravado. "I am not afraid or ashamed," she had claimed, while fear stared out of her eyes and shame flung the colour to her face. What had the past two years brought her? Had she stood with her back to the wall of public opinion and fought her fight, or had the forces of contempt and blame been too strong for her?
A very light hand on his arm brought him out of histhoughts with a start, and he turned to find a small, daintily-clad lady standing beside him.
"How much longer shall we be?" she asked; "and when am I going to see you again, Dicky, once we land?"
She had called him Dicky from the second day of their acquaintance. Mrs. Hayter always called men by their Christian names, or by nicknames invented by herself.
Dick let his eyes linger over her before he answered—immaculately dressed as ever—the wildest storm saw Mrs. Hayter with her hair waved, the other ladies claimed—small, piquante face, blue eyes and a marvellous complexion despite her many seasons spent in the East. She was the wife of an Indian Civilian, a tall, grey-headed man, who had come on board to see her off at Bombay. Dick had been rather struck with the tragedy of the man's face, that once he had seen it; he connected it always for some unexplainable reason with Mrs. Hayter's small, soft hands and the slumberous fire in her blue eyes. Not that Dick was not friendly with Mrs. Hayter; he had had on the contrary rather a fierce-tempered flirtation with her. Once, under the spell of a night all purple sea and sky and dim set stars, he had caught her to him and kissed her. Kissed the eager, laughing mouth, the warm, soft neck, just where the little pulse beat in the hollow of her throat. She had practically asked him to kiss her, yet that, he reflected in his cooler mood the next morning, was no excuse for his conduct, and, rather ashamed of himself, he had succeeded in avoiding her fairly well until this moment. He had not the slightest desire to kiss her again; that was always the sad end to all his venturings into the kingdom of romance.
"Where are you going to?" he answered her last question first; "if it is anywhere near London, I shall hope to look you up."
Mrs. Hayter laughed, a little caught-in laugh. "Look me up, Dicky, between you and me! Never mind, you funny, shy, big boy, you shall put it that way if you like.As a matter of fact, I am going to stay at the Knightsbridge Hotel for a week or so on my way through to my husband's people. Why don't you come there too?"
The invitation in her voice was unmistakable and set his teeth on edge. "It's too expensive for me," he answered shortly; "but I will come and call one day if I may."
"Of course," she agreed, "let's make it dinner the day after to-morrow. Dicky," she moved a little closer to him, "is it me or yourself you are angry with about the other night?"
"Myself," Dick said dryly, and had no time for more, for on the second a shiver shook the ship, throwing Mrs. Hayter forcibly against him, and the air was suddenly clamorous with shrill whistles, cries, and the quick throb of engines reversed.
Through the fog, which with a seeming malignity was lifting, veil upon thick veil, now that the mischief was accomplished, Dick could see the faint outlines of land; gaunt trees and a house, quite near at hand, certainly within call. Mrs. Hayter was in a paroxysm of terror, murmuring her fright and strange endearing terms all jumbled together, and the deck had waked to life; they seemed in the centre of a curious, nerve-ridden crowd. It was all very embarrassing; Dick had to hold on to Mrs. Hayter because he knew she would fall if he let her go, and she clung to him, arms thrown round his neck, golden hair brushing against his chin.
"There's not a particle of danger," a strong voice shouted from somewhere in the crowd. Dick could recognize it as the captain's. "Please don't get alarmed, ladies, it is quite unnecessary, with any luck we will be off almost immediately."
In that he proved incorrect, for, heavily weighted as theIndiawas, she stayed firmly fixed in Thames mud. By slow degrees the fog lifted and showed the long lines of the shore, and the solitary house standing out like a sentinel in the surrounding flatness.
Dick had succeeded in disentangling Mrs. Hayter's arms and had escorted her to a seat.
"I am afraid I have given myself away hopelessly," she whispered, clutching him with rather a shaky hand. "Did anybody see us?"
"Everybody, I should think," he told her gravely, "But, after all, most things are excusable in a possible wreck."
"Yes," she agreed, "only Mrs. Sandeman is all eyes to my doings, and on one occasion she even wrote Robert. Cat!"
The last expression was full of vindictiveness. Dick was seized with a disgust for his own share in the proceedings; he hoped devoutly that Mrs. Sandeman, a rather austere-faced, tight-lipped woman, would not write and disturb Robert's peace of mind for any doings of his. Also he took a mental resolve to see no more of Mrs. Hayter.
By four o'clock all the passengers, with a mild proportion of their luggage, had been transferred to small tugs for transport to Tilbury; for on a further examination into the state of affairs it had been found that theIndiawould probably remain where she was until a certain lightening of her freight should make it easier for her to refloat.
It was three days later, in fact, before Dick reached London. He found two letters waiting for him at his club; one from Mabel, telling him how glad they would be to see him, could he not make it earlier than the week-end; and one from Mrs. Hayter. Would he come and dine with her that evening? He need not trouble to answer, she was dining all alone and would not wait for him after half-past seven.
"If you can't come to dinner," she had added, "look in afterwards; there is something I rather particularly want to say to you."
He dressed for the evening meal in a vague state of discontent. He had not the slightest intention of going to Mrs. Hayter's, still the thought of her, waiting for him andexpecting him, made him uneasy. At one moment he meditated telephoning to her to tell her he was unavoidably prevented from coming, but dismissed the excuse as being too palpably a lie. He was restless, too, and at a loss as to how to spend his evening, the loneliness of being by himself in London after a two years' absence was beginning to oppress him. None of his old pals seemed to be in town—anyway they did not turn up at the club. Finally he decided to look in at the Empire, or one of the neighbouring music-halls, and strolled forth in that direction.
London certainly seemed no emptier than usual. Streams of motor-cars, taxis, and buses hurried along Piccadilly, the streets were busy with people coming and going. Out of the shadows just by the Burlington Arcade a woman spoke to him—little whispered words that he could pass on without noticing; but she had brushed against him as she spoke, the heavy scent she used seemed to cling to him, and he had been conscious in the one brief glance he had given her, that she was young, pretty, brown-eyed. The incident touched on his mind like the flick of a whip. He stared at the other women as they passed him, meeting always the same bold yet weary invitation of their eyes, the smile which betokened nothing of mirth. And as he stared and passed and stared again it grew on him that he was in reality searching for someone, searching those street faces in the same way as once before he had sought among the passers-by for one girl's face. The thought was no sooner matured than he hated it—and now he tried to keep his eyes off these women passing by, loathing the thought of their nightly pilgrimage, of their shame-haunted trade.
The Empire performance hardly served to distract his thoughts. He was out in the streets again before the ballet turn came on even. It had started to rain, a slight, indefinite drizzle; Leicester Square presented a drab and dingy appearance. The blaze of lights from the surrounding theatres shone on wet streets and slippery pavements. A drunken woman who had been ejected from the public-house at the corner stood leaning against a neighbouring lamp-post; her hat had fallen askew, stray, ragged wisps of hair hung about her face, from time to time she lifted up her voice and shouted at the children who had gathered in a ring to watch her antics. Life was horribly, hurtfully ugly at times. Dick would have liked to have shaken his shoulders free of it all and known himself back once more on the wind-swept deck of an outgoing steamer.
He strode off in the direction of Trafalgar Square, and still dim, draggled shapes haunted his footsteps, leered at him from the shadows, brushed against him as he passed. As he turned into the lighted purlieus of the Strand he paused for a moment, undecided which course to take next, and it was then that he saw Joan again.
She was standing a little in front of him on the edge of the pavement, evidently waiting for a bus. Another girl stood near her, talking in quick, childish excitement, recounting some conversation, for she acted the parts as she spoke. Joan seemed to pay very little attention to her companion, though occasionally she smiled in answer to the other's laughter.
He had recognized her at once! Now he stood with his eyes glued on her, taking in every detail of her appearance—the wide-brimmed hat, the little lace collar showing outside her jacket, the neat shoes.
Even as she talked Fanny's bird-like eyes darted here and there among the crowd and lit presently on the young man, so palpably staring at her companion. She edged nearer to Joan and nudged her.
"You have got off, honey," she whispered. "Turn your eyes slowly and you will catch such a look of devotion as will keep you in comfort for the rest of your life."
Joan flushed: Fanny could always succeed in bringing the hot blush to her face, even though she had been on tour with the company now for two months. Also she stillresented being stared at, though Fanny was doing her best to break her in to that most necessary adjunct of their profession. Rather haughtily, therefore, she turned, and for a second his eyes met hers, bringing a quick, disturbing memory which she could in no way place.
At any other time Dick would have taken off his hat and claimed acquaintance; just for the present moment, though, something held him spellbound, staring. Fanny giggled, and Joan, having had time to raise her feelings to a proper pitch of anger, let her eyes pass very coldly and calmly from the top of the young man's hat to the tip of his boots and back again. Contempt and dislike were in the glance, what Fanny called her "Kill the worm" expression. Then No. 11 motor-bus plunged alongside, and "Here we are at last!" called Fanny, dragging at Joan's arm.
With a sense of victory in her heart, since the young man had obviously been quelled by her anger, Joan climbed up to the top of the bus and sat down in a seat out of sight. Fanny, however, turned to have a final look at the enemy from the top step. As the bus moved, she saw him shake himself out of his trance and start forward.
"Good-night," she called in cheerfully affectionate tones; the conductor turned to stare up at her. "Some other day; can't be done to-night, sonny."
Then she subsided, almost weak with laughter at her own joke, beside a righteously irritated Joan.
"Nearly had the cheek to follow us, mind you," she told her, amid gasps; "properly smitten, he was."
"I wish you had not called out to him," said Joan stiffly. "It is so—so undignified."
Fanny quelled her laughter and looked up at Joan. "Undignified," she repeated; "it stopped him from coming, anyway. You don't look at things the right way, honey. One must not be disagreeable or rude to men in our trade, but one can often choke them off by laughing at them."
"And there is little Dickie," Mabel said; she stood, one hand on the cot, her grey eyes lowered—"he has brought such happiness into my life that sometimes I am afraid."
The baby. Some women were like that, Dick knew. A child could build anew their world for them and make it radiant with a heaven-sent wonder. He had never thought of Mabel as a mother. He had been almost afraid to meet her after two years away—her letters had given him no clue to her feelings; but then she rarely wrote of herself and she had never been the sort of person to complain. So he had come down to Sevenoaks rather wondering what he would find, remembering their last talk together the day before her wedding. Mabel had met him at the station and driven him back to the house in their car. She had talked chiefly about himself; was he glad to be back?—had he enjoyed the years away?—what plans had he made for the future? But her face, her quiet grey eyes had spoken for her. He knew she was happy, only the reason, the foundation of this happiness, had been a mystery to him until this moment.
"Little Dickie," he repeated, leaning forward to peer at the small atom of humanity who lay fast asleep. "You have called it after me, then?"
Mabel nodded. "Of course; and don't call him 'it,' Dick; he is a boy."
A sudden intuition came to her, she lifted her eyes to Dick's. "Tom wanted him called that, too," she said, speaking a little quickly; "but that is not wonderful,because Tom always wants just exactly what he thinks I do. We will go downstairs now, shall we, Dick? You know Mother insisted upon a dinner-party in your honour this evening, and we are going on to some awful theatre in Sevenoaks afterwards."
"Good Lord!" groaned Dick; "why did you let her?"
"I thought you wouldn't be too pleased," Mabel admitted; "but surely you must remember that it is no use arguing with mother about what she calls—amusing us. She took the tickets as a pleasant surprise yesterday when she was in Sevenoaks. As Tom says, 'Let's be amused with a good grace.' Dick"—she paused on the lowest step to look up at him—"you haven't the slightest idea of how good Tom is; he spoils mother almost as much as father did, and yet he manages her."
"And you," said Dick, "are absolutely and entirely happy, Mabel?"
"Absolutely and entirely," she answered; he could see the truth of her words shining in her eyes.
Mrs. Grant loved dinner-parties and going-on to the theatre. It is to be believed that she imagined that the younger people enjoyed them too, because, for herself, she invariably went to sleep half-way through the most brilliant performance—earlier, were the show not quite so good. Dick remembered many unpleasant entertainments in his youth which could be traced to this passion of Mrs. Grant's. She would drill them into amusement, becoming excessively annoyed with them did they not show immediate appreciation, and pleasure is too fragile a dream for such treatment; it can be very easily destroyed.
Dick and Mabel found herdownstairs, giving the final orders as to the setting out of the table to a harassed and sulky-looking maid. Everything had always to be done in Mrs. Grant's own particular way, even down to the placing of the salt-spoons. She was the bane of theservants' lives when they were new-comers; if they lived through the persecution they learned how best to avoid her gimlet eyes and could get a certain amount of amusement out of hoodwinking her. Dick contrived to display the correct amount of pleasure at the festivity in prospect for him. He wondered at the back of his mind how glad his mother really was to see him, and strolled away upstairs presently to his own room to unpack and change.
The first had already been accomplished for him by Tom's valet, and the man apparently proposed to stay and help him change, murmuring something about a hot bath being ready.
"Thanks," answered Dick, "then I will manage for myself; you need not wait."
He stood for some time, the man having slipped discreetly away, staring out of the wide-open window. It was still late summer, and the days stayed very hot. Beyond the well-kept lawn at the back of the house the fields stretched away till they reached the fringe of the forest, and above the trees again rose the chalk hills that lay, he knew, just behind Wrotham. He was thinking vaguely of many things as he stood there; first of Mabel and the new happiness shining in her eyes. Mabel and her small son; thank heaven, she had won through to such content, for if anyone deserved to be happy it was Mabel. Then little moments from the past two years strayed into his mind. Hot, sun-blazing ports, with their crowds of noisy, gesticulating natives; the very brazen blue of an Indian sky over an Indian sea; the moonlit night that had made him kiss Mrs. Hayter; he could almost feel for one second the throb of her heart against his. Then, like a flash, as if all his other thoughts had been but a shifting background for this, the principal one, Joan's face swung up before him. Where had she been going to that night? Who had her companion been? Why had not he had the courage to speak to her, to follow her at least, and find out where she lived? She was inLondon, anyway; he would have, even at the risk of hurting Mabel's feelings, to get back to London as soon as possible. It was a huge place, certainly, to look for just one person in, but Fate would bring them together again; he had learned to be a believer in Fate. There was truth, then, behind all the strange stories one heard about Love. A girl's voice, some face in the crowd, and a man's heart was all on flame. The waters of common-sense could do nothing to quench that fire. He would search, ridiculous and absurd as it seemed, till he found her—and then.... His thoughts broke off abruptly; there was a sound from downstairs which might be the dinner-bell, and he had not even had his bath yet.
The dinner-party, specially arranged by Mrs. Grant for Dick's benefit, consisted of a Mr. and Mrs. Bevis, who lived in a large new house on the other side of the park, their two daughters, Dr. English, who had taken Dick's place at Wrotham, and a young man from Sevenoaks itself. "Someone in a bank," as Mrs. Grant described him.
Dick's health was drunk and his mother insisted on "Just a little speech, dear boy," which thoroughly upset his temper for the rest of the evening, so that he found it difficult to be even decently polite to the eldest Miss Bevis, whom he had taken in to dinner. The talk turned, after the speech-making episode, to the theatre they were bound for, Mr. Jarvis asking young Swetenham if he knew anything of the company and what it was like.
"Rather," the youth answered, "been twice myself this time already. They are real good for travellers. Some jolly pretty girls among them."
"Musical comedy, isn't it?" Mrs. Bevis asked. "Dorothy has always so wanted to seeThe Merry Widow."
"Well, that is what they are playing to-night," Swetenham assured her, "and I hear it is Miss Bellairs' best part. She is good, mind you, in most things, and there is a girl who dances top-hole."
"I don't know why we have never heard of it before,"Mrs. Bevis meandered gently on; "it is so clever of you, Mrs. Grant, to have found that there was a theatre in Sevenoaks at all. I am sure we never dreamed of there being one."
"They use the town hall," Dr. English put in. "If we can guarantee a large enough audience, I expect they will favour us at Wrotham."
"Oh, what a splendid idea," cried the youngest Miss Bevis; "fancy a real live theatrical company in Wrotham."
"I hope it will stay at 'fancy,'" grunted Mr. Bevis. "From what I remember of travelling companies, Wrotham is better without them."
Despite all Swetenham's praise and the Miss Bevis' enthusiastic anticipation Dick settled into his seat in the fourth row of the so-called stalls with the firm conviction that he was going to be thoroughly bored.
"The one consolation," he whispered to Mabel on their way in, "is that mother will not be able to sleep comfortably. I don't want to appear vicious, but really that is a consolation."
Mrs. Grant had apparently come to the same conclusion herself, for she was expressing great dissatisfaction in a queenly manner to the timid programme seller.
"Are these the best seats in the house?" they could hear her say. "It is quite absurd to expect anyone to sit in them for a whole evening."
Mabel had to laugh at Dick's remark, then she went forward to soothe her troubled parent as much as possible. "It isn't like a London theatre, mother, and Tom has ordered one of the cars to stay just outside. The minute you get tired he will take you straight home. He says he does not mind, as he has so often seenThe Merry Widowbefore."
"Oh, well," Mrs. Grant sighed, and settled her weighty body into one of the creaking, straight-backed wooden chairs of which the stalls were composed. "So long as you young people enjoy yourselves I do not really mind."
Swetenham had purchased a stack of programmes and was pointing out the stars on the list to the youngest Miss Bevis. The back of the hall was rapidly filling, and one or two other parties strolled into the stalls. The orchestra had already commenced to play the overture rather shakily.
"Music, and bad music at that," groaned Dick inwardly. He took a despairing glance round him and wondered if it would be possible to go and lose himself after the first act. Then the lights went out abruptly and the curtain went up.
The beginning chorus dragged distinctly; Dick heard Swetenham whispering to his companions that it would be better when the principals came on. In this he proved correct, for theMerry Widowgirl could sing, and she could also act. Fanny's prettiness, her quick, light way of moving, shone out in contrast to her surroundings. High and sweet above the uncertain accompaniment her voice rose triumphant. The back of the house thundered with applause at the end of her song.
"Now wait," announced Swetenham, "the girl who dances comes on here. She hasn't any business to, it is not in the play, but old Brown finds it a good draw."
Mechanically the stage had been cleared, the characters sitting rather stiffly round the ball-room scene while the orchestra was making quite a good effort at "The Merry Widow Waltz." There was a second's pause, then down from the steps at the back of the stage came a girl; slim, straight-held, her eyes looking out over the audience as if they saw some vision beyond. It had taken Daddy Brown three very heated lessons to teach Joan this exact entrance. She was to move forward to the centre of the stage as if in a dream, almost sleep-walking, Fanny had suggested, the music was calling her. She was to begin her dance languidly, unwillingly, till note by note the melody crept into her veins and set all her blood tingling. "Now for abandon," Daddy Brown would exclaim, thumping the top of the piano with his baton. "That is right,my girl, fling yourself into it." And Joan had learned her lesson well, Daddy Brown and Fanny between them had wakened a talent to life in her which she had not known she possessed. Dance, yes, she could dance. The music seemed to give her wings. If she had seen her own performance she would probably have been a little shocked; she did not in the least realize how vividly she answered the call.
When she had finished she stood, flushed and breathless, listening to the shouted and clapped applause.
"Do it again, miss," a man's voice sounded from back in the hall. She tried to find him, to smile at him—that was more of Fanny's teaching. But Daddy Brown allowed no encores, it was only for a minute that she stood there, bowing and smiling, in her ridiculously short, flounced skirt and baby bodice, then the rest of the chorus moved out to take their places, and she vanished into the side wings again.
From the moment of her entry till the last flutter of her skirts as she ran off, Dick sat as if mesmerized, leaning slightly forward, his hands clenched. Every movement of her body had stabbed, as it were, at his heart. He had not heard the call of the music, he could not guess at the spirit that was awake in her, he only saw the abandon—of which Daddy Brown was so proud—the painted face, the smiles which came and went so gaily at the shouted applause. Common-sense might not kill love, but this! The knowledge that even this could not kill love was what clenched his hands.
At the end of the first act Swetenham leant across and asked if he was coming out for a drink. It may have been that the younger man had noticed Dick's intense interest in the dancer, or perhaps it was merely because he wished to air a familiarity which struck him as delightfully bold, anyway, as they strolled about outside he put a suggestion to Dick.
"If you can arrange to stay on after the show," he said,"and would care to, I could take you round and introduce you to those two girls, the one who dances and Miss Bellairs."
"Miss Bellairs," Dick repeated stupidly, his mind was grappling with a far bigger problem than young Swetenham could guess at.
"Yes," the other answered, "I met her last time she was down here, and the other is a great pal of hers."
He looked sideways at his companion as they went in under the lights; it occurred to him that Grant was either in a bad temper or had a headache, he looked anyway not in the least jovial. Swetenham almost regretted his rash invitation.
"Thank you," Dick was saying, speaking almost mechanically, "I should like to come very much. It doesn't in the least matter about getting home."
Swetenham glanced at him again. "If it comes to that," he said, "I have a motor-bike I could run you in on."
The fellow, it suddenly dawned on him, had gone clean off his head about one of the girls. Swetenham could understand and sympathize with him in that.
Dick managed to convey the information that he was staying on to Mabel during the third act. She looked a little astonished; Dick, in the old days, had been so scornful about young men's stage amusements. Anyway, it did not affect the party very much, for Mrs. Grant and Mr. Jarvis had already gone home, and Mabel was giving Dr. English a lift.
"Shall I send the motor back for you?" she asked, just as they moved away.
Dick shook his head. "Swetenham is going to give me a lift out," he answered her, and Dr. English chuckled an explanation as they rolled away.
"What it is to be young, eh, Mrs. Jarvis? One can find beauty even in the chorus of a travelling company."
But was that the explanation? Mabel wondered.Dick's face had not looked as if he had found anything beautiful in the performance.
Swetenham and Dick made their way round to the side entrance of the town hall which acted as stage door on these occasions, after they had seen the rest of the party off, and Swetenham found someone to take his card up to Miss Bellairs.
"We might take them out to supper at the 'Grand,'" he suggested, as they waited about for the answer. "I don't know about the new girl, but Miss Bellairs is always good fun."
"Yes," agreed Dick half-heartedly. He was already regretting the impulse which had made him come. What should he do, or how feel or act, when he really met Joan face to face? His throat seemed ridiculously dry, and he was conscious of a hot sense of nervousness all over him which made the atmosphere of the night very oppressive. The boy who had run up with Swetenham's card came back presently with a message.
"Would the gentlemen come upstairs, Miss Bellairs was just taking off her make-up."
"Come on," Swetenham whispered to Dick; "Fanny is a caution, she doesn't mind a bit what sort of state you see her in."
The boy led them up the stairs, through a small door and across what was evidently the back of the stage. At the foot of some steps on the further side he came to pause outside a door on which he knocked violently.
"Come in," Fanny's voice shrilled from inside; "don't mind us."
The boy with a grin threw the door open and indicated with his thumb that Swetenham and Dick might advance. He winked at them as they passed him, a fund of malignant impudence in his eyes. The room inside was small and scattered with a profusion of clothes. Fanny, attired in a long silk dressing wrap, sat on a low chair by the only table, very busy with a grease-pot and a soft rag removing thepaint from her face. She turned to smile at Swetenham and held out her hand to Dick when he was introduced with a disarming air of absolute frankness.
"You catch me not looking my best," she acknowledged; "just take a seat, dears; I'll be as beautiful as ever in a jiffy."
Joan—Dick's eyes found her at once—was standing in a corner of the room behind the door. She had changed into a blouse and skirt, but the change had evidently only just been completed. The fluffy flounces of her dancing skirt lay on the ground beside her and the make-up was still on her face. At this close range it gave her eyes a curiously beautiful appearance—the heavy lashes, the dark-smudged shadows, adding to their size and brilliancy. She did not come forward to greet the two men, but she lifted those strange eyes and returned Dick's glance with a stare in which defiance and a rather hurt self-consciousness were oddly mixed.
The tumult of anger and regret which had surged up in his heart as he had watched her dance died away as he looked at her; pity, and an intense desire to shield her, took its place. He moved forward impulsively, and Fanny, noticing the movement, turned with a little laugh.
"I had forgotten," she said; "my manners are perfectly scandalous. Joan, come out of your corner and be introduced. Mr. Swetenham is going to take us to supper at the 'Grand,' so he has just confided into my shell-like ear. I can do with a bit of supper, can't you?"
Joan dragged her eyes away from Dick. The painted lashes lay like stiff threads of black against her cheeks. "I don't think I will come," she answered. "I am tired to-night, Fanny, and I shan't be amusing."
She turned away and reached up for her hat, which hung on a peg just above her head. "I think I would rather go straight home," she added.
Fanny sprang to her feet and caught at her companionwith impulsive hands, dragging her into the centre of the room.
"Nonsense," she said, "you want cheering up far more than I do. Here, gentlemen," she went on, "you perceive a young lady suffering from an attack of the blues. If you will wait two minutes I'll make her face respectable—doesn't do to shock Sevenoaks—and we will all go to supper. Meanwhile let me introduce you—Miss Rutherford, known in the company as Sylvia Leicester, the some dancer of the Brown show."
"If Miss Rutherford does not feel up to supper," Dick suggested—he wanted, if possible, to help the girl out of her difficulty; he realized that she did not want to come—"let us make it another night, or perhaps you could all come to lunch with me to-morrow?"
Again Joan had lifted her eyes and was watching him, but now the defiance was uppermost in her mind. His face, to begin with, had worried her; the faint hint of having seen him somewhere before had been perplexing. She always disliked the way Fanny would welcome the most promiscuous acquaintances in their joint dressing-room at all times. She thought now that it must have been contempt which she had read in this man's eyes, and apart from their attraction—for in an indefinite way they had attracted her—the idea spurred her to instant rebellion.
"No, let's go to supper," she exclaimed; "Fanny is quite right, I do want to be cheered up. Let's eat, drink, and be merry."
She turned rather feverishly and started rubbing the make-up off her face with Fanny's rag. The other girl, meanwhile, slipped behind a curtain which hung across one side of the room and finished her dressing, carrying on an animated conversation with Swetenham all the time.
Dick drew a little closer to Joan. "Why do you come?" he asked. "You know you hate it and us."
Under the vanishing paint the colour flamed to Joan's face and died away-again. "Because I want to," she said;"and as for hating—you are wrong there; I don't hate anything or anyone, except, perhaps, myself." The last words were so low he hardly heard them.
They strolled across to the Grand Hotel; it was Fanny's suggestion that they should not bother with a cab. She walked between the two men, a hand on each of them. Joan walked the further side of Swetenham, and Dick had no chance of seeing her even, but he knew that she was very silent, and, he could gather, depressed. At supper, which they had served in a little private room, and over the champagne, she won back to a certain hilarity of spirit. Swetenham was entirely immersed in amusing and being amused by Fanny, and Joan set herself—Dick fancied it was deliberately—to talk and laugh. It was almost as if she were afraid of any silence that might fall between them. He did not help her very much; he was content to watch her. Absurd as it may seem, he knew himself to be almost happy because she was so near him, because the fancied dream of the last two years had come to sudden reality. The other feelings, the disgust and disappointment which had lain behind their first meeting, were for the time being forgotten. Now and again he met her eyes and felt, from the odd pulse of happiness that leapt in his heart, that his long search was over. So triumphantly does love rise over the obstacles of common sense and worldly knowledge—love, which takes no count of time, degrees, or place.
He had her to himself on the way home, for Fanny had elected to go for a spin in Swetenham's side-car, suggesting that Dick and Joan should go home and wait up for them.
"We shan't be long," Swetenham assured Dick, remembering too late his promise to take the other man home, "and it is all right waiting there, they have got a sitting-room."
So Joan and Dick walked home through the silent streets and all pretence of gaiety fell away from Joan. She walked without speaking, head held very high, moving beside him, her face scarce discernible under the shadow of her hat. Itwasnot to be believed that she was quite conscious of all she meant to this man; but she could not fail to know that he was attracted to her, she could not help feeling the warmth with which his thoughts surrounded her. And how does Love come to a woman? Not on the same quick-rushing wings which carry men's desires forward. Love creeps in more assiduously to a woman's thoughts. He brings with him first a sense of shyness, a rather wistful longing to be more worthy of his homage. Unconsciously Joan struggled with this intrusion into her life. The man had nice eyes, but she resented the tumult they roused in her. Why was he not content to find in her just a momentary amusement, why did his eyes wake this vague, uncomfortable feeling of shame in her heart; shame against herself and her surroundings?
At the door of the lodgings she turned to him; for the first time he could see her face, lit up by a neighbouring lamp.
"Do you want to come in?" she asked, her voice hesitated on the words. "I do not want to ask you," her eyes said as plainly as possible.
"No," he answered, "I would much rather you did not ask me to." Then suddenly he smiled at her. "We are going to be friends," he said. "I have a feeling that I have been looking for you for years; I am not going to let you go, once found."
He said the words so very earnestly, there was no hint of mockery in them, it could not seem that he was laughing at her. She put her hand into the one he held out.
"Well, friends," she said; an odd note of hesitation sounded in her voice.