Twopence Coloured Page 6

  The room grew darker and darker every tingling minute, and the fire within, with one large flame, flapping like a wind-tugged flag, leapt up to illuminate the room. If Mr. Gissing did not come at all (and when it was quite dark she would resign herself) she had her course of action more or less consciously resolved upon. She would go up to her dark bedroom, lie down upon her bed, cry until she was exhausted and satisfied, spend two more weeks in London going to every theatre, every day, that she cared to go to; and then return to Lady Perrin and be married as soon as it could possibly be negotiated. For if Mr. Gissing proved false to her (Jackie was now reduced to confessing to herself) she had come to the end of her spiritual resources.

  For it had been raining continuously since the night of her arrival, three days ago; and apart from one ineffectual little morning trip to the West End (when it simply pelted and she very nearly lost herself), West Kensington — that treeless and drab asylum for the driven and cast-off genteel — had been all that a desolate Jackie, cast upon herself, had seen of her London so far: and some cause for her dark and tearful frame of mind, as she stood at this window, may be discerned.

  Some cause, also, for her bounding sense of deliverance from nameless despairs, of her lightning transition to glad expectancy, may be imagined, as a taxi came wheeling round and snarling up from the station end of the road, and she herself rushed out to open the door and welcome him in.

  And when, a few minutes later, he was sitting in the flapping firelight with his overcoat on, and his hat in his hand, and very much at his ease altogether as he smiled up at her, she was an emancipated creature — emancipated from all West Kensingtons, and demented milkmen, and desires to cry — and simply a young girl resident in a twilight city of adventure at the outset of her career.

  II

  Everything was perfect from the first moment. There was first of all the introduction to Mrs. Lover, in which Mrs. Lover was, as usual, very shy, and in which even he showed an amiable kind of diffidence — (not knowing in quite what spirit one was to take Old Nurses). And then he was shown his room, which was a rather nervous moment for Jackie, as she listened to their bumpings and conversation overhead, and wondered what he was Thinking of it. And then it was decided to tackle his trunk at once; and he, on his part, took what he described as the Worst End, and Mrs. Lover, on her part, took what was by deduction the Best End, of the thing — the enormous size of which he apologized breathlessly for, to Mrs. Lover, and the obtruding wooden banisters defeating the advancement of which Mrs. Lover apologized breathlessly for, to him: and then they came down into the hall again (where Jackie was standing) for his suitcase, and here Mrs. Lover mentioned Tea.

  Whereat there was much silence, and “Well”-ing, and glances each to each, during which a ghostly vision of a deliciously intimate, not to say dual Tea, hovered in the air, waiting for an earthly medium to express it vocally, and champion its translation into fact. And Mr. Gissing said that he rather favoured, if the thing was negotiable at such short notice, a High one, as he had to play to-night and had had no lunch to speak of. At which Mrs. Lover made several tentative efforts to gauge the precise gastronomic dizzinesses conceived by her new lodger, and was at last humbly assured that he aspired no further than buttered (if possible) toast, and maybe poached (if he did not exceed the limits of audacity) eggs. Which Mrs. Lover amicably and virtually “Pooh-poohed” as a High Tea, as one having awaited a demand for Woolworth Buildings and received an order for Peacehaven Bungalows. And then she asked, About what time? “Well, I should say about an hour,” said Mr. Gissing, and then Jackie cut courageously in. “Would you like to have it with me?” she asked, and “Rather,” said Mr. Gissing, and it was settled.

  “Are you going anywhere particular to-night?” he asked, stopping on his way up the stairs to his room.

  “No,” said Jackie, knowing perfectly where this question was leading to, but hiding that knowledge from her elevated self, as well as from him. “Why?”

  “I wondered if you’d like to come to the King’s?”

  “Oh, I should love to,” said Jackie. “It’d be ripping.”

  “Then you’ll come round with me?”

  “Yes. Rather,” said Jackie. “Will you be acting, then?”

  “Well,” confessed Mr. Gissing, “I will….”

  “In a manner of speaking,” he qualified, and looked at her not without the remotest traces of that faint sarcasm he had employed with her before now.

  “Good Lord,” said Jackie, softly, but why she said this it is impossible to say. Mr. Gissing went on upstairs, and Jackie went back to her sitting-room.

  Here Mrs. Lover had already lit the gas and drawn down the blinds jealously against the benighted world outside. And here the fire was poked, and Jackie sat down in front of it for a quarter of an hour’s knee-clasping Nirvana, lulled by the eager flames, which might have been so many ecstatic prospects of the evening in front of her. But this was a mere preliminary, a scented bath of bliss prior to active participation, and soon enough she jumped up, and ran upstairs to change and prepare herself.

  And there had never been quite such a changing and preparing of herself in all her life. A violently cupboard-opening, a contemptuously clothes-flinging, a fiercely shoe-polishing, an inconsequently mind-changing, a giddily in-front-of-the mirror-whirling, a hurried, detailed, insane and chaotic changing it was, and if ever she stopped to listen, there came a leisurely and friendly bump from the light of her existence unpacking in the next room, as much as to say, “All right. Remember we have the whole evening in front of us.” And thirty-five minutes did this changing take, inclusive of finishing touches, which consumed ten (for however much one Liked him, one naturally had an instinct to Show him, as it were); and then she ran downstairs.

  And here the air was ripe with agreeable sounds of cooking — a much Higher tea than ever was bargained for being obviously in preparation — and here she was soon joined by Mrs. Lover, who came to lay the table. And Mrs. Lover did not at first speak, feeling that it was up to Jackie to fire the first shot of appraisement: and Jackie at last, after much light humming, and a great deal of detached stocking-ladder-examining, asked straight out what she thought of him. And Mrs. Lover, it may at once be said (though she herself took some time in coming to the point), described him as Decidedly Handsome. And, “You do think him handsome?” asked Jackie, as though that would not have been the exact epithet she herself would have selected. And Nice, also, did Mrs. Lover vote him; and, “Yes, he is nice,” said a fair-minded Jackie, as though that quality in him atoned for certain obscure charges that obtained in the back of her mind against him. Older than one had imagined, too, thought Mrs. Lover; and, “Yes, he is Older,” admitted Jackie, and added that that, really, was what made him so Nice, somehow, if Mrs. Lover knew what she meant. And Mrs. Lover was very quick in picking up the subtleties of this proposition, and said, in fact, that that was the very thing she had thought herself. They then both agreed that it was Strange, that they should both have struck upon the same idea, and they were both rather more emotional and glad-eyed about this circumstance than the thing actually warranted.

  The High tea went with a bang from the commencement, and although it would be an overstatement to say that the point of actual flirtatiousness was at any moment touched, there was certainly an altogether different and more human flavour in their discourse than had ever obtained before. This was nothing very strong, of course: but there was, nevertheless, an amount of free-and-easy puttings in of lumps of sugar, a quantity of most cheeky Finger-excusing with respect to the cake, and a whole lot of brilliantly casual Askings-for-more and grudging admissions of Enough, which all testified in their way to a new and unconstrainedly humorous intimacy which you could have hardly believed possible half an hour ago. Indeed, by the time they had finished their high tea, and had rushed upstairs for their hats and coats, and had helped each other on with them in the narrow hallway: and by the time they were walking briskly down the star-lit, f
rosty streets to the theatre, Jackie had awakened not only to the exhilarating consciousness that the world was at her feet again, but also to the calm pride of fore-knowledge that her friend might be relied upon to make love to her at any moment in the near future…. For many had loved Jackie, and she had learnt to read the signs. She was too familiar with these sudden leaping intimacies, these infectious, inexplicable ebulliences of spirit between two strangers, not to know their eventual outcome.

  Jackie never forgot that walk to the theatre; and the evening went on from thrill to thrill. And when, as they approached the theatre, they saw a little queue of early-door enthusiasts dismally sheltering themselves from the wind; and when, as they entered the rosy, lit, and yet hushed and unpopulated foyer, he went to the box office and employed his magic professional influence on her behalf; and when, as they emerged again, she stopped before a poster of the play (which was “The Devil’s Disciple,” by George Bernard Shaw) and observed that his name, Richard Gissing, led all the rest — it was as though the portals of fame were swinging back before her. Or, better still, it was as though she were being let into fame by some intimate side-entrance; and the little wistful queue, standing mutely by, formed the first chain of captives under the yoke of her aspiration.

  They then walked down to the stage-door, and there she left him (having arranged to call for him there afterwards), and decided to go for a little walk before going in.

  But there was too great a restlessness upon her, too full a symphony of glee beating somewhere in the deeps of her spirit, for mere walking, or the thick sights and roarings of Hammersmith to relieve; and she soon came back to the theatre, where she was with the first dozen or so who took their seats in the stalls.

  III

  It was a strange and enchanted half-hour which she then spent before the rising of the curtain; and she sat there peacefully reading her programme from cover to cover and back again.

  Until at last the house was full, and the conductor bobbed up, like the apex and unifying spirit of the will of the house, and the overture commenced.

  And the footlights blazed forth, like opening flowers of light; and there ensued a few minutes of elevated pulsating expectancy, of delicious irretrievability, in which every one tried to cough their last coughs, and make their final adjustments.

  Then the house-lights succumbed: a murmurous darkness descended: the overture died down: a quaint, prolonged pause intervened, as though some hitch had taken place: and then the curtain rumbled, slowly and with a sort of unsteady steadiness, upwards. Not a soul spoke; and the tense old gods of make-believe sat vigilant in the breathless house.

  As for Jackie, she sat there alone, with an odd foretaste of stage-fright on behalf of her friend, and watching every movement on the stage as though her existence hung upon it. Even after the first few minutes she was responding with her whole spirit and intelligence to the Satanic melodrama; but when at last Dick Dudgeon appeared, the devil’s advocate himself, the deliverer, the champion of the oppressed, the mocker of debased godliness, the hero and protagonist of courage and righteousness — and when Dick Dudgeon was observed, for all his make-up, to be none other than Richard Gissing; and when this individual did, with his loose, swashbuckling carriage, his emancipating wit and genial causticity, his depth and control of voice, which could break where it willed, yearn without querulousness, and hit every inflexion with an inevitability and surety of aim which left the soul released and happy — when, from the first moment, her own rescuer was to be witnessed evoking roars of laughing applause, and giggles of suspended delight, like a great wind over the rustling dark wheat of his audience; or caressing them into uncanny silences, like the threat of rain, which was the threat of tears, Jackie really did not know where she was or what she was doing at all. And when, at the end of the first act of this play, Dick Dudgeon drove forth his enemies and took their crying child-victim Essie under his wing; and when Essie began to cry, and he took her to himself and told her softly that she might cry that way if she liked, poor Jackie, as the curtain came down on that consummate moment, was in a fearful state of not knowing whether to let one’s tears roll one after another down one’s face, or to betray oneself equally by trying to smear them away. For she had by that time given up all her ambition of Going upon the Stage, all ambition of anything indeed, and had no object or fancy in life but as some eternal Essie to some eternal Dick Dudgeon in an eternal atmosphere of crying consolations.

  And the remainder of the play was merely an endorsement of this cardinal point. There were no more emotional heights to be scaled. Indeed, by the time the play was over, and she came out into the air, she had quite cooled down.

  IV

  It was with a curious blending of pride and trepidation that Jackie went round to the Stage Door afterwards, and asked of its guardian for Mr. Gissing. Her inquiry was handled with deferential suspicion, and in the few silent moments that she was kept waiting she was granted her first authentic impression of Stage Doors and the stone and brick passages leading therefrom — which was an impression of something distantly underhand, of business being transacted in a quiet and slightly furtive way, as from a distant consciousness of sin — which furtiveness was tempered by a certain humming jollity and ebullience whenever a human being passed across its background…. But this was but a fleeting and transitory impression, washed away in a variety of other more emphatic ones, by the time she had been transported to the door of Mr. Gissing’s dressing-room, and her conductor was knocking upon it.

  “Hullo!” Mr. Gissing was heard shouting, and the door was opened by Mr. Gissing’s slightly hostile dresser, through the defensive arms of whom Jackie peered through at Mr. Gissing, and Mr. Gissing peered through at Jackie.

  “Come in, come in, come in!” cried Mr. Gissing, three times exactly, as dressing actors have done since the first dressing actor. “I shan’t be long now.”

  Jackie entered smilingly, and the dresser went out, apparently in a temper.

  Mr. Gissing’s face was glistening with grease; Mr. Gissing was without coat and waistcoat, and wore no collar, and he was rubbing maliciously away at his face with a towel. You could have imagined that the labours of the evening had only just begun, to watch him rubbing. He rubbingly offered her a chair, and continued to rub, looking all the time into the mirror, as though in a wild endeavour to emulate the insane frictional antics of the individual therein reflected. His dressing-table, which was a long wooden shelf, was covered with a towel, which was stained luxuriously with carmine (Marat’s bath-towel might have looked rather like this one) and spread with stumps and assortments of grease-paints number five and nine, and blue pencil. An inconceivably vast powder-puff lay to one side, together with a pot of cream (which was the size of a gas reservoir), and Dick Dudgeon’s hair. In other parts of the blinding little room lay Dick Dudgeon’s overcoat, Dick Dudgeon’s top-boots, Dick Dudgeon’s hat, and other Dick Dudgeon parts, all lying anywhere, rather as though Dick Dudgeon had been the victim of spontaneous combustion (after all his trials) — as indeed, in some sense, he had — no trace of his character remaining in his earthly medium, who was an actor rubbing away with a keen eye upon his supper.

  “Enjoy yourself?” asked Mr. Gissing, peering keenly forward to simulate his model in the mirror, who was at that moment engaged in placing delicate slabs of grease along his eye-brows.

  “Terribly,” said Jackie, and there was a silence of contentment.

  “Saw you,” said Mr. Gissing.

  “Oh, did you? Can one see people from there, then?”

  “Well. I knew where you were.”

  Here’s fame, if you like, thought Jackie. Here am I, with Dick Dudgeon — the chosen one out of all those four hundred odd who are now going benightedly home — sitting behind the scenes in easy colloquy with the figure whom they rapturously applauded, and from whom the whole evening has emanated. Here’s fame, if only a vicarious fame, if you like, thought Jackie. Or at least this is what Jackie, who always like
d to get the best out of every moment, tried to think. Actually, and for some obscure reason, it did n’t seem to work. She found herself obtaining little or no pleasure from the fact.

  They talked for about five minutes, during which the dresser returned, and having silently collected all outstanding parts of Dick Dudgeon, with a view to his resurrection tomorrow night, quietly received his dismissal. And then there came a knock at the door.

  The new-comer, whose knock was a formality, was a gentleman of about the same age as Mr. Gissing, and swiftly identifiable as the gentleman who had played the parson. He wore a thick overcoat which was loose about the collar and rather too large for him, and kid-gloves upon his hands, the left palm of which he punched methodically and genially with his right fist, on and off during the greater part of his discourse. He assumed a bantering tone from the commencement.

  “Here he is, here he is, here he is!” he said. “The last as usual! The last as usual!” (Punch. Punch.)

  “Ah, Mr. Grayson,” said Mr. Gissing. “This is Miss Mortimer. Miss Mortimer, this is Mr. Grayson.”

  “How d’ you do,” said Jackie, smiling from her chair, and “Good evening, Miss Mortimer,” said Mr. Grayson, bowing mockingly, as much as to imply that you could n’t fool him that she was the genuine Miss Mortimer. A rather rude man, Jackie thought.

  There followed a slightly difficult silence, relieved in no manner by the dull smack of Mr. Grayson’s gloves.

  “Well, and how are we to-night, Mr. Gissing?”

  “I’m very well, thank you,” said Mr. Gissing, fixing his tie.

  Punch…. Punch.

  “The Great British Public in a curious mood this evening, I think?” hazarded Mr. Grayson.

  “Really?”

  “Or do I malign the Great British Public?”