Twopence Coloured Read online

  “I thought they were rather sweet.”

  “Yes. You would. Poor old Dobell, though. He nearly passed out about his round. It’s the first time the dear old thing’s missed it since we opened.”

  This was evidently a round of applause, thought Jackie.

  “I got mine all right,” said Mr. Gissing.

  “Oh yes, you would,” said Mr. Grayson, with great meaning, and there was a silence in which Mr. Grayson, punching mildly, watched Mr. Gissing buttoning his waistcoat.

  “Of course, how they get the jobs I don’t know,” said Mr. Grayson, manifestly poking fun at Mr. Gissing for Jackie’s benefit. “It’s beyond me. I mean to say, look at the fellow. Look at him. I ask you.”

  Here some voice softly whispered into Jackie’s ear, “Actor’s Jokes,” and she answered that prompting with a genial smile until such time as the pleasantry might exhaust itself. If Jackie had known how many weary times, in the career ahead of her, she would be called upon to assume that dread, fixed, receptive smile for like occasions, it is possible that she would have had more difficulty in responding now.

  “I mean, look at him, I mean,” said Mr. Grayson. “I ask you, I mean. I mean — look!

  “I mean, have you ever? Did you ever?

  “I mean, I could understand it if there was any talent….

  “Or any looks even,” said Mr. Grayson. “It must be influence, that’s all. What do you think, Miss Mortimer?”

  “Yes. I expect it’s influence,” said Jackie, and laughed.

  There was another awkward, if bland, silence, the conclusion that it was Influence seeming to have brought us to something of a cul-de-sac conversationally, and the jesters having nothing to do but gaze at the silent object of their attack with a kind of paternal mockery. Happily there came a knock at the door. “Can I come in?” came a man’s voice.

  “Don’t ask me. Don’t ask me.” Mr. Grayson would take no responsibility, as a head was put round the door. “I should n’t think you could. Star’s dressing-room, you know.”

  There entered a very tall gentleman with a long nose and a diffident air, who was readily recognizable as the gentleman who had impersonated General Burgoyne. His hair was greying and thin, his face nervous and emaciated, and his voice supercilious but submissive. He had the appearance of a legal adviser in a dread of getting flustered, and looked, in general, as though he should have had his cup of cocoa and been under the sheets two hours ago at least. This was Mr. Dobell, and Jackie took to him at once.

  “I came to ask if it’s true there’s a Call, to-morrow,” he said.

  “Call!” ejaculated both Mr. Grayson and Mr. Gissing.

  “Well, our A.S.M. was saying something about it.”

  “Well, we’ve been told nothing,” said Mr. Gissing. “This is Miss Mortimer, Dobell — Miss Mortimer, Mr. Dobell.”

  “Good evening,” said Mr. Dobell, and Jackie all at once found herself being saluted with a long thin hand, reinforced by a long thin smile, both of which vanished as suddenly as they had come.

  “Well, then, it’s a false alarm, I expect,” said Mr. Dobell. “But he certainly said something as I was coming off.”

  “Oh, that boy’ll come to a bad end,” said Mr. Grayson. “By the way, did you know Ernest was in front to-night?”

  “Was he!…” About three minutes’ conversation now ensued on the topic of Ernest, during which another gentleman, apparently the Stage Manager, entered brightly with, “Well, well, well — what are we all up to? … Call? No. No call…. Only understudies” — and during which, in the general hubbub, Jackie found herself cornered by Mr. Dobell.

  “Are you in this business, Miss Mortimer?” asked Mr. Dobell.

  “No, I’m not, really,” said Jackie.

  “Dreadful business,” said Mr. Dobell, ruminating, but he did not tell her why.

  “Yes,” said Jackie, with the same vagueness. “I suppose it is.”

  “Were you in front to-night?”

  “Yes. It was fearfully good, was n’t it?”

  “Yes. It plays very well, does n’t it?”

  “Yes. I thought you were wonderful,” said Jackie.

  “Well, it’s a wonderful Part, isn’t it?” said a fair-minded Mr. Dobell, but he was a little breathless and flushed over the compliment for all that. “You can’t go wrong. It plays itself.”

  “Oh, I don’t know….”

  “Gissing’s immense, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, he is wonderful, isn’t he?”

  By this time Mr. Gissing was ready, and a move was being made for the door. Mr. Gissing smiled upon Jackie and went ahead with Mr. Grayson, and Mr. Dobell and Jackie brought up the rear, meekly discussing the weather. On emerging into the fresh air, Mr. Grayson immediately began hissing through his teeth and punching with violent regularity, as though he had been wound up afresh: a stoutish woman had materialized, evidently the puncher’s choice in life, to whom Jackie was not introduced, and who was apparently oblivious, through usage, to the padded warfare eternally raging in the person of her domestic idol: they all stood there, swaying slightly in the wind, and valedictorily conversational, until such time as some intrepid spirit might say “Well,” and let them go home; which pioneer work Mr. Gissing undertook (Mr. Grayson supporting him with an even more resounding smack than usual): and then they dispersed. Mr. Dobell raised his hat and smiled very particularly at Jackie, and the next moment she was walking home under the twinkling stars at the usual rapid pace tacitly exacted by her deliverer.

  V

  They were passing St. Paul’s School, and she began it with “Oh, by the way,” as people do when broaching subjects upon which their lives hang by threads. And from the first moment he threw up a stolid fort of resistance. But that she did not mind, so long as it was acknowledged that she might storm it, so long as the argument was in the open and they might contradict each other flat without incivility.

  “I won’t,” said Mr. Gissing, looking down at her. “Honestly.”

  “Perhaps,” said Jackie, “you don’t think I could Act?”

  “That’s irrelevant, anyway,” said Mr. Gissing.

  “But do you think I could?” asked Jackie.

  “How on earth should I know? I should n’t think so.”

  “You would n’t?” said Jackie, with a rather mixed air of detachment.

  “No.”

  “Perhaps you think I’m not decent-looking enough?”

  “On the contrary, I think you’re extremely pretty.”

  “You do?” said Jackie, also with a very insecure detachment.

  “At times overbearingly so,” added Mr. Gissing.

  “Well, then …” said Jackie, but he remained silent. She herself wanted this silence, to think about “overbearingly so”, but she brought herself back to business.

  “I say,” said Jackie. “Won’t you?”

  “What do you want me to do, anyway?”

  “To introduce me to some one, or give me some advice.”

  “All right. I Advise you to go to an agent.”

  “Yes, but won’t you help me?”

  “No, I won’t. If there was the slightest possibility of ever forgiving myself if I did — I might…. Anyway, the best I could do would be to get you some rotten understudy on tour.”

  “Well, that’d be something. But I want, really, to start at the beginning, and learn, and get Experience, and all that. I really am serious, I mean. I’m not one of those who think they can jump into it.”

  “Oh, I see. You’re one of the I-started-at-the-bottom-Sound-Training-on-the-Road-Nothing-like-it-old-boy school? Then you should start with a fit-up.”

  “What’s a fit-up?”

  “A Fit,” said Mr. Gissing, after a pause. “Up.”

  There was another pause.

  “But you must have Experience, must n’t you?”

  “Why?”

  “Oh — don’t be silly.”

  “I wouldn’t start on Experience. If you go on with
this, you’ll have enough Experience rammed down your throat without going out to seek it.”

  “Yes — but you must have Experience. I bet you’ve had lots of it, anyway.”

  “Oh, I have, yes. That’s why I’m so full of mannerisms. I was a much better actor ten years ago.”

  “Besides, I’ve got to earn my living…. And by the way, if it’s such a rotten profession, why are you in it?”

  Mr. Gissing paused before replying to this.

  “Well,” he said at last. “I suppose it’s because I’m never really happy except when I am acting.”

  That struck Jackie as being very good. When the time came, she resolved, she would never be happy, except while she was acting. That was very nice.

  “Well, I think you might help me,” said Jackie.

  “That’s what I’m trying to do,” said Mr. Gissing, and so the argument went on and on, and round and round. They argued all the way back to their lodgings; they argued on the step, letting themselves in; they asked a rather shocked Mrs. Lover if they could have supper together, so that there should be no pause in their argument; they argued waiting for, consuming, and digesting their supper, until the clock above the ash-strewn fireplace pointed to five-and-twenty past twelve, at which magic moment Mr. Gissing made a concession. This he did not do with the air of a man making a concession, but as one maintaining his own argument: but it was a concession for all that.

  “I don’t mind ’phoning up and making an appointment with an agent for you to-morrow,” he said, and Jackie nailed him to it like lightning.

  “You will?” she said, smiling.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, thanks awfully…. I’m sorry to have gone on so, but you’ve no idea what it means…. Of course, I don’t want you to if you don’t really want to,” said Jackie, who only wished now that they could both win the day.

  “Very well, then — I won’t,” said Mr. Gissing.

  “What time’ll you do it? Shall I be able to see some one to-morrow?”

  “I imagine so.”

  “Thanks awfully,” repeated Jackie, softly, and, “It’s jolly nice of you, and thanks terribly,” she added.

  But Mr. Gissing was not going to kiss and make-up like that. He looked severely at her, and rose to go to bed.

  CHAPTER III

  A DAY IN THE THEATRE

  I

  HE came down to an extremely restive and rather scared Jackie at ten o’clock next morning, to ask her if she still felt the same, and five minutes later they left the house.

  With very few words they walked down the cold, sunny street, and he guided her mechanically to the post office.

  “This is where we ’phone Mr. Lee,” he said, and went into a box. She waited outside and watched him through the glass. It took about four minutes.

  “Well?” said Jackie.

  “A quarter to eleven,” he said. “I can see you round there.”

  “Do you think there’s any chance of anything?”

  “Yes. He thinks he might slip you in unnoticed with Linell. Stephen Linell.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Shakespeare. You’ll be jolly lucky if you can get it. He’s going out for fifteen weeks.”

  “On tour?”

  Mr. Gissing glanced at Jackie.

  “Yes.”

  There was a pause.

  “I hope I can get it,” said Jackie.

  They embarked together on the District, and got out at Piccadilly, and walked towards Leicester Square.

  “Does one just go in,” asked Jackie, “and ask for Mr. Lee?”

  “I think that’s just the thing, really,” said Mr. Gissing.

  There was a silence.

  “I’m very sorry to see you so frightened, Jackie,” he said. “Because all this business is made up of going in and asking for Mr. Lee.”

  She was too busy pulling round from the “Jackie” to answer at once.

  “It’s only the first time,” she said.

  “Well, here we are. You go up there, and it’s on the right. Will you join me at lunch?”

  “Oh yes,” said Jackie.

  “Will you meet me at this corner, then, at a quarter past one?”

  “Yes. Rather.”

  “If you’re not here, I’ll know that something’s happened. Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye.”

  She was walking up the street to her career.

  II

  Her career began with a not very impertinent young woman of middling attractions in an outer room. Her career was then suspended for half an hour, which deteriorated her morale at the outset, and during which other submissive individuals intermittently came in and softly tackled the not very impertinent young woman of middling attractions on the subject of their own careers. But at last a giddy moment came when she was running up the stairs; and then she was alone in a room with Mr. Carson Lee.

  Mr. Lee — a large, dark, heavily moustached and abundantly virile man of about forty-five — was at the telephone: and it was clear, at the moment that Jackie caught him, that the entire business of the theatre had reached a crisis from which it was not likely to pull through. But Mr. Lee was happily in charge, and he was sitting at the machine, like an admiral who had ruthlessly snatched the wireless from the operator, and was issuing his commands and smelling out the position with awe-inspiring rapidity and efficiency.

  In these circumstances, he was just able to concede to Jackie a curt and unsmiling nod, as though he knew that she had come with news of the fleet in the North (which had doubtless been sunk by now): but otherwise he did not attend to her.

  “What? … What? … Out of the question! … Wipe it out. Wipe it out…. What? … What? … Well he must come and see me…. What? … Good.”

  On this last word, which was pronounced with the minimum of satisfaction (and the maximum of finality), he thrust the instrument from him, and came over to shake Jackie’s hand.

  “Good morning, Miss Mortimer. Glad to see you here. Mr. Gissing ’phoned up about you, didn’t he?”

  “Yes,” said Jackie. “That’s right.” But at this moment there was a buzzing at the machine. Mr. Lee whirled himself back into the thick of the battle.

  “Hullo-hullo…. Hullo…. Yes…. HulLO…. Yes…. WHAT! … Never…. No. Certainly not. Never!”

  And the receiver smashed down on that leonine negative. The whole theatre had obviously combined against Mr. Lee, but he was taking a firm stand. Or rather the naval odds were numerically too much for the distressed admiral, but he was going down with flying colours.

  “Let me see now,” said Mr. Lee, again rising. “You’ve hardly had any experience at all now, have you?”

  “No — I haven’t, really.”

  Mr. Lee paced over to the blazing fire, and commenced to warm his back with a kind of expert lasciviousness and a gentle swaying motion.

  “Well, I rather think I may have the thing for you. Stephen Linell. If you could get in with him you’d get a fine all-round training, and a real start. And of course he’s wanting beginners. (Salary wouldn’t be up to much, of course.) Let me see now….”

  He flashed over to the telephone, lifted the receiver, shouted “Get me Mr. Brewster, please,” and paused.

  “Let me see now, how old are you, Miss — Hullo. Hullo. Mr. Brewster there, please? … Oh…. Well, do you know where Mr. Linell’s rehearsing to-day? … Oh … Then what time’ll Mr. Brewster be back? …. Ah…. Ah…. Thank you.”

  He snatched a bit of paper from a partition in his desk, and commenced scribbling upon it. He rose and handed it to Jackie.

  “Now if you’ll take that round to Mr. Brewster, in Glasshouse Street, you’ll probably catch him; and you may see Linell this morning. Of course, I don’t know whether he’s filled up, but I should think you’d stand a very good chance. You’ve got the right kind of voice and looks, and you could n’t get a better training anywhere. Benson, Greet or any of ’em. Of course there’s nothing to speak of in the way of salary. I
n fact, it generally means a premium as often as not. But then — —”

  Mr. Lee was summoned to the telephone.

  “Hullo…. Yes…. Yes…. Oh yes…. What! Good God, man, do they think I don’t know my own business? (The Government itself had evidently turned against him now.) “What! … Well, tell ’em I take complete responsibility — complete…. Yes…. Good-bye…. Yes…. Good-bye…. No…. No…. Good-bye.”

  He returned to the fire. “Well. Yes. That ought to be all right, then. It’s a chance in a hundred, really — placed as you are. Do you know Glasshouse Street?”

  “No,” said Jackie. “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  He directed her to Glasshouse Street, with some care, and the interview was closed.

  “Bosh!” was the last word she heard Mr. Lee (who had returned to the telephone) using, as she ran down the stairs and out into the sunny street.

  *

  She walked from the comparative quietude of Leicester Square into the seething vortex of Piccadilly, and was shot out again into the comparatively quiet and seedy environs of Snow’s chop-house and the Regent Palace, and found her way to the address she wanted. This address rather awkwardly coincided with a fishmonger’s address, but an assistant with a glistening dank blush upon his hands directed her to a narrow entrance next door, and after climbing a very great quantity of wooden stairs, she achieved an office.

  Here there was another young woman who was sitting in another outer room at her typing. She said that Mr. Brewster might soon be back, and gave Jackie a chair. Then she sat again at her typing. Jackie watched her with interest for an hour and five minutes….

  At the end of which period a gentleman came clattering busily upon the wooden stairs, and entered the room.

  This gentleman — a short, greying, clean-shaven man in pince-nez and a bowler hat — glanced in passing at Jackie, and went to the other end of the room to take off his overcoat.

  “Parry been?”

  “No. Mr. Rodd ’phoned, though.”

  “All serene?”

  “Yes.”

  Mr. Brewster hovered over Jackie and took her note. He adjusted his pince-nez, and read it. “Ah, yes,” he said. “I’m rather afraid you’ve come a bit too late, though. I think he’s all fixed up by now. You might try, though. He’s rehearsing at the Lester Halls, Jackson Street, off Tottenham Court Road. If I were you I’d go round. He’s wanting people like you. And if it’s too late now you might fix up for the Spring. He’s going out again, then. Do you know how to get there?”