title, by author—A Project Gutenberg eBook

THE clangour of bells grew insistent. In uncontrollable hilarity pealed S. Mary, contrasting clearly with the subdued carillon of S. Mark. From all sides, seldom in unison, resounded bells. S. Elizabeth and S. Sebastian, in Flower Street, seemed in loud dispute, while S. Ann “on the Hill,” all hollow, cracked, consumptive, fretful, did nothing but complain. Near by S. Nicaise, half-paralysed, and impotent, feebly shook. Then, triumphant, in a hurricane of sound, S. Irene hushed them all.

Up and up, and still up, the winding ways of the city the straggling townsfolk toiled.

Now and again a pilgrim perhaps would pause in the narrow lane behind the Deanery to rest.

Opening a black lacquer fan and setting the window of her bedroom wide, Miss Sarah Sinquier peered out.

Across it, the Cathedral rose up before her with wizardry against the evening sky.

Miss Sinquier raised her eyes towards the twin grey spires, threw up her arms, and yawned.

From a pinnacle a devil with limbs entwined about some struggling crowned-coiffed prey, grimaced.

Under the little old lime trees by the Cathedral door lounged Lady Caroline Dempsey’s Catholic footman.

In her mind’s eye she saw the impression her own conversion would make in the parochial world.

“Canon Sinquier’s only daughter has gone over to Rome....” Or, “Canon Sinquier’s daughter has taken the veil.” Or, “Miss Sinquier, having suffered untold persecution at 11the hands of her family, has been received into the Convent of the Holy Dove.”

Her eyes strayed leisurely from the powdered head and weeping shoulder-knots of Lady Caroline Dempsey’s Catholic footman. The lack of movement was oppressive.

Why was not Miss Worrall in her customary collapse being borne senseless to her Gate in the Sacristan’s arms? And why to-night were they not chaunting the Psalms?

“In all these fruitful years,” she read, “the only instance he is recorded to have smiled was at a great rat running in and out among some statues.... He was the Ideal Hamlet. Morose of countenance, and cynical by nature, his outbursts, at times, would completely freeze the company.”

“Somehow it makes no difference,” she 12murmured, turning towards a glass. To feign Ophelia—no matter what!

“I adore it.... You see ... I’ve lost my heart here—! Tell them so—oh! especially to the men.... Whereabouts was I born? In Westmorland; yes. In England, Sir! Inquisitive? Why not at all: I was born in the sleepy peaceful town of Applethorp (three p’s), in the inmost heart—right in the very middle,” Miss Sinquier murmured, tucking a few field flowers under her chin, “of the Close.”

“SALLY,” her father said, “I could not make out where you sat at Vespers, child, to-night.”

In the old-world Deanery drawing room, coffee and liqueurs—a Sunday indulgence—had been brought in.

Behind her, through the open windows, a riot of light leaves and creepers was swaying restively to and fro.

Canon Sinquier considered with an absent air an abundant-looking moon, then turned towards his wife.

At her cylinder-desk, between two flickering candles, Mrs. Sinquier, while her coffee grew cold, was opening her heart to a friend.

“Or dare to breathe,” her daughter added, taking up a Sunday journal and approaching nearer the light.

“‘At the Olive Theatre,’” she read, “‘Mrs. Starcross will produce a new comedy, in the coming autumn, which promises to be of the highest interest.’”

“‘At the Kehama, Yvonde Yalta will be seen shortly in a Japanese piece, with singing mandarins, geishas, and old samurai—’”

“Isn’t she always? ‘Come round and see me soon, Miss Sarah, there’s a dear, and let’s be intimate!’”

Miss Sinquier looked down at her feet. She had on black babouches all over little pearls with filigree butterflies that trembled above her toes.

“You need the proper movements....” she explained. “One ought really to shake one’s shanks!”

“Don’t, Mike. The horrors that go on in 19certain places, I’m sure no one would believe.”

“When I think of those coloured coons,” Mrs. Sinquier went on, “at the Palace fête last year! Roaming all night in the Close.... And when I went to look out next day there stood an old mulattress holding up the baker’s boy in the lane.”

“Between now and that,” Miss Sinquier reflected, shortly afterwards, on her way upstairs, “I shall almost certainly be in town.”

IN the Gazebo at the extremity of the garden, by the new parterre, Miss Sinquier, in a morning wrapper, was waiting for the post.

Through the trellis chinks, semicircular, showed the Close, with its plentiful, seasoned timber and sedate, tall houses, a stimulating sequence, architecturally, of whitewash, stone and brick.

Wretch—! to deliver at the Palace before the Deanery, when the Deanery was as near!

“Shower down over there, Oh Lord, ten thousand fearsome bills,” extemporaneously she prayed, “and spare them not at all; Amen.”

Husband; lovers ... little lives, perhaps—yet to be ... besides voyages, bouquets, diamonds, chocolates, duels, casinos...!

That large mauve envelope, with the wild handwriting, and the haunting scent, was from her.

As she whisked away her heart throbbed fast. Through the light spring foliage she could see her father, with folded hands, pacing meditatively to and fro before the front of the house.

“Humbug!” she murmured, darting down a gravel path towards the tradesmen’s door.

“Mrs. Albert Bromley presents her compliments 22to Miss S. Sinquier and will be pleased to offer her her experience and advice on Thursday morning next at the hour Miss Sinquier names.

“P.S. Mrs. Bromley already feels a parent’s sympathetic interest in Miss Sinquier. Is she dark or fair...? Does she shape for Lady Macbeth or is she a Lady Teazle?”

To keep the appointment, without being rushed, she would be obliged to set out, essentially baggageless, to-night—a few requisites merely, looped together and concealed beneath her dress, would be the utmost she could manage.

“A lump here and a lump there!” she breathed, “and I can unburden myself in the train.”

It should bring grist; perhaps close on a thousand pounds. Misericordia: to be compelled to part with it!

How clearly now they brought her Godmother to mind ... a little old body ... with improbable cherry-cheeks, and excrescent upper lip, with always the miniatures of her three deceased husbands clinging about one arm.... ‘Aren’t they pleasant?’ she would say proudly every now and then.... What talks they had had; and sometimes of an evening through the mauve moonlight they would strut together.

Now that she was leaving Applethorp, for ever perhaps, how dormant impressions revived!

The Saunders’ Fifeshire bull, one New Year’s night, ravaging the Close, driven frantic by the pealings of the bells. The time poor Dixon got drowned—at a Flower Show, a curate’s eyes—a German governess’s walk—a mould of calves-foot-jelly she had let fall in the Cathedral once, on her way somewhere—

Over the bed, an antique Bush-knife of barbaric shape supposed to have been Abraham’s, was quite a collector’s piece.

And downstairs in the butler’s room there were possessions of hers, besides. What of those Apostle spoons, and the two-pronged forks, and the chased tureen?

Leonard frequently had said it took the best part of a day to polish her plate alone.

“Oh God, help me, Dear,” she prayed. “This little once, Oh Lord! For Thou knowest my rights....”

Gripper, no doubt, would suspect something odd if she asked for her things “to play with” for an hour....

25A more satisfactory scheme would be to swoop into the pantry, on her way to the station, and to take them away for herself.

She had only to say: “Make haste with them crevets,” for Gripper to go off in a huff, and Leonard, should he be there, would be almost sure to follow.

“Have the chintz curtains in the white room folded,” she could hear her say, “and remember what I said about the carpet....”

“Never mind,” she murmured, “they shall have sofas in their box on the night of my début....”

Clad in full black, with a dark felt chapeau de resistance and a long Lancastrian shawl, she felt herself no mean match for any man.

“If dear Mrs. Bromley could see me,” she beamed, tucking dexterously away an apostolic spoon.

At a friendly frolic once, a Candidate for Orders had waltzed her about to that.

And the young man’s significant reasons and elaborate suppositions, and Fräulein’s creamy tone as she said she quite understood.

There were the Caroline sauce-boats, or the best Anne teapot, hardly, if ever, in use.

Flinging her wrap about her, Miss Sinquier slipped quietly out by way of a small room, where the Canon preserved his lawn.

Outside, the moon was already up—a 28full moon, high and white, a wisp of cloud stretched across it like a blindfold face.

Some day, at the King’s, or the Canary, or the Olive, in the warmth of a stage dressing-room, she would be amused, perhaps, and say:

“I left my father’s roof, Sir, one sweet spring night—without so much as a word!”

RAINDROPS were falling although the sky was visibly brightening as Miss Sinquier, tired, and a little uncertain, passed through the main exit of Euston terminus.

On a hoarding, as if to welcome her, a dramatic poster of Fan Fisher unexpectedly warmed her heart; it was almost like being met....

Whenever she had been in the metropolis before she had stayed at Millars in Eric Street, overlooking Percy Place; because Mr. Millar 30had formerly been employed at the Deanery, and had, moreover, married their cook....

Even Church dignitaries had been known to be refused accommodation on arriving at a strange hotel with nothing but themselves.

All the wonderful day stretched before her, and in the evening she would take a ticket perhaps for some light vaudeville or new revue.

Stella Starcross—The Lady from the Sea—This evening, Betty Buttermilk and Co.—Rose Tournesol—Mr. and Mrs. Mary’s Season: The Carmelite—The Shop Boy—Clemenza di Tito. To-night!

Until the shops should open up it might be well to take a taxi and rest in the Park for an hour.

Upon the floor and over the cushions of the cab was sprinkled fresh confetti—turquoise, pink and violet, gold and green.

As a mascot, she reflected, it would be equivalent to a cinqfoil of clover, or a tuft of edelweiss, or a twist of hangman’s rope.

FROM the big hotel in the vicinity of the Marble Arch, to the consulting rooms in Shaftesbury Avenue of Mrs. Albert Bromley, it appeared, on inquiry, that the distance might easily be accomplished in less than forty minutes.

Garmented charmingly in a cornflower-blue frock with a black gauze turban trimmed with a forest of tinted leaves, she lingered uplifted by her appearance before the glass.

The sober turban, no doubt, would suggest to Mrs. Bromley, Macbeth—the forest-scene, and the blue, she murmured, “might be anything.”

It occurred to her as she left her room that Mr. Bromley might quite conceivably be there to assist his wife.

33It was just the morning for a walk. A pale silvery light spread over Oxford Street, while above the shop fronts, the sun flashed down upon a sea of brass-tipped masts, from whence trade flags trembled in a vagrant breeze. Rejoicing in her independence, and in the exhilarating brightness of the day, Miss Sinquier sailed along. The ordeal of a first meeting with a distinguished dramatic expert diminished at every step. She could conjecture with assurance, almost, upon their ultimate, mutual understanding. But before expressing any opinion, Mrs. Bromley, no doubt, would require to test her voice; perhaps, also, expect her to dance and declaim.

There was the thing from Rizzio. The Mistress of the Robes’ lament upon her vanished youth, on discovering a mirror unexpectedly, one morning, at Holyrood, outside Queen Mary’s door.

Diamond, Lady Drummond, bearing the Queen a cap, raps, smiles, listens ... smiles, raps again, puts out her leg and rustles ... 34giggles, ventures to drop a ring, effusive facial play and sundry tentative noises, when catching sight of her reflection, she starts back with:

“O! obnoxious old age. O! hideous horror. O! youthful years all gone. O! childhood spent. Decrepitude at hand.... Infirmities drawing near....”

“Yes,” Miss Sinquier decided, crossing into Regent Street, “should Mrs. Bromley bid me declaim, I’ll do Diamond.”

There was the new Merrymount Theatre 35with its roguish Amorini supporting torches and smiling down over gay flower-boxes on to the passers-by.

On the mat, dressed in a violet riband, with its paw in the air, lay a great sly, black, joyous cat.

In the threshold, here and there, were small brass plates, that brought to mind somehow memorial tablets to departed virtue at home.

A maid with her head wreathed in curl-papers answered the door, surveying the visitor first through a muslin blind.

Instinctively, she stopped to examine a portrait of Yvonde Yalta in the open vestibule of the Dream.

She devoured it: Really...? Really? She resembled more some Girton guy than a great coquette.

38All down the street indeed, at the theatre doors, were studies of artists, scenes from current plays.

By the time she found herself back in Piccadilly Circus again Miss Sinquier was nearly fainting from inanition.

In Regent Street, she reflected, almost certainly, there must be some nice tea-shop, some cool creamery....

Everyone seemed to be chattering, smoking, lunching, casting dice, or playing dominoes.

She advanced slowly through a veil of opal mist, feeling her way from side to side with her parasol.

She put out her hand in a swimming, groping gesture, twirling as she did so, accidentally, an old gentleman’s moustache.

“Bring me some China tea,” she murmured to a passing waiter, “and a bun with currants in it.”

It would have been a relief to have blotted her face against some neighbouring blouse or waistcoat and to have had a hearty cry.

With a mournful glance she slid the apparatus from her in the direction of an adolescent of a sympathetic, somewhat sentimental, appearance, who, despite emphatic whiskers, had the air of a wildly pretty girl.

To have cherished such an one as a brother! Miss Sinquier reflected, as the waiter brought her tea.

40While consuming it, she studied the young man’s chiselled profile from the corners of her eyes.

Supporting his chin upon the crook of a cane, he was listening, as if enthralled, to a large florid man, who, the centre of a small, rapt group, was relating in a high-pitched, musical voice, how “Poor dear Chaliapin one day had asked for Kvass and was given Bass. And that reminds me,” the speaker said, giving the table an impressive thump, “of the time when Anna Held—let go.”

Here were stage folk, artists, singers ... that white, thin girl in the shaggy hat opposite was without doubt a temperament akin.

Folding her arms upon the table she sank despairingly forward and burst into tears.

“Never mind, Precious,” the fat man crooned. “You shall ride in a comfy taxi-cab with me.”

“No; indeed she shan’t,” Mrs. Sixsmith snapped. “You may rely on me, Ernest, for that!”

Rejecting the proffered spirits with a gesture, Miss Sinquier controlled her grief.

“My dear,” Mrs. Sixsmith said, “I shouldn’t think of it again. I expect this Mrs. Bromley was nothing but an old procuress.”

“Then here, close at hand ... sitting with you and me,” she informally presented, “Is Mr. Ernest Stubbs, whose wild wanderings in the Gog-magog hills in sight of Cambridge, orchestrally described, recently thrilled us all. Next to him—tuning his locks and twisting his cane—you’ll notice Mr. Harold Weathercock, an exponent of calf-love parts at the Dream. And, beyond, blackening her nose with a cigarette, sprawls the most resigned of women—Miss Whipsina Peters, a 44daughter of the famous flagelist—and a coryphée herself.”

“A sight!” Mrs. Sixsmith closed her eyes. “They’re all laid up in lavender, I fear.”

“Just now you spoke of a necklace of your own ... a pearl rope, or something, that you wish to sell.”

“Through an old banker-friend of mine—Sir Oliver Dawtry. Down Hatton Garden way and throughout the City he has enormous interests. And I should say he could place your pearls—if anyone could!”

“Sir Oliver is offering me a little dinner to-night. And I should be happy for you to join us.”

“At Angrezini’s. It’s a little restaurant ... with a nigger band. And you sing between the courses.”

“I shall stay where I am,” she murmured, “and perhaps take a nap. There’s sure to be a tremendous exodus directly.”

“Better ask for Sir Oliver—one never knows.... And I might perhaps happen to be late.”

“I will explain whatever’s needful by telephone to Sir Oliver now. And during dinner,” Mrs. Sixsmith bubbled, “while the old gentleman picks a quail, we will see what we can do!”

“The question of commission,” Mrs. Sixsmith murmured with a slight smile, “we will discuss more fully later on.”

SUBJECTIVE. On a rack in the loom. Powerless oneself to grasp the design. Operated on by others. At the mercy of chance fingers, unskilled fingers, tender fingers; nails of all sorts. Unable to progress alone. Finding fulfilment through friction and because of friction. Stung into sentiency gradually, bit by bit—a toe at a time.

After all there was a zest in it; and who should blame the raw material should an accident occur by the way....

Careless of an intriguing world about her, Miss Sinquier left her hotel, just so as to arrive at Angrezini’s last.

“For Thou knowest well my safety is in Thee,” she murmured to herself mazily as her taxi skirted the Park.

Having disposed of her Anne teapot for close on seventy pounds, she was looking more radiant than ever in a frail Byzantine tunic that had cost her fifty guineas.

48Through the shadowy palings it slipped away, abundantly dotted with lovers. Some were plighting themselves on little chairs, others preferred the green ground: and beyond them, behind the whispering trees, the sky gleamed pale and luminous as church glass.

Glory to have a lover too, she reflected, and to stroll leisurely-united through the evening streets, between an avenue of sparkling lamps....

She found herself directly in a small bemirrored room with a hatch on one side of it, in which an old woman in a voluminous cap was serenely knitting.

Behind her dangled furs and wraps that scintillated or made pools of heavy shade as they caught or missed the light.

Through a glass door she could make out Mrs. Sixsmith herself, seated in a cosy red-walled sitting-room beyond.

She was looking staid as a porcelain goddess in a garment of trailing white with a minute griffin-eared dog peeping out its sheeny paws and head wakefully from beneath her train.

“Sir Oliver hasn’t yet come!” she said, imprinting on Miss Sinquier’s youthful cheek a salute of hospitality.

“From the Bank to the Poultry, and from the Poultry on...; just consider,” she calculated, subsiding leisurely with Miss Sinquier upon a spindle-legged settee.

“You should have heard us. This Mrs. 50Bromley, he pretends.... Oh, well ... one must not be too harsh on the dead.”

“Always remember,” she said, “to a City man, twelve hundred sounds less than a thousand. Just as a year, to you and me, sounds more than eighteen months!”

Through the swing doors an elderly man with a ruddy, rather apoplectic face, and close-set opaque eyes, precipitantly advanced.

“Your pardon rests with Miss Sinquier,” Mrs. Sixsmith said with melodious inflections as she showed the way towards the restaurant. “Address your petitions to her.”

In the crescent-shaped, cedar-walled, cedar-beamed room, a table at a confidential angle had been reserved.

“There’s a big gathering here to-night,” Sir Oliver observed, glancing round him, a “board-room” mask clinging to him still.

“I find London really very hot.... It’s after the north, I suppose. In the north it’s always much cooler.”

“Yes, indeed she is,” Mrs. Sixsmith chimed 52in. “And so am I,” she said. “Two north-country girls!” she added gaily.

“I should say so.... Swans and peacocks! I wonder you’re prepared to admit it.”

“Only this afternoon I ran right into him—it was just outside the Café Royal....”

“He looked superb. Oh, so smart; spats, speckled trousers, the rest all deep indigo. Rather Russian.”

“My actor-husband, Paul. There. One has only to speak his name for Juno to jerk her tail.”

“I understand, my dear young lady, you’ve an itch for the footlights yourself.”

“We old ones ...” he lamented. “Once 54upon a time, I was in closer touch with the stage.”

“Footing, f-f-f——; among the whole demned lot, who persists still but, perhaps, the Marys?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Mary have won repute throughout the realm,” Mrs. Sixsmith impressively said, wondering (as middlewoman) what commission she should ask.

“Mrs. Mary, aujourd’hui, is a trifle, perhaps, full-blown, but she’s most magnetic still. And a warmer, quicker heart never beat in any breast.”

“In my younger days,” he said, “she was comeliness itself ... full of fun. I well recall 55her as the ‘wife’ in Macbeth; I assure you she was positively roguish.”

“Being fairly on now in years,” Miss Sinquier reflected, “she naturally wouldn’t fill very juvenile parts—which would be a blessing.”

“She used to make Paul ill——” Mrs. Sixsmith began, but stopped discreetly. “Oh, listen,” she murmured, glancing up towards the nigger band and insouciantly commencing to hum.

“Apropos of pearls ...” Sir Oliver addressed Miss Sinquier, “I look forward to the privilege before long of inspecting your own.”

“Before approaching some City firm, it’s possible Lady Dawtry might welcome an opportunity of acquiring this poor child’s jewels for herself,” Mrs. Sixsmith said.

“Many’s the time,” he said, “I’ve asked her to be a little more spectacular—but she won’t.”

“My dear, you’ll miss very little; besides it’s too close to linger over dinner long.”

“I feel very much like sitting à la Chaste Suzanne, in the nearest ice-pail!” she declared.

MARY LODGE, or Maryland, as it was more familiarly known, stood quite at the end of Gardingore Gate, facing the Park.

Half-way down the row, on the Knightsbridge side, you caught a glimpse of it set well back in its strip of garden with a curtain of rustling aspen-trees before the door.

Erected towards the close of the eighteenth century as a retreat for a fallen minister, it had, on his demise, become the residence of a minor member of the reigning Royal House, from whose executors, it had, in due course, passed into the hands of the first histrionic couple in the land.

A gravel sweep leading between a pair of grotesquely attenuated sphinxes conducted, via a fountain, to the plain, sober façade in the Grecian style.

Moving demurely up this approach some few minutes prior to the hour telegraphically 59specified by the mistress of the house, Miss Sinquier, clad in a light summer dress, with a bow like a great gold butterfly under her chin, pulled the bell of Mary Lodge.

Some day others would be standing at her own front gate, their hearts a-hammer....

The entrance hall bare but for a porphyry sarcophagus containing visiting cards, and a few stiff chairs, clung obviously to royal tradition still.

To right and left of the broad stairway two colossal battle-pictures, by Uccelli, were narrowly divided by a pedestalled recess in which a frowning bust of Mrs. Mary as Medusa was enshrined.

Miss Sinquier, following closely, was shown into a compartment whose windows faced the Park.

“Mrs. Mary has not yet risen from lunch,” the man said as he went away. “But she won’t be many minutes.”

Selecting herself a chair with a back suited to the occasion, Miss Sinquier prepared to wait.

60It was an irregular planned, rather lofty room, connected by a wide arch with other rooms beyond. From the painted boiseries hung glowing Eastern carpets, on which warriors astride fleet-legged fantastic horses were seen to pursue wild animals, that fled helter-skelter through transparent thickets of may. A number of fragile French chairs formed a broken ring about a Louis XVI bed—all fretted, massive pillars of twisted, gilded wood—converted now to be a seat. Persian and Pesaro pottery conserving “eternal” grasses, fans of feathers, strange sea-shells, bits of Blue-John, blocks of malachite, morsels of coral, images of jade littered the guéridons and étagères. A portrait of Mrs. Mary, by Watts, was suspended above the chimney-place, from whence came the momentous ticking of a clock.

“The old girl’s lair, no doubt!” Miss Sinquier reflected, lifting her eyes towards a carved mythological ceiling describing the Zodiac and the Milky Way.

Tongue protruding, face upturned, it was something to mortify her for ever that Mrs. Mary, entering quietly, should so get her unawares.

“And you’ll see it; in trine of Mars. The Seventh House. The House of Marriage. The House of Happiness.”

Mrs. Mary was large and robust, with commanding features and an upright carriage. She had a Redfern gown of “navy” blue stuff infinitely laced. One white, long hand, curved and jewelled, clung as if paralysed above her breast.

Seating herself majestically, with a glance of invitation to Miss Sinquier to do the same, the eminent actress appraised her visitor slowly with a cold, dry eye.

“Unfortunately she’s obliged. She’s just had another babelet, poor dear.”

“And in Lara, she was the orphan. That part should suit you well,” Mrs. Mary murmured, rising and taking from a cabinet a bundle of printed sheets.

“Never mind about her dress. Let me hear how you’d deliver her lines,” Mrs. Mary tartly said, placing in Miss Sinquier’s hands a brochure of the play.

“A twitter of birds is all. You are now in Lord and Lady Lara’s garden—near Nice. Begin.”

“Think less of your costume, dear, do; and learn to do what you’re told. Begin!”

“Arsi——? So she does. You should understand we’re in Egypt, in the halls of Ptolemy Philadelphus, on the banks of the River Nile. I will begin.

Some priestly treachery; but see! What crouching shape is this?... Peace, fool!”

“O beating heart, Mrs. Mary paced stormily the room, Tumultuous throbbing breast. Alas! how art thou laden?...”

“High Horus!... What! Back from Ethiopia and the Nubean Army! Is’t indeed Ismenias...?”

“Ah!” she broke off, “An engagement, I fear. But come and see me again. Come one day to the theatre. Our stage-door is in Sloop Street, an impasse off the Strand.” And Mrs. Mary, gathering up her skirts, nodded and withdrew.

“BLACK her great boots! Not I,” Miss Sinquier said to herself as she turned her back on Mary Lodge to wend her way westward across the Park.

She was to meet Mrs. Sixsmith at a certain club on Hay Hill towards dusk to learn whether any tempting offer had been submitted Sir Oliver for her pearls.

“If I chose I suppose I could keep them,” she murmured incoherently to herself as she crossed the Row.

Under the small formal trees sheltering the path she clapped her sunshade to, and slackened speed.

The rhododendrons, in vivid clumps of new and subtle colours brushing the ground, were in their pride. Above, the sky showed purely blue. She walked on a little way towards Stanhope Gate when, overcome by the odoriferous 69fragrance of heliotropes and xenias, she sank serenely to a bench.

Far off by the Serpentine a woman was preaching from a tree to a small audience gathered beneath. How primeval she looked as her arms shot out in argument, a discarded cock’s-feather boa looped to an upper bough dangling like some dark python in the air above.

“I gave you up. I thought you lost,” Mrs. Sixsmith exclaimed, hitching higher her veil with fingers super-manicured, covered in oxydized metal rings.

“He has had an offer of two thousand pounds,” she triumphantly said, “for the pearls alone.”

“And, moreover, I have hopes for the silver, too. Sir Oliver is enchanted with the spoons—the Barnabas spoon especially. He said he had never seen a finer. Such a beautiful little Barny, such a rapture of a little sinner as it is, in every way.”

“In Foreign-Colony Street. He and a friend of his, Noel Nice, share a studio there. Not to paint in, alas! It’s to wash.”

“They’ve made a little laundry of it. And when they’re not acting actually, they wash. Oh! sometimes when Mr. Nice spits across his iron and says Pah! it makes one ill.”

“Mr. Sixsmith often sent them things ... little things,” she said. “His linen was his pride. You might annex him, perhaps. He’s played Mercutio before.”

From her reticule Mrs. Sixsmith took a small note-book and made an entry therein.

“My advice to you is, hire a playhouse—the Cobbler’s End, for example—for three round months at a reasonable rent, with a right, should you wish, to sub-let.”

“I’ve no doubt by paying a fortune you could find a more central position if you care to wait. The Bolivar Theatre, possibly——; or the Cone.... At the Cone, there’s a joy-plank from the auditorium to the stage, so 73that, should you want to ever, you can come right out into the stalls.”

“What do you say,” she asked, “to making an informal début (before ‘royal’ auspices!) at the Esmé Fisher ‘Farewell’ coming off next week?”

“I’ll send a note to the secretary, Miss Willinghorse, straight away,” Mrs. Sixsmith murmured, gathering up her constant Juno beneath her arm, and looking about her for some ink.

“I can’t go any more to the Café Royal,” Mrs. Sixsmith said. “I owe money there.... To all the waiters.”

“Besides, I’ve a small headache,” 74Mrs. Sixsmith said, selecting herself a quill.

“What can I do to relieve it?” Miss Sinquier wondered, taking up a newspaper as her friend commenced to write.

“I can’t epistolize while you make those unearthly noises,” Mrs. Sixsmith complained.

“The Grill-room at the Piccadilly isn’t going to cure a headache,” she remarked.

TO watch Diana rise blurred above a damp chemise from a fifth-floor laundry garden in Foreign-Colony Street, Soho, had brought all Chelsea (and part of Paris) to study illusive atmospherical effects from the dizzy drying-ground of those versatile young men, Harold Weathercock and Noel Nice.

Like a necropolis at the Resurrection, or some moody vision of Blake, would it appear under the evanescent rays of the moon.

Nighties, as evening fell, would go off into proud Praxiteles—torsos of Nymphs or Muses: pants and ready-mades, at a hint of air would pirouette and execute a phantom ballet from Don John.

Beyond the clothes lines was a Pagoda, set up in an extravagant mood, containing a gilded Buddha—a thorn and a symbol of unrighteousness to a convent of Ursulines whose recreation yard was underneath.

76Here, at a certain hour when the Mother Superior was wont to walk round and round her preserves, a young, bewhiskered man frequently would come bearing ceremonial offerings of rice or linen newly washed, and falling flat before the shrine would roll himself about and beat the ground as if in mortal anguish of his sins before her fascinated eye. Here, too, from time to time, festivities would take place—sauteries (to a piano-organ), or convivial petits soupers after the play.

Ascending this by the light of the stars, Mrs. Sixsmith and the New Juliet, gay from a certain grill, audaciously advanced, their playful screams rendered inaudible by the sounds of a tricksome waltz wafted down to them from the piano-organ above.

Items of linen nestling close to a line overhead showed palely against the night like roosting doves.

“Help.... Oh! she’s falling,” Mrs. Sixsmith screamed. “Are you there, Mr. Nice?”

London, beyond the frail filigree cross on the Ursulines’ bleached wall, blazed with light. From the Old Boar and Castle over the way came a perfect flood of it. And all along the curved river-line from Westminster to St. Paul’s glittered lamps, lamps, lamps.

Folding an arm about her friend’s “wasp” waist, Mrs. Sixsmith whirled her deftly round to a wild street air:

A small, thick-set, grizzled man with dark æsthetic eyes and a pinkish nose, the result maybe of continuously tinting it for music-hall purposes, addressed the breathless ladies in a broad, inquiring voice.

78“Then—do it,” Mrs. Sixsmith serenely said, resting her left knee against an empty keg of beer.

“By your leave, ladies,” he said, “I’ll just slip across to the Old Boar and Castle and sample a snack at the bar.”

“Don’t run off, Mr. Smee. You really mustn’t. On tiles, they say, one usually meets with cats.”

“How long is it—say—since we met?” she inquired. “Not since my wedding, I do believe.”

“What’s become of those kiddy bridesmaids you had?” Mr. Smee warily asked.

“So-so. I’ve been away on tour. Mildred 79Milson and Co. Oh! my Lord—it was. No sooner did we get to Buxton—down in Derbyshire—than Miss Milson fell sick and had to be left behind.”

“Exposure.... On Bank Holiday some of the company hired a three-horse char-à-banc and drove from Buxton over to Castleton Caves—my hat. What hills!—and from there we went to take a squint at Chatsworth, where Miss Milson came over queer.”

“Well.... I’m fond of thoughtful, theosophical reading, too, Mr. Smee,” Mrs. Sixsmith said. “Madame Blavatsky and Mrs. Annie Besant are both favourites with me.”

80“Mon Dieu,” Mrs. Sixsmith doubtfully said. “Je crois que c’est une Pucelle.”

“Don’t look like that, Mr. Smee—nobody’s asking you,” Mrs. Sixsmith murmured.

“God has given him looks, but no brains,” Mr. Smee emphatically declared. “No more brains than a cow in a field.”

“His is indeed a charming face,” Mrs. Sixsmith sighed. “And as to his brains, Mr. Smee—why, come!”

“From the time she could toddle; in a Midsummer Night’s Dream, when not quite two, she was the Bug with gilded wings.”

“And in Mr. Smee,” she said, “I see the makings of a fine Friar Lawrence!”

“I see Verona ... the torrid sky ... the town ascending, up, up, up. I hear the panting nurse. She knocks. Your priest’s eyes glisten. She enters, blouse-a-gape—a thorough coster. You raise your cowl.... Chianti? She shakes her head. Benedictine? No! no! A little Chartreuse, then? Certainly not! Nothing.... You squeeze her waist. Her cries ‘go through’ Lady Capulet and her daughter in the distant city on their way to mass. Romeo enters. So!” Mrs. Sixsmith broke off as Mr. Weathercock and 82a curly-headed lad, followed by a swathed woman and a whey-faced child, showed themselves upon the stairs.

“Intrude?” Harold Weathercock exclaimed, coming up. “I assure you it’s a treat....”

“Oh!... Is that Ita?” Mrs. Sixsmith murmured, stepping forward to embrace Miss “Ita Iris” of the Dream.

“I’m having a season,” she, without further preamble, began. “And I want to persuade you to join....”

“Why must you insult me, Ita?” she bitterly asked. “You know I’m Miss Iris.”

“To some ideas,” Mrs. Sixsmith said, “I suppose she’s very blooming still....”

She had a tired mouth, contrasting vividly with the artificial freshness of her teeth.

“Naturally,” Miss Sinquier was saying, “one can’t expect instantly to be a draw. More than—perhaps—just a little!”

“In my opinion,” he said, “to associate oneself with a sanctified classic is a huge mistake. And why start a season on the tragic tack?”

“She was an invalid. A bed-ridden beauty ... and, of course, the hero’s a Doctor.”

“It sounds to me like my husband,” she said, with an involuntary nervous movement of the hands.

LIKE wildfire the rumour ran. The King had knighted—he had knighted—by what accident?—Mr. Mary, in lieu of Mr. Fisher, at Mr. Fisher’s own farewell. In the annals of the stage such an occurrence was unheard of, unique.

“M-m! He is not de first to zell is birs-r-rite for a mess of porridge!” Yvonde Yalta, the playgoers’ darling, remarked as she poised with an extravagant play of arms, a black glittering bandeau on her short flaxen hair.

“You correct me? Ah, sanx! I am so grateful, so—so grateful,” the charming creature murmured as she sailed away.

The curtain had risen some few minutes since on Mlle. Fanfette and Monsieur Coquelet 88de Chaussepierre of the Théâtre Sans Rancune in the comedietta, Sydney, or There’s No Resisting Him.

“It’s extraordinary I’ve never seen a man knighted,” a show-girl twittered, “and I’ve seen a good deal....”

“Like this,” a sparkling brunette answered, bestowing a sly pat on the interlocutress with the back of a brush.

“I was!” Mrs. Sixsmith said, who had just peeped in to exchange a few words with her friend.

“I was selling sweets in the vestibule and saw it all. Really! If I live to be an old woman I shan’t forget it. Mr. Mary—Sir Maurice—was in the lobby chatting with Sylvester Fry of the Dispatch, when the Royal party arrived. The King instantly noticed him and sent one of his suite, quite unpremeditatedly, it seemed, to summon him, and in a trice ... Oh! ... and I never saw the Queen look so charming. She has a gold 89dress turning to white through the most exquisite gradations....”

“A-wheel,” Miss Sinquier’s dresser disrespectfully said, “how was the poor man to tell? Both the blighters—God forgive me—are equally on their last legs.”

“Splendid. Outside they’re flying five ‘full’ boards.... There’s not a single vacant place. Poor Sydney Iphis gave half a guinea for a seat in the slips.”

“I’m with Sir Oliver Dawtry,” Mrs. Sixsmith replied, “except when I’m running about!... Can I sell anyone anything?” she inquired, raising sonorously her voice. “Vanilla! Caramel! Chocolate!... Comfits,” she warbled.

Nature had thrown up upon her lip and cheek two big blonde moles that procured to her physiognomy, somehow or other, an unusual degree of expression.

“My husband has been waiting to hear from you,” she said, “as agent to this Miss Sin——, the new star with the naughty name, and from all I could make out I understand it would be likely to be a Double Engagement.”

“Were I to play her in ‘good’ preservation,” she inquired, “I suppose there’d be no objection?”

“My dear, I once was thought to be a very pretty woman.... All I can do now is to urge my remains.”

Voices shivering in altercation issued loudly from a private dressing-room next door.

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” the wardrobe-mistress entering said. “Sir Maurice and Mr. Fisher are passing sharp words with a couple of pitchforks.”

“The ‘Farm-players’ sent them over from the Bolivar for their Pig-sty scene—and now poor Mr. Mary, Sir M’riss, and Mr. Fisher are fighting it out, and Mrs. Mary, her ladyship, has joined the struggle.”

“Da!” she gasped, as Lady Mary, a trifle dazed but decked in smiles, came bustling in.

“Oh, Men! Men! Men!” she exclaimed, 92going off into a hearty laugh. “Rough, angelic brutes...!”

She had a gown of shot brocade, a high lace ruff and a silver girdle of old German work, that had an ivory missal falling from it.

“Quarrelsome, quarrelling kings,” she stuttered, drifting towards a toilet-table—the very one before which Miss Sinquier was making her face.

Touched, responsive, with a gesture springing immediately from the heart, the consummate Victorian extended impulsive happy hands.

“For goodness sake, my dear,” she addressed Miss Sinquier, “do leave yourself alone. I want the glass.”

At her elbow a slip of a “Joy-baby” was holding forth with animation to Mrs. Sixsmith and Mrs. Smee.

“That was one of my dreams,” she was saying, “and last night again I had another—in spite of a night-light, too! It began by a ring formed of crags and boulders enclosing a troop of deer—oh, such a herd of them—delicate, distinguished animals with little pom-pom horns, and some had poodles’ tails. Sitting behind a rhododendron bush was an old gentleman on a white horse; he never moved a muscle. Suddenly I became aware of a pack of dogs.... And then, before my very eyes, one of the dogs transformed itself into a giraffe....”

“Nothing but literary-people with their Beatrices.... My dear the scum! Half-way through supper, Dore got her revolver out and began shooting the glass drops off her chandelier.”

“Always be civil with bailiffs,” she said; “never ruffle them! If you queen a sheriff’s officer remember there’s no getting rid of him. He clings on—like a poor relation.”

“Oh, well,” Mrs. Sixsmith replied, “I always treat the worms en reine, not,” she added wittily, “that I ever have....”

For her unofficial first appearance she was resolved to woo the world with a dance—a dance all fearless somersaults and quivering battements; a young Hungarian meanwhile recording her movements sensitively upon a violin.

She was looking well in an obedient little ballet skirt that made action a delight. Her hair, piled high in a towering toupee, had a white flower in it.

“Down a step and through an arch,” a pierrette who passed her in the corridor directed her to the stage.

How often on the cold flags of the great church at home had she asked the way before!

Above her, stars sparkled lavishly in a darkling sky, controlled by a bare-armed mechanic who was endeavouring, it seemed, to deliver himself of a moon; craning from 96a ladder at the risk of his life, he pushed it gently with a big soft hand.

From her shelter Miss Sinquier could observe her, in opulent silhouette, perfectly at her ease.

She stood waiting for the last huzzas to subside with bowed head and folded hands—like some great sinner—looking reverently up through her eyelashes at the blue silk hangings of the Royal box.

Approaching the footlights with a wistful smile, the favourite woman scanned the stalls.

“Now most of you here this afternoon,” she intimately began, “I will venture to say, never heard of Judy Jacock. I grant you, certainly, there’s nothing very singular in that; for her life, which was a strangely frail one, essentially was obscure. Judy herself was obscure.... And so that is why I say you can’t have ever heard of her!... Because she was totally unknown.... Ah, poor wee waif! Alas, she’s dead now. Judy’s among the angels ... and the beautiful 97little elegy which, with your consent, I intend forthwith to submit, is written around her, around little Judy, and around her old Father, her ‘Da’—James, who was a waiter. And while he was away waiting one day—he used to wipe the plates on the seat of his breeches!—his little Judy died. Ah, poor old James. Poor Sir James. But let the poet,” she broke off suddenly, confused, “take up the tale himself, or, rather—to be more specific!—herself. For the lines that follow, which are inédit, are from the seductive and charming pen of Lady Violet Sleepwell.”

Lady Mary coughed, winked archly an eye, and began quite carelessly as if it were Swinburne:

To her surprise, lurking behind a property torso of “a Fawn,” her pigtails roped with beads of scarlet glass, was Miss May Mant.

“They go right through me. Through my shoes, up my legs, and at my heart they sting.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” Miss Sinquier replied, covering her face with her hands.

Through her fingers she could contemplate her accompanist’s lanky figure as he stood in the opposite wing busily powdering his nose.

Yet not quite—the public, who loved tradition, was determined on obtaining an encore.

DEAR MOTHER,—I saw your notice in a newspaper not very long ago, and this morning I came across it again in the Dispatch. Really I don’t know what there can be to “forgive,” and as to “coming back!”—I have undertaken the management of this theatre, where rehearsals of Romeo and Juliet have already begun. This is the little house where Audrey Anderson made her début, and where Avize Mendoza made such a hit. You could imagine nothing cosier or more intimate if you tried. Father would be charmed (tell him, for, of course, he sometimes speaks of me in the long triste evenings as he smokes a pipe) with the foyer, which has a mural design in marquetry, showing Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, sunning themselves by the side of a well. They say the theatre contains a well beneath the stage, which is why it’s known as the Source. I have left, I’m glad to 102say, the hotel, which was getting dreadfully on my nerves, for a dressing-room here, where I pass the nights now: an arrangement that suits me, as I like to be on the spot. A sister of Ita Iris of the Dream Theatre keeps me company, so that I’m not a bit solitary. We understand each other to perfection, and I find her helpful to me in many ways. She is such an affectionate child and I do not think I shall regret it. I’ve decided to have half my teeth taken out by a man in Knightsbridge—some trial to me, I fear; but, alas, we’ve all to carry our cross! I seem to have nothing but debts. Clothes, as well as scenery, would ruin anyone.

I’m allotting a little box to you and father for the opening night, unless you would prefer two stalls?

The other afternoon I “offered my services” and obtained three curtains at a gala matinée; I wish you could have been at it!

AN absence of ventilation made the room an oven and discouraged sleep. Through the width of skylight, in inert recumbence, she could follow wonderingly the frail pristine tints of dawn. Flushed, rose-barred, it spread above her with fantastic drifting clouds masking the morning stars.

“One needs a blind,” she mused, “and a pane——.” She looked about her for something to throw.

Cinquecento, Italian things—a chest, a crucifix, a huge guitar, a grim, carved catafalque all purple sticks and violet legs (Juliet’s) crowded the floor.

“A mess of glass ... and cut my feet ...;” she murmured, gathering about her a négligé of oxydized knitted stuff and sauntering out towards the footlights in quest of air.

104Notwithstanding the thermometer, she could hear Miss May Mant breathing nasally from behind her door.

“Verona,” set in autumn trees, looked fast asleep. Here and there a campanile shot up, in high relief, backed by a scenic hill, or an umbrella-pine. On a column in the “Market Place” crouched a brazen lion.

Making a circuit of the boxes, she found her way up a stairway into the promenade.

Busts of players, busts of poets, busts of peris, interspersed by tall mirrors in gilt-bordered mouldings, smiled on her good-day.

Rid of the perpetual frictions of the inevitable 105personnel, she could possess the theatre, for a little while, in quietude to herself.

In the long window boxes, tufts of white daisies inclining to the air brought back to mind a certain meadow, known as Basings, a pet haunt with her at home.

At the pond end, in a small coppice, doves cried “Coucoussou-coucoussou” all the day long.

Here, soon a year ago, while weaving herself a garland (she was playing at being Europa with the Saunders’ Fifeshire bull; flourishing flowers at it; tempting it with waving poppies; defying it to bear her away from the surrounding stagnance), the realization of her dramatic gift first discovered itself.

And then, her thoughts tripped on, he came: the Rev. George—“just as I was wondering to whom to apply”—and drew all Applethorp to S. Ann-on-the-Hill by the persuasive magnetism of his voice; largely due—so he said—to “scientific production.” To the Bromley Breath! He never could adequately thank Elizabeth, Mrs. Albert Bromley, for all she had done. No; because words failed.... Her Institute, for him, would be always “top-o’-the-tree,” and when asked, by her, “What tree?” he had answered 106with a cryptic look: “She trains them for the stage.”

Dear heart! How much he seemed to love it. He had known by their green-room names all the leading stars, and could tell on occasion, little anecdotes of each.

It was he who narrated how Mrs. Mary (as she was then), on the first night of Gulnara, Queen of the Lattermonians, got caught in the passenger-lift on the way from her dressing-room to the stage and was obliged to allow her understudy to replace her, which with the utmost éclat she did, while Mrs. Mary, who could overhear the salvos from her prison, was driven quite distraught at a triumph that, but for the irony of things, would most certainly have been hers.

“Which reminds me,” she murmured, fixing her eyes upon the storied ceiling, “that I’ve no one at all, should anything happen to me.”

Hydropic loves with arms outstretched in invitation, ladies in hectic hats and billowing 107silks, courtiers, lap-dogs, peacocks, etc., all intermingled in the pleasantest way.

“Crumbs in the boxes, I’ve noticed, encourage mice.... They must come from the spring, I think, under the stage.”

“Poor creatures ... they enjoy a good play, I expect, as much as we do,” Miss Mant murmured, setting down the kettle she was holding and lowering her cheek graciously for a kiss.

“Really,” she remarked, “I’m at a loss to know what to give you, Sally; I sometimes ask myself what Juliet took....”

“Yes.... She writes from a toy bungalow, she says, with the sea at the very door and a small shipwreck lying on the beach.”

“Oh, Ita hates the stage. She’s only on it of course to make a match ...; she could have been an Irish countess had she pleased, only she said it wasn’t smart enough, and it sounded too Sicilian.”

“... Oh, she’s such a minx. In her letter she writes, ‘I don’t doubt you’ll soon grow 109tired of the Sally-Sin Theatre and of dancing attendance on the Fair Sink.’”

“And her Manting ways just to annoy. Mant, Mant, Mant! She does it to humiliate. Whenever the Tirds are in earshot she’s sure to begin.”

“Llewellyn and Lydia. Lydia Tird has an understanding with my big brother. Poor lad! Just before I left home he took the name of Isadore: Isadore Iris. Oh, when Ita heard! Bill Mant she said and made Llewellyn laugh.”

TO bring together certain of the dramatic critics (such high arbiters of the stage as Sylvester Fry of the Dispatch, Lupin Petrol of Now, Amethyst Valer of Fashion, Berinthia of Woodfalls (the terrible, the embittered Berinthia who was also Angela)), cards had been sent out from Foreign-Colony Street, in the comprehensive name of Sir Oliver Dawtry, the famous banker and financier, to meet the new lessee of the Source.

It was one of those sultry summer nights of electricity and tension, when nerves at almost nothing are apt to explode. Beyond the iron Calvary on the Ursulines’ great wall, London flared with lights.

Perched upon a parapet in brilliant solitude, her identity unsuspected by the throng, Miss Sinquier, swathed in black mousseline and nursing a sheaf of calla lilies, surveyed the scene with inexpressive eyes.

“And there was the wind bellowing and we 112witches wailing: and no Macbeth!” a young man with a voice like cheap scent was saying to a sympathetic journalist for whatever it might be worth....

By the Buddha shrine, festively decked with lamps, couples were pirouetting to a nigger band, while in the vicinity of the buffet, a masked adept was holding a clairaudience of a nature only to be guessed at from afar. An agile negro melody, wild rag-time with passages of almost Wesleyan hymnishness—reminiscent of Georgia gospel-missions; the eighteenth century in the Dutch East Indies—charmed and soothed the ear.

At their cell windows, as if riveted by the lights and commotion, leaned a few pale nuns.

“You know, he always belittles people. Sylvester traduces everyone; he even crabs his daughter; he damns all he sees.”

“How he got up those narrow stairs is a mystery to me,” Mrs. Sixsmith smiled.

Miss Sinquier raised her face towards the bustling stars. An elfish horse-shoe moon, felicitously bright, struck her as auspicious.

“Of Fashion. You are Miss Sinquier, I take it, whose costumes for Romeo—Renaissance, and ergo à la mode!—I so long to hear about.”

“He has such perfect sloth. I love his lazaroni-ness, his Riva-Schiavoni-ness.... He’s very, very handsome. But, of course, it cannot last!”

“That’s a pity. An actress ... she needs a lover: a sort of husbandina, as it 115were ...; I always say Passion tells: L’amour!”

Miss Sinquier threw a glance towards Mrs. Sixsmith, who stood listlessly flirting her fan.

“You didn’t mention your Old Mechlin scarf, or your fox-trimmed nightie,” Mrs. Sixsmith murmured, dexterously evading the psychic freedoms of the masked adept.

“Mephisto! I know his parlour tricks ... though it would only be just, perhaps, to say he did foresee our separation some time before it occurred.”

“Once as I was making ready to pay some calls, in order to frighten me, he caused the hare’s foot on my toilet-table to leave its carton sheath and go skipping about the room.”

“My dear, I was disgusted. It really seemed as if the whole of Womanhood was outraged. So, to punish him—for revenge—instead of going to a number of houses that day, I went to only one.”

But a lanthorn falling in flames just then above them put an end to the conversation.

“That’s the second I’ve seen drop,” Miss May Mant exclaimed, darting up.

“By the masked professor.... Oh, the things he said; only fancy, he told me I’d cause the death of one both near and dear; Ita’s near ...; but she certainly isn’t dear—odious cat.”

“He must have thought you curiously credulous,” Miss Sinquier murmured, turning her head aside.

To her annoyance she perceived the scholarly representative of the Dispatch—a man of prodigious size—leaning solidly on a gold-headed 117cane while appraising her to Sir Oliver Dawtry, from her bebandeaued head to her jewelly shoes.

“She reminds me just a little of someone de l’Évangile,” she could hear the great critic say.

“Should he speak,” Mrs. Sixsmith murmured, wincing at the summer lightning that flickered every now and then, “don’t forget the mediæval nightie or the Mechlin lace! Five long yards—a cloud....”

Through the barred windows of the convent opposite, certain novices appeared to be enjoying a small saltation among themselves.

Up and down the corridor to the yearning melody of the minstrel players they twirled, clinging to one another in an ecstasy of delight.

Her fine eyes looked beautiful as, raising them fraught with soul, they met the veteran critic’s own.

“OH, dear God, help me. Hear me, Jesu. Hear me and forgive me and be offended not if what I ask is vain ... soften all hostile hearts and let them love me—adore me!—oh Heaven, help me to please. Vouchsafe at each finale countless curtains; and in the ‘Potion Scene,’ oh Lord, pull me through....”

Unwilling to genuflect in the presence of her maid, who would interpret any unwontedness of gesture for first-night symptoms of fear, Miss Sinquier lifted her face towards the bluish light of day that filtered obliquely through the long glass-plating above.

“There’s a cat on the skylight, Smith,” was what she said as her maid with a telegram recalled her wandering gaze to earth.

“Missed conveyance York,” she read. “Bishopthorpe to-night archiepiscopal blessings.”

“Ah, well, ...” she professionally philosophized, 119“there’ll be deadheads besides, I’ve no doubt.”

“Go, Smith, to the box office, and say G 2 and 3 (orchestra) have been returned; there’s no answer,” she added, moving towards the brightly lit dressing-room beyond.

Ensconced in an easy chair, before a folding mirror that, rich in reflections, encompassed her screen-like about, sat Mrs. Sixsmith pensively polishing her nails.

“Sh——! Be Juliet now. We’re in Verona,” Mrs. Sixsmith exclaimed. “Fuori the doors.”

Mrs. Sixsmith threw a glance at herself in the glass. “I’m a girl friend,” she said; “a Venetian acquaintance: someone Julie met while paddling in the Adriatic—in fact, cara cuore, I’m a daughter of the Doge. Yes; I’m one of the Dolfin-Trons.”

“Let me finish my hands. My manicurist has left me with such claws.... Poor little soul! When she came to my wedding-finger she just twiddled her rasp and broke out crying. ‘To be filing people’s nails,’ she said, ‘while my husband is filing a petition!’”

“This city has its sadness. Your maid, Smith, while you were in the other room said, ‘Oh, marm,’ she said, ‘what you must have endured; one Smith was enough for me.’”

“Ah, Julie ...” Mrs. Sixsmith sighed, when the door opening gently was followed by the entry of Mrs. Smee.

“It’s a hard thing for a wife to confess. But for a première he’s nearly always in wine.”

“He’s more confused, dear, than violent,” Mrs. Smee explained. “He seems to think we’re doing The Tempest; Romeo’s tanned breast he takes for Ferdinand’s. ‘Mind, Ferdy, boy,’ I heard him say, ‘and keep the —— out.’ Whereupon, his mind wandered to the Russian plays I love, and he ran through some of Irina’s lines from The Three Sisters: ‘My soul,’ you know she says, ‘my soul is like an expensive piano which is locked and the key lost.’ Ah, there’s for you; Shakespeare never wrote that. He couldn’t. Even by making piano, spinet. Oh, Russia! Russia! land of Tchekhov, land of Andrief, of Solugub, of Korelenko, of Artzibashef—Maria Capulet salutes thee! And then my man was moved to sing. His love, she was in Otaheite.... But as soon as he saw me he was back at The Tempest again, calling me Caliban, Countess, and I don’t know what.”

“After the performance I’ll pop home—Home!—in a drosky and shut him out.”

“He’ll probably be priceless; the masses always love the man who can make them laugh.”

Plants for the balcony set of a rambling, twining nature, together with a quantity of small wicker cages labelled “Atmospherics,” and containing bats, owls, lizards, etc., were in course of being prepared.

“Miss Marquis,” she called, “instead of teasing the animals, I suggest you complete your toilet.”

“She reminds me more of a nurse-maid than a nurse,” she murmured. “Not what I should have chosen for Juliet at all.”

“Miss Marquis has no stage presence. And such a poor physique—she’s too mean.”

“Anyway, Sally’s got fine men. I never 123saw finer fellows. Even the Apothecary! Fancy taking the fatal dose from a lad like that; he makes me want to live.”

“To have interesting workmates is everything,” she said. “Hughie Huntress, as Producer, seemed quite stunned at the subtle material at his disposal.... In fact, he realized from the first, he told me, he couldn’t ‘produce’ all of it.”

“Where did Sally find her Balthasar,” she asked, “and where did she secure her Tybalt?”

“My dear Mrs. Sixsmith, I’m not in the management’s secrets, remember, so much as you!”

“Or who put her in the way of Sampson and Gregory? And where did she get her Benvolio?”

Mrs. Sixsmith threw a sidelong probing glance in the direction of the door. Already in her heart she felt herself losing her hold. Had the time inevitably come to make out the score?

124“Dearest, what diddlies; one has a look of old Sir Oliver!” Miss Mant declared, coming forward into the room.

Clad in a pair of striped “culottes,” she had assumed, notwithstanding sororal remonstrance, the conspicuous livery of Paris.

“I just looked in to thank you, darling,” she began, “for all your sweetness and goodness.... Oh Sally, when I saw the playbill with my name on it (right in among the gentlemen!) I thought I should have died. Who could have guessed ever it would be a breeches part?”

“Such jealous murmurings already as there are; a-citizen-of-Verona—an envious super without a line, whispered, as I went by, that my legs in these tissue tights had a look of forced asparagus.”

“Of course: I knew that, Sally. But devil take me. How I’ll hate going back into virginals again; these trousers spoil you for skirts.”

“And I’d a trifling triumph too, darling, which I chose to ignore: just as I was leaving 125my dressing-room, Jack Whorwood, all dressed up for Tybalt, accosted me with a fatuous easy smile. ‘I want your picture, Miss Iris, with your name on it,’ he said. ‘Do you?’ I said. ‘I do,’ he said. ‘Then I fear you’ll have to,’ I said. Oh, he was cross! But all the while, Sally, he was speaking I could feel the wolf....”

“Although I snubbed him,” Miss Iris murmured, stooping to examine upon the toilet-table a beribboned aeroplane filled with sweets, “he looked too charming!”

“Mr. Smee’s sallies at times are not for young ears,” Mrs. Smee loftily observed. “His witticisms,” she added, “aren’t for everyone.”

“My friend, Miss Tird, who came to watch me dress, was quite upset by his cochônneries!”

“Although your little friend appears scarcely to be nine, she seems dazed by her sex and power,” Mrs. Smee unfavourably commented.

126“I’ll have to go, I suppose,” Miss Sinquier sighed, “and see how matters stand.”

“Prenez garde: for when making up, he mostly makes a palette of his hand,” Mrs. Sixsmith said. “I happen to know—because one day he caught hold of me.”

THE sound of rain-drops falling vigorously upon the glass roof awoke her. A few wind-tossed, fan-shaped leaves tinged with hectic autumnal colours spotted marvellously the skylight without, half-screening the pale and monotonous sky beyond.

After the last night’s proceedings the room was a bower of gardenia, heliotrope, and tuberose, whose allied odours during slumber had bewildered just a little her head.

“Sally,” she read, “Should you be conscious before I return, I’m only gone to market, cordially yours, R. Iris. Such mixed verdicts! I’ve arranged the early papers on your dressing-table. I could find no reference to me. This morning there were rat-marks again, and part of a mangled bat.”

128“Oh, those ‘atmospherics’!” Miss Sinquier complained, finding somnolently her way into the inner room.

Here all was Italy—Even the gauze-winged aeroplane filled with sweets had an air of a silver water-fly from some serene trans-Alpine garden.

Dropping to a fine cassoni she perused with contracted brows a small sheaf of notices, the gist of which bore faint pencilled lines below.

“Among those present at the Source last night were”—she looked—“were, Queen Henriette Marie, Duchess of Norwich, Dismalia Duchess of Meath-and-Mann, Lady Di Flattery, Lord and Lady Newblood, Mr. and Lady Caroline Crofts, Sir Gottlieb and Lady Gretel Teuton-Haven, ex-King Bomba, ex-King Kacatogan, ex-Queen of Snowland, ex-Prince Marphise, Hon. Mrs. Mordecai, Lady Wimbush, Lord and Lady Drumliemore, Sir John and Lady Journeyman, Lord and Lady Lonely, Lady Harrier, Feodorowna Lady Meadowbank, Lady Lucy Lacy, Duchess of Netherland and Lady Diana Haviours, Miss Azra, Miss Christine Cross, Sir Francis and Lady Four, Madame Kotzebue, Comtesse Yvonde de Tot, Mlle. de Tot, Duque de Quaranta, Marquesa Pitti-Riffa and Sir Siegfried Seitz.”

“Oh God! How quite ... delicious!” she murmured, snatching up a Cinquecento cope 130transformed to be a dressing-gown, and faring forth for an airing upon the stage.

The churchyard scene with its unassuming crosses, accentuating the regal sepulchre of the Capulets (and there for that), showed grimly.

Had Réné been setting more traps? Upon a mysterious mound by a jam-jar full of flowers was a hunk of cheese.

Then bracing herself, head level, hands on hips, she executed a few athletic figures to shake off sleep.

Suddenly there was a cry; a cry that was heard outside the theatre walls, blending half-harmoniously with the London streets.

Looking out somewhat furtively from beneath her veil, Mrs. Sixsmith could observe only a few farmers conversing together beneath the immemorial yews of S. Irene.

“From the artists and staff of the Source Theatre as a trifling proof of their esteem”—such the large lyre crushing her own “Resurgam.” And there also was the Marys’ with their motto: “All men and women are merely players. They have their exits and their entrances.” And the “Heureuse!” tribute by the sexton’s tools—she craned—was Yvonde de Yalta’s, it appeared.

“I was her protégée ... that is ... it was I who tried to protect her,” Mrs. Sixsmith replied.

“Oh, Canon, why was her tomb not in Westminster where so many of her profession are? I was reading somewhere only the other day there are more actresses buried there than Kings!”

“Her father was her cult, Canon.... In that she resembled much the irresistible Venetian—Catarina Dolfin-Tron.”

“We laid her star-like, in the dress-circle—out on Juliet’s bier ... Mr. and Mrs. Smee and her dresser watched ... Berinthia ... Sylvester ... came. I cannot loose from mind one of the scene-shifters said to me, ‘How 134bonny she looked on the bloody balcony.’”

“On the evening of her dissolution, I regret to say there was a most unseemly fracas in the foyer—some crazy wretch demanding back her money, having booked her place in advance; every one of the staff in tears and too unstrung to heed her. Had it been a box, Canon; or even a stall! But she only paid four shillings.”

“Your girl was never loose, Canon. She was straight. Sally was straight ... at least,” Mrs. Sixsmith added (with a slight shrug) ... “to the best of my knowledge, she was!”

“Indeed she had ... she owed me money. Much money. But I won’t refer to that.... Sally owed me one thousand pounds.”

“Her clothes,” Mrs. Sixsmith replied with a nervous titter, “for one thing, were exquisite. All from the atelier of the divine Katinka King....”

“She knew! Puss! The white mantilla for the Balcony scene alone cost her close on three hundred pounds.”

“It disappeared,” Mrs. Sixsmith answered, a quick red shooting over her face, “in the general confusion. I hear even,” she murmured with a little laugh, “they even filched the till!”

“May Mant? Her sister is sending her to school—if (that is) she can get her to go!”

“Indeed, sir, yes. But for her—she had been setting traps! She and a girl called Tird: a charming couple!”

“Your daughter and she used frequently to 136take their meals in the boxes, which made, of course, for mice. There was a well, you know, below the stage.”

“There was a letter found in one of her jacket-pockets, Canon,” she said. “Perhaps you might care to have it.”

“A young coster of Covent Garden, who saw your daughter at a stage-farewell.”

“It’s quite illiterate,” Mrs. Sixsmith murmured, putting back her veil and glancing humorously towards the grave.

“I seed you at the Fisher Mat. on Friday last and you took my heart a treat. I’m only a young Gallery boy—wot’s in the flower trade. But I knows wot I knows—And you’re It. Oh Miss! I does want to see you act in Juliet in your own butey-ful ouse, if only you ad a seat as you could spare just for me and a pal o’ mine as is alright. I send you some red cars sweet and scenty 137fresh from Covent Market, your true-gone

“She knew that. Sally’s faith never forsook her.... Oh, Canon, some day perhaps I may come to you to direct me. I’m so soul-sick.”

“Alas, Canon! I often think ... sometimes ... I would like to adopt one. A little country buttercup! Really ... a dog, even the best of mannered—isn’t very comme il faut.”

“I imply a girl ... a blonde! And she’d share with me, sir, every facility, every advantage. Her education should be my care.”

“I will discuss the affair presently with my wife,” Canon Sinquier said, turning in meditation his steps towards the wicket-gate.

“Before leaving your charming city, Canon, I should like beyond everything to visit the episcopal Palace: Sally used often to speak of the art-treasures there.”

“Indeed I am. My husband once—Paul—he paid a perfect fortune for a Dutch painting; and will you believe me, Canon! It was only of the back view of a horse.”

“A Circus—with straw-knots in its tail. It used to hang in Mr. Sixsmith’s study; and there it always was! Frankly,” she added, 139brushing a black kid glove to her face, “I used sometimes to wish it would kick.”

“If you’re remaining here any length of time, there are some portraits at the Deanery that are considered to be of interest, I believe.”

“I know that my girl would have wished our house to be open to you. You were her friend. Her champion....”

“Dear Canon—don’t ... don’t: You mustn’t! She’s at peace. Nothing can fret her. Nothing shall fret her ... ever now. And, you know, as a manageress, she was liable to vast vexations.”

“She’s hors de combat: free from a calculating and dishonest world; ah, Canon!”

“We shall expect you, then, dear Sally’s friend, to dinner this evening at eight,” Canon Sinquier murmured as he walked away.

Mrs. Sixsmith put up a large chiffon sunshade 140and hovered staccato before the dwindling spires and ogee dome of S. Irene.

It was one of the finest days imaginable. The sun shone triumphantly in the midst of a cloudless sky.

She would loiter awhile among the bougainvilleas and dark, spreading laurels of the Cathedral green, trespassing obtusely now and then into quiet gardens, through tall wrought-iron gates.

With Sally still, she could do a lot. Through her she would be received with honours, into the courtly circles of the Close.

Those fine palatial houses, she reflected, must be full of wealth ... old Caroline plate and gorgeous green Limoges: Sally indeed had proved it! The day she had opened her heart in the Café Royal she had spoken of a massive tureen too heavy even to hold.

Her lost friend’s father wished for anecdotes; anecdotes of her “broken brilliance”; he should have them. She saw herself indulging him with “Salliana,” wrapped in a white lace mantilla of old Mechlin lace.

141An invitation from Canon and Mrs. Sinquier should be adroitly played for to-night: “And once in the house!...” she schemed, starting as a peacock, a symbol of S. Irene, stretched from a bougainvillea shrouded wall its sapphire neck at her as if to peck.

On a near hill beyond the river reach, the sombre little church of S. Ann changed to a thing of fancy against a yellowing sky.

From all sides, seldom in unison, pealed forth bells. In fine religious gaiety struck S. Mary, contrasting clearly with the bumble-dumble of S. Mark. S. Elizabeth and S. Sebastian in Flower Street seemed in high dispute, while across the sunset water S. Ann-on-the-Hill did nothing but complain. Near by S. Nicaise, half-paralysed, and impotent, scarcely shook. Then triumphant, in a hurricane of sound S. Irene hushed the lot.

“And my experience tells me,” she murmured, as she took her way towards the Deanery, “that with opportunity and time he may hope to succeed to Sir Oliver.”

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