.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 42531
   :PG.Title: The Honey-Pot
   :PG.Released: 2013-04-14
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Countess Barcyǹska
   :DC.Title: The Honey-Pot
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1916
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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THE HONEY-POT
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      Cover

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      :alt: SHE PUT ALEXANDRIA INTO THE MOST COMFORTABLE OF HER CHAIRS AND DREW ANOTHER CLOSE TO IT.  PAGE 103.

      SHE PUT ALEXANDRIA INTO THE MOST COMFORTABLE OF HER CHAIRS AND DREW ANOTHER CLOSE TO IT.  PAGE `103`_.

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      THE HONEY-POT

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      BY
      THE COUNTESS BARCYǸSKA

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      Author of "The Little Mother Who
      Sits at Home."

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      NEW YORK
      E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
      681 FIFTH AVENUE
      1916

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      Copyright, 1916
      BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

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      FIRST IMPRESSION, FEBRUARY 1916
      SECOND IMPRESSION, FEBRUARY 1916

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*I am a traveler in the great World-path; my garments
are dirty and my feet are bleeding with thorns.  Where
should I achieve flower-beauty, the unsullied loveliness of
a moment's life?  The gift that I proudly bring you is
the heart of a woman.  Here have all pains and joys
gathered, the hopes and fears and shames of a daughter
of the dust; here love springs up struggling toward
immortal life.  Herein lies an imperfection which yet is
noble and grand.  If the flower service is finished, my
master, accept this as your servant for the days to come*.

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   —Rabindranath Tagore.

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.. _`THE HONEY-POT`:

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   THE HONEY-POT

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   I

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In her petticoat, barefooted, because the
morning was sultry, Miss Maggy Delamere plied
a well-worn hare's foot to her cheeks with
the sure touch of an artist.  Professionally
speaking and adding a final "e" to the term, that
is what she was—chorus-lady by courtesy,
showgirl in the vernacular of the stage.  On her small
dressing-table were ranged a number of pots and
bottles, unguents and creams.  A battered
make-up box containing remnants and ends of
variously colored grease sticks flanked a looking-glass
of inadequate size and small reflective power.  A
beam of sunlight striking across a corner of the
table danced with minute particles of dust from a
powder-puff.

The astonishing amount of vigor she put into
the process of facial adornment, the prodigality
with which she used pigments and washes, were
characteristic of her temperament, all generosity
and recklessness.  Paint and powder were a habit
with her, not an exigency.  No girl of nineteen
could have needed them less.  Her complexion,
well-nigh flawless, bloomed beneath the
unnecessary veneer.  Not even a cracked mirror could
mitigate her good looks nor detract anything from her
vivacious expression.  It reflected a speaking face
even when the lips were still.

She was taking unusual pains with her appearance
this morning.  A card stuck in the edge of
the looking-glass provided the reason.

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   *Memo. from A. Stannard, Dramatic Agent.*
   PALL MALL THEATRE.
   *Voice Trial, June 22nd, 10.45 a. m.*

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As everybody knows, the Pall Mall is the one
London Theater of all others to which ladies of
the chorus most aspire.  In Maggy's case that
aspiration was intensified by real want of an
engagement.  She had recently succumbed to an
attack of that childish complaint, measles, and was
more than usually hard-up.  Her choice of
garments was as limited as her means, yet twice she
changed her mind about one or another of them
before she was satisfied that she looked her best.
Her efforts to that end finished with the tacking
of several sheets of tissue paper to the inside of
her skirt to give it the rustle of a silk lining.  The
rustle—deceptive and effective as stage
thunder—convincingly accomplished, she felt ready to
present herself before any stage-manager in existence.

If her mood was serene vanity had no part in
it.  Unlike the average chorus-girl she was quite
free from conceit of any kind.  She was too
good-looking to be unaware of it, but she did not trade
on her appearance further than professional
principles strictly allowed.  She asked no more of it
than that it should bring her in from thirty
shillings to two pounds a week for honest work
behind the footlights.  Commercialism with her
ended there.  She was all heart, but free from
illusions.  Her mother had been on the stage
before her.  Always on the stage herself since
childhood, familiarized with its careless, hand-to-mouth
existence, its trials and its exuberances, she had
become worldly-wise at ten and a woman at fifteen.
But the life did not demoralize her.  The bad
example of a mother's frailty and intemperance had
been her safeguard.  She had never lost her head
or her heart.  She did not rate herself very high,
but she rated men lower.  Apart from this she
had no hidebound views about life or morality.
Since her mother's unlovely death she had lived
alone and kept her end up somehow.  She had
often been penniless, gone hungry and cold; but
so did many of the people among whom she
moved.  So long as she was not quite penniless
she never worried.  Cigale-like she lived in the
present.  If she ever suffered from fits of
depression it was when she realized that she was more
than usually shabby and needy, a condition,
however, which she preferred to put up with rather
than descend to the acquisitive methods of other
girls.

Through the rattle of the traffic in the street
below she heard a church clock booming.  Incidentally,
she regarded churches less as places of
worship than timepieces of magnitude, convenient
when you do not possess a watch.  She counted
the strokes, ten of them, darted to the glass for a
last survey of herself, gave a touch to her hat,
another to her waistbelt, and pattered in her now
stockinged feet to the top of the stairs.

"Shoes, please, Mrs. Bell!" she sang out.
"You don't want me to be late, do you?"

"Coming this moment, Miss Delamere!"
shouted an answering voice.

Mrs. Bell lumbered up the stairs with the shoes
in her hand—high-heeled ones of the sort that
only last a fortnight before losing shape.

"I just stopped to give them an extry polish,"
she panted.

Maggy took them from her and hurriedly put
them on.  While she buttoned them her landlady
went on her knees and gave them a final rub up
with her apron.  She meant well.

"You'll have luck to-day," she said, regaining
her feet and surveying her lodger with approval.
"I should look out for the butcher's black cat
on my way, if I was you.  Back to dinner, dear?"

"I'll have a cut off whatever you've got, if I
am," Maggy answered.

"Mine's hot Canterbury lamb and onion sauce."

"All right."

Maggy ran downstairs, slammed the hall door
behind her and walked down the street into the
main thoroughfare, looking for the green motor-bus
that would take her within a stone's throw of
the Pall Mall Theater.  In a quarter of an hour
she had reached that imposing edifice.  Going
in at the stage door she descended a flight of
stone steps, traversed a long passage, and found
herself upon the stage.

Gray daylight filtered down from the skylight
above the flies, just enough for the business of the
moment, no more.  Across the unlit footlights
was a gloomy void, pierced by an occasional
gleam from an open door at the back of the pit or
dress-circle, and relieved by the lighter hue of
serried rows of dust-sheets hanging over the seats
and balcony edges.

Close to the footlights was a table occupied by
the stage-manager and one of his satellites.  In
the corner to their left an upright piano was set
askew with the conductor of the orchestra seated
at it.  At the back of the stage, standing about in
groups, some thirty girls and a few men were
waiting to have their voices tried.

They chattered noisily.  Most of them seemed
to know one another.  One or two called out a
greeting to Maggy.  Some were volubly discussing
their professional experiences, telling of late
engagements and prospective ones; the run of this
piece, the closing down of that; incidents on tour
and in pantomime; suppers at restaurants and the
demerits of landladies.  These topics ran into one
another and overlapped.  Others, with giggles,
imparted risky anecdotes in undertones.  Most of
them appeared to be taking the situation with the
calmness of habit.  Nervousness showed in a few
faces; anxiety in one or two.  One pale-faced girl
was in a condition of approaching maternity.  In
other surroundings she would have attracted
attention, perhaps called up pathetic surprise that
in the circumstances she should be attempting to
obtain employment.  But here very few were
affected by pathos at sight of her, nor was she an
object of much surprise.

After Maggy had exchanged a word or two
with those whom she knew she took very little
notice of the people about her.  She stood apart,
humming a tune, and every now and again her
feet broke into a subdued dance step.  But this
state of abstraction did not last long.  That she
was a creature of impulse showed in an abrupt
change from it to close attention of what was
going on around her.  Her fine eyes went alertly
over those present and came to rest on a girl of
about her own age whose quiet manner and dress
of severe black singled her out from the rest.
She was tall and slight, very much in the style of
the women in Shepperson's drawings.  Her small
features and graceful figure gave her a
distinguished appearance.  She looked what she was,
a lady, and a stranger to her surroundings.  She
held a roll of music and glanced nervously about
her until she became aware of Maggy's smiling
regard.  It seemed to encourage her.  She
returned the smile and advanced.

"At which end will they begin?" she asked
nervously, making it clear that she was an amateur.

"Anywhere," replied Maggy with friendly
cheerfulness.  "You're not a pro.?"

"No."

"I thought not.  I shouldn't let on if I were
you.  Managers fight shy of beginners.  First
thing they'll ask you at the table is what
experience you've had.  Haven't you been on the stage
at all before?"

"No, I've never appeared in public.  I'm new
to it all."

"Been looking for a shop—an engagement—long?"

"For five weeks.  Ever since I came to London."

The girl in black could not hide the note of
disappointment that came into her voice.  Maggy
gave her an encouraging tap on the arm.

"Five weeks!" she scoffed.  "That's nothing.
Lots of us are out for months.  You'll
know that if you ever hit real bad luck."

"I can't wait months."

"Hard up?" Maggy asked with quick understanding.

"I shall be soon."

"Same here.  Tell me, where are you living?
You're different to the crowd.  I like you."

The girl in black hesitated and got a little red.

"I'm not living anywhere at present," she
confessed.  "I was in a boarding-house until to-day.
I had to leave.  I shall have to find rooms before
night.  Perhaps you wouldn't mind telling me
where to look?"

They had moved away from those nearest
them.  Each felt attracted to the other without
knowing why.

"Did they keep your box?"

"No.  Why should they?"

"I thought you meant you couldn't pay."

"No, it wasn't that.  But I can't go back.  A
man came into my room last night—one of the
men staying there.  I rang the bell and called
the landlady.  I don't understand why, but she
blamed me and was very offensive.  I didn't go
to bed again.  I sat up, waiting for the morning."

"The beast!"

The cheery look left Maggy's face, giving
place to one of deep resentment.  "The man, I
mean," she said, "though I've no doubt the
woman was just as bad.  There are houses like
that.  Fancy you not knowing it.  I should
have ... Here, they're going to begin.  Keep
by me.  I'll see you through."

The stage-manager rapped on the table.

"Silence, please!  We'll commence now."

An immediate hush followed.  The groups
broke up, spreading across the stage, facing the
footlights.  Such indifference to the occasion as
many of them had hitherto evinced was gone now.
They were there to be engaged.  Even the most
self-assured became serious, made so by the
competitive equation.  Only twelve girls and three
men were wanted to complete the ranks of the
chorus, and here were nearly forty applicants for
the vacancies.

"Come on, come on.  Who's first?  You with
the boa," proceeded the stage-manager.  "What's
your song?"

The girl indicated handed her music to the
pianist.  He rattled off the prelude without the
waste of a moment.  The girl sang a few bars,
and was interrupted by: "That'll do.  Next!"

Nothing more was said or asked.  The girl
took her sheet of music, and effaced herself.
With equal celerity the next dozen were disposed
of.  Not more than one out of four was called
to the table for her or his name to be recorded.
All the while the singing was going on the
stage-manager kept up a running fire of remarks at the
expense of the singer.  Generally they were
merely sarcastic; some were rude.

The girl in black kept close to Maggy who
looked on unperturbed, now and then jerking out
a subdued comment on the proceedings, partly
to herself, partly for the information of her companion.

"Now it's Dickson, poor kid!  Look at the
state she's in.  Silly of her to come.  Powell
won't let her open her mouth....  There you
are!  Off she goes.  She's crying.  The brute!
He needn't have *said* it! ... That's Mortimer.
She'll get taken on....  Knew it at once.
Down goes her name—address 'Makehaste
Mansions!'  Don't they get through us quick?
We're not human beings, only voices and figures.
My turn!"

She walked confidently down to the table,
ignoring the piano.

"Where's your song?" inquired the stage-manager.

"Won't you take my voice on trust, Mr. Powell?"
was her jaunty reply.  "It's like a bird's."

"Nightingale, I suppose?" he jeered.

"No, bird of Paradise.  Aren't I good enough
to look at?"

After a momentary hesitation, during which he
appraised her face and figure, he said:

"Got a photo of yourself in fleshings?"

"Not here.  Plenty at my agent's—Stannard's."

"All right.  Name, please.  Next."

The girl in black was next.  Her heart beat
uncomfortably fast as she moved down.  Had she
to pitch her voice to fill that gaping void across
the footlights?  She shrank from singing to these
blasé-looking men who gave the impression of
damning before they heard.  Then she saw that
Maggy was still standing by the table and nodding
encouragingly to her.  It gave her heart.  She
handed her song to the pianist and commenced to sing.

"Louder, please," said some one.

She sang louder and lost her nervousness.  It
was not so difficult to fill that huge auditorium,
after all.  So far, she was the only one of them
that had been allowed to sing her song half
through.

"Shouldn't mind hearing the rest of that
another day," said the stage-manager, stopping her
at last.  "Not half bad, my dear.  Name, please."

She gave her name, Alexandra Hersey.

"What have you been in?" came the query.

Before she could answer Maggy chimed in.

"She was with me on tour in 'The Camera
Girl.'  No. 2 Company."

"Address?"

Again Maggy came to the rescue.

"Put her down to mine.  109 Sidey Street.
Then you'll remember us both—p'r'aps!"

She hooked her arm in Alexandra's and made
for the wings.  When they were in the passage
facing the stage-door she said:

"I'll help you find rooms if you like.  I've
nothing to do.  I say, you can sing!"

"If it hadn't been for you—"

"Oh, rats!"

"But it was awfully good of you," Alexandra
maintained.  "Is there a room in the house where
you live?" she asked, actuated by a strong desire
not to lose sight of her new acquaintance.

"There's room in my room, that's all.  I pay
ten shillings a week.  My landlady charges
fifteen for two in it.  That would be seven-and-six
each.  But"—she made a wry face—"you
wouldn't like it.  It's slummy.  There's a smell
of fried fish and a beastly row half the night.
Still, you can have a look at it if you like."

There was invitation in the tone.

"I'd like to come," said Alexandra.

"Right-O.  Here's my motor car.  The green
one."  She held up her hand to a 'bus driver.
"My chauffeur doesn't like stopping, except for
policemen."

She gave Alexandra a push up and sprang on
the footboard after her.  They climbed to the
top, and were rattled and jerked in the direction
of the King's Cross Road.





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.. _`II`:

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   II

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One Hundred and Nine Sidey
Street was not an attractive apartment
house, but it was cheap and respectable.
Mrs. Bell, an "old pro" herself, by reason of
having, in some distant past, earned twelve shillings
a week as a "local girl" in pantomime, preferred
the lesser lights of the stage for tenants.  She
knew their ways, their freedom from "side," their
unexacting habits.  When she could not secure
them she took in "respectable young men."  At
the present juncture the young men predominated.
Maggy Delamere was the sole representative of
"the professional" in her house.  She occupied
the third-floor front, and owed three weeks' rent.

She threw open the door for Alexandra to
enter.  It was the sort of room that many a
domestic servant would have considered inadequate.
The only compensating feature about it on this
hot June day was that it had two windows.  Both
stood open, and on the sill of each a pot of
flowers, mignonette in the one, sweet peas in the other,
helped to create an impression of freshness.
This was strengthened by the paucity of its
furniture and the chilly look which an unrelieved
expanse of linoleum invariably gives.  A single iron
bedstead occupied one angle.  A clean but faded
nightdress case, trimmed with crochet work, lay
on the pillow.  This and the flowers in the
windows were the only things that gave evidence of
the room being occupied by a young girl.

Maggy made a comprehensive gesture with her hand.

"The chorus lady at home!" she declaimed
humorously.  "Living in the lap of luxury.
There's her voluptuous couch, her Louis the
what's-his-name chest of drawers, her exquisite
bric-à-bric washstand and—My dear, be
careful of the chair!  It's a real antique, only three
legs and a swinger!  Sit on the bed, it's safer.
Pretty little place, isn't it?  We'll have lunch in
a minute or two.  Can you eat hot New Zealand
mutton?  I told the old woman I'd have a cut off
her joint to-day.  I'll just shout down to let her
know there's two of us."

After her voice had echoed down the three
flights and been duly answered, she came back and
poured out water for her new friend to wash her
hands in.  Common yellow soap was all she could
offer for this purpose.  She was only able to
afford the fancy variety and cheap perfumes when
she was in an engagement.  She took off her hat
while Alexandra dried her hands and then, as
they sat side by side on the bed, she suddenly
blurted out:

"What the dickens makes you want to go in
for the stage?  Don't tell me if you'd rather not."

"There's no reason why I shouldn't," said
Alexandra.  "I've longed to ever since I was
quite small."

"Goodness!  And I've wanted to get off it
ever since I can remember.  Not that I ever had
the chance.  I don't know how to do anything
useful.  I suppose you got cracked about the
stage, same as most girls, because you didn't know
anything about it.  You belong to a swell family,
I suppose?"

"No," was the smiling reply; "only Anglo-Indians."

"What are they?  Half-castes?  You're fooling!"

"English people who live or have lived in
India.  My father was in the army."

"What, an officer?"

"Yes."

Maggy was impressed.  She had once met a
Sergeant-Major, and, superior being as she
thought him, knew that his glory was reflected
from the commissioned ranks.

"That's something to be proud of, anyway."

Alexandra's people had been in the Army and
Civil Service for generations.  It had not
occurred to her to think of them unduly on this
account.  She said as much.

"Well," observed Maggy sententiously, "I
should say your father and the rest of your
relations must be either dead or dreaming to let you
go on the stage."

"Nearly all my near relations *are* dead.  I
have an aunt and uncle—"

"What does he do?"

"He's a retired colonel.  He—they wanted
me to live with them."  Alexandra gave the
information with a touch of reluctance.

"Why didn't you?"

To give a stranger adequate and convincing
reasons why one prefers not to live with
uncongenial relations is not always easy.  Alexandra
put it briefly.

"We have nothing in common," she said.

"And what do you think you have in common
with this life and the people you'll meet in it?"
propounded Maggy.  "If I were you I'd go back
and say: 'Nunky old dear, I've changed my
mind.  I'll come and live with you and be your
loving niece, amen.'  Fancy! a retired
colonel—Anglo-Indian—and you think twice about it!"

"Nothing would induce me to change my
mind," said Alexandra with decision.  "There
are three girls, and they find it a tight fit without
me.  They're not rich....  When my mother
died I had to do something.  Besides, I'm really
ambitious to get on."

Maggy snapped her fingers.

"Oh, ambition!  Do you know what the
ambition of every chorus girl is?  It isn't to become
a star-actress.  That's clean beyond her.  It's to
find a man who'll take her away from a room like
this and treat her decently."

Alexandra found it difficult to reconcile such a
statement with one so beaming and joyous-looking
as Maggy.

"But you—you don't think like that?" she rejoined.

"Sometimes I do.  I've kept straight so far
because I like being on my own.  I hate men, with
their nasty thoughts and their prowling ways.
But I haven't met any that I liked.  If I had,
perhaps I shouldn't be here now.  If we get taken
on at the Pall Mall it'll be nothing but men, men,
men.  We shall get no peace."

"You paint everything in such somber colors.
There must be light as well as shade."

"There's a lot of limelight, if that's what you
mean; but the shade's all the darker for it.  Oh,
I can tell you the stage is a rotten place if you've
got no money or no friends or no chap at the back
of you.  I'm not saying that for the sake of
talking.  It's good enough for any one like me.  But
when I see a blind man crossing the road I always
wish I could make him see, and as I'm not God
Almighty the only thing I can do is to give him a
hand.  That's how I feel about you.  The
traffic's dangerous enough when you've got eyes in
your head, like I have.  It's all traffic on the
stage.  I suppose you think you'll be able to look
after yourself?  Well, you wait and see.
There'll be Mr. Johnnie at the stage-door asking
you to hop into his landaulette because the road's
slippery or some such nonsense.  But what's the
use of trying to convince anybody?  I can see
I shan't put you off the stage....  I'll help you
to look for a room, unless—"  Maggy's
volubility checked for a moment.  "—unless you'd
like to chum with me.  I'm just what you see.
Nothing hidden up my sleeve; no drink and no boy."

She saw Alexandra wince at her plain language,
and watched her anxiously.  Hardly ever before
had she sought the companionship of another girl,
nor could she quite understand the motive that
was making her do so now.

Her extreme candor certainly had a startling
effect on Alexandra.  She had never met any one
so outspoken.  But she put the right construction
on Maggy's frankness, recognized it as a
manifestation of genuineness and honesty, and
succumbed to it as she had to the girl's fascinating
vivacity.  She was altogether drawn towards her.
Again, Maggy stood to her as the personification
of the new life she had elected to make her own.

Maggy was looking at her expectantly, looking
and smiling.  There was something very
compelling in her smile.

"I'd like to chum," said Alexandra impulsively.





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.. _`III`:

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   III

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When Maggy spoke of the stage she
generally meant the Pall Mall Theater.
Just now it was in her thoughts more
than any other, perhaps because she had met
Alexandra there, but also because she was inclined to
think that Alexandra and she had made a
favorable impression on its stage-manager.

The Pall Mall, De Freyne, its lessee and
manager, and the Pall Mall chorus are a trinity known
the world over.  Productions at the Pall Mall
invariably enjoy success.  Long runs prevail there.
That was one of the reasons why Maggy looked
forward to an engagement at that theater.
Another was the pay, rather more than was
obtainable elsewhere.  In other respects it offered her
no advantages and some drawbacks.  She had,
for instance no aspiration to become one of a
chorus whose unrivaled attractions marked it out
as a sort of human *delicatessen* for the
consumption of epicurean males.  On the other hand, De
Freyne was indifferent to expense on the question
of costume, and that had had considerable weight
with Maggy.  Like any other pretty girl she
reveled in beautiful clothes, even though they should
only be on loan to her for an hour or two out of
the twenty-four.  On tour the dresses were often
effective enough at a distance, but either of
inferior material or their pristine freshness
considerably depreciated by having seen previous
service in a London theater.  That militated against
the pleasure of wearing them.  At the Pall Mall
everything would be new and the best that money
could buy.

That De Freyne's object in dressing his chorus
regardless of cost was a licentious one, the desire
to make his two-score of attractive-looking girls
still more attractive in the eyes of the *jeunesse
dorée*, who filled his stalls, was no deterrent to
Maggy on her own account.  She did think of it
in regard to Alexandra.  She wondered whether
Alexandra would be affected by the demoralizing
influence of those beautiful clothes which at the
Pall Mall were fashioned to display a girl's
physical charms to the very limit of decency.  It ended
in her being almost sorry that Alexandra's
innocence and the callousness of an agent should
have sent her to the voice trial.

How Alexandra was to make a good impression
on the public by posturing in the chorus was not
explained to her.  It was the expression of an
opinion which she could take or leave.  In her
innocence she made the common error of
imagining that the public chooses its plays, its novels,
its pictures, its music and its actors and actresses
for itself.  She did not stop to think that there
might be gradations in that public or that the vast
majority of it is deprived of selective taste by the
interested parties who cater for it.  Generalizing
by the noise the public makes with its hands when
it approves of anything, she argued that
everything it applauds must be good.  The noise is
there right enough and the approval is genuine;
but that has to be discounted by the fact that the
public has nothing better to approve of.  For the
public—the crowd—is a led horse most of the
time.  It is enormously manageable.  It does
what it is told and goes where it is taken.  Its
taste has never been given a chance of becoming
educated because of the fare that has been forced
upon it.  Its purveyors feed it as injuriously as an
ignorant man will a horse.  For the want of
anything better the horse will eat what is given it.
So with the public.  Obviously the public never
has anything to do with the choice of a play.
Nobody has except the man who buys it and puts it
on the stage.

Following the simile of the led horse and the
proverb that, though you may take it to the water
you cannot make it drink, the public likewise will
once in a way evince the same sort of stubbornness.
Then the play that failed to "go down" is
unostentatiously withdrawn, or the pretender to
histrionic laurels unable to obtain them will try
his or her luck again in another piece with
another's money behind it.

After all, it is but a question of credulity.
Even Alexandra had to conform to it.  She was
advised to apply for a place in the chorus and she
did so.  With her necessarily vague ideas about
the chorus she did not think of it as anything very
dreadful.  It did not offer so good a footing on
the stage as she desired, that was all.  She did
not, for instance, believe all the disparaging things
Maggy said about the stage.  She appreciated
that on the stage a girl might be unduly exposed
to temptation, but in her austerity that was no
reason for yielding to it.  In her Arcadian purity
she could not conceive of circumstances, however
degrading, having any adverse effect on herself.
Nor could she credit Maggy's insistent assertion
that without money or influence an actress must
remain in the depths.  She believed, as
inexperience always does, that talent is bound to be
recognized sooner or later.  The creed of the chorus
girl, unspoken, unwritten, was yet hers to learn.


For ten days the two girls heard nothing from
the Pall Mall Theater.  It was possible, if not
probable, that they might not hear at all.
Meanwhile Maggy went about with Alexandra looking
for an engagement in some other direction.  It
was a matter of urgency to both of them to get
something to do.  Maggy had been out of an
engagement for two months.  She was in
Mrs. Bell's debt, and she owed money to a doctor.
Alexandra was little better off.  As the orphaned
daughter of an officer she had a pension of £40
a year so long as she remained unmarried.  But
with the expense she had been put to in coming to
town and in spite of the strictest economy it was
not enough to live on.

She could not help being anxious about the
future; more so than Maggy.  Maggy, though
she chafed at them, was accustomed to bad times:
Alexandra had never struck them before.
Hardly had she got over the illusion of imagining
that a small part in a London theater was
obtainable than she found herself in no request even
for the chorus.  It was terribly disappointing.
They were forever haunting stage-doors and the
crowded waiting rooms of theatrical agencies.
For hours every day they wandered about the
Strand and its environs.

But for the prospect of sheer want confronting
them they would have been quite happy.  The
bond that united them was based on mutual
respect as well as affection.  Disappointment and
privation only cemented it.  In these days when
the stale breakfast egg was a comestible to be
shared, when anything better than canned food
became a luxury, their friendship remained free
from any of the pettinesses which generally
characterize the intimacy of people living under
conditions of hardship.

The stoicism of a family of soldiers supported
Alexandra.  She had the pride of race that
refuses to surrender to misfortune.  Her grit,
astonishing in one so delicately reared, surprised
Maggy.  She began to look up to Alexandra as a
being of a superior world in which the virtues,
being Anglo-Indian, were of a particularly high
order.  She had a very nebulous conception of the
meaning of the term.

Just as Alexandra found it absorbing to listen
to Maggy's stage talk, even though it was
humorously misogynistic, so nothing pleased Maggy so
much as to listen to Alexandra's narration of life
in an Indian military station.  It sounded to her
like a history of the high gods: a medley of color,
warmth and ease, good living and brass bands.
She loved to hear of parades and polo, of the
troops of servants, the gymkhanas and dances, all
the social amusements and advantages of the sahib
caste.  From habit, Alexandra would use native
words when talking of these things, and Maggy's
unaccustomed brain never quite differentiated
between syce, hazari, maidan, ayah, chit, durzi,
kitmagar, butti, tikka-gari and such-like terms in
common use with Anglo-Indians.  But they
impressed her immensely.

The amount of talk they got through in these
early days of their friendship was stupendous.
It helped to relieve the harassing search after
employment and its invariable ill-success.

One morning, three weeks after their first
meeting, Maggy sprang out of bed to gather up two
letters which their landlady had pushed under the
door.  On the flaps were inspiring words in red
lettering.

"Pall Mall Theater!  Hooroo!  One for
each of us!" she cried, and danced about in her
nightdress.

Alexandra, behind an improvised screen formed
of a shawl over the towel rail, was having her
morning bath in a zinc tub of inadequate size.

"Open mine," she called.  "I'm wet."

She waited anxiously.  There came the sound
of tearing paper and then Maggy's voice, raised
excitedly:

"Pull that old shawl down, Lexie!  If you
don't practise on me you'll die of shyness and no
clothes at the Pall Mall.  We're engaged!
Rehearsal Thursday.  Eleven o'clock!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`IV`:

.. class:: center large

   IV

.. vspace:: 2

It was past one o'clock.  For over two hours
without a pause the chorus had been going
through their "business" in the new play with
the reiteration that exasperates the teacher and
the taught.  The girls had relapsed into
sulkiness, the stage-manager's temper was ruffled.
Even the pianist in the O.P. corner by the
footlights felt the reaction.  His hands rested on the
keys without energy.

Powell, the stage-manager, faced the forty girls
standing in a semi-circle, three-deep.  The
majority of them were dressed in the ultra-fashionable
style of the moment, some very expensively,
a few with taste.  The exceptions were Maggy
and Alexandra.  He knew they were all tired
and rebellious; but he was concerned only with
their recalcitrant feet.

"Now then, girls.  Once more."

The pianist's hands came down heavily on the
opening chords of a dance movement.

"La-la-la—da-di-dum—point!  Step it out.
Don't mince!"

A tall girl, gorgeously arrayed, brought the
dance to a stop by leaving her position in the
front row.

"I'm not going to stick here all day," she
announced defiantly.  "I'm lunching with my boy,
and he won't wait."

"Get back to your place, Miss Mortimer,"
snapped Powell.

"Not me.  I'm going."

As she began to cross the stage on her way
out a voice came from the depths of the auditorium:

"Miss Mortimer, we're not concerned with
your private appointments.  If they're to interfere
with your work here you can look for another
engagement somewhere else."

The show-girl glanced in the direction of the
voice and shrugged.

"Mean you'll fire me, Mr. De Freyne?  Well,
I don't care.  Pa's rich!"

She walked off jauntily, her high heels clicking
on the boards, a costly plume streaming over her
left ear.  The lessee of the Pall Mall Theater
said nothing.  He was mildly amused.  He
stood in the dark at the back of the dress circle
complacently regarding his theatrical seraglio.
All the girls were pretty, or if not pretty, showy.
Some had been selected for their figures, some for
their faces, some for both.  No duchess, not even
a fashionable duchess, was arrayed like one of
these.  Solomon in all his glory might perhaps
have competed with them, but not the lilies of the
field.  Presently De Freyne's gimlet eyes picked
out Maggy and Alexandra.  Their appearance
disturbed his equanimity.

He watched them attentively for ten minutes or
so, at the end of which period the tired
stage-manager dismissed the chorus for the morning.
De Freyne's authoritative voice again made itself
heard.

"Miss Delamere and Miss Hersey.  Step up to
my room before you go, please.  I want to speak
to you."

The girls exchanged scared glances.  A special
interview with De Freyne was sufficiently unusual
to fill them with dismay.  He was not in the habit
of detaining members of his chorus for the fun of
the thing.

They groped their way along dim, soft-carpeted
passages to the front of the house and
entered the managerial office.  De Freyne was blunt
to a degree.  He wasted no time.

"You two girls have got to make more of a
show," he told them.  "I can't have shabby
dresses at the Pall Mall."

Alexandra was too taken aback by this curt
rebuke to make any reply; but Maggy lost her
temper.

"Meaning flash clothes and jewelry?" she bit
out.  "How do you expect us to do it on thirty-five
shillings a week, Mr. De Freyne?"

"I'm not interested in your resources," was De
Freyne's cold answer.

"You ought to be.  You ought to get a pencil
and slate and write down the cost of lodgings,
food, boots, and all the rest of it, and figure out
how little we've got left to buy clothes with—unless
we don't care who buys them for us.
*We're* not that sort—not yet."

"You must look smarter," reiterated De
Freyne, showing no resentment at this tirade.
"You silly creatures, don't you want to attract
attention?"

"We'll attract attention on the night.  Don't
worry," said Maggy.  She was afraid of De
Freyne, but she did not let her voice show it.

"That's all very well, but you know the
unwritten clause of my agreement with you all.  The
ladies of my chorus have got to be dressed
decently off the stage as well as on....  Anyhow,
there it is.  Take it or leave it."  He dismissed
them with a nod.

Neither said anything until they had passed
out of the stage-door and were in the street.

"That means new clothes," said Alexandra in
a tone of deep depression.

"Or Dick Whittington!" Maggy rejoined
dryly.  "Turn and turn again—our dresses.
I'll have a go at yours to-night, Lexie.  Look,
there's Mortimer and her boy."

A big car slid past them, ridiculously upholstered
in white velvet.  An effete-looking youth
and the girl who had stated that her "pa" was
rich lolled in the back seat.

Maggy's eyes followed them speculatively.

"Wonder if there's anything in it?" she remarked.

"In what?"

"In that sort of a good time.  Flat, money,
pet dog, car, week-ends at Brighton—enough to eat."

"I don't want to think about it."

"Neither do I.  But I have lately.  I'm
wondering what on earth we're standing out for.  No
one thinks any the better of us for it.  The girls
all think us fools, and the men just grin and wait."

"Don't talk about it.  Talking makes it all
seem worse."

"One day I shall do more than talk.  I shall
walk off."

Alexandra said nothing.  She knew Maggy's
mood.  Maggy was hungry, tired, and cross.
Motives of economy impelled them towards their
lodgings, where half a tin of sardines was waiting
to be consumed.  Neither had had anything to
eat since early morning.  And when they had
lunched they would have to walk back to the
theater for rehearsal again at three.  Maggy
suddenly halted before a Lyons' depot.

"Come on in, Lexie," she said.  "We can't
wait.  We shan't be home till past two.  And
if we're late back we'll be fined."

"There's the tin of—" Alexandra began and stopped.

Maggy had pushed open the swing doors.
The grateful smell of hot and well-made coffee
and savory, nourishing food, cheapness
notwithstanding, made her surrender to temptation.
Deprivation has this effect.  De Freyne, lunching
expensively at the Savoy, recognizing here and
there approved members of his chorus and their
cavaliers, could not be expected to know anything
of empty stomachs.  Besides, it was their own
fault if the girls did not know which side their
bread was buttered.

They sat down at one of the marble-topped
tables.  A waitress came towards them.

"Two cups of coffee, rolls and butter—"

This was Alexandra's order.

"Coffee, rolls, and two steak-and-kidney puddings,"
augmented Maggy recklessly.

Unmoved, the attendant went off to execute the order.

Maggy met Alexandra's startled eyes.  Her
own were defiant.

"Don't tell me," she said.  "It'll cost us
nearly eighteenpence.  I don't care.  *I'm* going
to pay, and if I don't go bust that way I shall do
something worse.  We're going to feed, dear!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`V`:

.. class:: center large

   V

.. vspace:: 2

"Damn!  She's turned off the gas!"

Maggy stopped machining.  The
small room was plunged in darkness.
Alexandra groped for matches and lit the candles.
It was not easy to work by the flickering light, but
both girls went on with what they were doing.
There was something grim about the task.  One
associates the alteration of frills and furbelows
with some small pleasure to the adapter; but there
was none here.  Necessity impelled them, kept
them out of their beds.  They were heavy with
sleep.  The air of the room was close and unpleasant.

Maggy had all but finished turning Alexandra's
coat and skirt.  Alexandra had adapted two
Indian shawls into an effective dress for Maggy.
The work was too hastily done to bear inspection
at close quarters or much strain by its wearer.
They had been steadily at it for five hours.

It was Maggy who gave in first.  She finished
machining with a savage jerk, leaving the handle
to revolve by itself.

"Let's go to bed," she said.  "I'll get up half
an hour earlier and finish that."

Alexandra went on.  She was not going to be
beaten for the sake of half an hour.  Besides,
she knew that Maggy in the cashmere shawl
arrangement would please De Freyne.  She, at any
rate, would pass muster.

"I'm not so very tired now," she answered
without looking up, "and I may be in the morning."

Maggy shook her hair down and slipped out
of her clothes with the celerity that comes of
practise between the acts.  She did not even
trouble to take the paint off her face.  She got
into bed and lay watching Alexandra working by
the guttering candle-light.  She did not talk.
She was too utterly tired.

At last Alexandra's work was done.  She hung
up the dress and put away the needles and cotton.
She had a strong inclination to get into bed
without more ado than Maggy had shown; but habit
was not to be denied.  She knew she would not
be able to rest properly unless she was clean and
cool.  She brushed her hair, washed her face and
hands, brushed her teeth.  A huge sigh from
Maggy's bed made her turn.

"Am I keeping you awake?"

"No.  I sighed because you're so different to
me.  *I* couldn't wash to-night.  And I knew my
hair'd be a mat in the morning and the pillow pink
from my cheeks."

"I wish you didn't paint.  There's no harm
in girls doing it if they need it, but you spoil yourself."

"Force of habit.  Mother made up my face
from the time I was ten."

Alexandra in her nightdress knelt down at the
side of her bed.  Maggy never said prayers.  To
see Alexandra say them, she said, was the nearest
she would ever get to such things.  She had never
been taught to pray when a child.

"Might as well drop Him a hint that we're at
the end of our tether," she suggested presently.

When Alexandra rose from her knees Maggy
was sitting up in bed watching her, her hands
clasping her legs.

"And you mean to say that you believe
somebody hears you!" she said wonderingly.

"Yes."

"And does what you ask?"

"Yes—in the end."

"Then He must be pretty deaf....  You look
nice saying your prayers.  If I were God I
couldn't refuse you anything.  P'raps He's a
woman-hater.  Women get the worst of it
everywhere, I think.  If we do wrong, we have to
pay for it.  If we don't do wrong, we have to
pay just the same.  We're made so that we're not
fit to be working all the time.  Oh, it's a hell of
a world for women!  I can stand anything when
I feel it's fair and just.  I can't see any justice
where we're concerned.  They have an inspector
Johnnie to see that the scales in the grocery-shops
are fair, but if a woman wants to make a bargain
she's got to do it on the heavy side."

"The law courts are the scales."

"The law?  Aren't the scales against us there
too?  If we want a divorce we've got to be
knocked about as well as—other things.  If
we're deserted and ruined before we're married
we can get so many shillings a week until the kid's
in his teens.  And if there's no kid or it dies, well,
p'raps your God'll help us, but the law won't.
It's all too hard to fight against, and one can't
make head or tail of it.  Look at the White Slave
Traffic.  They'll flog a man if they catch him at
it, but they won't flog De Freyne and give him
hard labor for the dirty work he's doing every
day of his life, though everybody knows about it.
Why, he's only a—what's it called?—procurer
for the nobility and gentry and all the rich
bounders.  And we're not all in yet, but we shall
be.  My word, one hears a lot about the
chorus-girl being on the make-haste and living
you-know-how.  One doesn't hear how she's driven into it,
like cattle into a dirty pen.  I'm done, Lexie.  I
shan't hold out long."

Alexandra blew out the remaining candle.  In
the darkness one could just make out the two
narrow beds and the glimmer of the window.

"You mustn't give in, Maggy," came Alexandra's
voice after a pause.  "When one meets the
man one cares about one doesn't want to come to
him with nothing to give."

"Why not?  There isn't a man in a hundred
who comes to a woman with a clean slate.  Why
should they expect us to have nothing written on
ours?"

"Because when a man marries nature makes
him want a pure woman, not for his own sake but
because of the children she will probably have.
For myself, I know I would rather show a clean
slate to the man I loved and who loved me in a
decent way whatever his life had been, than let a
man who was nothing to me write his name there
first.  That must be wrong because it's against
nature."

"Is it?  I don't know.  You can argue better
than I can.  You don't lose your temper.  Let's
bring it down to ourselves and our difficulties.
The stage is a honey-pot and we girls are the
honey in it, and the men are the flies buzzing
round.  They won't leave us alone.  They make
it almost impossible for us to live a decent life.
And if it's decent it isn't beautiful.  You can't
call it beautiful, Lexie.  This room's the limit.
Think of the food we eat.  Generally beastly.
And our clothes.  Everything's ugly and
makeshift, and yet we've only got to stretch out our
little fingers—"

"More than our little fingers."

"Well, if you like.  Anyway, what are we
waiting for?  There's no sense in it.  It won't
get us any forrader.  Why don't you leave me
alone?  I'd almost made up my mind to give in
when I met you.  I should rather enjoy cutting
a dash and having everything I want and going
one better than the other girls who crow over us,
and snapping my fingers at the management like
Mortimer did to-day.  If a man was going to
marry me and give me a nice broad ring and a
little home there'd be some reason for going on
like this and keeping good; but men don't ask
chorus-girls to marry them, as a rule—not by a
long chalk!  Oh, goodnight!"

She twisted on to her side, and the bedsprings
groaned.

From neighboring churches clocks began striking
twelve.  The noises from the street subsided.
Only an occasional footfall was heard or a cart
rumbling past.  Sometimes a shrill voice broke
the stillness, sometimes a drunken song.

The girls slept.

At dawn a cool breeze moved the dingy window
curtain.  Maggy woke and peered through the
gray light at Alexandra, sleeping.

She looked as though she were dead and at peace.

Maggy wondered if that was the better fate.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`VI`:

.. class:: center large

   VI

.. vspace:: 2

De Freyne did not seem to notice the
efforts of the two girls in obeying his
instructions to smarten up their appearance:
he said nothing.  But for all that, the
change did not escape him.  Maggy, in the draped
cashmere affair struck him as likely to appeal to a
Jew or a gentleman from Manchester.  He had
a particular individual of each type in his mind,
and awaited a propitious moment for exploiting
her to one or the other.  For the next few days
the attention of the girls would have to be
devoted to rehearsals, not men.

De Freyne's exploitation of his chorus
naturally had it roots in commercialism and
self-interest.  The girls themselves very seldom
thanked him for his introductions.  They were
astute enough to understand that the advantage was
at least mutual.  Not that De Freyne expected
any thanks.  It was a trite observation of his that
theatrical people were the most ungrateful lot in
the world.  He himself was a shining illustration
of the dictum, but that did not lessen its truth.
He got his "turn" from his wealthy stage-door
dilettanti.  It might be a social one in the shape
of admittance to elevated circles; a select club, a
shooting party, a cruise on a big yacht.
Sometimes it was an invitation by a young and
indiscreet member of the peerage to his country house
and a photograph in the illustrated papers to
proclaim it.  De Freyne was very partial to reading
beneath the group: "From left to right: The
Marquis of Perth, Lady Angela Coniston, Sir
Francis Manningtree, Mr. De Freyne...."  This
was prestige dear to his heart.  He toed
the line successfully between Society and
Bohemianism.  Most of the rich rascals and all the
rich fools of the world were at his service.

But what gave him most satisfaction was to be
able to put an important City man under an
obligation.  It often resulted in special information
concerning stocks and shares that brought him
large profits.  He would have sacrificed any girl's
reputation for a one-fourth per cent. turn of the
market, and frequently did so.

In this regard he mentally pigeon-holed Maggy.
It would not be difficult to find her a partner in the
dance to which he should set the Mephistophelean
measure.  Alexandra he looked at with a cold
eye.  He wasn't sure of her.  He had nothing
to say against her looks, but he had no use for
prudish high-steppers.  Quick of apprehension
where girls were concerned, he put her down in
that category.  The chorus would bear thinning
out a bit.  As a matter of policy, De Freyne
always engaged more girls than he wanted.

For another week rehearsals went on, growing
more frequent and longer.  The clever
stage-manager goes nearer creating silk purses out of
sows' ears than any human being.  No one in the
early days of rehearsal would associate the
pouting, obtuse, wooden young woman with the airy
fairy sylphs who ravish the eye on a first night;
yet they are one and the same, trained by methods
similar to those used in schooling performing
animals, by coaxing, bullying and inexhaustible patience.

When the chorus were at last up to concert
pitch and the principals letter-perfect, the dress
rehearsal took place.  Maggy was in the front
row, looking big and beautiful in a Futurist
creation of rose fleshings and black chiffon.  The
front row girls were very carefully chosen for
opulence of figure.  Alexandra had been
relegated to the back.  She was disappointing in
tights, which means nothing more than that if a
butcher did not approve her an artist might.

.. vspace:: 2

It was over at last, the long performance with
its glitter, glare and gaiety.  There was nothing
in it, but all London would flock to see it because
the music was catchy and the girls so pretty and
the whole show so symbolical of the light side of
life.  For several days afterwards rehearsals
were frequent.  The usual "cuts" and alterations
had to be made, the show licked into shape.

On one of these occasions Maggy received a
message from De Freyne.  He wanted to see her.
Leaving Alexandra in the dressing room she went
up to the managerial office.  It was nearly one
o'clock.

"I'm glad you took my advice," he said in a
friendly tone.  "You've been turning yourself
out much better."

"Thanks," Maggy answered.  "Is that all?"

"No.  I'm going to put you in the way of
dressing really well.  A very decent chap wants to
know you.  You'll be lucky if he likes you."

"That's your opinion.  Well, he can like me as
much as he likes.  But I'm straight."

De Freyne chewed the end of his mustache.

"You get these silly notions from the girl you
live with," he said impatiently.  "I'll mix
advice with a bit of prophecy.  If you don't try and
make yourselves more agreeable you'll find you're in—"

"Queer Street?"

"It's equivalent—Garrick Street and Maiden
Lane—out of a shop.  It doesn't hurt you to
be nice to a fellow, does it?  He may ask you to
lunch.  Duchesses lunch."

"I'm not a duchess, and I'm particular who I
lunch with."

At the end of her sentence the door opened and
a man looked in.  He had heard her, and was amused.

Maggy's look as she turned to acknowledge De
Freyne's introduction was inimical.  She knew
perfectly well what that introduction portended.
She must be hard.  She had repulsed other men.
She could take care of herself.  But this
man—what was his name—Woolf?—loomed tall and
big over her, big as Fate, possessive.  He
exercised a spell: he appealed to her.  She knew it in
the first moment that she looked at him.  She
knew she would like to lunch with him, and
that she would inwardly be disappointed if she
had the strength of mind to refuse.  When the
invitation came she accepted it with cheeky reservation.

"All right, Mr. Woolf, so long as you don't
think I'm Little Red Riding-hood and included in
the menu."

The capitulation satisfied her conscience.  Then
she remembered Alexandra.

"I must go and tell my friend not to wait for
me," she said.

"Miss Hersey?" supplied De Freyne.  "You
might also ask her to come in here in ten minutes,
will you?"

"My car's outside," said Woolf.  "You'll
find me at the stage-door."

Maggy ran along to the dressing room where
she had left Alexandra.  The other girls had gone.

"Lexie, I'm going out to lunch," she began
breathlessly.  "I wish you were coming too.  Do
you mind?  I shan't be long.  I'll cut home as
quickly as I can."

She could not hide her excitement.  It showed
in an added sparkle of the eyes, a catch in the
voice.  Alexandra wondered what else besides an
invitation to lunch could have created this effect.
It caused her vague uneasiness.  But prospective
enjoyment was so clearly written all over Maggy's
face that she refrained from expressing it.

"Of course I don't mind," she said.  "I hope
you will enjoy yourself."

"You are a dear!" Maggy felt awkward.
"You—you don't think it's wrong?"

"There's nothing wrong in going to lunch with
anybody.  Especially if he's—all right, and
knows you are, too."

"He's nice, I think."

"I'm glad.  But be careful, Maggy."

"Rather!"

Maggy moved to one of the mirrors and took
up a powder-puff.

"You've got heaps on already," deprecated
Alexandra.

"Have I?"  She powdered over the rouge.
"I do look rather like puff pastry—in layers,
don't I?  Well, I haven't time to take any of it
off.  Lexie, De Freyne wants to see you in a
minute or two.  I don't think it's anything important.
He seems in a good temper.  Ta-ta, dear."

She ran out and made for the stage-door where
Woolf was waiting for her.  His car, a big open
one, was drawn up opposite it.  Maggy wished
the girls had not all gone.  They had twitted her
so often about her lack of a male escort.  Now
there was no one to see her get in.

"Where are we going?" she asked.  "The Savoy?"

"Not this time," said Woolf.  "My house is
not far off."

"I'd prefer the Savoy," she persisted, although
she had never actually been to that restaurant.

Woolf was the sort of man who invariably gets
his own way with women.  In addition to being
characteristically obstinate he was indifferent to
any opinion that clashed with his own.  If it was
one that suited him so much the better; if not, he
ignored it.  So long as he paid the piper he
considered he had the right to call the tune.  But
before paying he scanned the bill carefully.  He was
not a gentleman.  He met gentlemen sometimes,
and was adaptive enough to be mistaken for one.
He belonged to one or two nearly-good clubs.
He was a man about town in the sense that he was
to be seen wherever money could purchase an entrance.

"You'll be quite chaperoned at my place," he
assured Maggy.  "I've a man and his wife."

"I don't need a man and his wife to look after
me," she retorted sharply.

He gave her an attentive stare.  "Who does
look after you?"  His meaning was obvious.

"Myself, of course.  Why don't we go to the Savoy?"

"How persistent you are.  Do you want to
know why, really?  Promise you won't be offended?"

"If I am I'll hop out."

"Well ... when you let me buy you some
pretty clothes I'll take you there."

He half expected she might "hop out," especially
as the car had come to a standstill in a traffic
block.  She looked hot-tempered.  But Maggy
was too level-headed to be sensitive on the score of
clothes.

"I suppose that king in the story wouldn't have
been seen with his beggar maid at the Savoy until
he'd dressed her out," she remarked ironically.
"Well, you won't go there with me any time, anyway."

"Why not?"

"Because this young woman provides her own
wardrobe."

"We shall see."

Woolf liked her spirit, otherwise her independence
might have irritated him.

Arrived at his house he gave her in charge of
his man's wife.  Maggy disliked the woman on
sight.  There was something furtive about her.
She gave the impression of being one who was
used to waiting on ladies in a single man's house.
Sly and secret amusement lurked in her eyes.  She
lingered, unostentatiously, while Maggy prinked
herself in front of the glass.  After a minute or
two she turned, and intimated that she was ready.

"Wouldn't you like to take off your hat, miss?"

There was something unpleasantly insinuating
in the smooth tones.

"No, thanks," said Maggy shortly.

"You've left your purse on the table, miss."

"Have I?  There's nothing in it.  It'll be
quite safe."

The woman led the way downstairs and ushered
her into a room half-library, half-drawing-room.

"Find everything you wanted?" inquired
Woolf, coming forward to meet her.

"Yes, thanks.  What a swanky bed-room!
Silver hair-brushes and face powder and hairpins!
Is it yours?"

"No, it's the visitors' room.  I'm glad you like it."

"I didn't say I liked it.  It looked as if you
always had it ready for a lady.  I don't like the
look of your man's wife either."

Woolf laughed at the downright expression of opinion.

"She's all right," he said significantly.  "She's
as quiet as the grave and much deeper."

"She's no good."

"Who *is*!  Are you?"  He took her hand
and tried to draw her to him.  Maggy's form
grew rigid.

"Hands off," she said coolly.  "There's nothing
doing here."

"Won't you let me kiss you?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"For the same reason that I keep my hat on,
and you don't.  One's out of respect for me and
the other's respect for myself."

"You're a funny girl!"  Woolf drew back and
looked at her.  "Why are you on the defensive?"

"Haven't I need to be?"

"Not with me, surely.  I want to be friends
with you."

"Friends!"  She threw up her chin aggressively.
"I've only got one in the world."

"And who is he?" Woolf asked with quick curiosity.

"She's a girl.  I chum with her."

"Women can't be friends with each other," he
asserted didactically.  "Especially when they're
of the same profession.  A Hottentot woman and
her civilized sister have only one occupation—the
study and pursuit of man.  You're like doctors,
all at each other's throats.  Some of you
practise homeopathy, the others are allopaths.
The first marry and take their husbands in small
doses, the allopaths believe in quantity.  Your
friend would probably leave you to-morrow if she
got a good enough chance."

"Talk about some one you know," Maggy responded.

The contentious conversation was interrupted
by the entrance of Woolf's man announcing lunch.
They went into the dining room.  Maggy was
hungry and did justice to an excellent meal.  But
she refused to drink anything stronger than lemon
squash, and when Woolf pressed her for her
reason for such abstinence she gave him none.  She
had seen her mother suffer from alcoholic excess.
The smell of spirits always turned her sick.

When they were alone Woolf leant towards her.

"Now let's talk," he said.  "What do you
want me to do for you?"

"Nothing," replied Maggy shortly.

"Do you dislike me?"

She looked at him and away again.

"No.  That doesn't mean you're fascinating.
You're the sort of man who might get round a girl
like me if I was fool enough to listen to you.
Lexie—that's my chum—would tell you off at once."

"I should think she's a man-hater."  Woolf
was beginning to feel a distinct antipathy towards
Maggy's friend.

"No, she isn't.  Only men aren't much in our
line.  You can see prowling beasts without going
to the Zoo."

Maggy's conversational trick of generalizing
led away from the point Woolf wanted to press.

"You doubt me," he said.  "You'd believe in
me if I wanted to marry you—"

"Oh, cut it!  You don't!" she interjected.

"Marriage is an institution for the protection
of women who wear flannel petticoats.  It doesn't
follow that a girl can't trust a man because he
offers her a lot more than most wives get."

"He offers her a lot more because he knows it
won't last for long.  I'm practical."

"If you were practical you'd listen to my offer."

"Oh, I'll listen."

"Well, I'd like to make you really comfortable.
You ought to have a smart little place of your
own, and dainty things, and money to spend."

"It's as old as the hills.  I daresay I'm not the
only girl you've made that proposition to.  Try
somebody else.  I'm going now."

"You mean you won't think about it?"

Maggy was silent for a minute.

"Oh, I shall think about it right enough, don't
you worry," she said in an odd voice.  "I shall
think about it when I'm hungry.  I shall think
about it when I'm tired.  It's a long way from
the theater to King's Cross Road.  I shall
think about it when I see the other girls sneering
at me because I haven't got a boy.  I shall think
about it in the summer time when people go to the
sea and take off their clothes, and I shall think of
it in the winter when I'd like a few more on.  You
needn't think I don't know that you're tempting
me."  Her voice nearly broke.

"Then be friends," urged Woolf again.
"What's to prevent you?"

"Lexie.  Lexie would be cut up.  Lexie has
made me think more of myself since I've known
her than I ever did before.  If it wasn't for her
do you think I'd traipse home night after night
to that slummy little room that's dear at fifteen
shillings a week?  *She's* not used to the life, and
if she can hold out against it I ought to be able
to who've never known anything better.  Well,
thanks for a nice lunch.  You've fed the hungry.
That's one good mark for you."

Woolf led her back into the other room and
shut the door.

"You'll kiss me before you go," he said imperiously.

He had her by the wrists.  His strong grasp
sent a thrill through her.  Though she resisted
she wished there were no harm in letting him kiss
her, wished that his offer were not based on
wrong-doing.  It was not only because he could give her
material things that she was tempted.  She had
stumbled across a man who made a direct call to
her nature, and she knew it.  De Freyne, callously
unselective, could not have deliberately chosen an
individual more likely to encompass Maggy's
surrender.  Woolf was not young: nearly forty.
But he was so blatantly good-looking, so—so
swaggering.  Maggy knew he was selfish and
probably a little unkind, possibly bad-tempered,
that he would never care for a woman in the way
that women crave to be cared for, tenderly,
protectively.  All the same, she knew that she would
get too fond of him if she saw him often and that
he would go to her head....

Even now she felt dizzy.  Her habitual
self-confidence deserted her.  She experienced an
overmastering desire to fling herself into his arms and
cry and cry, to tell him how difficult everything
was, and how she had tried....  But she knew
perfectly well that he would not understand.  He
was a man who would never understand women's
feelings because he did not think them worth
understanding.  As long as there were women in the
world, plenty of pretty ones, their feelings did not
matter.  Flowers did not feel when one picked
them, or if they did, well, that was what they
were there for: to be picked.

"You don't want to kiss me against my will, do you?"

Maggy struggled free.  As a matter of fact
Woolf's grasp had relaxed.  He was quite ready
for the interview to end.  He had a business
appointment at three and did not want to be late for
it.  If Maggy had offered him her soul at three
that afternoon, or what interested him far more,
her substance, he would not have foregone his
appointment.  That was the man.

"Well, good-by," he said, without further
persuasion.  "You can go home in my car.  I'll
'phone to the garage now."

Maggy went to get her purse and gloves.
When she returned Woolf was no longer in the
room.  It was five minutes to three.

"The car is at the door, miss," the man told
her.  "Mr. Woolf had an appointment to keep.
He asked me to say would you ring him up any
time you wished to speak to him.  This is his
telephone number, miss."  He handed her a card.

He helped her into the car and tucked the linen
rug round her with just that touch of familiarity
which the good servant avoids.  Maggy knew
perfectly well what he and his wife thought about
her.  Unused as she was to servants, good or bad,
she was quick enough to appreciate that they took
their tone from their employer and his habits.

She leant back in the car and gave herself up to
the luxury of being driven in it.  The celerity with
which she was whirled from the affluence of
Piccadilly and Regent Street to the grimy purlieus of
the King's Cross Road had a disheartening effect
upon her.  When the chauffeur stopped at her
door she was sure she saw disparagement in his
face.  He would return to his own place and tell
Woolf's man and his wife to what sort of a
lodging-house he had taken her, and they would make
impertinent jokes at her expense.  She despised
herself for caring what the man thought or said.
Alexandra wouldn't have cared a button.  She
would have scorned the man for scorning her.

She went upstairs slowly.  The period of
reaction had arrived.  It depressed her.  The
lunch was over; the pleasant excitation Woolf's
company had aroused had died down.  She felt "flat."

To her surprise Alexandra was not in.  She put
the kettle on the gas-ring and took out their
tea-cups from the cupboard where they were kept.
She was rather glad she had got in before her
friend.  It would show how she cared about her,
to have hurried home and made tea....  Good
old Lexie!

At the sound of steps outside she called out:

"Hurry up, Lexie.  Tea!"

It was Mrs. Bell, not Alexandra.

"I've brought the bill," she observed, depositing
a half sheet of paper on the table.  "I'd be
glad to have it squared soon.  You're still one-ten
behind."

"We haven't got it yet."

"You'll pay me soon?  I shall have to let the
room if you don't.  Letting's all I have to depend
on, you know.  By the way, I ought to have told
you, it'll be seventeen and six a week now instead
of fifteen.  The rents of these houses have gone up."

"Since I drove here in a car," snapped Maggy.
"We'll pay you and clear."

"No, don't do that, dearie.  Can't you just
give me a bit on account?"

Maggy opened her purse and held it upside
down.  She had given threepence to Woolf's
woman, and the remaining threepence to the
chauffeur.  They had despised the coppers, naturally,
and barely thanked her.  They would not have
thanked her at all but for the possibility that they
might see her again under more affluent circumstances.

"Something'll happen soon," said the woman,
thinking of the car.  "I'll treat you kind because
I've a kind 'eart."

She stood away from the door to let Alexandra,
who had come up, pass into the room.  Maggy
looked up quickly.  Something was wrong.  She
saw it at once.

"So I'll let it stand over," went on Mrs. Bell.
"The bill," she explained to Alexandra.  "It
seems as it's not convenient for you to pay it yet.
It's disappointing, but I suppose—"

"How much is it?" asked Alexandra in a dispirited voice.

"Two pounds—five altogether with last week's bill."

To Maggy's amazement Alexandra handed her
the amount.

"Write the receipt and go, please," she said.

When they were alone Maggy stood still
waiting for an explanation.

"Where did you get it?"

To add to her astonishment Alexandra began
to cry brokenly.  She had never seen her give way
before.

"Lexie, darling, what is it?"  Her voice was
sharp with alarm.

Alexandra stopped crying as suddenly as she
had begun.

"A fortnight's salary in lieu of notice," she
said.  "I think I've been walking ever since.
The pavements were hot, and—my head."

Maggy said nothing more.  With a world of
sympathy in her touch she unpinned Alexandra's
hat.  Alexandra sat with her hands in her lap
staring in front of her.  Maggy knelt on the floor
and gently drew off her friend's shoes, brought
slippers and put them on, after which she poured
out a cup of tea and silently put it before her.

This was dire news.  Lexie would tell her more
by and by.  Maggy knew she couldn't talk now.
She couldn't have said a word herself without
breaking down.  Tea would relieve the tension.

There came an irresolute knock at the door,
and their landlady thrust in an arm and a plate.

"Shrimps was passing so I've bought you a pint
for a relish, dears," came a conciliatory whine.

To save argument Maggy took them and shut
the door again.

"W-what a mixture!" she gasped hysterically.
"Temptation and tea, t-tears and—shrimps!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`VII`:

.. class:: center large

   VII

.. vspace:: 2

Alexandra began to tell about her
sudden dismissal.  De Freyne had been in a
good temper and apparently had no grievance
against her.  Every one in the chorus knew
there was always the chance of not being kept on
for the run of the piece.  He was the managerial
autocrat of stageland and he did what he liked.
A fortnight's notice or a fortnight's salary in lieu
of notice discharged his obligations so far as his
chorus was concerned.

Quite formally and with much the same
stereotyped form of regret as an editor employs in
rejecting a suitable contribution, he told Alexandra
that he did not feel himself justified in retaining
her services.

"Are you—dissatisfied with me?" she faltered,
utterly taken aback.

"No, not exactly.  You're a hard worker."

"Then—?"

"I simply find I don't need you.  I'm sorry,
but there it is."

"Is it—because I didn't get a new dress when
you spoke to us?  I couldn't afford to," she said
simply.

De Freyne fidgeted with some papers on his desk.

"Oh, that's all finished and done with," he
answered without looking at her.

"But I'd like to know where I've failed, please,
Mr. De Freyne.  It's very important that I
should know.  I shall have to find another engagement."

De Freyne gave her a searching look.

"You may get on all right elsewhere," he said.
"I'll tell you the truth for once in a way.  You're
not the right type.  Don't you see you're not the
sort of material I've got to provide?  Hang it all,
it's my living.  Do you think I surround myself
with the belles of Houndsditch and the Lord
knows where because I like it?  The only kind
of girl I've any use for is the one who, besides
working in business hours, makes a show in
smart places the rest of her time.  Miss Mortimer
was a good instance of what I mean until she
got swelled head.  You're a lady and you won't
do.  Forget you are one and you can stop on or
come back again.  I mean that."

She knew what he meant, and since she had no
intention of modeling herself on Miss Mortimer
she also did not attempt to argue the matter.  De
Freyne, for some unaccountable reason, tried to
justify himself.

"I daresay you think me a sort of understudy
to Apollyon, but if you'll look at things impartially
I'm not as bad as all that.  The girls I engage
come to me knowing I can find them the best
market.  I give them far better chances than they
can get anywhere else.  You and your friend
are—accidents.  You have either got to clear
or—conform.  In the case of your friend, don't you
think it's rather a shame to persuade her to buck
up against things?  She's not like you.  It's not
doing her a good turn.  I've given her a chance
to-day...."

He let the words sink in.

Alexandra left the theater, dismissed.

Her luck looked desperately bad.  It was
unlikely that she would get another engagement
until the autumn, if then.  It was a long time to
wait.  True, she might go and stay with her
nearest relatives, the Anglo-Indian Colonel, his wife
and daughters, but they lived in Devonshire.
Once in Devonshire it was morally certain that she
would have to remain there, dependent on people
with whom she had nothing in common.  Her
purse would not allow her to make frequent
journeys to London to find work.

She did not want to give up the stage without
a struggle.  It would be horribly humiliating to
own herself beaten.  She believed in her dramatic
ability.  She was not afraid of roughing it, but she
had not seen the rocks ahead.  When she turned
over in her mind other ways of earning a living
difficulties presented themselves.  She could not
do office work: she knew nothing of shorthand or
typewriting.  She might apply for the post of
children's governess or companion, but would she be
acceptable for either?  There would be questions
as to her previous experience.  All she would be
able to cite would be a fortnight's stage-work in
the chorus, hardly the right qualification for a
guardian of youth or companionship to a lady!
She could picture the instinctive drawing-back of a
prospective employer and the murmured "I'm
afraid you won't do...."

No, she would have to go on as she had begun
or drop by the way.

She walked the sun-blistered pavements, hardly
noticing where she was going, trying to think what
to do, where to go.  The same old heart-rending
round would begin again—Denton's, Blackmoore's,
Hart's, the lesser known agencies, and
"nothing for you to-day.  Look in again, dear."

How she was going to live she simply did not
know.  A fortnight's salary! ... She could not
guess how many hundreds of men and women of
the same profession as herself were facing the
same problem without even the fortnight's salary
between them and destitution.

Then there was Maggy.  Unless Maggy
"conformed," she would be told to go too.  De
Freyne's words stuck in her mind: "Isn't it rather
a shame to persuade her to buck up against things?
It's not doing her a good turn."  "Things," of
course, was a euphemism for Fate.  She had
never meant to impose her own moral views on
Maggy.  She didn't want to spoil her material
prospects.  Maggy had shown again and again
that it was only on her, Alexandra's, account that
she had elected to make a stand.  There was ever
a hint of irresolution behind her apparent
firmness.  Alexandra was fairly sure that if Maggy
found a man who would gain her affection and
treat her well she would be ready to be convinced
that there was no harm in an unlegalized union.
That she had not succumbed in the past was no
argument that she would remain unassailable in the
future.  Alexandra was perhaps standing in her
light.  In one sense she was protecting her, in
the other she was taking the bread out of her
mouth.  She did not feel herself privileged to
coerce the younger girl when she could not help
her or even help herself.  Maggy was not fiercely
virginal.  Once she had taken the initial step she
would lose her sensitiveness.  Nature would
demand that she take it sooner or later.  She
was frail, because at heart she was so simple, so
unhesitatingly unafraid to go where her instincts
led her.

Alexandra made up her mind that she would
not try to influence her.  It was not fair.  But
she hoped she would not yield to temptation.
Something in the thought of Maggy surrendering
twisted her heartstrings.  It made her feel so
dreadfully sorry.  It was as though she dimly
foresaw that if Maggy snatched at the sham thing
Joy, she would see it turn to sorrow, to dust and
ashes....

She found herself before the door of their
lodging.  She had walked there mechanically with
dragging steps.  De Freyne had said that he had
given Maggy a chance that afternoon.  Alexandra
recalled her happy, flushed face, the look of
excitation in her eyes.  Maggy had evidently liked
the man, whoever he was.  It was only three
o'clock.  She did not expect her back yet.  She
was probably still enjoying herself tremendously.
Alexandra wondered how much Maggy cared for
her after all, how soon before she would leave her
to fight it out alone.

.. vspace:: 2

And she found Maggy in before her.  Maggy
had made tea, she had taken off Alexandra's hat
and knelt down and drawn off her shoes....

Alexandra put down her cup and stretched out
her hand across the table.  Maggy took it and
gave it a squeeze.

"There's a bit of poetry I learnt once," she
said.  "I say it whenever I feel the limit.  It's a
sort of psalm.

   |  "All's well with the world, my friend,
   |    And there isn't an ache that lasts;
   |  All troubles will have an end,
   |    And the rain and the bitter blasts.

   |  There is sleep when the evil is done,
   |    There's substance beneath the foam;
   |  And the bully old yellow sun will shine
   |    Till the cows come home!"
   |

"Can't you see 'em in your mind's eye, Lexie
dear, a string of them—brown ones with soft
eyes—their heads moving from side to side,
coming down the long lane just round the turning ...
and the sun shining behind them through clouds....
Cheer up, ducky!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`VIII`:

.. class:: center large

   VIII

.. vspace:: 2

Maggy said very little about Woolf.  On
certain topics there was a barrier of
silence between the two girls, imposed by
Alexandra.  Maggy was disposed to be utterly
unreserved, crude.  Brought up in stage
surroundings she had heard undiscussable things
talked of openly all her life.  Alexandra showed
such distaste for laxity of speech that Maggy now
refrained from touching on the subject of sex
almost entirely.  Had she been unreserved about
Woolf, his conversation with her and her own
attitude toward him, she would have had to show
herself in a light that Alexandra would have
disliked and certainly not understood.

Maggy was never quite sure in her mind whether
Alexandra was very cold by nature or completely
reserved.  She, herself, belonged to the type of
woman, not a rare one, who can discuss her
marital relations with others with a frankness
that no man would ever dream of employing when
speaking of his wife to his most intimate friend.
Alexandra, except under extraordinary stress,
would be as secretive as a man.  To discuss
sexual emotions or indulge in speculation about them
with another girl was a thing quite foreign to her.
At school she had, in that sense, been a being apart,
while the other girls whispered in corners.
Instinctively she shrank from having her mind
contaminated by second-hand knowledge of the most
vital and delicate functions of nature.

Her upbringing had been different from
Maggy's.  Maggy's mind had been forced
prematurely on the hot-bed of theatrical laxity.
Alexandra's life, up till the last year, had been
one of calm and sweet companionship with an
adored mother.  She had lived a healthy, normal
existence, met men of her own class who would
no more have dreamt of thinking irreverently of
her than of their own mothers or sisters.  She
was aware that strong passions, illicit unions, and
trouble and misery resulting from immorality, did
exist in the world.  She read of these things in
newspapers and the books that were never kept
from her; but these passions and unions and
dissolving of unions seemed things that did not touch
her class.

She came into active collision with them for the
first time when she went on the stage.  She could
not shut her eyes to the condition of things there
any more than she could shut her ears to the sordid
language of the girls in their common dressing
room.  But it made her ashamed to be a woman,
a being of the same sex.  These girls thought
of men only in one way.  The men whom they
spoke of as their "boys" or their "friends"
were certainly not any coarser in mind than the
girls themselves.  They had no more reserves of
speech than factory-hands.  There were exceptions
here and there, but being exceptions they
were negligible as a power of reform.

Some girls attained their positions legitimately,
she knew; but how few?  One could count them
on the fingers of one hand.  Every one of them
had had some one, a mother or a father to look
after them, a father who waited at the stage-door
every night, a comfortable home.  They had been
dressed well by their people.  Though in the
chorus, they had never known its strain and stress,
for they had not been of it.  Its hardships and
temptations had, so to speak, been screened from
them, and they had been curiously impervious to
its language.  Hence it was that their reputations
had not suffered.

Even out of musical comedy how few illustrious
names were unassociated with scandal.  Alexandra
had heard the true story of how one of
England's most prominent actresses was selected
for her first important part—that of a courtesan.
An actress sufficiently convincing in the role could
not be found, till at last the author of the play
exclaimed in exasperation: "Well, if we can't
get the actress, let's have the woman."  The
equivalent had been lauded by the Press and the
public, and the author's fees had not appreciably
diminished!

Alexandra knew now that her own chance of
succeeding through hard work or any talent she
might possess was about one in a thousand.  She
learnt of the many capable actors and
actresses—some of them more than capable—who were
touring the provinces year after year, and would
wear out their souls and their lives touring the
provinces.  It was more than a hard struggle
for the women: women were scarcely given a
fighting chance.

Yet all she could do was to fight, fight all the
time so as not to drop out; to make a bare living,
not to lose sight of ambition's pinnacle while she
was forced to dwell in the plains of penury.  But
as regards Maggy she would not influence her
one way or the other.  Maggy would have to
decide for herself.

During the ensuing week they were less together
than they had ever been.  In the morning Maggy
was at the theater while Alexandra went the round
of the stage-doors to see if there was a chance
of her being taken on.  Very often they did not
meet till after the show in the evening.  For the
first two nights Alexandra had gone to meet
Maggy and had walked back with her; but now
Maggy came home in Woolf's car.  She said
nothing about him.  Alexandra asked no questions.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`IX`:

.. class:: center large

   IX

.. vspace:: 2

"I've got something to show you," Woolf
said.  "Hop in."

Maggy got into the car.  She had been
lunching with Woolf at his house.  He always
sent her to Sidey Street in his car, but never went
there with her.  He hated slums and mean streets.
He had been born and bred in them and had had
enough of them.

"Coming too?" she asked.

"Yes.  I'm going to take you to see something
I've just fixed up.  I want to know what you
think of it.  It's a flat."

"Oh."

He got in beside her and set the car going.
Maggy had been holding him at arm's length all
the afternoon.  He was getting a little tired of
the pursuit and intended it should end.  He could
not associate Maggy with protracted virtue.  If
she persisted in this pose—for he thought it
was a pose—he would lose interest in her.  He
had told her as much at lunch.

"Oh, rubbish!" Maggy had responded,
munching at a pear that only a rich man could
afford to buy out of season.  "Courting's a
change for you."

"It's too much trouble.  In business I work
hard.  I know what I want and I go on till I get
it.  With women I don't want hard work.  Besides,
unripe fruit is sour.  It's best when it's ready
to fall."

"Then you've come under the wrong tree," she
said cheekily.

But she knew that the fruit was trembling on
its stem—ripe.

"About this flat," she said, when they were on
their way, "are you thinking of moving?"

"No."

Woolf turned and looked at her intently.  She
could not face the searching in his eyes; she blushed
and was angry with herself.

"I don't see what you want my opinion for,
anyway," she said, to cover her confusion.

"It's funny, but I do."

He said no more.  Maggy's thoughts occupied
her for the rest of the drive.  She sat back in her
seat, out of contact with Woolf.  When he was
close to her, or his clothing touched her, a breathless
sensation assailed her, sapping her strength.

The flat he took her to see was a furnished one
in Bloomsbury, small but attractive in her eyes.
It contained a bedroom, a bathroom and a sitting
room.  Meals were obtainable at a reasonable
price in a restaurant attached to the building.
The rooms had every appearance of being lived
in.  There were flowers in sitting room and
bedroom, magazines, a box of chocolates: on the
bedroom dressing-table was a brand-new silver
toilette set and brushes.  Among the pictures on
the walls, framed in black and gold, were several
studies of female figures in the nude.  The
electric lights were rose-shaded.

Maggy was entranced with the place.  She
forgot her defensive attitude and showed frank
pleasure in all she saw.  She fingered the silver brushes
lovingly, smelt the flowers, munched a chocolate.

The white-tiled bathroom with its plated fittings
appealed to her strongly.

"Hot and cold!" she murmured.  "Not in
bits but all at once.  Scrummy!"

"What are you talking about?" said Woolf, amused.

"In Sidey Street we have a foot-bath and wash
in bits," she explained frankly.  "I've dreamt of
baths like this.  I've never had one."

She turned on the taps with the fascination of
a child, and watched the water run.

"So you like it all?"

"I should just think I did!"

She perched on the edge of the bath, swinging a foot.

"You've really taken it?"

"For three years."

"Who's coming to it?"

"It's for a good girl."

"You mean for a bad girl," she pouted.

"She'll be good—to me."

"Well, I hope she'll like it."

He took her two hands.  "So do I, Maggy.
She's said so, anyway."

"Meaning me?"

He nodded.

"You've taken it on the chance that I'll come?"

"It's got to be completely furnished.  If it
wasn't you it would probably be some one I didn't
care about half so much.  But it's going to be
you, isn't it, Maggy?"

"For three years!"  Her voice trembled.
"And after?  What happens when the agreement's
run out?  Has the girl got to be like the
flat—taken on by some one else?  There was a
play, wasn't there, a few years ago, called 'Love
and What Then?'  It didn't last long."

She got up and went back into the sitting room.
Woolf followed her.

"Won't you trust me and come?"

"If I came I should come without trusting you.
I'm not the kind that tiles herself in.  I suppose
I should let things rip."

"Well, it's yours for the taking.  Only you've
got to decide—now."

And suddenly Maggy's defenses broke down.
She felt the frail bulwarks of her unsheltered
girlhood crumbling around her.

"It wouldn't be for the bathroom or the
bedroom or what you'd give me," she said huskily.

"Wouldn't it?"

His arms were about her.

"No," she whispered.  "It's you."

.. vspace:: 2

Woolf gave her a little Yale key.

"Here it is.  Let yourself in when you want
to take possession."

He had tea sent up from the restaurant and
they had it together in the cosy sitting room.
Maggy was very subdued.  She would go back to
Sidey Street only to pack the few personal
possessions she treasured.  She hoped, was almost
sure, Alexandra would be out.  She dared not
face her just yet.

"I'll bring you back after the show to-night,"
Woolf reminded her when they parted.  "Don't
forget I've given you the key."

"I've given you more than a key," said Maggy.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`X`:

.. class:: center large

   X

.. vspace:: 2

"Lexie, I feel a beast, but I've got to go.
You'll never understand.  That's why
I've said so little about him.  Woolf, I
mean.  It isn't only what he can give me, though
it does mean something too.  I'm wrong somewhere,
I suppose.  I don't think about it like you
do.  And it's all right for girls like me.
Perhaps it's the only thing.  You'll never want to see
me again.  That's the one part that doesn't bear
thinking about.  I don't suppose you'll believe
I care a hang for you now, but I do, even though
it's too late to go on living with you if I wanted
to.  The other thing was stronger, that's all.  I
had a little Persian cat once.  I used to let her out
for exercise on a string because I was afraid of
losing her.  But she got out when I wasn't
looking all the same and disappeared for three days.
She couldn't help it, poor dear.  It was just her
nature.  I expect I'm like that cat.  I was bound
to go on the tiles.  You'll think that vulgar.  I
am vulgar all through.  That's the difference between us.

"You've been the best chum in the world, dear.
I can't thank you properly.  I'm a rotter.  I've
left my cash on the dressing-table.  I don't want
it.  Fred Woolf will be looking after me.  Take
it, do please.  What's the use of starving when
you needn't.  Good-by, Lexie.  You may not
believe it, but I'm crying and I *do* care.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent

   "MAGGY."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XI`:

.. class:: center large

   XI

.. vspace:: 2

Mrs. Bell came into the room with the
supper tray.  It was mostly tray.  The
supper consisted of two cups of cocoa,
half a loaf of bread and an atom of butter.  She
gave her lodger an inquisitive glance as she spread
the tablecloth.  Alexandra had Maggy's letter
in her hand, and her face was woefully sad.

"You need not lay for two," she said quietly.
"Miss Delamere won't be here in future."

The bald statement was sufficient for Mrs. Bell.
Ever since the day when Maggy had been brought
to her door in a private car she had more or less
been prepared for this dénouement.  The association
of chorus-girls and cars in her experience had
but one meaning: a rise for the former in the plane
of life with a concomitant and much-to-be-desired
acceleration of the pace at which it may be lived.

"I'm glad she's found a friend," she observed
cheerfully.  "She's the sort that's made for a man
to look at.  Have you seen her chap yet, Miss
Hersey?"

"I don't want to talk about Miss Delamere's
affairs," winced Alexandra.

"You're upset, I can see.  I'm not denying it's
hard to see a friend carried off like that."  Mrs. Bell
Bell shook her head deprecatingly.  "It's a
trying place, the stage.  I wouldn't go back to it
myself, not if I was paid like a Pavlova.  I'd rather
toil and moil for Mr. Bell downstairs all the days
of my life."  And having thus asserted her claim
to respectability, conjugal endurance and a taste
for sour grapes, with admirable conciseness she
felt she was privileged to ask another question:
"Have you got a shop yet, dear?"

"No, it's the wrong time of year."

"You can't wait till the autumn?"

"No."

"Then what'll you do?"

"I'm not thinking of myself just now.  It
doesn't matter," said Alexandra wearily.

"I know.  You're bothering your poor head
about Miss Delamere.  Don't you fret.  She's
got some one to look after her.  That's better
than looking after yourself.  I daresay she's
sleeping in a creep de sheeny nightdress to-night
with real lace on her pillows."

"Don't talk like that!" Alexandra shuddered.

"Well, it's no good trying to walk clean on a
muddy road.  Drink your cocoa while it's hot,
dearie.  If you're on the stage you must go on
like the angels in heaven, doing what Rome does,
where there's very little marriage or giving in
marriage."  Mrs. Bell's metaphor was mixed, but her
views were definite.  "That's why I would rather
see my own girl lying here at my feet dead and
smiling in her coffin than in the profession.  She's
a respectable upper housemaid," she finished
comfortably, as she closed the door behind her.

Alexandra tried to eat a little dry bread.  The
butter was rancid.  She ended by giving up the
attempt.  Her throat ached.  She leant her head
on the table.  It ached as much as her heart and
throat did.  Her whole body was permeated with
the pain of unshed tears.

Maggy had gone.

Except for the letter, which was final enough, it
was difficult to realize.  She had not even taken
her box, only a small handbag.  Her possessions
had been so pitifully meager.  Her wooden-backed
brush and a metal comb were still on the
dressing-table, but the cheap German silver
powder box and her rouge and cream pots were gone;
there was the nightdress case on her bed in the
crochet work that was Maggy's hobby with the big
badly-worked M in washed-out greens and pinks.
Wrapped in a little screw of paper was the money
she had left behind.  She had taken Alexandra's
photograph, and for some reason she had turned
the face of her own to the wall.

A wild desire came to Alexandra to run out, late
as it was, go to Maggy and bring her back.  Then
she remembered that she did not even know where
Maggy was.  She was gone and that was all;
swallowed up in the immensity of London;
captured by some man unknown.

The realization that Maggy had deliberately
stolen away at the call of exigency hurt her acutely.
Passion had never touched Alexandra.  Just now
she could only feel impatience with one who was
moved by it to extremes.  But mingled with the
distaste for a thing she could not comprehend was
compassion for her friend.  Some part of Maggy
must be suffering, sorry.  No woman surrenders
herself without some secret, sacred regret.

She sat thinking, trying not to think, for hours.
Finally, she undressed and, in the darkness, said
her prayers.  She felt they were futile,
childish....  She turned her face to the wall so that
she should not see the ghostly outline of Maggy's
narrow, empty bed.

As the hours passed and sleep did not come she
began to wonder if it were not all a dream.  The
idea took hold of her.  Of course, Maggy had not
gone....

She sat up and spoke her name across the darkness.

"Maggy!"

Although there was no answer, the tantalizing
obsession was still upon her.  She got out of bed
and crossed over to Maggy's, feeling above the
coverlet for the comforting touch of the warm,
sleepy body.  The coverlet was flat, the sheets
cool.  Maggy had gone.

She groped her way back to her own bed, and
at last tears came, and with tears, sleep.

By the morning, the sharp edge of her feelings
was somewhat blunted.  She was still sorry, but
not passionately sorry.  Those who have wept for
their dead with the poignancy of first grief
experience much the same dulling of the emotions.  It
precedes the inevitable resignation, without which
they could not again take up the lonely burden of
life.

Maggy was lost to her, as lost to her as if she
had died.  She had not the consolation of knowing
that she would see her again, alive, exuberantly
happy, unregretting, and that this feeling would
pass.  She did not know then that across the
barrier of her frailty Maggy would hold out her
strong, young, eager hands, and that she,
Alexandra, would grasp them in unalterable love and
friendship.

She put away the money Maggy had wanted her
to take until she could give it back to her, and
directly she had had her breakfast, started for the
theatrical agents' offices.  They opened at ten.
She had small hope of obtaining anything at any
of them.  The principals did not know her by
sight.  When one of them made an occasional
dart into the waiting room and gave a quick
glance round she was only "one of a crowd."

At such times there would be a little stir and
scrimmage amongst the men and women in which
she would not share.  Men would elbow women,
women elbow men in their efforts to catch the
agent's eye or better still his sleeve.  And he
would shake them off in a precipitate passage from
his own room to that of his partner's at the other
end of the waiting room.  Alexandra knew his
short, little, staccato, stock sentences by heart.

"Nothing for you to-day, dear."  (Shake her off.)

"Sorry, my dear, I can't stop."  (Shake her off.)

"No, my dear, I—oh, it's you.  Stop behind.
I'll see you later."  (Pressure of the hand.)

"Nothing in your line to-day, old fellow."
(Shake him off.)

Perhaps a fleeting look at Alexandra, so that
she was in doubt as to whether she had been
noticed or not.

Then the crowd would wait on, lessened by the
few who lost heart and went on to other agencies.
The assembly varied little in any of these refuges
of the out-of-works.  There you would find every
specimen of stageland: the sprightly young man
with an eye stimulated hopefully by sherry from
the adjacent Bodega, dressed in the last
fashionable suit left from his wardrobe, his waistcoat
pocket bulging with pawntickets; the old actor
with a blue chin, a red nose and a kindly smile,
unctuously imparting the latest "wheeze" to a
brother comedy-merchant; the hard-eyed woman
of forty, rouged, smelling of spirits and patchouli,
consumed with inward wrath because of the
refusal of managers to entertain her applications
for youthful parts; the fresh-looking girl with an
air of country lanes and a pigtail, who
nevertheless was bred and born at Stratford-at-Bow; the
seedy advance-agent, vainly trying to adopt a
managerial air; the plump and cheery chorister
with no ambitions beyond thirty shillings a week
and a long pantomime run; her male compeer
nourishing a secret belief that he could "wipe the
floor" with every tenor on the boards.

Eleven, twelve, one o'clock, and still the patient
crowd would linger on in the agents' offices,
chattering intermittently, giggling occasionally,
desperately anxious all the same, eyes ever glancing
toward the two shut doors.

At one would come the unwelcome news, spoken
by the young man who kept the accounts and
made out the contracts:

"Mr. Whitehead's gone to lunch.  Won't be
back to-day.  No use waiting."

How quickly the room emptied!  Alexandra
did not know that a goodly proportion of its
habitués would quickly foregather for
consultation and refreshment in Rule's or the Bodega,
where the atmosphere was redolent of alcoholic
odors, curiously aromatic, sonorous with sustained
conversation and the low chuckle of the comedians.

One saw the same faces again after the luncheon
hour, at Denton's, at Hart's, at Paul Stannard's,
a little less hopeful, a little more tired as the day
went on.

Paul Stannard had got Alexandra her
engagement at De Freyne's.  She went to him again
now.  She liked him.  He was a gentleman by
birth, had drifted on to the stage, loathed it, could
not get free of it, and ended by running a
theatrical agency with fair success.  He did not call
all girls "dear," only the ones that liked it, and
was more accessible to the rank and file than most
agents.

"I thought I had fixed you up with De Freyne,"
he said.  "His show's in for a long run.
Couldn't stick it?"

"Mr. De Freyne told me to go."

Alexandra was tired.  She could hardly stand.

"Sit down," invited Stannard.  "Up against it?"

"Well, I've nothing to do.  It's serious."

"I'm sorry."  He turned over the leaves of
a big book on his desk.  "And I can't help you.
Nothing's doing, except a sextette for Rio."

"Can't I go?" she asked eagerly.

"My God, no!"

He put his hands in his pockets and surveyed
her compassionately.  Belonging as he did to the
class that shelters its women it still hurt him to
see women engaged in fighting for bread.  It was
more desperate still when they fought for honor
too, or held it above the price of bread.

"Why did you send me to the Pall Mall if you
knew they wouldn't want—any one straight-laced?"

"I can't ask every girl who comes to me for
a job to sign an affidavit concerning her morals.
Why are you on the stage at all if you've got
different ideas to the others?  You haven't an
earthly.  Might as well buy a toothbrush."

"Buy a toothbrush?"

"To sweep out an Augean stable."  He
scribbled some addresses on a half sheet of paper.
"There's just a chance these aren't filled up.
Mention my name.  I don't hold out any hope,
though."  He hesitated for a minute.  "Are you
bound to go on at this?  Haven't you a home to go to?"

"I'm bound to go on," she said, trying to keep
the desperate note out of her voice.

"Well, good luck."  Stannard held open the
door for her.

"Poor devil!" he said as he shut it.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XII`:

.. class:: center large

   XII

.. vspace:: 2

All the names which Stannard had given
her were those of minor managers.  It
was late in the season and their companies
would in all probability be made up and booked
for the road.  Still she went to them.  There was
a bare chance that one of them might have a
vacancy.  For two hours she hung about their
offices waiting for an interview, only to waste her
time in the end.  "Full up" was the answer she
got to each application.  The last place she called
at was situated in a block of buildings off
Shaftesbury Avenue.  As she left it a door facing her
on the opposite side of the passage opened and a
man in a frock coat and silk hat came out.  He
stopped short, looked her up and down and spoke.

"Excuse me, but are you out of an engagement?"

"Yes," she replied, a last glimmer of hope
flickering within her, the silk hat suggesting
something managerial.

The stranger's next words confirmed her in
this idea.

"I believe you're the very person I've been
looking for for a week.  The question is, can you
sing?"

"Yes."

"Then come in."

He threw the door open again and followed
her in.  The room contained two chairs, a desk,
a small grand piano, one or two playbills on
the walls and several diagrams of the larynx,
looking not unlike a map of the tube railways.

"This is my practise room and therefore bare,"
he explained.  "It's bad to sing in a room blocked
up with furniture.  Breaks up the voice, you know.
By the way, my name's Norburton—Gerald
Norburton.  You may have heard of it," he added
modestly.

Alexandra had heard of it.  The name was
that of a singer of some repute.

"Oh, then, you're not an agent," she said, a
little disappointed.

"Lord, no."  The idea seemed to amuse him.
"Fact of the matter is this: my friend, Maurice
Haines, wrote to me the other day—here's his
letter—asking me to find him a likely girl for
a sketch he has booked at the Palace.  He'd
engaged some one, but she's just gone in for
appendicitis.  Funny thing, appendicitis.  Has it ever
occurred to you—"  The blank look in Alexandra's
face constrained him to keep to business.
"So he appeals to me, thinking that as a singer
I might know some one likely.  But I didn't—not
until I saw you.  If you can sing it's a sure
thing."  He read from the letter he had been
searching for.

"'She must be tall and dark and a lady.  Youth
essential.  Of course she must have a well-trained
voice, but previous experience doesn't matter.
I'll look in next week, and if you know a girl who
will do, for heaven's sake have her round.  The
sketch is booked for the next six months, first here
and then in the leading provincial towns.  I'll pay
ten pounds a week for the right woman.'

"What do you think of that?"

"It seems to me it depends on my voice," said
Alexandra.

"That's it.  Do you mind singing me something?
Here's a pile of songs.  Pick out one
you know."

She found a song.  Norburton played the
accompaniment.  She had an idea she was singing
well and hoped he would think so.  When she
finished, she had the impression that he was not
satisfied.

"I'm afraid you're disappointed," she said, with
foreboding.

"No, not exactly.  You've a nice voice.  You
want to know how to pitch it better.  As it is it
won't carry.  I believe I could teach you in five
days, before Haines comes round."

"I couldn't expect you to do that."

"But I *do* teach," he laughed.  "Do you doubt
my capability?  I assure you that besides being
a public singer I get three guineas for every
half-hour lesson I give."

"What I meant was," said Alexandra, "that
I couldn't expect you to coach me for nothing, and
I couldn't pay enough to make it worth your
while."

He appeared to think.

"I want to do my best for Haines," he said.
"Look here.  I'll give you five lessons—one
every day for ten minutes—and you can pay me
what you can afford, five shillings a lesson, say."

She colored.  "That's charity."

"No.  I really want to help Haines."

Now Alexandra had little more than five
shillings in her purse.  The next quarterly payment
of her annuity would not be due for a fortnight.
In the meantime all she possessed was some old
jewelry that had belonged to her mother.  There
was the money Maggy had left behind her, but
she was not going to touch that.

"I should like you to teach me.  It's very good
of you," she said.  "Would you take this instead
of money?  It's worth a little more than five
five-shilling lessons."  She tendered him a ring with
a single pearl in an antique setting.  A pawnbroker
would have lent her five pounds on it.  She
was anxious that he should take the ring.  It
would make her feel less under an obligation to him.

Apparently he appreciated her feelings.

"That's very pretty of you," he said.  "It
fits my little finger, too.  Would you rather I took
it?"  There was a shade of reluctance in his voice.

"Much rather."

"Well, thank you very much.  Now I must pull
you through by a little teaching.  Can you have
your first lesson now?  No time like the present,
is there?  Stand in the corner over there to the
right.  Now, sing 'ah' on middle C.  Keep your
tongue well down.  Give it room—give it room!
Swell it out!  You'll do very well," he said, after
ten minutes.  "To-morrow, same time.  I'll drop
Haines a line.  Don't thank me, please."

Another girl came in as Alexandra went out.
She heard Norburton tell her she was early.

"Have you heard from Mr. ——"  She
thought the name mentioned was Haines, but
argued she must have been mistaken.  The girl
was fair and short, not at all the type Norburton's
friend wanted.  Alexandra assumed she must be
one of the singer's private pupils, and thought no
more about her.

For the next four days she came for her lessons,
and at the end of that time Norburton told
her he was quite satisfied with the result.

"Haines will be here to-morrow at eleven,"
he told her.  "Don't worry, you'll get the engagement."

All the same she did worry.  She pinned her
hopes on it.  She had curtailed her food down
to the irreductible minimum.  Privation showed
in her looks.  She was not a big eater, but her
physique demanded good and nourishing food,
which now she never got.  She wanted new shoes
and gloves badly.  These she could not manage
to do without indefinitely.  She began to lose
confidence in herself in these days.  She knew her
appearance was noticeably shabby, and that she
was getting the delicate look that employers
dislike.  One cannot say to the man from whom one
is hoping for an engagement: "I'm pale, but I'll
look better when I can afford to feed myself
properly.  My clothes are shabby, but they would be
in rags if I hadn't looked after them as if they
were priceless brocades.  And I'm not poor and
hungry and out of an engagement because I've no
talent, but because I've certain principles that I've
brought to the wrong place.  Give me a chance and
don't ask anything else of me."

At five minutes to eleven the next day she was
in Shaftesbury Avenue.  Outside Mr. Norburton's
door some ten or twelve girls were waiting.
They looked a mixed lot, all of them anxious, poor
and shabby.

"He told me ten," said one of them, "and he's
not here yet."

"I've been here since half-past nine," said another.

One bold spirit rapped sharply on the door.

As a result one next to it bearing a brass plate and
a solicitor's name was opened and a man put his
head out and angrily demanded:

"Who's making that row?  If you're waiting
to see the fellow who had that room, he's gone.
Went away yesterday afternoon."

"Meaning Mr. Norburton?" asked one of the girls.

"I don't know what his name was.  He's
gone, anyhow.  It's no good waiting about and
making a noise."

He shut the door.  The girls stared at one
another blankly.

"I want to know the meaning of this," said
one of them truculently.  "P'raps the caretaker
can tell us."  She clattered down the stone stairs,
and half a dozen of the others followed her.

A fair girl standing next to Alexandra spoke to her.

"Did you want to see Mr. Norburton too?"

"Yes, but I'm afraid I shan't."  Alexandra
felt faint.

"I don't think we shall either.  It's my belief
we've been done.  Did he give you lessons?"

"Five."

"I had five, too," nodded the girl.  "Two
pounds I paid the blighter.  He said I'd suit
Mr. Haines a treat.  Read me a letter saying he
wanted a fair girl with a good figure and contralto
voice—  What's that?  It was a 'tall and dark'
to you!  My hat!  What did *you* pay?"

"I gave him a pearl ring."

"O-oh!"  Her eyes went round.  "I saw
it on his finger.  Then you were hard up?"

"I had the ring, but not the money to pay him."

"And I had the money.  And I haven't got it now."

One of the girls who had gone to make enquiries
below came up again.

"Thought I'd come and tell you," she
panted.  "It's true.  He's gone, right enough.
The piano was hired and it's been fetched away.
He's done seventeen of us, the beast!  His name
isn't Norburton at all, but Easton or Weston, I
forget which.  If the real Mr. Norburton or
Maurice Haines heard what he'd been up to they'd
prosecute him.  He's just been using their names
to cod us.  Oh, I'd like to—to—"  The
unspoken threat tailed off in a resigned sigh.  "Well,
there's a voice-trial at Daly's at 11.30.  I'm off."

Alexandra did not move.  She was dazed.
The other girls melted away, all but one little
creature in black who commenced to sob.

"Don't cry," said Alexandra, touched by her
grief.  "You must try and forget the disappointment."

The girl raised streaming eyes.  She was very
plain and wore her hair frizzed out all round her
head.  The fingers through which her tears had
been trickling were red and work-worn.

"I paid him f-four pounds in gold," she wept.
"And he s-said my voice was g-good enough to
get me the engagement.  And I've given notice at
the place I'm at on the strength of it, and now
I'll have to go back and ask to be kept on.  Makes
me ashamed of myself, it does, after what I said
to the mistress about gettin' ten pounds a week
on the stage.  And now f-four pounds of good
money gone!"

"Haven't you any left?"

"I've got eleven saved, but it would have been
fifteen," sniffed the girl.  She took it hardly that
she had to pay so heavily for her experience.

"Well, then, cheer up," said Alexandra.  "I
haven't got fifteen shillings."

"Not in the world?"

"Not in the world."

"But you're a lady!"

"Am I?" asked poor Alexandra.  Tears were
not far from her own eyes now.  The girl saw
them, and the fount of her own dried up in her
compassion for a disappointment that must be even
greater than her own because of the actual need
behind it.  A lady, and with less than fifteen
shillings in the world!  Why, she had always been
able to earn nearly ten shillings a week, without
counting her board and keep.  She had always
been able to count on regular employment, plenty
of food and a fairly comfortable bed; and until
she had been dazzled by the magnificent prospect
of ten pounds a week and still more by the idea
of becoming a "star actress," she had been fairly
contented with her life.  She wished she had never
seen that catch advertisement in the newspaper.

"I shouldn't think any more about the stage
if I were you," advised Alexandra.

"I shan't," was the resolute answer.  "It's
no good, is it?"

"Not a bit of good."

The girl hesitated.

"Do you mind telling me," she said, "if it's
very bad.  The girls on it, I mean."

"It's difficult sometimes for them to be good,"
was Alexandra's qualified reply.

"That's pretty much what our milkman says.
He had a wife he divorced that used to go on the
stage once a year in pantomime."

Alexandra smiled wanly.  She was getting
accustomed to the democratic atmosphere of the
stage, where social differences are inexistent.  The
dragging in of the milkman's wife was only a
sharp-cut illustration of the lengths to which the
leveling-down process could go.  The life had
robbed her of all surprise at the necessity of
having to rub shoulders with ex-shopgirls and the
like; but this was the first time she had found
herself on terms of equality with a domestic servant.

"Dessay I'm well out of it," said the girl
philosophically.  "I hope you'll get on, miss."

As she passed Alexandra she stopped, making
believe to pick up something that was not there.

"Oh, look what you've dropped!" she
exclaimed, holding out two half-crowns.

Alexandra had come out that morning with only
a few pence.

"It isn't mine," she disclaimed.  "If you look
in your purse you'll probably find it's your own
money."

The girl made a pretense of doing so.

"No, that it isn't," she insisted.  "It must be
yours, right enough."

"But it can't be."

Before she could anticipate the movement, the
girl slipped past her and raced down the stairs.
Alexandra followed as fast as she could.  But
the girl was too quick for her.  She was nowhere
to be seen when Alexandra reached the street.

Only then did she comprehend the meaning of
the generous subterfuge.  She stood staring down
at the money in her hand—two half-crowns,
given her by a servant!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XIII`:

.. class:: center large

   XIII

.. vspace:: 2

July, that theatrical close season, was
wearing itself out.  Alexandra subsisted on the
small quarterly dividend that a grateful
country bestows in the way of pension on the orphaned
children of the men who fight its battles.  She
sweltered in her one room or else sat in the
deserted ones of theatrical agencies waiting for an
engagement that never came.

One sultry afternoon, on turning into Sidey
Street, she found, standing opposite her door, a
brand-new landaulette.  In her prosperous days
she had learnt to distinguish between the makes
of cars, and a glance showed her that this one
belonged to a type that was just then being widely
advertised at a popular price.  But it was neither
its shape nor finish, nor even the bright coloring
of its paintwork that attracted her attention so
much as the large monogram composed of an
M. and a D. in the center of its door-panel.  The
world might contain a thousand other people with
those initials, but M. D. on an empty car outside
Alexandra's door meant that Maggy was inside
the house, waiting for her.

Her heart beat fast and she went in.  There
would be a visible difference in Maggy.  Their
girlish friendship was a closed chapter.  Maggy had
left her.  The hurt still rankled.  She felt
nervous.  It would be like greeting a stranger; worse,
it would be meeting as a stranger one with whom
she had shared a close intimacy.  There would
be awkwardness....

Maggy, waiting for her, felt equally nervous.
She had struggled against the desire to see
Alexandra again, but it had grown too strong for her.
She yearned for her.  She wanted to tell her that
she had not deserted her, that she could still be
as true a friend as ever.  Suppose Alexandra were
so intolerant of what she had done that she would
not even let her stay a minute!  Perhaps she
would refuse to speak, or worse still, and this was
more likely, she might pretend hard that her
feelings had not changed so that she, Maggy, might
not feel hurt, and Maggy would know she was
pretending.  She began to wish she had not come.

Looking round the little room it seemed difficult
to believe that she had really left it.  Only
the expensive frock she was wearing, a peep
through the curtains at the new toy that she liked
to drive about in, assured her that she had.  Then
she noticed that her bed was gone.  That was
even more conclusive evidence of the domestic
rupture than the expensive frock and the car.  And
yet Alexandra had her photograph on the mantel-piece.
That cheered her.

During one of her periodical peeps at the
window she saw Alexandra walking down the street.
A panicy feeling assailed her.  She peeped again
and noticed how slowly she was coming along, how
listless was her step.  She looked tired, frail.
Maggy's warm heart gave a compassionate thump.
Her nervousness increased as she heard Alexandra
mounting the stairs.  What should she say to
start with?  "I was passing, and I thought I'd
look in?"  That would sound casual, forced.
Or "I hope you don't mind my coming to see
you."  That would be groveling.  Should she
wait for Alexandra to speak first?  Suppose she
should say something cold and cutting, final?
Suppose she just stood still, waiting for Maggy
to speak?  And how long might they not stand
looking at each other like that, without saying a
word....

Alexandra opened the door and Maggy faced
round, her breast rising and falling.

Unrehearsed words bubbled from her heart.

"Oh, Lexie, I'm just the same.  Won't you be?"

"Maggy, dear!"

Choking with emotion and gladness, they found
they were holding hands tightly, as if they could
never let go.  Big tears welled up in Maggy's eyes.

"It doesn't alter one a bit," she got out huskily.

They sat down on the bed, close together, for
a moment or two dumb with congestion of
thought—the numberless things, essentials affecting
themselves, that needed asking and answering.

"Are you happy, Maggy?"

"Don't I look it?"  She irradiated happiness.
Her eyes beamed, her lips laughed.  "I love him,
Lexie.  It's lovely to love a man whatever way
love comes to you.  He can't give me the brown
egg at breakfast because he's not there then, but
I feel just as—oh, you know!  I'm not really
*bad*, Lexie.  There isn't another man in the world
for me.  Tell me about yourself, darling.  Have
you got anything to do yet?"

"No.  I'm beginning to wonder whether I ever
shall.  I can't see anything ahead.  It's black."

"Your stomach's empty," said Maggy prosaically.
"You look as if you've lived on nothing
for ten days."

"I've lived on four-and-sixpence a week."

"Oh, Lexie!  And I've had caviare and plovers'
eggs and all sorts of expensive things while
you've been starving!"  She looked horribly
contrite.  "Do you know that picture advertisement
with a big fat cat talking to a thin miserable one
and saying it had been fed on somebody's milk?
I'm the fat cat because I'm being kept by—"

"Don't!" said Alexandra.

"I'm sorry.  I forgot.  Fred encourages me
to be downright.  Don't take the pins out of your
hat.  Look here, Lexie.  Do me a favor and
come out with me sometimes.  Come now!
When Fred's not around I'm at a loose end, and
it's lonely.  I get tired of mooching round the
shops and only buying things for myself.  The
day would go faster if I could lie in bed half the
morning, but I'm so beastly energetic.  I'm awake
at seven and thinking of eggs and bacon.  I would
like to show you my flat.  Would you mind
coming to see it?  There's no one there, only me."

She saw Alexandra hesitate.

"It's such a duck of a flat," she went on.  "I
haven't got any one to show it to.  Dozens of
times I've said to myself: if only Lexie could see
this or that....  You needn't approve of me,
but do come!  We can have an early dinner
before I go to the theater."

"But what about—"

"Fred's never there at that time.  We generally
lunch out and then I don't see him till after
the show."

On Maggy's left hand Alexandra noticed the
gleam of a wedding ring.  Maggy, following her
glance, smiled contentedly.  For the moment it
occurred to Alexandra that perhaps Maggy was
really married after all.  She asked the question.

"No," was the regretful reply.  "But I often
forget I'm not.  There's not much difference
when you're fond of a man.  You get to love him
so much that you don't feel the law could bring
you any closer.  All the same I'd like to be
married to him really.  I'd like to look after his
clothes, and keep his things tidy—and have his
children."  She flushed and got up rather
hurriedly.  "Ready?  Come along!"

In the narrow hall they encountered Mrs. Bell.
She had been lying in wait, and now advanced
with her be-ringed and not over-clean hand outstretched.

"Always pleased to see you, Miss Delamere,"
she beamed.  "I'm sure Miss Hersey's been quite
lost without you.  No chance of your coming back
to us, I suppose?"  She smiled knowingly.

"You never know," said Maggy lightly.
"Here's something to—buy shrimps with," she
supplemented, winking at Alexandra.

Mrs. Bell gave an astonished and delighted
look at the coin before her fingers closed on it.

"Well, you are a dear!  I always did say you
had a heart of gold—"

"Not when my purse had only coppers in it,"
Maggy laughed.

"What did you give her?  She looked quite
surprised," Alexandra inquired directly the street
door had shut.

"A sovereign."

"But why?"

"Swank, my dear.  Get in."

The car moved off.

"How do you like it?" she asked.  "It's a
Primus.  Fred's got an interest in them.  I wish
he'd make me an agent.  He's had my photo
taken in one for an ad.  They've got electric
starting and lighting and only cost two-seventy-five.
Lean back, dear.  Isn't it comfy?  Oh, I
wonder what you'll think of my flat.  You'll like
the bathroom, I know.  Hot water service at any
time of the day or night.  That's in the prospectus."

Alexandra laughed.

"May I have a bath?"

"Of course.  Whenever you like.  I thought
you'd ask."

She could not contain her pride in her new home.
Alexandra, unable to help contrasting it with her
own poor room, liked its light daintiness, its
exquisite tidiness.  Maggy would have delighted in
doing the whole work of a cottage of her own in
the country.  She was by nature domesticated.
The personal touch was everywhere visible about
the flat, especially to Alexandra who knew her.
Maggy had a mania for crochet work.  It was to
be seen in all directions.  Towels, mats, chair
covers, everything that could have crochet sewn on
to it was so ornamented.  A large open workbox,
crammed to overflowing with a medley of fancy-work,
testified to the hours she gave to her needle
and the many directions in which she made use of
it.  A mongrel terrier gave them a violent
welcome as they came in, and a dissipated-looking
cat blinked at them lazily from the sofa where it
lay on a cushion.  Maggy introduced the two
animals.

"This is Mr. Onions," she said.  "I saw him
eating one out of a dustbin and brought him here.
He was starved, Lexie.  Now he lives on the fat
of the land, like me.  And he's no breed, like
me.  Neither is Mrs. Slightly.  She's Slightly
because she's slightly soiled, and never will clean
herself, and she's called 'Mrs.' because she's not
married, but ought to be.  Isn't it curious, Lexie?
Slightly and Onions are absolute gutter-snipes, but
they've taken to cushions and cream as if they'd
never known anything else.  Fred can't bear them.
He wanted me to have a Pekinese with a pedigree,
but *I* haven't a pedigree, so I don't want an
animal with one.  Slightly and Onions are such
grateful devils, too.  Would you really like a
bath now?  After you've had it we'll have tea.
China tea at four and six a pound, my dear!
Think of that!  I believe I could drink tea dust
and enjoy it if I knew it was expensive."

While Alexandra luxuriated in her bath,
reckless for once of the quantity of water she used,
Maggy took the opportunity of providing something
exceptional in the way of tea.  It began with
poached eggs and finished with strawberries and
cream.  Maggy was not a bit hungry; she had
lunched late with Woolf.  But she knew
Alexandra had been denying herself food and would
eat heartily so long as she could do so in
company.  So she crammed loyally, ignoring the
physical discomfort it inflicted on her.

.. _`103`:

Finally she put Alexandra into the most
comfortable of her chairs and drew another close to
it.  Onions lay at her feet, Slightly was curled
on her lap.

"Now tell me what you've been doing to get
an engagement," she said.

"There's nothing to tell.  No luck anywhere,
that's all."

Maggy sighed.  "I wish you could live here.
That's impossible, I know.  But why be so proud?
Let me lend you a few pounds."

"I can't.  I've not used the money you left.  I
meant to give it back to you, but I forgot."

"You make me angry.  Isn't my money good
enough?  I'm sorry, Lexie.  You've got such
cracked ideas."

Alexandra decided to be frank.

"It isn't that," she said.  "I would take your
money if I dared and be grateful for it.  I would
sooner borrow from you than from any one.  But
if I began to borrow, even from you, I should find
it more difficult to keep straight.  I've never said
as much to anybody before, but I don't want you
to think I won't take it because it's you who are
offering it."

"I think I know what you mean.  Once you've
taken the first step you're afraid you'll go on
slithering.  But you've got to take some sort of
step to get a job.  De Freyne said we were shabby,
Lexie; but if he could see you now!  What's the
use of being nearly the same size as your best
friend if you won't let her lend you a dress or
two?  Answer me that.  That's not borrowing.
That oughtn't to hurt your pride.  We used to
swop things.  And I've got a dress and a hat, and
a pair of shoes in the other room that are too
small for me.  You must have them, Lexie.  No
one'll look at you as you are.  When managers
see a girl looking shabby they only think of the
reputation of their stage-door.  If you'll just let
me give you a leg-up toward a job!  Let me drive
you round to the agencies in the car instead of
walking.  I won't take 'no.'  It's Maggy's call
this time."

She prevailed in the end, forced the new frock
on Alexandra and the shoes that were too small;
stuffed other things into the parcel when she wasn't
looking—a veil and some gloves, a pot of Bovril
from her sideboard, a tin of biscuits, a bottle of
scent and other things.  Alexandra found them
all when she got home.  They dropped out of
the most unexpected places.  There was a box
of chocolates in one sleeve, some very nice soap
in another.  A silk petticoat was wrapped round
a bottle of lemon squash.  It was so like Maggy's
indiscriminate largesse.  Where she loved, she
was constrained to give, always with both hands.
Before Alexandra left she showed her a photograph.

"Fred," she said.  "Isn't he handsome?
He's got one white tuft in his black hair.  I wish
you knew him, Lexie."  Alexandra had all along
been afraid she was going to say that.  "I wish
you *would* meet him."  Her voice was wistful.
"I'm so proud of you.  I've talked about you to
him such a lot.  I believe if he were to see you
he'd—think more of me," she added humbly.

"Doesn't he think a lot of you?" asked Alexandra,
surprised.  She put down the photo.  The
face, handsome, albeit brutal, did not appeal to her.

"In a way.  But I don't think he really believes
you're a lady ... that a lady would be real
friends with me.  It's difficult to explain."

Alexandra felt sure she would not like Woolf.
She instantly resented what she suspected must be
his attitude toward Maggy.

"You'd be doing me a favor," Maggy said.
"Would you mind very much?"

Alexandra shrank from meeting Woolf because
instinctively she guessed the kind of man he was.
The photograph almost told her.  It showed her
a man, not a gentleman, yet whose money bought
him the right of way amongst gentlemen, the type
of man who would assume that every woman, not
a lady, had her price.  She felt sorry for Maggy.

"I will meet him if you're very keen about it,"
she said at length.  It seemed so grudging, so
ungrateful to refuse the one thing required of her.
Maggy would have done, had done, more than
that for her.  She acknowledged the concession
now with a spontaneous hug.

"I'll fix a day.  We'll have lunch together,"
she said.  "It makes me so happy, Lexie, to
think I've got you again—my friend.  Men say
women can't be friends.  They don't know.
Have another look round before you go.  You do
think it nice, don't you?  Fred's taken it on a
three years' agreement."

"Is he married?" asked Alexandra suddenly.

"No."

"Then surely he might marry you."

"He would never marry me," said Maggy.
"I don't talk about it.  I don't think of it.  If he
thought I'd got such an idea in my head I don't
believe he'd want me any longer.  He'd hate to
be tied down to anything or anybody for longer
than a three years' agreement."

An oppression fell on Alexandra.  The room,
which had been flooded by the afternoon sun, was
in shade now.  It looked colder, less intimate.
One saw that it was a room whose furniture had
been provided *en bloc* by a Company—the
Company that owned the flats.  There was no
individual taste about it.  There was nothing
permanent about it.  It was not a home, and was not
meant to be one.

"But after three years—" Alexandra began anxiously.

Maggy shut her eyes.

"If you ever love a man," she said, "you'll
know one doesn't think in years.  One simply
feels—in minutes."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XIV`:

.. class:: center large

   XIV

.. vspace:: 2

Alexandra did not have to avail herself
of Maggy's offer of her car for the
purpose of visiting the various agencies.
That evening she received a post-card from
Stannard requesting her to call on Mrs. Hugh
Lambert at her house in South Kensington.
Mrs. Lambert's name was familiar to her as that of
the wife of a leading actor-manager on whose
stage she was never seen.  She toured the
provinces with plays of her own, while he remained in
London or visited New York, in both of which
cities he was the idol of a vast number of
impressionable women.

You could hardly pick up an illustrated paper
without finding Hugh Lambert's photograph in it.
You could buy picture post-cards of him at every
shop where such things are on sale—full-face, in
profile, in costume, out of costume, head and
shoulders, half-length, full-length.  How he was able
to devote so much time to being photographed and
yet get a reasonable amount of sleep was a
mystery that did not seem capable of explanation.
He was immensely popular and very good-looking
in an effeminate way.  Before arriving at the
dignity of actor-management his talent for poetic
interpretation had been freely recognized.  But
success had spoilt him.  Now he was mannered.
Costume parts were his hobby.  The story went
that, at one of his dress-rehearsals in which he was
figuring as a Roman general in gilded armor,
he asked a lady present what she thought of his
appearance, and that her answer had been: "Oh,
Mr. Lambert, what a girl you are for clothes!"

As Lambert's reputation had increased, so that
of his wife had diminished.  At one time she
had promised to develop into an actress of
renown.  But for some reason difficult to
understand she never quite succeeded.  The critics said
she lacked "personal magnetism," that touch of
attractiveness that gets the actress's individuality
across the footlights.  The fact remains that she
failed to please the public in the big roles that
fell to her in her husband's productions.  London
dropped her, and Hugh Lambert's name blazed
alone in colored electric lights across the front of
his theater.

Then came a whisper of his marital infidelity.
The couple separated.  From this time onwards
Mrs. Lambert was seldom seen on the London stage.

Her career was a disappointing one.  None
knew it better than herself.  Technically and
emotionally she was a finer actress than her
husband's leading lady, finer indeed than most of the
leading ladies of other managers.  That she
became a great attraction in the Provinces was
nothing to her.  She loathed the Provinces, their
inadequate theaters, their inferior hotels, and the
incessant traveling.  At thirty-five she found
herself as it were back at the collar-work of her earlier
days of struggle, and without its compensations.
Then, conjugal affection and the stimulus of
ambition still unachieved had made touring bearable
and often enjoyable because she shared it with
Lambert.

Now she was alone.

She hated the sordid manufacturing towns and
their unsophisticated audiences, the eternal
sameness of the self-vaunted watering-places, the dull
spas where fashionable frequenters of the pump
room would condescend to patronize her whom
they would not pay to see in London.  She was
a tired woman.

To her came Alexandra at eleven o'clock on the
morning appointed.  She had quite forgotten,
until her maid brought her up the card, that she had
asked Stannard to find her a small-part actress who
would also be useful as a companion.  She saw
Alexandra at once.

The impression the latter first got of her was a
pathetic one.  She never forgot it.  Mrs. Lambert
was sitting up in bed.  The small oval of her
face was too pale for health, and her dark hair
accentuated her look of fragility.  On the
dressing-table lay a rich copper-colored transformation.

"I hope you don't mind seeing me in bed,"
she said.  "I hate keeping people waiting.  It's
so selfish.  In my time I've sat on dress-baskets
outside dressing-room doors waiting for hours till
some selfish wretch took it into his head to see
me, although he'd made an appointment and knew
perfectly well I was there.  I vowed I'd never
treat any one in the same way.  Sit down
somewhere and tell me about yourself.  What have
you done?"

"Very little," Alexandra confessed.  "I'm
almost an amateur."

Mrs. Lambert made a wry face.  "Not a
moneyed one, I hope?"

"I've got forty pounds a year."

"Officer's daughter's pension?"

"Yes."  Alexandra looked surprised.  "How
did you know?"

"I'm one myself.  Officer's daughters can't
do much when they're left stranded.  They teach
if they're ugly and sensible enough, and they go
on the stage if they're sufficiently pretty and
foolish.  How long have you been at it?"

"Three months."

"And how long in an engagement?"

"I rehearsed for three weeks at the Pall Mall
in the chorus....  I wasn't wanted."

"I don't wonder.  I can't quite see a girl like
you in the Pall Mall chorus.  You must have had
rather an unpleasant time of it there.  Were you
worried by men?  Before I married I used to
wear a wedding ring.  In my innocence, I thought
it would be something of a protection, but it had
quite a contrary effect."  She gave Alexandra a
sympathetic look.  "Would you really like to
come on tour with me?"

"Mr. Stannard didn't say what you required,"
said Alexandra.  "Perhaps you won't think I'm
experienced enough."

"Well, I want some one to thread ribbons
through my underclothes, to sleep in my room
when I see bogies, and play a small part—a
servant flicking chairs.  I can't promise that it will
increase your theatrical reputation, but perhaps
when you leave me, some minor manager might
be induced to give you a decent part on the
strength of your having been in Mrs. Hugh
Lambert's company.  You'll go about with me.  I'll
pay all hotel expenses and give you thirty
shillings a week.  If you're hard up for clothes, say
so.  I've always got a lot more than I want, and
as I send them to the Theatrical Ladies' Guild you
needn't feel under any obligation about taking
them.  I hope you'll decide to come.  I should
like you to.  You won't be overworked and I'll
treat you decently.  I'm not a cat."

"I'd love to come if you'll have me."

"Well, we'll consider it arranged then.  Stannard
will see to the contract.  The tour is for
three months.  I leave town in about a fortnight,
but you might as well come and stop here in the
meantime.  We shall get to know each other and
rub corners off.  Would you care to?  Then
come back to-night, somewhere about six.  You
can help me with my shopping and packing.  I'll
keep you busy!"  She held out a thin artistic hand.

There was no maid in the hall, so Alexandra
opened the door to let herself out.  A man stood
on the steps, about to ring the bell.  He was
thirty or so, of an aristocratic type.  They both
hesitated for a moment.  Then he asked:

"Can you tell me if Mrs. Lambert is in?"

"Yes—I think so," she said.

"Would you mind telling her I'd like to take
her to lunch.  I'll wait if she isn't down yet."

"Yes, certainly," said Alexandra.  It struck
her that he seemed to be aware of the late hours
she kept.  It argued intimacy.  "What name
shall I say?"

"Oh—Chalfont."

She went upstairs again, knocked at the door,
and found Mrs. Lambert with the morning's
papers on the bed.  She was reading of her
husband's projected departure for America with his
successful repertoire.  There were tears in her eyes.

"I shall have to take to glasses," she said,
looking up.  "I can't read without weeping.  What
is it?"

"Mr. Chalfont is downstairs.  He wants to
know if you will lunch with him."

"Please tell Lord Chalfont," said Mrs. Lambert
in a low voice, "that it's the anniversary of
my separation from my husband, and that I'm
lunching on my heart.  But he can come to dinner
to-night if he likes.  Ask him to put you in a taxi."

She returned to the newspapers.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XV`:

.. class:: center large

   XV

.. vspace:: 2

"Lexie's coming to lunch to-morrow,"
Maggy informed Woolf.  "We must
give her a good one, Fred, and you'll
behave, won't you, D.D.?"

"D.D." in Maggy's language of love stood for
Dearest Darling.  She was not free from the
modern, time-saving habit, set by trade advertisements
and the halfpenny papers, of abbreviating
words in common use down to their lowest denomination.

"So she's woken up to the fact that there may
be something to be got out of you," yawned Woolf.

"I wish you wouldn't talk like that, Fred.
Lexie couldn't be on the make-haste.  She's not
made that way."

"Sounds as if she's too good and uninteresting
to live."

"She isn't uninteresting.  You'll like her.
She's very pretty.  Do be good and do me credit."

"Well ... I like that!" Woolf stared at
her, half-amused.

"I mean, don't say the things you say to me.
She's sensitive."

"My dear girl, don't teach me how to talk to
women.  Judging by what you've told me I'm
inclined to think your copybook Lexie is a deep
'un.  I don't think I'll come, anyway."

"Oh, but you must.  I've asked her on purpose
to meet you.  I want her to see what a duck
you are, and to like you, and not to think me bad
just because I let you wipe your shoes on me."

She slipped to the ground and sat at his feet.
Woolf liked her in her devoted moods.  Like
many another unworthy man, adulation gave him
peculiar satisfaction.  Maggy was rarely flippant
now.  She loved Woolf with a passion that almost
frightened her.  It was not a passion of the mind.
He dominated her in other ways.  She was too
transparent to hide how much she cared.  She
gave too much.  It was her pleasure, when she
knew he was going to stay several hours with her,
to take off his shoes and put on the pumps which
with a few other things he kept at the flat.

She commenced to unlace his shoes now.  Then
she dragged his pumps from under the sofa,
kissing them first before she put them on his feet.

"You funny creature.  What makes you do
that?" he asked, well enough aware of her reason,
but desirous of extracting an expression of it.

"Because I adore you.  I feel like Mary
Magdalene or whoever it was who broke the
precious ointment all over her Master's feet.
Oh, yes, I know who it was.  But do you think
she wouldn't have done it just the same if He had
been an ordinary man?  He was *her* lord.  She
never thought of Him as everybody's Lord.  That
isn't blasphemy.  It's love."

"You don't know how I love you," she went
on ardently.  "Men think they know how to love,
but they never love as a woman loves.  I love you
so much that first of all I wish I had been your
mother, so that I might have held you in my arms
when you were tiny and given you dill water for
your tummy aches, and bathed and powdered you....
And next I wish I had been your twin sister
to have grown up with you....  And next I wish
I had been the first woman in your life....  And
next I wish....  Oh, and I'm thankful to be—just
yours."  She sat up, and went on in rather
a tense voice.  "I wonder if you'll ever get tired
of me.  Could you, Fred?"

"Well, I'm not yet."  He gave a playful pull
at her loosened hair.

"And treat me like men treat the A.F.'s in
story-books."

"What's an A.F.?"

"Abandoned female, you goose.  That's what I
am.  And when you've finished with me will you
leave me to starve in a garret while you live in a
mansion with a beautiful and good wife?  And
will I haunt your doorstep and throw vitriol in
your belovedest face?"

"What nonsense you're talking, Maggy."

"It isn't all nonsense.  It isn't only in the
story-books that women do that.  They do it in real
life too.  I read about a case in the paper not long
ago, and the judge asked the girl why she did it.
She answered 'Because I love him.'  The silly
judge said: 'That's a funny way of showing
love,' and there was laughter in Court, in brackets.
Laughter in Court!  I expect it sounded to that
girl like laughter in hell.  I know what she must
have felt.  I daresay she lived so long with the
man and loved him so much that she felt as good
as his wife.  Then when he left her, she must
have gone mad, poor thing."

She got up and stood in front of him, looking
very sweet and alluring.

"How long will you love me, I wonder?" she mused.

Woolf drew her on to his knees.

"So long as you look like you do now."

"You mean so long as I'm pretty?  Wouldn't
you love me if I looked like poor Mrs. Slightly?
She's losing her fur."

"What's the matter with Mrs. Slightly?" he asked.

He did not care for Maggy's mongrel pets, and
his tone was not encouraging.  It put Maggy on
her guard.  She had a premonition that it would
be best to hide Mrs. Slightly's secret until it could
no longer be hidden.

"I'm not quite sure," she said.

"Where is she?"

"I left her in the bathroom.  I'll get her.  She
hasn't had her supper yet."

She went out of the room.  Woolf heard her
calling the cat softly, then came a smothered
exclamation, and she called to him eagerly, excitedly.

"Oh, Fred!  Fred!  Come here!  Come and *look*!"

He followed her.  She was standing before
Mrs. Slightly's basket.  The cat was purring, its
eyes half-shut, tired after the tremendous function
of motherhood.  Six little rat-like, squirming
bodies lay against her own.

"Six of them!" breathed Maggy triumphantly.
"Aren't they lovely!  Wasn't it worth going on
the tiles for, Mrs. Dearest?  The cat's cradle is
full, full!"

Woolf disengaged her arm from his.

"It's disgusting," he said angrily.  "You
ought to have got rid of her before this, or—or
kept her in.  You can't keep the kittens.  They'll
have to be drowned."

Maggy looked at him blankly.

"Aren't you pleased?" she asked, surprised.

"Pleased!  At a sight like that!  Besides, you
told me a lie.  I won't have lies.  You must have
known before you went to the theater that the cat
had had kittens—"

"I didn't.  Oh, how dare you say so!  Do you
think I'd have gone out and left her all these
hours without any milk by her side if I'd guessed
they were coming so soon?"

She flew off, and came back with a saucer of
bread and milk.  She put it on the floor and went
down on her hands and knees beside the newly-born
animals.  There was a rapt expression on
her face.

"I don't think I'll stop," said Woolf huffily, and
moved to the door.

He expected that she would call him back, but
to his surprise she did not even look up.  She was
wholly absorbed with the natural phenomenon.
For the first time in their intercourse she was
oblivious of his presence.  She did not even hear
him go.  She knelt entranced.

At last a sigh broke from her.  She became articulate.

"Oh, you babies!" she whispered.  "Oh, you
little, little things!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XVI`:

.. class:: center large

   XVI

.. vspace:: 2

Maggy looked forward with immense
eagerness to the luncheon at which
Woolf was to meet Alexandra.  She
had a double reason for desiring it.  In a sense,
Alexandra's presence would mean that she no
longer disapproved of the connection: it would
give it a certain sanction, an authority it would
otherwise lack.  Her other reason concerned
Woolf himself.  In spite of his assertions to the
contrary, she was sure he knew how to appreciate
a woman of culture.  Once he saw how different
Alexandra was from the girls he usually met, his
regard for herself would grow stronger, if only
because she had the advantage of the friendship
of such a superior being.

She was not altogether wrong in her assumption
that Woolf liked a lady, although it must be
admitted he seldom felt at ease with one.  He
was only himself with déclassé women, or a girl
of Maggy's class, who had few sensibilities to
shock.  All the same, he was contemptuous of the
women whose society he frequented, and he had
a sneaking admiration for the women of the more
sedate world to which he did not belong.  It was
likely that he would ultimately marry a lady, if
he married at all, since he considered that women,
other than the class that will not give itself away
except in the bond of holy matrimony, were not
worthy of any such honor.  He was a cad, of
course, but a cad of ambitions and brains.

Maggy's rhapsodies about Alexandra left him
cold.  He did not credit Maggy with being much
of a judge concerning matters pertaining to the
aristocracy.  He did not believe that Alexandra
had the breeding Maggy was always vaunting.
He merely supposed that she was more subtle than
Maggy, one who could ape superior manners, much
as an astute parlormaid can.

The fact that this friend so exclusive, according
to Maggy, should overcome her scruples
sufficiently to meet him, knowing perfectly well in
what relation he stood to Maggy, was sufficient
confirmation that she had never had any scruples
of importance to overcome.  He was amused that
Maggy could be so hoodwinked by one of her own
sex.  But then Maggy was a little fool—pretty
and taking, and that was all.  He was too
egregious to appreciate that real friendship for
Maggy, friendship which overrode personal
considerations, had induced Alexandra to accept the
invitation.

She turned up at the flat at the time appointed.
They were to lunch in the restaurant attached.

Woolf could not help being impressed with her
appearance.  He could not deny that she was
really exceedingly pretty.  Her features were
quite perfect—white brow, small straight nose,
well-shaped mouth.  He saw all this at a glance,
the cool, scrutinizing glance of valuation with
which he favored every attractive member of her
sex, whether a duchess in her carriage in Bond
Street or a shop-girl on her way to work.

Maggy introduced her friend and her lover
with mutual pride.  The tone in which she did it
left no doubt that what she would have loved to
say was:

"This is Lexie.  Isn't she lovely?  You know
she is;" and then with a certain dubiousness:
"My Fred....  *Do* like him.  Surely you must
think him handsome."

"Delighted to meet any friend of Maggy's,"
said Woolf cordially.  "Been a long time
coming round, haven't you?"

Alexandra instantly resented the unnecessary
familiarity he put into his tone, but for Maggy's
sake she refrained from showing it.  Woolf was
no better and no worse than she had expected to
find him.  He was merely vulgar, from the
salmon-pink handkerchief in his breast-pocket to
the too-valuable pin in his tie.

"I came as soon as I was asked," she answered
equably.  "Maggy and I are old friends.
There's no reason why I should keep away from her."

"Of course, there isn't.  Only Maggy thought
you didn't approve of—this little show."  He
waved his arm round the room.

"It's a dear little flat.  I like it very much."

Woolf laughed loudly.  "The flat's all right.
Perhaps I should have said our little ménage à
deux.  There's no harm in it.  Everybody's
doing it, aren't they, Maggy?  Come along to lunch,
you girls."

If Alexandra could have run away then and
there she would have done so.  She guessed what
she was in for.  Maggy was looking nervous.
She wanted Alexandra and Fred to "get on," to
like each other.  She had done her best to make
her lover avoid the sort of conversation Alexandra
would not like.  She was dreadfully afraid he was
going to spoil it all.

As Woolf led the way down to the restaurant
she slipped behind and whispered:

"Lexie, don't be shocked if Fred talks a bit.
I've told him not to because you don't like it; but
if he forgets—"

Alexandra gave her arm a little squeeze.  It
heartened her.  Her adoring eyes went to the big
figure, striding on in front of them.

"Doesn't he look a dear?" she asked.  "Could
I *help* it?  Fancy him wanting me!"

Her abjectness was a revelation to Alexandra.
She had not conceived it possible that cheeky,
masterful Maggy, could have surrendered her
independence so completely.  In this man's
company she was quieter, more subdued, ever
watchful to please, to laugh when he laughed—a little
too much perhaps, too ready to applaud his most
commonplace remarks as witticisms, his untasteful
jokes as gems of wit.  She had a mind of her
own.  She hardly showed it.  His assertive
manhood seemed to have swamped her personality.
All the time she was considering him.  He
scarcely considered her at all.

Conversation did not run freely during the first
part of the meal.  Woolf wanted to shine in
Alexandra's eyes as a good host.  He showed it
by bullying the waiters over trivialities, until she
began to feel quite uncomfortable.  His was not
the quietly assertive tone of the man who knows
what he wants and how to order it.  It was
obvious to the very attendants themselves that he
blustered in order to draw attention to his
importance, just as he would tip excessively and yet
argue over a trifling item on the bill.

Over his coffee and a cigarette his manner
showed some improvement.  Still, he had not
taken Alexandra's measure.  She was telling
Maggy of her sudden luck in obtaining an
engagement, and that she was going to stay with
Mrs. Lambert.  Maggy was delighted.

"Oh, I'm glad!" she said enthusiastically.
"It's tip-top, Lexie.  Fred, did you hear that?
Lexie's going on tour with Mrs. Lambert.  Isn't
it splendid for her?"

"Splendid for Mrs. Lambert.  Rather!" concurred
Woolf, with heavy gallantry.  "You'll
have plenty of opportunities of ingenue parts with
the lady," he went on, knowingly.  "You'll suit
her to a T.  You'll play propriety, of course!
Dashed funny, that."

"I don't understand," said Alexandra.

"Oh, come, we're none of us as good as we
look.  Of course you've heard about Mrs. Lambert
and Lord Chalfont?  I told you everybody
was doing it."

Her crimson face and indignant eyes did not
warn him of the blunder he was committing.
Maggy was playing nervously with the crystallized
sugar, afraid of angering Woolf by stemming
the tide of his untactful garrulity.

He bent forward, lowering his voice.  "It's
like this," he said, and began to give details of a
liaison which Alexandra had no reason to credit,
details which were offensive and unnecessary.
She was genuinely shocked.  Involuntarily she
pushed back her chair while he was still talking
and made the first excuse she could think of.

"I shall have to be going now, Maggy.  I'm
so sorry.  I—I'm late for an appointment as it
is.  I—I'll come and say good-by before I go
on tour."

"Must you really go?" asked Maggy weakly.
She knew that Alexandra could stand no more.
It meant that her poor little attempt at concord
between the only two people she cared about had
come to nought.  "Fred, tell the waiter to order
a taxicab."

"I won't wait for that," said Alexandra.  "I
shall be too late.  I ought to go at once.  I shall
find one in the street."

She managed a reassuring smile to show Maggy
that though her feelings were outraged she meant
to get over it, and let it make no difference to their
friendship.  Now that she had met Woolf and
learnt the sort of man he was, nothing would have
induced her to waver in allegiance to Maggy.
Maggy needed her though she might never say it.
She knew she could not bring herself to meet
Woolf again, even for Maggy's sake.

He insisted on escorting her out of the
restaurant and putting her into a cab.  He was aware
now from her almost monosyllabic rejoinders that
he had made a mistake, spoken in bad taste.  It
was suddenly obvious to him that she was a
lady—the "real thing," and that he had offended
her.  Simultaneously with this came the desire
to know more of her.

"I believe you're annoyed," he said.  "Have
I been a bit too plain-spoken?"

"Here's my taxi," she said, disregarding the
question.

He helped her in, knowing that she disapproved
of him.  A natural premonition told him that she
would not be desirous of meeting him again unless
he could convince her he was aware of his error
and regretted it.  He was distinctly taken with
her, more now than ever that her fastidiousness
made her difficult.  He leant toward her and
spoke almost anxiously.

"I'd like to meet you again.  Can't you dine
with me one night before you go?  I'm sorry if
I've offended you....  I made a mistake.  I
thought you were Maggy's sort."

The apology, so disloyal to Maggy, as well as
insulting to herself, inflamed her.

"You unspeakable cad!" she said.

Woolf returned to Maggy rather red in the
face.  She had left the restaurant and was
waiting for him in her sitting-room.  She was afraid
to reproach him, and yet anxious that he should
know he had blundered.  She was terribly disappointed.

"You shocked Lexie," she told him, and waited
to see what he would say.

He made no answer.

"You thought her pretty?" she went on.

Woolf was biting his finger-nails savagely.

"Didn't you?" she persisted.

"Oh, yes.  Very pretty."

He had been repulsed, snubbed, and was
rankling under the smart of it.  It made him turn to
the girl who had nothing but devotion for him for
a salve to his wounded vanity.  The girl who had
just gone was provokingly desirable because of her
cool eyes, her scornful mouth, her aloofness, the
disdain of her.  But Maggy was all his, living for him.

He took her in his arms almost savagely.

"You're worth ten of her," he exclaimed; and
in his irritation believed what he said.

Her body relaxed submissively in the grip of his arms.

"Oh, my God, how I love you!" she murmured,
trembling.

She laid her cheek against his and stroked his
hand.  "Will you do me a favor, Fred?" she
went on presently, unconsciously taking advantage
of what she regarded as a soft mood.

"What is it?  A bit more money than I give you?"

"No.  I don't want more money.  I've got
enough.  I've never been greedy that way, have I?"

"No.  More silly you.  Women should make
hay while the sun shines."

She looked at him with soft eyes.

"When the sun shines some women only want
to let it warm them through and through."

"Well, what's the favor?"

She pointed at the basket containing Mrs. Slightly
and her offspring, which Woolf had not noticed.

"You asked me to have them drowned.  I'd
rather find homes for them.  Please, D.D.?"

"But, good Lord—why?"

She drew away from him, walked over to the
basket, and leant over it, as if communing with
Mrs. Slightly.

"I had a dream last night," she said.  "It's
because of that I—I want Mrs. Slightly's
kittens to live.  I dreamt that I was a mother cat,
only in my dream I had but one little kitty.  But
it was all mine and I loved it.  It had soft black
hair with a white tuft in it—like its father."  She
looked straight at the white lock that was so
singular a feature of Woolf's dark hair.  "And
one afternoon when I had come back from a stroll
I went to the basket to find that my Kitty was
gone.  I mewed for it everywhere.  There was
nowhere that I did not look.  I couldn't possibly,
as a cat, know that the human I looked up to, the
giver of food and all good things could do
anything so evil as to make away with the precious
thing.  It was a nightmare.  In my dream, I was
searching, searching for hours.  My cat-heart was
breaking.  When I woke up, I was mewing!
Don't laugh, Fred.  And I made up my mind that
I couldn't have Mrs. Slightly's kittens drowned.
Oh, the people who drown kittens and take away
calves from cows and lambs from sheep, must be
hard-hearted beasts.  Why, if I had a baby, a
little soft warm baby, and somebody wanted to
deprive me of it—Fred!"  She caught at his arm.

Startled by the sharp note of appeal in her voice
he put a startled question.

Maggy had cast her arms protectively round the
basket where Mrs. Slightly and her kittens slept,
all unconscious of issues concerning their fate.
Her shoulders were shaking.  She was moved by
some extraordinary emotion.  But when she
turned to Woolf again she was calm.

"I am quite sure," she said.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XVII`:

.. class:: center large

   XVII

.. vspace:: 2

The change from the drab surroundings of
the King's Cross Road to Mrs. Lambert's
pretty house in South Kensington made
Alexandra feel as though she had escaped from
purgatory.  Hers was the temperament that
withers in a sad environment and expands in a
bright one.  Whilst in her lodgings she had had
to put up with dinginess and discomfort: Albert
Place was the antithesis of everything unpleasant.
She seemed to breathe more freely there.

The house was small, Georgian and white.
Great wire baskets overflowing with pink climbing
geraniums hung from its porch and balcony.
Between its green iron railings and the front door
was a strip of well-kept garden full of shrubs and
ferns kept fresh and glistening with a constant
supply of moisture.

Inside it was equally delightful.  Mrs. Lambert
had a nice taste for form and color.  Where
Maggy would have put hot-toned plush and
burnished copper the actress had quiet soft brocades
and silver.  Her furniture consisted mainly of
delicate Georgian mahogany as decorative as it was
comfortable.  Alexandra reveled in it all.

Then again, the change meant relief from anxiety.
She had something to do, she would be paid
for it.  For three months or more she would be
free from continuous alarm about the morrow.
Here was occupation, cleanliness, comfort, good
food, agreeable companionship.  Over and over
again she kept reminding herself of it.

The days that followed her arrival were busy
ones.  The tour was to start in a fortnight.
There was much shopping to do, packing,
preparation for it.  The small part Alexandra was to
play, that of a parlormaid, did not take up much
of her time rehearsing.  Mrs. Lambert did not
rehearse at all.  Her understudy relieved her of
that duty.  Occasionally she would spend an hour
watching her company and conferring with her
manager, but so long as things went on smoothly,
as they generally did, she avoided the theatrical
side of her affairs as much as she could.

The fact was, as Alexandra quickly found out,
Mrs. Lambert disliked the stage.  She loved
acting because she had a gift for it.  But she was
not eaten up with her own achievements and was
quite free from the artificial manner and the petty
interests of average stage-folk.  Her chief
pleasure lay in getting away from London in her
excellent Panhard limousine on every available occasion
and forgetting that she belonged to the stage.
Alexandra shared many a pleasant drive with her
that hot end of July, lunching in the shade of some
quiet Surrey lane or the more deserted parts of
Richmond Park.

A day or two before they were to start on tour
they met Maggy in a Regent Street shop.
Maggy's appearance was very striking.  Her
coloring just now was more vivid than usual.  She
bloomed.

"Oh, Lexie!" she exclaimed, "I was half
afraid you'd gone off without saying good-by."

"You know I wouldn't have done that," Alexandra protested.

"I haven't given her a moment to herself," put
in Mrs. Lambert.  She was looking at Maggy
with the frank admiration of an unjealous woman.
"Are you great friends, you two?" she asked.

"We used to chum together," Maggy said.
"Lexie is my patron saint."

"Well, then you must see more of her before
she goes.  Won't you come and lunch with us
to-morrow?—seventy-four, Albert Place."

"I should love to," Maggy answered eagerly.
"May I really?"

"Yes, do," said Mrs. Lambert.  "Half-past one."

She nodded, and Maggy moved away to join
Woolf, who had come in.  He glanced curiously
at Alexandra as she and Mrs. Lambert left the shop.

"That's Mrs. Lambert, with Lexie," Maggy
told him.  "I was just talking to them.
Mrs. Lambert asked me to lunch at her house.  Isn't
it kind of her?  She looked at me so nicely too.
Our hearts seemed to shake hands."

Woolf had scarcely noticed Mrs. Lambert.
He had only had eyes for Alexandra, and was
incensed because she had not acknowledged him.

"Your precious particular friend cut me," he
said.  "I suppose you saw that."

"I'm sure she couldn't have seen you.  Why
should she cut you?"

Woolf had his own reasons for surmising why
she had done so, but he was not going to give them.

"I should like you to drop that friendship," he
said vindictively.

"Drop Lexie?  Me?  You're joking!"

"I'm not."

Maggy very seldom argued with Woolf.  Her
subjugation was nearly complete, but she still had
some spirit left.  She showed it now.

"I gave up living with Lexie to come to you,"
she reminded him.

"Do you regret it?"

"I don't, but I probably shall.  Anyway,
instead of turning up her nose at me she's behaved
like a darling.  I couldn't go back on her.  Why,
I—I'd rather have drowned Mrs. Slightly's
kittens with my own hands than been so mean as that!"

"Well, you needn't lunch with her at
Mrs. Lambert's.  You might meet Lord Chalfont
there."

"It's not in the least likely.  But what would
it matter if I did?"

"I don't like him."

"I thought you said you didn't know him?"

"I've never spoken to the bounder, if that's
what you mean," said Woolf testily.

"I don't understand you.  You generally don't
care what I do or where I go when I'm not with
you.  When I see Lexie again I shall tell her
you're huffy with her."

Now Alexandra had not deliberately meant to
cut Woolf.  She would not have done so out of
consideration to Maggy; but as she had only seen
his reflection in one of the shop mirrors she did
not consider it necessary to turn round and bow to
him.  Besides, she knew he was the sort of man
Mrs. Lambert would not care about, and it was
quite likely that if she had acknowledged him he
would have presumed on her good nature.

"What a lovely girl!" Mrs. Lambert said,
when they were in the street.  "She's a joy to
look at.  Who was the man who joined her?  I
seem to know his face.  He looked Jewish."

"His name is Woolf."

"I wonder if he's the person who is exploiting
Primus cars.  He owns some racehorses too, and
a sporting paper."

"It's the same," said Alexandra.

"Lord Chalfont knows more about him than I
do.  He had him turned out of his club.  It's an
exclusive one, and some thoughtless young fellow
had brought him in.  I don't think he's very nice,
dear.  What a pity he knows your friend."

Alexandra hesitated.  She guessed that
Mrs. Lambert had asked Maggy out of consideration
to herself.  But if she knew that Woolf and
Maggy were intimate perhaps she would wish to
rescind that invitation.  Alexandra did not want
to be disloyal to Maggy, nor yet to let Mrs. Lambert
be deceived about her.

"Maggy thinks a lot of him," she hesitated.
"I don't want to talk about her because she is my
friend, but—"

Mrs. Lambert laid her hand on Alexandra's
for a moment.

"The majority of us have got a 'but' in our
lives," she said in a curious tone, and then added
with apparent irrelevance, "Did I tell you that
Lord Chalfont will be staying with us on tour?"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XVIII`:

.. class:: center large

   XVIII

.. vspace:: 2

Maggy meant to disregard Woolf's
injunction against her going to Mrs. Lambert's.
The temptation to see Alexandra
was too strong to resist.  Moreover, she
thought it likely that he would forget having made
it.  Then, if she went and he still objected, she
would admit having disobeyed him.  She would
not lie about it.  She never did tell lies; not on
moral grounds but because lying was cowardly and
she did not know the meaning of cowardice.

Woolf had been a little overbearing with her
lately, too much the master.  She did not mind
that sort of tyranny so long as it implied fondness,
but she had a feeling that he was changing
towards her.  For one thing, she knew he was
annoyed at her condition.  That hurt her
abominably.  In books she had read of husbands and
wives being drawn closer together, of estranged
couples becoming reconciled under similar
conditions.  Indeed, she had hoped for special
tenderness from him directly he knew they existed.  She
had even tried to delude herself into the hope that
he might marry her.

It was not that she wanted any legal hold on
him.  She would not have loved Woolf any more
because of marriage.  But if he married her it
would be a guarantee of his love, which just now
she had reason to doubt.  That was all.  The
rights which marriage confer on a woman meant
nothing to her.  She only wanted to get rid of the
nightmare dread of separation from him.  Any
other girl similarly situated would have stood out
for marriage, but Maggy had too much pride for
that.  She recoiled from a more than possible refusal.

She felt thrown back upon herself, lonely in
spirit.  A faintness assailed her whenever she
thought of what she would have to undergo
without a soul knowing of it except Woolf.  And on
this subject, so closely connecting them, Woolf
was cold and remote.  He would have shown
more concern had she cut her finger.  She wanted
comfort.  It would have helped her to confide in
some sympathetic woman.  She wondered whether
she dared tell Alexandra, and decided that it
would not be fair or even expedient.  Virginal
Alexandra would not understand, or if she
understood she would be more afraid than Maggy
herself.  Obviously she could neither reassure nor
comfort her, since the thing was right out of her
experience, and always would be.  Poor Maggy!
Her abundant vitality, her pulsing affections, made
motherhood infinitely desirable to her.  As a child
she had scarcely had time to play with dolls
because she was always on the stage, but she had
always yearned over babies.  Nature, which takes
no account of the individual, concerned only with
the reproduction of the race, had intended her to
be a mother.  Man-made shibboleths were to deny
her that right.

She took great pains in dressing for her visit
to Mrs. Lambert's.  She was free from the spirit
of feminine emulation, but she wanted to look her
best, to please Alexandra's critical taste, so that
she might remember how she looked that day, in
case they might never see each other again.
Maggy had never before been inclined to depression,
but the clammy fingers of morbidity touched
her now.

She elected to wear a frock of sprigged muslin
and a simple hat that she had trimmed herself.
The hat was in part a concession to Woolf, for
she took pleasure in such tasks, and liked him to
see that she could excel in them.  Thus dressed,
she was quite perfect.  Her coloring was so vivid
and her figure so mature that extreme simplicity
suited her.  But she was not quite satisfied with
the effect.  Her eyes roved over the dressing-table
in search of some finishing touch, and came to a
stop at her jewel-case.  From it she took a
diamond bracelet Woolf had given her, and put it
on.  He had bestowed it on her with great
impressiveness, and she accordingly believed it to be
very valuable.

When she reached Albert Place neither
Mrs. Lambert nor Alexandra was in.  They had been
detained somewhere and had telephoned through
to say so.  The maid showed her into the
drawing room.  Somewhat to her dismay she found
it occupied by a man.  She did not know him by
sight, but she immediately came to the conclusion
that he must be Lord Chalfont.  She felt
awkward, uncertain whether it was "proper" to speak
or not.  She had not encountered any men of rank
before, and had not the average chorus girl's
assurance with male members of the peerage.

Lord Chalfont got up.

"I fancy we're both here for the same reason:
to lunch," he said pleasantly.  "Shall we become
known to each other?  I'm Lord Chalfont."

"My name's Delamere," rejoined Maggy.

"We both owe something to the French, then.
It ought to provide us with a sort of *entente cordiale*."

"Oh, I don't believe Delamere's my right name.
It's too high-falutin'.  But it's the only one I
know of.  My mother took it for the stage and it
had to do for my christening."

The statement was made quite innocently.
Chalfont was amused.

"I'm sure I've seen you before," he said.

His easy manner gave her confidence.  She
liked him.  She felt she could talk to him without
being on her guard.  The way in which he looked
at her had nothing disturbing in it.  It was not the
hunting look which she was accustomed to see in
men's eyes, and against which she was for ever
armed.  If there was a touch of admiration in it
there was also respect.  She recognized the
difference, and knew she had to do with a gentleman.
Woolf had spoken of him as a bounder.  There
he was obviously wrong.  Lord Chalfont looked
the sort of person she had seen in historical
pictures, dressed in silk and lace, walking
unconcernedly to have his head chopped off.

"I daresay you've seen me often," she agreed.
"I'm in the front row at the Pall Mall Theater—black
chiffon over pink.  Then I'm somebody's
boot polish in the advertisements—my photograph,
you know—cleaning my own shoes without
dirtying my frock.  And I'm somebody else's
motorcoats, and nearly everybody's mouth-wash
and cigarettes."

Chalfont laughed.

"By Jove!  Do you know, I've always wondered
who they got to sit for those advertisements.
How's it arranged?  Do you mind telling me?"

"Not at all.  Sometimes the people—cigarettes
or motorcoats, you know—write and ask
you to come and pose for them at their shops;
but generally it's done through a photographer.
He gets paid for taking the photos, and you get a
little cheque and a lot of advertisement.  When
it's for a mouth-wash you have to put on a broad
grin and show your teeth.  It's awfully tiring
sometimes.  For a hair-restorer you wear your
hair down, and if you haven't much they fluff it out
with a long switch so as to make people believe in
the stuff."

"You're not tempted to use it, I suppose?"

"Rather not!  I've got too much hair as it is.
It won't even fall out in the autumn and spring."

"How about the cigarettes?"

"Oh, I daresay they're all right, though I don't
suppose you'd want to smoke them."

"Just what I thought.  Personally, I never buy
anything that's advertised if I can help it.  When
I have it I invariably have a feeling that I'm
being taken in."

"I think it's the women more than the men
who are taken in," said Maggy thoughtfully.
"Women believe anything they see in the papers.
I used to once."

"But not now?"

She shook her head.  "You get to know a lot
about make-believe when you're on the stage."

"I suppose you do.  How is it I've never met
you here before?"

"I'm Lexie's friend.  I mean Miss Hersey.
Excuse my bad habit of speaking of people by
their Christian names.  I know it's not right.  I
don't, myself, like to hear women call their
husbands 'Daddy' or 'Father' before strangers.
It always sounds to me as if they wanted you to
consider yourself one of the family."

"But you know Mrs. Lambert, don't you?"

"Hardly.  I met her with Lexie in a shop the
other day and she asked me to lunch.  So here
I am.  Have I come too early?"

"On the contrary.  I'm very glad you're here,
relieving my solitude."

"I was afraid I was boring you.  I can only
talk rubbish.  I can't help it.  You see, I don't
know anything about the things that sensible
people talk about.  Pictures and books and politics."

"I think you do yourself an injustice.  Please
don't imagine I say it out of compliment, but it's
evident you are full of ideas, jolly interesting ones,
too."

"Everybody has ideas of a sort, I suppose.
What I mean is, I can't discuss any of the subjects
that really matter.  Religion, for instance.  I
know there are a thousand and one different ways
of worshiping God, but I haven't brains enough
to argue about them.  I'm far more interested in
a thousand different patterns for crochet, or the
everyday things you see from the top of a bus.
I'm just hot and cold, or happy or miserable."

"Which is it to-day?" asked Chalfont.

There was no flippancy in his tone.  He saw
that Maggy was an innately simple girl, quite
natural, and by no means unintelligent.  He
found her frankness very refreshing, and he could
but admire her delightful appearance.  He was
anything but bored.

"Which is it to-day?" he repeated.

"Warm and happy—just now.  I'm not often
miserable.  I love my life," she said.

She meant it.  The pretty room, the flowers
abounding in it, the shaded windows framing
masses of pink geranium, the soft ease of the big
armchair she was seated in, so different from the
new-art, unadaptable chairs of her own flat, had
induced in her bodily comfort and mental
contentment.  For the moment she had forgotten the
anxieties caused by her physical state.
Unconsciously too she had fallen under the charm of
Chalfont's amiability.  She had never met a man
like him.  She felt she did not want to be on her
guard with him.  Whether he was more honest
or more reasonable than other men she had known
she did not stop to think about.  Had she been
asked for her chief impression of him she would
have expressed it in the word clean.

So while she waited for Alexandra's return she
let her candor have full play, keeping Chalfont
amused by her cheery talk and quaintly humorous
accounts of her life behind the scenes at the Pall
Mall.  She had brought with her a number of
picture postcards of herself to give to Alexandra,
for recently she had become quite a photographic
favorite, and these she showed him.

"This is the one I like best," he said.  "In
the dress you have on now.  It's charming."

"The dress, you mean.  I'm so glad you like
it.  I was afraid it was too quiet.  I'm never quite
sure about my dresses and hats.  My taste in
clothes isn't always quiet.  I love bright colors.
They make me feel warm and comfy.  You know
how dogs like rolling in mud.  I have the same
feeling about colors.  If I see anything very
bright and gorgeous I want to hug it to me for
joy.  People are always staring at me in the street
because of what I'm wearing."

Chalfont could quite understand that any one,
in the street or elsewhere, would find pleasure in
looking twice at such a beautiful creature.  But
he did not say so in so many words.

"You need not mind that," he said.  "There's
an esthetic sense in nearly everybody that makes
them glad to look at anything—radiant."

"Radiant means brilliance, doesn't it?  Talking
of brilliance, do you like this?"

She held out her arm with the bracelet on it.
Chalfont had already noticed it.  Now he gave it
a closer inspection.  Whilst being a good judge
of precious stones he had a great liking for paste
when it was old and good, but what he saw now
was merely a product of the modern manufacturer.

"A French copy, isn't it?" he asked, thoughtlessly.

Maggy's eyes widened.  French—copy?
Her diamond bracelet a copy—imitation!  She
could not credit it.

"But—they're diamonds!" she stammered,
filled with a horrible misgiving.

Chalfont noticed the sharp note of disappointment
in her voice and put it down to one of two
causes.  Either she had been defrauded by
somebody or the bracelet was a present meant to
deceive her.  He made haste to modify the opinion
he had expressed about it.  Looking at it once
more, he said:

"Is it?  I'm awfully sorry.  Of course, I
must be mistaken.  Hullo!" he interjected with
relief, "here are Mrs. Lambert and Miss Hersey."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XIX`:

.. class:: center large

   XIX

.. vspace:: 2

Lunch was over.  Chalfont had taken his
departure; Mrs. Lambert had excused
herself on account of a bad headache and
gone to lie down.  The two girls were alone.
The personal equation began to trouble Maggy again.

"I haven't seen you to talk to since you came to
the flat," she said diffidently.  "Were you really
cross with Fred?  Of course, what he said about
Lord Chalfont was only what he'd heard.  I
could see by your face you were shocked."

"No, I wasn't exactly shocked," Alexandra answered.

"But you didn't like it.  Fred didn't mean any
harm.  He's like me: he doesn't think what he
says.  I wish you liked him.  You don't, do you?"

"You make me uncomfortable, Maggy.  We
can't all like the same people."

"But you're sorry I'm so fond of him?"

"Very sorry," said Alexandra in a low voice.

"I can't stop caring because of that.  It's—it's
in my system.  Some girls fall in love with a
man because they believe he's good or noble or
brave or something they're particularly keen on;
but if they find out they're mistaken they're off
that man like fleas from a dead rabbit.  If that
sounds vulgar please forgive me, Lexie.  The
words just came out.  It's one of Fred's
expressions.  What I mean is, I can't love like that,
though I know I should be much more comfortable
if I could.  If I knew you'd stolen Mrs. Lambert's
purse or gone off with a rag-picker it
wouldn't make a bit of difference to me.  It's you
I love, not what you do.  And I feel the same
about Fred, only more so."

Prior to this, Mrs. Lambert had asked Alexandra
a few questions about Maggy's relations
with Woolf.  The answers she had fitted in with
certain information about the man himself
previously imparted to her by Chalfont.  What she
deduced from the two statements made her sorry
for Alexandra's friend and a little anxious about her.

"No girl is safe with a man like that," she had
said to Alexandra.  "If I were you I should try
and persuade her to break with him."

And Alexandra meant to try.  There was one
weapon she might have used to shake Maggy's
loyalty to Woolf: the cruelly belittling way in
which he had referred to her just before her cab
drove off.  But she shrank from that.  It was
too poisonous.

"What would you say if I asked you to leave
him?" she asked.  "Supposing I needed you
back with me?"

Maggy weighed the problem.

"I should say you jolly well knew I couldn't
come," she answered.  "I'm all in.  If Fred was
in Hell and wanted me there I believe I'd have to
get to him.  You don't know what it is."

"What is it?"

"It's the little things about him that have eaten
into me.  I'm corrupted, or corroded, whatever
it is.  Perhaps it's both.  I love the white lock in
his hair, the little pellet in his ear where he got
peppered out shooting once, the scent of his
tobacco, the smell of a Harris tweed suit he's got."  She
sniffed sensuously.  "And there are other
things I can't tell you about...."

"If he were to die or married some one else
you would have to resign yourself to doing
without him," argued Alexandra.

"Perhaps.  I don't know.  He's not dead or
married, and I'm his.  I know he could manage
without me.  I'm just like an ornament to him.
He dusts me and puts me back on my shelf, and
takes me down sometimes and has a look at me.
I hope to God he'll never drop or break me!"

Alexandra was disturbed by the depth of
passion in her voice.

"I know what you think about Fred," Maggy
went on.  "You think he's something near a cad.
Well, there are lots of women who love cads and
who don't know that they are cads.  Perhaps I'm
one of them.  You can't put me out of this, Lexie
dear.  I don't know how it's going to end and I
don't want to know.  That's where real life is
rather like the stage.  The tag to a play's kept
dark, never spoken until the curtain's about to hide
the players from view.  If we knew how things
were going to end with us—knew the tags to our
lives—I guess some of us wouldn't be able to go
on with our parts off the stage."

It was like arguing with a fatalist.  Her loyalty
to Woolf was as unalterable as destiny.
Alexandra gave up trying to move her.  She changed
the conversation, and an hour later Maggy went
upstairs in response to a message from Mrs. Lambert,
who wanted to say good-by to her.

Mrs. Lambert's bedroom was in half darkness.
She was still racked with a headache, but she
wanted to see Maggy and to hear whether Alexandra
had succeeded in persuading her to break with
Woolf.  For this purpose she had left the two
girls alone together.  Maggy closed the door
gently behind her and tip-toed toward the bed.

"I'm so sorry you feel bad," she said feelingly.
"It won't do for me to stop talking to you.  That
will make your head worse.  I'll just say good-by
and go.  Thank you for being so kind to me.  It
was nice to come and see Lexie here."

"You're very fond of her?" asked Mrs. Lambert.

"She's fine.  I lived with her, you see.  When
you live for weeks with another girl in one room,
and don't have a cross word it stands to reason
one of you must be eighteen-carat.  That's Lexie.
She never complained or lost heart, not even when
things were bad and I left her.  She's the quiet
sort but she's a fighter.  There were soldiers in
her family.  It comes out in her.  But I've
started to talk—"

"You don't tire me.  Sit down.  It's
refreshing to hear a woman speak well of another.
Rather a novelty too.  Aren't you jealous of her
going away with me?"

"No, I'm awfully glad she's found you.  I was
thinking this afternoon how well she fitted in with
everything here.  She's a lady, like you.  Things
that I never fretted about because I wasn't used
to them, she must have missed terribly.  She's
fine lace.  I'm crochet work."

Mrs. Lambert laid her thin hand on Maggy's.

"How would you like to come on tour with
us?" she asked.  "I could make room for you.
But I suppose your contract at the Pall Mall
wouldn't permit of it?"

The unexpected proposition was tempting
enough.  Under different circumstances Maggy
would have jumped at it.

"It isn't the contract that would stop me,"
she said with some hesitation.  "But I've got a—flat."

There was a pregnant pause.

"And there's another reason....  I—I have
to go away for a little while ... and I was glad
that Lexie would be away.  Oh, what have I said?
You don't understand?"

"I think I do."

Maggy's face flushed crimson and then went
white.  Mrs. Lambert's hand still lay on hers.
Contact with it gave her a feeling of sisterhood,
a longing to confide.  Her pent up feelings
suddenly found voice.

"I want to tell some one," she choked.  "I've
got to go through with something I hate—and
dread.  I've longed to speak to another woman
about it, but there was only Lexie, and she's not"—she
stumbled over the word—"married.  I
wouldn't tell her.  It wouldn't have been right."

"Tell me."

"I—can't see your face," whispered Maggy
fearfully.

"It's not turned from you."

Then Maggy unburdened her soul.  A flood
of unreserved words broke from her.  Mrs. Lambert
neither moved nor spoke, but the grasp of
her hand tightened as the poignant story culminated.

"I daren't let myself think about it," Maggy's
faltering voice went on.  "If I think too much
my brain begins to rock, and I'm afraid.  It's
wonderful and awful and I don't feel the same.
The other day I saw a woman in the street.  She
had such a pretty baby in her arms.  It was too
heavy for her to carry, and she looked dead tired,
but I could see by her face how she loved it, weight
and all, and I had to hold on to myself to stop
from screaming out, 'You're lucky.  You can
keep yours.  I—'"  Something she dimly
discerned in Mrs. Lambert's face brought her to a
sudden stop.  "Why, I've made you cry!" she
said contritely.  "What a brute I am!"

"No, no.  Don't take your hand away," was
the soft rejoinder.  "You poor child!  My heart
aches for you."

.. vspace:: 2

When Maggy re-entered the drawing room her
eyes were suspiciously red.  She seemed anxious
to get away.  She put her arms round Alexandra
and hugged her.

"Good-by, Lexie," she said breathlessly.
"Don't forget me.  The best of luck.  Mrs. Lambert's
an angel.  T-tell her so—from me."

She tore herself away, pulled down her veil,
and was gone, leaving Alexandra bewildered.

Maggy stopped at a jeweler's on her way home.
Taking off her bracelet, she handed it to the man
behind the counter.

"Don't bother to tell me what it's worth.  Just
say whether it's real or sham," she said.

It was sham.

She dropped it into her bag and went out, with
a new pain gripping at her heart.  She never wore
the bracelet again.

After dinner that evening Woolf remarked its
absence.  She had worn it ever since he had given
it to her.

"Where's your bracelet?" he inquired.  "I
hope you haven't left it about or had it stolen."

"Fred," she said, looking him steadily in the
eyes, "I found out quite by accident that it isn't
real.  Wait a minute.  Let me finish.  You know
I don't care tuppence about the value of anything
you give me.  It isn't the cost I think of.  If
you'd given me a ring out of a penny cracker I
wouldn't have changed it for another from
somebody else a million times its value.  But don't
sham to me.  I—I can't bear it."

"I never told you they were real diamonds,"
he rejoined in a nettled voice.  "If I didn't say
they were paste you ought to have guessed it.
Anyhow, the bracelet cost me twenty pounds.
Genuine stones that size would have run to the
price of a damn good race horse."  He gave her
a disparaging look.  "Why, all in, you don't cost
me as much as one of the animals I've got in training."

The words froze her.  She stared at him in dumb agony.

"Oh, my heart!" she cried, with a sudden catch
at her breath.

He sat still, coldly indifferent.

"And I've given it to you!" she presently whispered.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XX`:

.. class:: center large

   XX

.. vspace:: 2

Alexandra's longing to act, to appear
before an impartial audience in a play
reflecting every-day life, was at last
satisfied when the tour began.  Her part was a very
small one, that of a parlormaid only, but it did
not prevent her going through the usual phases
of stage fright at the first performance.  On the
second night she was calm and collected.  At the
end of a week it surprised her to find that she was
no longer under the spell of theatricalism.

Had she joined the company in the ordinary
way the glamour of the stage would have got hold
of her and remained with her for a long time.
As an insignificant member of it, out of touch with
its leading light, she would have imagined
mysteries where none existed.  But from the very first
all these so-called mysteries were exposed.  She
was like the assistant to the conjuror: she saw how
things were done.

In the first place, Mrs. Lambert did not pose as
any high-priestess of the drama: she was rather
contemptuous of the stage.  She thought of it as
a way to make an easy living, that was all.
Alexandra's notions about the stage were all associated
with Art: Mrs. Lambert's were confined to figures.
She and her manager talked business unexcitedly
for an hour every day, never esthetics.  She was
mildly amused when Alexandra showed her
enthusiasm for acting, as she did in that first week.

"You'll get over it, my dear," she said.  "It's
not an art, merely a matter of temperament.  If
acting were creative one could take it seriously,
but it isn't.  The author creates; the actor only
represents.  When I'm acting I often feel like the
inside of a moving picture show.  It's all mechanical."

"But," said Alexandra, "you weren't always
like that?  When you first went on the stage—"

"I felt as you do, all emotion and inexperience.
Now that I've lived and am disillusioned I
know that the stage is only a business, and not a
very edifying one.  The public don't see that side
of it, fortunately.  They think only of the
amusement it provides.  If they would stop there it
wouldn't matter: but they have such a mania for
everything theatrical in this country, such a
desire to penetrate beyond the footlights, that they
quite forget the necessity for a curtain between
the make-believe of the stage and themselves.
They're like a child with a toy.  They want to see
the inside mechanism, and directly they do they
suffer the usual disappointment.  I never take
people 'behind'; if I do I always find they never
again want to pay for a seat 'in front.'  We're
only shop-keepers, after all, and shop-keepers don't
invite their customers behind the counter, any
more than the customers are in the habit of asking
their butcher or their baker to dinner.  Somehow
you can't get the public to see things like that.
Instead of keeping members of the stage at a
distance, treating them like kennel-dogs, they invite
them to their houses and pamper them.  It makes
them more conceited and self-sufficient than they
are already.  I don't deny that a few actors and
actresses are decently born and bred, indoor dogs,
so to speak, knowing their manners; but that's no
reason why the whole pack should be made free of
the public's drawing rooms....  Let us walk up
to the cathedral and spend a quiet hour there."

The tour had opened in a small cathedral town,
and the three hours spent at the theater each night
hardly counted in their daily round.  They
motored about the surrounding country, or read,
talked and did needlework in the private sitting
room of their quiet hotel.  Such a life, placid and
yet full of pleasant occupation, was delightful to
Alexandra.  She found the weekly change from
town to town exhilarating, and the journey each
Sunday in Mrs. Lambert's comfortable landaulette
a luxurious mode of traveling.

At the end of their first week Chalfont came
down and remained with them for the rest of the
tour.  Both he and Mrs. Lambert treated
Alexandra on terms of equality so that she never felt
an intruder on their intimacy.  Before her they
made no secret of their attachment, but she never
regarded it as anything more close than what might
exist between old and tried friends.  Sometimes
she detected in Mrs. Lambert quite a sisterly
attitude toward Lord Chalfont.  That was probably
accounted for by the differences in their ages,
she being a few years the elder.

Chalfont often asked after Maggy.  He had
quite an open admiration for her, which
Mrs. Lambert shared.  But, unlike him, she seldom
asked for news of her.  At the time, Alexandra
did not notice this apparent lack of interest.  She
was not able to impart anything about Maggy for
the simple reason that she had not heard from her.
Only twice during the early days of the tour had
there been a letter from her.  After that,
although Alexandra repeatedly wrote, she got no
reply.  She could not help wondering at this
silence.  It was not like Maggy.  Later, when
she spoke of it to Mrs. Lambert, the latter did not
seem surprised.

"You're sure to hear from her soon.  She may
be away," she said.

And a letter did arrive from Maggy shortly
afterwards.  It was written in pencil and strangely
shaky, quite unlike her habitual hand, which
although childish, was remarkably firm.  She said
very little, confirmed Mrs. Lambert's prophecy by
admitting that she had been away for a change,
owing to which she had not received Alexandra's
letters until her return.  She ended with a
postscript which had evidently been added in a burst
of feeling.

"I love Fred more than ever, Lexie.  I couldn't
exist without him.  He has been such a dear since
I got back."

Alexandra passed it across the breakfast table
to Mrs. Lambert, with the remark:

"It's from Maggy.  She doesn't say what has
been the matter with her, though."

Chalfont looked up.

"Has your friend been ill?" he asked with
concern.  "I'm sorry to hear that.  We must send
her some flowers, Ada."

"Yes, we will," Mrs. Lambert concurred.

After breakfast he went out to buy some.
When he came back Mrs. Lambert was alone in
the room.

"What beauties!" she said, lifting the lid of
the box he had brought in with him.  "Catherine
Mermets."

She hung over the roses, the bitter-sweet of the
memories they evoked coming up to her with their
delicate fragrance.  Chalfont always bought her
Catherine Mermets when they were in bloom,
great masses of them; but it was Hugh Lambert
who had first given her a bunch of three,
purchased at a street corner at sixpence each in the
days when sixpences were scarce with him.

"I got them because they are your favorites,"
he said.  "I thought she would be sure to like
what you like.  Anyway, what's good enough for
you is good enough for anybody."

She put her arm over his shoulder and kissed him.

"You're always so thoughtful, and so loyal,"
she said.  "I'm getting old and you remain
steadfast.  It seems such an irony of fate that I can't
love you as you deserve.  Although Hugh has no
claim on my feelings or my memory, I can't forget
him.  I give you so little, Leonard.  One day,
perhaps, some girl will love you worthily, and
make up for my meanness."

He smiled down at her, shaking his head.

"Keep those roses," he said.  "I'll get Miss
Delamere some more."

"No, no, I want her to have them.  Put your
card in.  Shall I write the address?"

.. vspace:: 2

Woolf was with Maggy when the post brought
her the roses.  He cut the string and stood
looking on while she removed the tissue wrappings.

"Oh, roses!" she cried delightedly.  "Who
can have sent them?"

They had traveled as well as could be expected
of cut flowers, but they were flagging a little for
want of water.

Woolf pounced on the card that accompanied them.

"'Lord Chalfont,'" he read, and scowled at
the club address in the corner.  "Damn his
impudence sending you flowers!  And how the devil
does he know your address?" he demanded angrily.

Maggy was perturbed at this outburst.

"You needn't mind, Fred," she said placably.

"Did you tell him where you lived?"

"Of course not.  You needn't go back to that.
You said you'd forgiven me for going to lunch
with Mrs. Lambert that day.  You know I met
him there, and that's all there is in it.  He must
have known that I—I hadn't been well—through
Lexie, and sent the flowers out of politeness."  She
turned the lid of the box up.  "The
address is in a woman's hand: Mrs. Lambert's.
There's nothing to look so furious about."

The fact that flowers should come to Maggy
from a comparative stranger would not, of itself,
have irritated Woolf.  She often received flowers
now, and from men she had never met.  Her good
looks and prominence at the Pall Mall accounted
for this.  Woolf made no objection.  The
admiration of other men for her rather enhanced
her desirability in his eyes.  He took it as a tribute
to his own good taste in having secured possession
of her.  But Chalfont's name affected him in much
the same manner as a red rag does a bull.  It
blinded him with rage because it stood for
everything that he himself was devoid of—birth,
breeding, nobility of nature—and, moreover,
because it was that of the man who had humbled him
by having him turned out of the select club to
which he aspired to membership.  That incident
had touched Woolf on the raw.  It was much as
if he had been told that he was unworthy of
association with gentlemen.

He picked up the roses and pitched them into
the fireplace.

"Damned cheek, sending you a few pennyworth
of dead flowers!" he flared out.  "I'll go and
buy you some live ones!"

Maggy did not protest.  She had learnt
discretion with Woolf.  He flung out of the flat.
Half-an-hour later a messenger boy came with a
magnificent bouquet of freshly-cut Catherine Mermets.

Maggy was so happy arranging them.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XXI`:

.. class:: center large

   XXI

.. vspace:: 2

In spite of the pleasant conditions under which
the tour proceeded it began to be evident to
Alexandra that Mrs. Lambert was suffering
from acute nervous strain.  She would spend
hours on the sofa in thoughtful silence.
Conversely, she showed undue vivacity on the stage at
night.  Sometimes she evinced an almost feverish
interest in the financial side of her tour, growing
depressed when business was indifferent and
unduly elated when it was extra good.

During this period Alexandra learnt for the
first time that Mrs. Lambert had a daughter.
Inconsequently enough, as it seemed to her,
Mrs. Lambert's reference to the fact was the outcome
of a talk between them one day concerning Maggy.
It showed the elder woman in a new aspect,
strongly maternal in her feelings.  The child's
absence evidently distressed her.

"Why don't you have her with you?" was the
natural inquiry that rose to Alexandra's lips.

The reply to this was as spontaneous as the question.

"I would love to!  But how could I?  Baba
is ten.  There's Chalfont....  Children are so
quick to notice things...."

Alexandra's puzzled look showed that she
placed a very innocent construction on the intimacy
of these two.

"You didn't think we were only friends?"
Mrs. Lambert inquired a little reluctantly.  "It's
not so.  I supposed you knew."

The admission did not actually shock Alexandra,
but it pained her.  She found it difficult to
associate Mrs. Lambert with any form of liaison.
Lord Chalfont, moreover, had also given her the
impression of being a man averse from it.  That
these two, in Alexandra's estimation so free from
the taint of theatrical libertinism, should not have
been superior to circumstances was singularly
disconcerting.

"I did think you were only friends," she said.

Her voice was so full of disappointment that
Mrs. Lambert half-regretted her frankness.  She
knew Alexandra to be a very pure-minded girl.
She felt she owed her an explanation.

"Friendship as you understand it is difficult,
almost impossible, between a man and woman in
circumstances like ours," she said.  "Lord Chalfont
has remained unmarried on my account.  I think
you must know that my husband and I are
separated.  Well, a woman is a very lone creature
without love and sympathy.  There are so many
things she cannot do for herself.  If there were
nothing else there would always be the difficulty
of business.  I have to work for Baba's sake.  I
couldn't do it alone.  I *must* leave her independent
of the stage."

"I am so sorry," was all Alexandra could say.

"I believe you are.  My dear, when I was your
age, like you I was full of regrets for all the
wrongs of the world.  I wanted it perfect and
morally rigid.  I meant to show that an actress
could still be a lady and quite virtuous.  I don't
think I've disproved the one, but the Fates have
been too strong for me to fulfill the second
qualification.  I had to separate from my husband.  I
did not want to.  I loved him.  I have nothing to
reproach myself with for the rupture between us.
But for that I should always have been a faithful
wife.  I only thought of his career.  I used to
fight all his battles, on and off the stage.  At one
time I did all his business for him because he hated
it.  In those days he wasn't spoilt.  He was just
a fascinating, childish person with all the
sensitiveness of an artistic temperament.  He was
very fond of me, too....  Then came the time
when he went into management, and there was no
part for me.  I was not to play "lead" with him
because he considered me unsuited to it.  I was
too proud to play a smaller part in his own
theater....  He engaged Mary Mantel.  In
that play their love-making brought down the
house.  It was so real.  It *was* real.  I found
that out very soon.  Mary Mantel deliberately
took my husband from me.  He was too weak to
resist her—to resist pleasing any pretty woman....
I told them both what I knew ... and we
parted.  If I hadn't discovered what I did, or
suppressed my knowledge of it, I don't doubt
but that he would be with me now, behaving as a
lover to two women!  ...  For years Lord
Chalfont went about with me.  We were friends,
nothing more.  I always hoped Hugh would
make atonement and want me back.  But I lost
heart, and Chalfont was always there, so patient
and kind....  As a Catholic I couldn't bring
myself to divorce Hugh and marry him, and I thought
that if he should ever get tired of me I should
like him to feel free....  Because I am an
actress, to whom all things are forgiven, the voice
of social ostracism had never been raised against
our union....  That is the whole story.  Well,
what do you think of me now?"

Alexandra did not know what to think, still
less to say.  The only comment she felt capable
of making was that Mrs. Lambert was not
degraded by what she had done.  That was evident.
Alexandra did not make the comparison, but all
the same she dimly comprehended that there was
a certain similarity between Maggy's case and
Mrs. Lambert's.  It had never occurred to
Alexandra that Maggy was degraded either....
Quite suddenly, like a revelation, the reason of
the sympathy between these two, now her closest
friends, dawned on her....  Insensibly too,
because she was not thinking of herself, her own
resistance to frailty seemed to weaken.  There
was to come a time when she would recall every
word Maggy and Mrs. Lambert had spoken on
the subject of sex conflict and the stage.

"I think none the less of you," she answered
steadily after a long pause.  "I suppose you are
being more true to yourself in not divorcing your
husband and marrying Lord Chalfont."

"I don't know.  I'm not sure that I've done
right.  But the stage makes it so easy for you to
do wrong, to choose the way your inclinations
lead....  Chalfont has been the greater sufferer.
He hates to think that our relationship, when
discussed, is bracketed with the usual run of light
and unholy compacts.  I confess to being more
thick-skinned.  The stage blunts one's finer
feelings, I suppose.  There's something dreadfully
insidious about it.  Its lax atmosphere saps the
sense of rectitude.  You don't know that your
views are gradually altering until you suddenly
discover that, like everybody else on it, you are
about to make its customs fit your own
circumstances.  Nobody on the stage is free from that
taint: chorus girls are not a bit more frail than
highly-paid actresses.  Chorus girls are more
flagrant, that is all."

Alexandra was looking very serious and dismayed.

"It's rather terrible," she said reflectively.
"Maggy has often said much the same thing in a
different way.  Is *everything* wrong?"

"For a girl like you, yes.  I don't assert that
everything and everybody on the stage is bad.
There are exceptions, of course.  Clouds have
their silver lining.  What I do maintain is that
the stage is not and never can be a profession that
a nice-minded girl can adopt and expect to
remain untainted by."

"I wonder"—Alexandra's voice was almost
fearful—"what my own ideas about it will be
in a few years' time."

"In a few years' time, my dear girl, with luck
you will be married and have forgotten all its
ugliness.  You may perhaps still be sufficiently
enamored of the theater to let your husband
sometimes pay for two stalls; and sometimes when
you pass a struggling actress in the street you will
recognize her by her stamp and thank God that
you're out of it all.  That's the best that can
happen to you."

"But you?  You wouldn't like to be out of
it—altogether?"

Mrs. Lambert's eyes seemed to hold some happy secret.

"I look forward to the day when I shall be—resting,"
she made answer.  "Have you ever
tried to wind a ball of thread with the skein in
your hand?  It isn't easy.  My skein is tangled
... and I am tired."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XXII`:

.. class:: center large

   XXII

.. vspace:: 2

They were at Eastbourne during the
following week.  One morning whilst in her
bedroom putting on her hat in readiness
for a walk Alexandra was startled by an
impetuous knock at her door.  Chalfont's voice,
calling her by name, took her hurriedly to it.

"Please go to Ada at once," he said.  "She's
ill.  She can't act to-night.  I have to see her
manager and telephone to London for her doctor.
You'll look after her while I'm gone, won't you?"
he added with deep solicitude as he hastened off.

Alexandra went quickly to Mrs. Lambert's
room.  She was greatly concerned by Chalfont's
bad news, but far less unprepared for it than
he had been.  On the previous night Mrs. Lambert
had almost collapsed in her dressing room,
though she had made light of it and had forbidden
Alexandra to say anything about it to Chalfont.
Now she was worse, just recovering from the
dead faint in which she had been found.  She
looked exceedingly ill.

"Don't be frightened," she said in a weak
voice.  "I know perfectly well what is the matter
with me.  I'm afraid it means an untimely end to
the tour, though.  You won't leave me?"

"Of course not," Alexandra promised.  "You
mustn't worry about the tour, or anything.  You
want a rest.  You'll be quite strong again soon."

Mrs. Lambert smiled faintly.  "I told you I
looked forward to resting.  I meant it in its
eternal sense.  Six months ago I knew what was
in store for me, but I meant to stand out this tour,
if I could.  I'm afraid they'll try and persuade
me to have an operation....  Just an outside
chance of living....  Oh, my dear, I would so
like to die quietly without being cut about and
pried into."

The tears came into Alexandra's eyes.  Illness
she was prepared for, but not the thought of
death.

"Please, please, don't talk like that," she said
unsteadily.  "Heaps of people who are very ill
get better.  Let me undress you.  Then I'll sit
by you.  But I don't think you ought to talk."

Mrs. Lambert was very passive.  When Alexandra
had undressed her she lay for a little in
silence.  Suddenly she said:

"Remember I'm a Catholic....  See that I
have a priest at the last ... if it comes to that.
And—I must say this, don't stop me—if—it's
necessary—afterwards—I would like you to
write to my husband and tell him I sent my love."

"Yes, yes, I promise," murmured Alexandra huskily.

Mrs. Lambert turned on her pillow.

"Baba will be all right, I think," she whispered,
and fell asleep.

She was awake again and quite cheery when
the doctor, a noted specialist, arrived during the
late afternoon.  He was a long time with her
and also a long time with Chalfont afterwards.
The result of that conference was that the latter
came to Alexandra and told her that an immediate
operation had been decided on.

"To-morrow?" she asked fearfully.

The weakening effect of suspense made her
shrink from the imminence of the ordeal, although
it was not she who was to endure it.  Deep
distress was in Chalfont's face.

"No, to-night," he said brokenly.  "She
wouldn't consent at first....  When Sir James
told me that delay was dangerous I had to—to
advise her to undergo it."  He could hardly get
the words out.  "There isn't time to move her.
The hotel people have been very decent about it.
I have just seen the manager....  Two nurses
are coming."

Alexandra could only stand and struggle with
her voice.  Her feelings were beyond expression.

"I'm afraid—terribly afraid we have to face
losing her," said Chalfont at last.

"Oh, I hope not," she said fervently, while
the tears streamed down her face.  "Is there
anything I can do?"

"Yes, there is."  What he had to say cost him
a struggle.  "Her husband ought to know.  He
ought to be here.  I doubt whether a telegram
would be any use, and I can't go to him.  Will you?"

"I'll do anything," she said.

"Thank you.  I'll have the car round at once
then."  He looked at his watch.  "It's six now.
You can be in town by a little after eight.  You'll
catch him at the theater.  Try and bring him
back with you.  It—the operation—will be over
by that time.  We shall know—one way or the
other.  You would like to see her before you start?"

"Please."  Alexandra was very white, but she
was quiet now that she knew the worst and had
not to await in inactivity.  "She told me she
would like a priest," she said.  "I think you
should send for one."

"I have already."

She took a step toward the door but turned
suddenly and without speaking put her hand out.
He grasped and held it tightly, taking comfort
from the action.

"You'll do your best, I know," he said gratefully.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XXIII`:

.. class:: center large

   XXIII

.. vspace:: 2

Alexandra said nothing to Mrs. Lambert
of her impending errand.  Discretion
counseled silence about it.  From
what she had heard of Hugh Lambert, and
judging also by Chalfont's doubts, unexpressed though
they were, whether he would respond to the
obligation imposed on him, she was dreadfully afraid
that she might not be successful.  Still, she could
do nothing by remaining in the hotel, and in
going she was avoiding the purgatory of having to
sit in an adjoining room while the woman who
had been so good to her was in the toils of death.

It was half-past six when Chalfont saw her off
after bidding the chauffeur use the best speed the
car was capable of.  The man, who was devoted
to his mistress, needed little incentive.  Once
informed of her perilous condition his one thought
was to do his best for her by getting to his
destination without the loss of a moment.

Once out of the town he let his engine out.
Alexandra found herself leaning forward in the
car, involuntarily actuated by a desire to urge it
on still faster.  At first her troubled mind could
not think coherently, but as the Panhard tore along
over the smooth tarred road northwards, the
monotony of its motion tended to abate her nervous
tension.  She found herself reviewing the
incidents that had culminated in the present crisis.
They passed through her mind like a set of
moving pictures, the hum of the engine accentuating
the illusion.

She saw herself at home, alone, bereft of the
mother with whom she had happily spent so many
years in the small and placid provincial town that
was like a harbor of refuge to superannuated
Anglo-Indians; her departure from it under the
eyes of a sceptical circle of friends, suspect
because she had elected to choose so unconventional
a way of life as the stage; flitting shadows of
herself in London looking for employment; the
unpleasant picture of a boarding-house; the still more
unpleasant incident that had caused her to leave
it; then the somber picture of the Pall Mall stage
and Maggy.  The screen of her mind threw
things up clearly now.  The perspective of time
robbed the little room in Sidey Street of its
uninviting aspect, and her life there of its
straitened circumstances.  Maggy's desertion of her
was the one sad feature of that picture.  The reel
of experience became vivid again as it showed her
in happy companionship with the actress.  Pleasant
scenes and cheerful incidents characterized it,
obliterating from her mind the troublous past.
Then, close on the heels of this state of content
came the unexpected shock of present happenings.
From being a spectator of the introspective drama
she came to herself, startled by the abrupt
consciousness of personal participation in it.

The pale face and luminous eyes of the sick
woman filled her thoughts; the odor of drugs that
permeated the room in which she had left her
seemed to fill her nostrils.  She thought too of
Chalfont and the self-denying motives that had
prompted him to send for the one man he could
least wish to see.

It was dark inside the car now, but the lit streets
and the turmoil of traffic through which it was
threading its way meant that she had reached
London.

London again!  She no longer felt about it as
she had in the days when she was new to it.  The
novelty of it had worn off.  She had seen its
seamy side, lived on the verge of its submerged
life, been up against the brunt of it.  Repugnance
to it filled her when she remembered, as she
suddenly did, that before many days had elapsed
she would probably have to return to it.  She
found herself shrinking at the prospect of going
back to the conditions that wore one down and
sapped one's power of resistance in the unequal
fight for a living there, from having to resume
the weary round once more among the agencies;
the interminable suspense in stuffy waiting rooms
among the loquacious crowd of out-of-works.  It
all came back so vividly: her soul sickened of it.

She knew that if Mrs. Lambert should recover
she would stand by her.  She had said as much.
But if she died....  The unhappy speculation
was not induced by selfishness.  The next moment
Alexandra's thoughts were solely concerned with
Mrs. Lambert's personal peril.  They made her
forget her own fears.  She tried to pray for her.
It seemed incongruous to pray in Piccadilly, where
the car was slowly threading its way among the
traffic.  Still, surely God could and would hear
her in spite of the din made by the motor-buses!

They were close to Lambert's theater now....
Another few minutes....  The piece would be
half over....  The car turned down a side street
and stopped at the stage door.  Alexandra got
out.  There was the usual difficulty with the
stage-door keeper about admittance.  He did not know
her.  She mentioned Mrs. Lambert's name.  That
stirred him even less.  His attitude toward the
last-named was that of the hireling inspired by
the master.  No *Mrs.* Lambert existed for him.
Indeed, the importation of her name struck him
as the ruse of a stage-struck damsel.  They were
always inventing dodges to get past him and make
him lose his job.  Ten precious minutes passed
in futile argument.  Even in an urgent case like
this, vital to Lambert himself, the absurd
inaccessibility of the successful actor toward any one
of the outside world was borne in on Alexandra
with exaggerated force.

"I'll wait here until Mr. Lambert leaves the
theater," she said at last.  "And I think I can
promise you that you'll lose your place when he
hears that you refused to take up my card."

Her indignation and her threat were too real
to be ignored.  They influenced the man's manner.

"Oh, well, chuck it over," he said grudgingly.

She handed it to him.  In addition to her name
it bore the words "Mrs. Hugh Lambert's
Company."  She had already penciled on it a line
meant for Lambert's own eye.  The man went
off grumbling.  When he returned his arrogance
had entirely disappeared.

"The governor will see you," he said.  "Up
the stairs and the first door on the right."  Then
he added insinuatingly: "Sorry to keep you
waiting, miss; but I get it that hot if I let anybody
pass who's wanting an engagement."

She was indifferent to his regrets.  All she
wanted was to see Lambert and take him back
with her.  She passed in, hurried up the stairs,
where at the top his dressing-room door stood open.

Lambert was playing in a costume piece, a
mid-Georgian comedy that owed a great deal of its
inspiration to Sheridan.  In it he appeared as a
beau of that elegant period, and as Alexandra on
entering saw him she could but admit that he
looked the part.  Dressed in gorgeous brocade
through which a dainty sword-hilt protruded,
immaculately bewigged, lace-ruffled and overpoweringly
scented, as she discovered on nearing him,
he gave her the impression of extreme elegance,
tempered by foppishness and effeminacy.  He was
sitting before the mirror on his dressing-table,
leaning toward it, adding a deeper pencil mark
to his eyebrows.  When he had done that to his
satisfaction he picked up a stick of carmine and
deliberately touched up the curve of his lips
before turning round to face his visitor.  Alexandra
had always felt an instinctive dislike of make-up
on a man's face, though she recognized it as
essential to the stage.  But Lambert's attitude
before the mirror was so affected, so vain that he
instantly inspired her with contempt.

"You come from my wife?" he asked, and she
thought she detected a note of dismay in his
fine-toned voice.  "Did she send you?"

"No," she answered.  "But I want you to
come down to her at once.  She is very ill.  I
motored up so as not to lose a minute."

He gave a slightly startled movement at her
news.  It was as though he shrank from hearing it.

"I'm sorry to hear that," he said.  "Where is she?"

"At Eastbourne."

"Is—is it serious?"

"Very serious.  They—" the words stuck in
her throat—"they are operating now.  She
wished to see you.  She was talking of you to
me this morning—"

She was interrupted by the entrance of a third
person, a woman who came in without knocking,
a woman, pretty beneath her paint, with curiously
hard blue eyes.  She stared at Alexandra with
open hostility and then looked interrogatively at
Lambert.

"This lady has come up from Eastbourne," he
hesitated.  "My wife is ill and wants to see me."

After a momentary silence the newcomer
allowed herself a trifling shrug of the shoulders.

"She has been ill before," she said a little
contemptuously, and turned to Alexandra.  "What
is it this time?  A bilious attack?"

Alexandra looked at her steadily, perhaps
disdainfully.  She guessed she had to do with Mary
Mantel, the woman who had displaced Mrs. Lambert
in her husband's affections.

"We fear she is dying," was her rejoinder.

The other woman laughed.

"Oh, I see!  Advertising her 'farewell to the
stage.'  I daresay she will take her time over it."

Lambert turned on her.

"Be quiet!" he exclaimed irritably.

Again she shrugged.  "It's our call directly."

"I can't help that.  MacBride must go on for me."

He picked up a towel and was about to remove
the grease paint from his face, but stopped at the
ejaculation that broke from her.

"You can't possibly go to-night," she burst out.
"Evidently these people"—she made an impatient
gesture that indicated Alexandra—"don't
know that it's the last night of your season, and
that you're booked to leave for America in three
days' time.  Or probably they don't care.  To
think of throwing up your part at a moment's
notice and letting the curtain come down in your
absence is madness.  You must stop for your
speech.  If you want to you can go first thing
to-morrow, though you'll probably have a wire by
then to say your wife's better and won't see you
for worlds!"

A boy put his head in at the door.

"Your call, sir," he announced.

Lambert got up, the towel still in his hand, the
paint still on his face.  Alexandra watched the
indecision in it.  Had he enough strength of mind
to come?  Or would he let self-interest prevail?

"Hugh, do be guided by me," begged Miss
Mantel.  "Think of your career.  There will be
call on call for you at the end of the show.  The
house is full of pressmen.  Are you going to
throw away hundreds of pounds' worth of
gratuitous advertisement?"

That last argument decided him.  Publicity, the
acclamation of the crowd, the opportunity to pose
before it, to deliver the carefully-prepared speech,
egotistical yet full of sham humility, were
temptations he was unable to resist.  With a quiver of
his painted lips that owed nothing to solicitude for
a wife who lay between life and death, he said:

"I'll come in the morning;" and without looking
at Alexandra, made for the stage.

She heard the thunder of applause that greeted
him.  To the little tin gods the plaudits of the
multitude are as the music of the spheres.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XXIV`:

.. class:: center large

   XXIV

.. vspace:: 2

It was verging on midnight when Chalfont
came out of the sick room to hear the result
of Alexandra's errand.  The moment he saw
that she was alone, limp and tired from her
journey, he knew it had failed.  He had had the
forethought to have some cold supper ready for her,
and while she ate a little of it and drank the glass
of champagne which he insisted on her taking, he
answered her many questions about Mrs. Lambert.
In tones of sad resignation he told her that the
operation had been successful but that there was
little hope.  She had taken the anesthetic badly
and was still under its influence.

"So Lambert wouldn't come?" he asked, when
the painful subject was exhausted.

"I believe he was willing to come," she replied.
"I saw him alone first.  But Miss Mantel came
in and dissuaded him.  It was a last night.  He
had to make a speech.  She urged him to stay.
He's very weak, I think.  He said he would come
in the morning.  Can I go to her?"

"Better not.  The nurse will let us know when
she is conscious.  It oughtn't to be long now.
Lie down on the sofa and try to sleep."

She was too anxious for that, so they sat waiting,
for hours as it seemed.  Now and again they
talked, but most of the time absorbed and troubled
thought held them silent.  No sound came from
the next room.  Presently its quiet was broken by
the monotonous drone of a man's voice.  Alexandra
sat up, listening.

"Who is that?" she asked.

"The priest.  He's with her."

Twice they heard a faint murmur mingled with
a low intoning.  Another half-hour passed.  Then
the priest came noiselessly into the room.  He
drew Chalfont on one side and they spoke together
in whispers.

Presently the latter beckoned to Alexandra.

"Come," he said; and the three went into the
sick room.

A light, carefully screened, threw the bed in
shadow, but not sufficiently to hide the still form
that lay upon it.  Although the pallor of death
was in Mrs. Lambert's face, it seemed to have
grown youthful.  She looked like a child asleep.
Her eyes were closed.  They could not tell
whether she was aware of their presence or not.
The priest stood at the foot of the bed lost in
prayer.  The nurses, still and white like statues,
watched from a distance.

Chalfont, kneeling with a hand laid gently on
that of the woman he loved, broke the long silence.

"Speak to us," he implored.

She heard his voice and opened her eyes.  They
had a spectral look, and as she turned them from
him to Alexandra an expression of concern crept
into her face.  She murmured something faintly.

"Your husband will be here in the morning,
dearest," he said softly but distinctly, trying to
stimulate her to consciousness.

Some weighty thought was affecting her mind.
Her eyes were on Chalfont.  She seemed to be
making an effort to say something.

"That poor girl ... that nice girl..."

Chalfont bent low, fearful of losing the whispered words.

"What poor girl, dear?"

They thought she said "Maggy."

.. vspace:: 2

Lambert arrived at six the next morning.  His
first concern was to explain breathlessly to
Alexandra that he had been detained ... a business
matter ... farewell supper....  She would
understand....  He had hardly had three hours'
sleep before starting.  Chalfont and Alexandra
could not help exchanging an outraged glance.
When she told him that he had come too late
his weak mouth opened in surprise.  Then his
features worked unpleasantly.  He stood stupidly,
looking as though he were about to burst into
tears.  Chalfont's tolerance was near its limit.
With a set face he indicated the closed door.

"In there," he said.

Lambert hesitated.

"Do you not want to see her?"  Chalfont's
voice was like steel.

It only wanted the point-blank demand to
unnerve Lambert completely.  He collapsed into a
chair.  It would have been difficult to recognize
his huddled figure as that of the debonair
stage-gallant so familiar and so dear to a host of
infatuated theater-goers.

"Do you not want to see her?" Chalfont
repeated remorselessly.

Lambert's face was lowered.  When he looked
up cowardice transfigured it.

"I—I've never looked on death," he quavered.

Alexandra, shocked beyond words, thought that
Chalfont would surely strike him.  He stood over
him so long in a tense attitude.

"My God!" he at last exclaimed.  "Can this
be a man?"

He went to the door by which Lambert had
entered, opened it, and then drew aside as far as
he could to let the actor pass.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XXV`:

.. class:: center large

   XXV

.. vspace:: 2

The London newspapers had not given
much of their space to Mrs. Lambert's
doings while she was alive.  She did not
advertise in them.  Besides, all their dramatic critics
were on speaking terms with Lambert, and even
dramatic critics have second-hand prejudices.  But
now that Mrs. Lambert was dead she was accorded
the half-column of obituary notice to which actors
and actresses seem to have a prescriptive right.
Defunct millionaires and jam-makers get a little
less: British officers who die for their country
have to be satisfied with a couple of lines tucked
away among the Military Intelligence.

The papers belauded the dead woman.  They
recorded her dramatic successes with much detail.
They were fulsome concerning her virtues.  Their
readers were left to imagine the feelings of her
bereaved and heart-broken husband, who at the
moment was sorting an auction-bridge hand in the
cardroom of a transatlantic liner.  It was the
sort of pretentious gush that had always sickened
Mrs. Lambert when she read it about others.

The funeral was largely attended by members
of the theatrical profession.  Few of them knew
the deceased personally, but as the occasion
provided an opportunity for public exhibition and
incidentally for getting their names into the papers
they did not miss it.

Maggy was not of these.  Woolf had made
some engagement for her which he would not let
her break.  But she sent a wreath.  It was quite
unlike any of the others.  Hers was composed of
autumn-tinted leaves and the last homely flowers
that one sees in cottage gardens.  She purposely
wished to avoid the conventional effect aimed at
by the professional florist whose stiff made-to-order
wreath implies such indifference to death.

Alexandra placed it at the head of the coffin.
Mary Mantel had also sent one, ordered before
she left for America with Lambert.  But
Alexandra refused to take it in.  Lambert's card was
inscribed "From your sorrowing husband."  All
the newspapers dragged in those words with a
suitably unctuous comment.

Late on the afternoon of the funeral Maggy
managed to evade Woolf and go to Albert Place,
thinking to find Alexandra there.  The blinds had
not yet been drawn up, but the front door was
open.  Feeling an aversion from disturbing the
silence of a house of mourning she went in without
ringing and ascended to the room Alexandra had
used.  Finding it empty she came down and looked
into the drawing room.  It was in the green gloom
of a closed jalousie and she thought it unoccupied.
In that room she had spent such a pleasant
half-hour with Lord Chalfont not so very long ago.
Since then, disaster had befallen its owner, and
she herself had been very near to death.  The
three events seemed associated in her mind.

She was about to draw back when a movement
arrested her.  At the far end she made out
Chalfont.  He was sitting at an escritoire with his
head bent over it.  After a moment of hesitation
she went up to him and timidly touched him
on the shoulder.  Dazed by grief and with his
thoughts far away he did not at first recognize her.
Seeing how it was with him she gently said:

"I'm Maggy.  I didn't mean to disturb you.
I was looking for Lexie....  Now that I'm here
I'd like to say how dreadfully sorry I am."

After he had thanked her there was a pause.
His ease had temporarily left him.  Maggy felt
she was intruding.

"Do you know where she has gone?  Lexie, I
mean," she went on.

"She wrote down her address."  Chalfont
searched for and found it among the papers on
the escritoire.  "109, Sidey Street."

"Then she's gone back.  That's where we used
to live together."

There was another silence.  Then Chalfont said:

"Will you let me know if there is anything I
can do for her?  Mrs. Lambert was very
interested in her—and yourself.  Indeed—" here
he hesitated a little—"the last word she spoke
was your name.  That is why I—"

The color came into Maggy's face.  She did
not let him finish.

"Did she—did she say anything else?"

"No; only your name.  She seemed to be
concerned about you."

Maggy nodded.

"She knew all about me," she said in an
explanatory tone.  "She was worried because I had
been ill, I expect.  She was like that, I know....
And she knew I—I wasn't married."

Her meaning was quite plain, as plain as the
wedding-ring on her ungloved hand.  In her
honesty she thought the admission was due to
Chalfont after he had apprized her of Mrs. Lambert's
interest in her.  His manner of doing so had
implied friendship.  She did not want to accept that
under false pretenses.

Chalfont was quick to appreciate her motive in
making the confession.  If possible it raised her
in his estimation.  But it filled him with a curious
sense of disappointment.  In spite of the absence
of a legal bond between Mrs. Lambert and himself
he had a strong distaste for free alliances.  He
had chafed against circumstances in his own case,
and he was far from sitting in judgment on
Maggy's.  Still, he could not help the shock they
had on his feelings.

"You didn't think I was that sort," she said,
guessing at what was in his mind.  "Lexie's not,
but I'm different.  I'm not a lady.  It wasn't only
because I wanted clothes and jewelry, or because
I was hungry that—that it happened.  I *did*
hate going without things.  But it was because I
met a man who made me feel—like jelly.  If
he'd had nothing a year I would have gone to the
devil with him just the same....  I'm telling you
all this to show you why we can't be friends,
although I know you're ever so kind."

"Can we not?  Mrs. Lambert was your friend."

"I can't think why."  Tears came into her
eyes.  "There aren't many women like her....
You loved her, didn't you?"

"I loved her very dearly.  More than she
loved me.  Though she loved me as much as I
deserved," he added quickly.

"And she loved her husband.  I know.  I
think he must be a pig! ... Why do we love
things that are bad for us, and men that don't
care for us? ... You would have married her,
wouldn't you?"

"That was what I desired more than anything
else," he rejoined in a voice full of regret.

This unreserved talk did not strike either of
them as strange.  Chalfont was usually sphynx-like
about his innermost feelings, but with Maggy
it seemed unnecessary to hide them.  It did him
good to unburden his heart to her.  Maggy not
only inspired confidence, she attracted it.  It gave
her a double hold on sympathy.

"She would have been 'my lady' then," she
said thoughtfully.  "What a draw that would be
to a lot of women—the women who don't put
love first.  It's when we love that we don't think
what we get by it....  If the Earl of the Scilly
Isles came crawling all the way from Scotland and
wanted me to marry him I wouldn't leave Woolf."

Chalfont lost sight of her amazing geography
in the surprise he felt at the name she mentioned.

"Woolf!  What Woolf?" he stared.

"Fred Woolf," she said with a touch of pride.
"He owns the *Jockey's Weekly* and Primus cars.
You must have heard of Biretta, his racehorse."

"Oh!"

Chalfont was incapable of more than the
exclamation.  He knew all about Woolf.  Sudden
pity for Maggy took hold of him.  He could not
run the man down; he could not tell her that
Woolf's name stank in the nostrils of decent-minded
men; that even the men who fraternized
with him took care to keep their womenfolk out of
his reach.  He could not tell her of Woolf's shady
reputation on the turf, at the card table, and in the
city.  He saw that it would be useless to do so,
and also cruel.

"You've met him, haven't you?" she asked.

"I've seen him at race-meetings and—and once
at a club to which I belong."

She nodded.  "Fred goes everywhere."

Chalfont did not pursue the subject.

"I must go now," said Maggy.  "Good-by....
Oh, I forgot to thank you for the roses."  She
colored, remembering the fate they had suffered.

"I'm glad you liked them.  They were
Mrs. Lambert's favorites."

"Oh, were they?  If I'd known that I would
have got some instead of the wreath I sent."

"It was a beautiful wreath—so simple.  She
wouldn't have wished it altered if she could have
seen it.  It didn't remind one of a funeral."

"I didn't want it to.  I felt I couldn't just go
and give an order to a florist who grows flowers
on purpose for graves.  I was up ever so early
this morning and motored into the country.  The
dew was all over the hedges.  That's where I got
the leaves from.  And in the cottage gardens
wherever I saw the sort of flowers I'd have liked
some one to give me, whether I was dead or alive,
I stopped and asked the woman to pick me a few
for a wreath for a sweet lady.  They were so
pleased to give them.  Not one would take
payment.  They were *given* flowers, given for love,
fresh and—"

She broke off, shy at having exhibited her
feelings.  It saddened Chalfont to think of her in
association with such a man as Woolf.  In spite
of it she was still something of a child, with a
child's pretty thoughts.  But the next moment
her womanliness showed itself.

"Are you going away?" she asked.  "I would,
if I were a man and had lost all I loved I should
go away to places where I could kill something.
Wild places, where there's solitude and danger,
so that it would be quite sporting to keep alive....
You'd come back feeling different ... and
perhaps marry some nice girl who would love you
and make up for all that's happened....  I think
Mrs. Lambert would wish that."

She spoke as if Mrs. Lambert were not so far away.

"What makes you say that?" he wondered.

"Because—because she told me things."  Maggy
hesitated.  "May I draw up the blinds
before I go?"

They pulled up the blinds together and let the
autumn sunshine into the room.  Maggy threw
up one of the windows.  They stood side by side
looking at the movement in the street.  Around
a barrel organ a little way off children were
dancing.  A man and a girl, looking into each other's
eyes, passed under the window.  On the opposite
side a woman was wheeling a perambulator,
running every now and then so that the baby in it
screamed with delight.  The roar of London's
traffic came from a distance.  Maggy's eyes grew soft.

"Life goes on," she said.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XXVI`:

.. class:: center large

   XXVI

.. vspace:: 2

The landlady of 109 Sidey Street opened
the door to Maggy.

"Goodness me!" were her first words.
"Whatever have you been doing to yourself, Miss
Delamere?  You *are* thin!"

"I've had appendicitis," said Maggy.

Mrs. Bell's face immediately indicated the
thirsty interest which people of her class take in
any form of illness.  She closed the door carefully.
A hushed note came into her voice.

"Appendicitis!  What did they find?"

"Latchkey and a bath mat," said Maggy solemnly.

Mrs. Bell looked offended, also disappointed.

"What a one you always were for jokes," she
complained.  "I believe you'd joke in your coffin.
Talking of coffins—"

"I hope you've not been talking of such things
to Miss Hersey," Maggy interrupted.

"Not talk about them?  And she just come
back from a funeral!  What else would *any one*
talk about?  Not that *she* said much, mind you.
I only know there was a carriage-full of wreaths
besides what was in the hearse.  I'll have to wait
for the rest of it in the Sunday paper.  Miss
Hersey wouldn't say what the corpse looked like."

Mrs. Bell was wound up.  Maggy knew that
the only way to avoid a repetition of the ghoulish
verbosity from which Alexandra must already have
suffered was to get away.

"Where is Miss Hersey?" she asked, beginning
to mount the stairs.  "Same room?"

"No; a shunter from King's Cross has that
now.  Such a nice-spoken young feller.  Miss
Hersey's in the room with the cistern.  I'll bring
you up a nice cup of tea directly, dear.  I won't
put it down in her bill," she whispered in a burst
of generosity.

Upstairs in the room with the cistern the two
girls ran into one another's arms.  But Maggy
was not to escape a repetition of the scrutiny that
Mrs. Bell had given her downstairs.  After their
embrace Alexandra drew back and looked at her
with concern.

"Maggy!" she exclaimed.  "Have you been
ill?  There's nothing of you."

"Rubbish!" said Maggy.  "It's all over,
anyway.  I'm what they call *svelte* in the society
papers.  I was all face and fatness before.  Fred
says I'm a lady-like size now.  It's the 'Willow'
corset.  I'm in the *Ladies' Field* this week.  Such
a sketch!  Just a chemise and—  But don't let's
talk about me.  Lexie, I wanted to ask you
something.  Mrs. Lambert wrote to me two or three
times, and I wrote to her.  Do you know if she
tore the letters up?"

"I found them.  Lord Chalfont asked me to
look through a lot of her papers, and your letters
were there.  They were marked in pencil
'Destroy.'  I expect she meant to have done it, so I
tore them up myself.  There were three letters
and a postcard.  I couldn't help seeing what was
on the postcard—'All over, Maggy.'  What did
you mean?"

Under her paint and powder Maggy flushed a little.

"Oh, that was—about my illness.  Thank you
for destroying the letters, Lexie.  There was
nothing in them I couldn't have told you, but they
were about things you'd rather not know."

"Then you have been ill?"

"Rest cure, my dear.  Forget it."

"I'm not hurt because you wrote to her about
it instead of me."

"You needn't be.  Was it nice being with her?"

Alexandra told her all about the tour.  While
she talked Maggy began to notice a subtle change
in her.  Her views seemed to have grown broader.
She appeared to be more tolerant of human
failings.  Her old, hard attitude toward them had
disappeared.  She showed this by the manner in
which she spoke of Mrs. Lambert and Chalfont.
It was entirely sympathetic.

"Lexie, you're different," declared Maggy in
surprise when she had done.  "You've come alive!"

"I don't feel quite the same," Alexandra
admitted.  "I believe I'm—changing.  I've been
trying to think things out, Maggy."  There was
puzzledom in her voice.

"What sort of things?"

"Principally morals and—lack of morals....
Not long ago I had everything neatly
labeled and pigeon-holed in my mind.  Things
were either good or bad.  People the same.  Now
all the labels seem to have come off....  Really,
I'm not half so good as poor Mrs. Lambert was,
and yet she did what I always considered so wrong.
She lived with Lord Chalfont.  The strange thing
is it didn't make either of them bad.  They were
just like two married people who had the deepest
respect for each other."

Maggy gave a nod of comprehension.  "And
that puzzles you?" she asked.

"Yes, in a way."

"I think I know why.  You're asking yourself
whether that sort of thing is really bad, after
all, since it didn't drag them down.  You've got
the labels wrong, mixing up morals with people
and putting them all together in the honey-pot.
The stage, I mean.  It's a contaminating place,
right enough.  The wonder is how anybody gets
out of it clean.  Some people can drink filthy
water and keep healthy, and others get typhoid from
it.  It doesn't alter the water.  What makes me
sorry is that nice people like Mrs. Lambert and
Lord Chalfont and you should have to drink it at
all.  The worst of it is you can't tell whether it's
done you any harm until it's worked right into your
system, and then you're generally past help.  That
rather proves that immorality is a sort of disease,
probably a microbe, which thrives especially on
the stage.  What a pity they can't vaccinate us
against it when we're babies.  It would have done
*me* good.  *I'm* an example of the corruption of
the stage, if you're looking for one."

"You're nothing of the kind, Maggy!"

"Yes, I am.  If I hadn't been on the stage
Fred wouldn't have thought I was easy fruit, and
I shouldn't have known what he wanted from the
start.  I went over the line because I knew living
with him was all he expected, or I could expect.
I don't say I wouldn't rather be married and
respectable, but as I couldn't have Fred that way,
I've got to put up without it.  Marriage and the
stage are like oil and vinegar.  They don't mix.
Look at Mrs. Lambert and her husband.  Look
at the girls who marry noblemen.  Don't they
keep the divorce court busy?  And you can't do
any good on the stage without a man at the back
of you.  Make up your mind to that.  You've
got to bury your conscience like a dog does a bone.
At first you keep on going back to it to see if it's
there, and one day you forget all about it, or you
find it's gone.  That's the big difference between
you and the dog....  So you've come back to
this hole, Lexie.  Do you think I don't know what
you feel about it?  You're like Cinderella, only
you've been to the funeral of your fairy
god-mother.  I suppose you'll hold out while your
money lasts, and then begin the old fight all over
again.  But there won't be so much fight left in
you.  You don't *feel* like fighting.  You don't
feel the same.  You said so, just now....  Lexie
dear, don't think of your old pal Maggy as a
she-devil taking you up on top of a mountain and
tempting you.  But I do want you to make the
most of your chances.  I honestly believe if you
take things as they come you won't be sorry.
You're sure to meet some nice man sometime.  If
he's able to—to keep you, do give in.  If you
love him you'll want to.  And what's the use of
giving love the cold shoulder simply because he
doesn't always go about with a marriage license
in his pocket?  If it's wrong to talk like that all
I can say is I'd rather love without marriage than
not love at all, even though I knew I was going
to be burnt to a cinder for it."

"Perhaps I'm asbestos—"

"All the better if you are: you'll stand it
better.  Anyhow, asbestos gets hot....  Lexie, I
haven't a regret in the world.  I was a bit down
on my luck before I was ill, but now I'm well
again, I'm glad that I'm Maggy who loves her Fred."

Alexandra sat staring in front of her, turning
Maggy's advice over in her mind.  She knew she
meant every word she said.  She recalled
Mrs. Lambert's views about the stage.  She had less
faith in her powers of endurance now.  Privation
and disappointment had done their work.
In easy circumstances any one may withstand
temptation: surrender comes with adversity.  At the
present moment Alexandra was not actually in
touch with adversity.  She felt capable of holding
out against temptation.

"I shan't give in," she said with a little of her
old tenacity.  "I'm going to try and write."

"What?" asked Maggy blankly.

"My experiences."

"But you haven't had any."

"You and Mrs. Lambert and all that you both
have told me are experiences."

This was a new aspect of Alexandra.  It mystified Maggy.

"But can you write?" she asked doubtfully.

"I—I think so.  At least I've made a beginning."

"It seems so funny.  Fred says that actresses
can't write.  All those things you see in the
magazines and the *Jockey's Weekly* by actresses all
about themselves, with photos stuck in between,
aren't written by them.  The printer does it."

"Not the printer, surely?"

"Well, the man from the paper.  It's all the
same.  I've been interviewed and I know.  All I
did was to sign my name at the end.  It came
out in *The Housewife*."

"What I meant was a serious article.  Something true."

"But nobody wants to read anything serious
about the stage," Maggy contended.  "It's for
pleasure....  Fancy you writing!  Do let me
see what you've done, Lexie."

Alexandra went over to the chest of drawers
and came back with her article.  It was in
manuscript.  She handed it over shyly.

"Why, it's pages and pages!" exclaimed
Maggy, with the bewilderment of one to whom
the space on a postcard presents difficulties.

She commenced to read aloud from it.

"'The stage as a profession for women has
frequently been a subject of discussion.  Seldom
however has it occurred to any one to descant on
it as a profession for ladies...'

"We're always called *ladies* of the profession,"
debated Maggy, and read on.

"'... To do this effectively one must first try
and arrive at the proper definition of the term
"lady," and when one has done so enquire into
the economic and moral effects which the stage
may have on her if she should embark on...'"

Maggy raised enquiring, rather helpless, eyes.

"Does this mean you're a Suffragette?" she asked.

"No, of course not."

Maggy skipped a paragraph.

"'A lady, we will say, is one who, apart from
the question of birth, has been brought up to
respect the usual conventions of social life.  Let
us now consider how far those conventions are
respected on the stage.'"

As she turned the pages, singling out portions
of them at random, she found it very hard
reading.  She thought it like the leaders in the daily
paper, which she always skipped.  In reality, it
was not a bad little article for a beginner, in spite
of its consciously correct phraseology and want of
cohesion of idea.  But as an unglossed commentary
concerning the ethical side of stage life it
provided food for thought.

"I suppose it's brainy," said Maggy, handing
it back.  "It doesn't sound a bit like you though.
I hope I'm not a wet blanket, but I think you'll
get sick of the crumply plop it will make coming
back through the letter-box.  It's not what you
ever see in the papers.  You may ask things about
inferior flannelette or horrid sausages or white
slaves, and it's all right.  But the truth about the
stage!  Well, there, it's written now, so you may
as well post it; but if I were you, I'd go and see
the editor in the morning before he's had time to
read it."

"Why?" enquired Alexandra innocently.

"Well ... if he's young—and impressionable—it
might—  No, on second thoughts, don't."

Tea came in.  By the side of the teapot Mrs. Bell
had ostentatiously placed a small medicine bottle.
She had also provided what purported to be a cake.

"I sent out for 'three' of gin," she said,
beaming placidly at the bottle.

"Whatever for?" demanded Alexandra.

"For a dash in your tea, dear.  Seeing as how
you've just come from a funeral—"

Alexandra's face showed a repugnance.  Mrs. Bell
looked grieved.  Maggy intervened.

"Miss Hersey only drinks champagne now,"
she said cheerily.  "Doctor's orders.  And I've
sworn off.  You trot off with it downstairs.  Gin's
good for landladies."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XXVII`:

.. class:: center large

   XXVII

.. vspace:: 2

Alexandra's bad luck held.

The only engagements she was offered
she could not accept.  One was in provincial
pantomime and therefore not immediate,
another a "walk-on" at a London theater, for
which a premium of £10 was asked.  Suggestions
were made to her by doubtful-looking touring
managers which besides being only tentative were also
unwholesome.  One agent made it impossible for
her to go and see him again.

The soul-sickening chase after employment
continued for several weeks.  By husbanding the
money she had saved while on tour with
Mrs. Lambert she was able to keep out of debt; but
time was against her.  Soon she would be unable
to do without a fire in her room.  Coals at
six-pence a scuttle sounded to her like extravagance
and were therefore prohibitive.  She did not
think it likely she would be able to find a cheaper
lodging, or at any rate one where the landlady
was as honest as Mrs. Bell.  In Sidey Street she
could at least make sure that if half a herring was
left over at breakfast the other half would be
available at supper time.

Mrs. Bell was also "particular" about sheets
and cleanliness generally.  She took an open pride
in having a lodger who indulged in a daily bath.
The blush of modesty often came to Alexandra's
face as she heard the fact being exultantly
advertised on the stairs to some new or would-be
tenant.  Her landlady used it as a testimonial.  Once
a week, too, the little room with the cistern was
"done out," which meant that Mrs. Bell used a
duster for a motor-veil and threw the furniture
out on the landing.  For these reasons 109 Sidey
Street was tolerable.  The lodgers there were
respectable.  True, the shunter from King's Cross
Station had the room overhead, but as he did not
import his boisterous occupation into domestic life
Alexandra found him unobjectionable.

She saw a good deal of Maggy, but Maggy was
only able to offer advice and the use of her purse,
neither of which Alexandra would accept.  It hurt
her to refuse.  The advice she could not reconcile
with her conscience: the money, being Woolf's,
seemed tainted.  All this while her one attempt
at literature had kept returning to her with
hopeless monotony.  A month had elapsed since she
had last seen it.  She had all but forgotten it
when a letter unexpectedly reached her, nebulously
signed "The Editor," requesting her to call at the
offices of his paper.

She went there full of a natural excitement at
the prospect of hearing that her article was to be
printed.  To her chagrin the Editor, otherwise
quite a pleasant person, disillusioned her on this
point.

"It's quite all right," he told her; "but I can't
use it."

"Then why did you send for me?" asked poor
Alexandra helplessly.

"For one reason, because I saw you knew your
subject, and it struck me you might put your
knowledge to a more commercial use.  My dear young
lady, there isn't a paper in England that would
print this as it stands."

Alexandra had nothing to say.

"It's quite simple," he went on.  "Papers live
by advertisement.  The stage is one of their
sources of revenue.  Besides, it doesn't pay to
vilify the stage.  It's too popular.  We have to
butter it up.  Look at this," he flicked over the
pages of his popular weekly.  "Full of photos
of stage beauties, with a eulogistic paragraph to
each.  Many of them paid for.  Well, we can't
publish a picture of, say, Miss Tottie Fluff on one
page and an indictment of her morals on the next.
Now can we?"

"I—I suppose not," said Alexandra, vastly
impressed by this amiable frankness.

"If you'll be guided by me you'll leave the
question of stage morality alone.  The press, the
public and the profession all unite in a conspiracy
of silence about it.  You're on the stage, I suppose?"

"Generally off," said Alexandra.

"Doing anything now?"

"No, I wish I were."

"Well, look here: why not write something
in a chatty way about theatrical matters?  Take
the exact opposite view to what you have here.
Treat the stage sympathetically.  Point out its
elevating influence on the masses.  Sugar it all
up.  And, I say, not twelve pages: a thousand
words or so.  I'll give you thirty shillings for it."

Alexandra went back to Sidey Street and sat
down to try and write fulsome untruths about the
stage.  She thought and thought.  The ink dried
on her pen.  Presently an idea came.  She
commenced to write swiftly.  When she had covered
two pages she stopped and read them over, realizing
what she was doing.  For the paltry sum of
thirty shillings she, who recoiled from sacrificing
her body, was prostituting her pen.

She put it down and deliberately tore the sheets
into fragments, so small that she would not be
tempted to piece them together again.

Not for thirty pieces of silver!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XXVIII`:

.. class:: center large

   XXVIII

.. vspace:: 2

The cistern, that prominent feature of
Alexandra's bedroom, was for once in a
way overshadowed.  So to speak, it was
put out of countenance.  If a cistern—squat,
square, and forbidding as this one was—could
have expressed itself it would have done so in the
form of a gasp.

For, on the bed lay the sable coat, muff and
toque and half-a-dozen unworn French frocks.
Such richness could never have been seen in Sidey
Street before.  Alexandra's emotions as she stood
and stared at them were indescribable.

They had come—several huge cardboard
boxes—that afternoon—with a letter from a
firm of solicitors stating that the furs and the
dresses were a legacy from Mrs. Lambert.  The
reason why they had not been delivered before
was that the executors of the will were ignorant
of Miss Hersey's whereabouts.  Lord Chalfont
had, however, now returned to London and had
given them her address.

And there they lay, beautiful and costly, in
startling contrast with the cistern and the other
unlovely appurtenances of the room.  Alexandra
supposed the furs must be worth quite a hundred
pounds.  The irony of the situation was not lost
upon her.  Here she was in a fireless room,
dreadfully hungry, and there on the bed lay valuables
which nothing would induce her to sell because they
were a gift from the dear dead.

A day or two ago she had found herself regretting
the destruction of that sugary eulogy of the
stage.  She had reconstructed it, but so unsuccessfully
that in the end she decided against posting
it.  The editor in all probability would have
forgotten her existence.

It was now late November and a particularly
cheerless specimen of the month.  She was glad
to leave her fireless room each morning for the
warmth of the agents' offices, always hoping
against hope that something would turn up.
Pride made her hide her straitened circumstances
from Maggy.  She still refused to borrow from
her friend.  Maggy's counsel was always the
same: "Climb down, Lexie.  Go back to De
Freyne.  He'll very likely take you on again."

She put out a cold hand and touched the furs.
They were so rich, so soft; they signified the very
quintessence of warmth.  All she had had for her
lunch that day was cold rice pudding—rice
pudding made with three parts of water to one of
milk.  She felt as if she would never thaw again.
It was sheer desire for warmth that made her
suddenly discard her thin black serge for one of the
new acquisitions, a dark brown velvet dress.

Over it she slipped the fur coat.  The warmth
of it was better than a fire.  It permeated her,
sent a glow all through her chilled body.  She
looked at herself as well as she was able in the
small mirror on her dressing-table and—thought
of De Freyne.  De Freyne only wanted well-dressed
girls.  She was well-dressed now.  She
had enough frocks to keep her looking expensively
dressed for many months.  She could not go
another week without an engagement.  Her money
would not hold out longer than that.  Even
supposing that De Freyne, following his usual custom,
should want to put her in the way of what he
termed "a chance," she need not necessarily avail
herself of it.  It was sophistry and she knew it.
Allowing herself no more time for thought she put
on the toque, picked up the muff and went out.

A motorbus took her to the theater.  There she
asked to see De Freyne, fearful lest he should
have forgotten her name.  But De Freyne had
not forgotten it nor her.  He saw her at once.
He remembered the circumstances under which
he had dismissed her, her inability to dress up to
his standard and her resolve to keep straight.
That had been too novel to slip his memory.

His jaded, practised eyes took in her changed
appearance, and priced her furs more accurately
than she had done.  He knew they must have cost
a good many hundreds, and wondered who had
paid for them.  But he made no comment and
asked no questions.  He would hear all about it in
good time.

"Come for a fresh contract?" was all he said.
"That's right."

.. vspace:: 2

Alexandra had not got back to Sidey Street when
Maggy knocked at her door.  She looked very
fetching and contented in a gray squirrel coat, a
present from Woolf.  She often contrasted her
lot with Alexandra's and felt uncomfortable when
she thought of all she had and all that her poor
proud Lexie went without.

When she heard that the latter was out she
decided to await her in her room.  Mrs. Bell
accompanied her up to it.  The first thing Maggy
noticed was the absence of a fire.  The tidy grate
showed that it had not been lit that day.  She
shivered.

"What time do you expect her in?" she asked.

"She's sure to be back by half-past four," said
Mrs. Bell.

"Well, hadn't you better light the fire?"

Mrs. Bell pursed her lips.

"She don't like her room hot," she mumbled.

"Nonsense; it's freezing!"

A look, such as a person who is about to reveal
a State secret wears, came into the landlady's face.
She dropped her voice to a tone proper to confidences.

"To tell you the truth, Miss Delamere, I'm
sadly afraid the poor dear hasn't the money to pay
for a fire.  I've lit a bit of a one sometimes on my
own, but coals is coals, and I've my living to make."

"My goodness!  You ought to have told me,"
said Maggy accusingly.  "You know I would
have paid for it."

"That's what I told her; but she wouldn't have
it.  I don't like to think what'll be the end of her
going on like this.  She's so different to any one
I ever come across.  I've let rooms to ladies of
the profession for fifteen years.  There was
Freddie Aragon.  She left me to go off with a trick
bicyclist, and after that she took up with a baronet.
I forget the name.  Then there was Cleo Kaydor
who got married to a jockey in church.  She used
to come and see me—"

"I can smell something burning!" Maggy
broke in, and the tide of Mrs. Bell's reminiscences
was immediately stemmed.  She clattered
downstairs to enquire into the false alarm.

Maggy lit the fire and settled herself before
it with a book which she found lying about.  It
was one which failed to sustain her interest.
Gradually she dozed and ultimately dropped off
asleep.  By the time Alexandra returned the fire
had burnt red, warming the room to a pleasant
and unaccustomed temperature.  As she came in
Maggy woke up with a start, unable to believe the
sight that met her eyes.  They went from the
sable coat and muff to the toque and back again.
Astonishment and the lovely effect they produced
on their wearer took her breath away.

"Lexie!" she cried.  "Where *did* you get
them?  You look a princess!  Is it—you don't
mean—  Are—are you ruined?" she quaintly
stammered.

Alexandra explained how she had come by the
furs.  If Maggy had not been so intent on
Mrs. Lambert's legacy she would have noticed an odd
look in their wearer's face.

"Oh, my dear, they're perfect!" she exclaimed.
"Real sable!"  She clutched at the arm nearest
her.  "Lexie, go and see De Freyne in them.
He'll think you've married Rockefeller—or ought to!"

"I've just come from him," said Alexandra in a
weak voice.  "He's taken me on again."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XXIX`:

.. class:: center large

   XXIX

.. vspace:: 2

De Freyne was puzzled about Alexandra.
Her furs and her frocks baffled
him.  When it transpired that she was
still living in Sidey Street she became more than
ever an enigma to him.  He could not reconcile
that neighborhood with her new and expensive
appearance.  Business instincts apart from curiosity
made him keep an eye on her.  Some acquaintance
with the private affairs of his fair and usually frail
merchandise was sometimes of value to him.
Like a good tradesman it was his habit to take
stock of it.

One thing he could not reconcile with Alexandra's
apparent opulence: he never saw her lunching
or supping at the Savoy or similar places.  Nor
did she appear to have a motor-car, that invariable
sign of private advancement.  Not knowing what
to make of it he was reduced to detaining Maggy
on pretext of business one matinée afternoon and
sounding her about her friend.

"By the way," he observed casually, after
mildly cautioning her against a want of punctuality
of which she had been guilty on the previous night.
"By the way, Miss Hersey seems to have come to
her senses at last.  But why does her friend keep
in the background?"

Maggy saw that De Freyne took it for granted
that Alexandra had a man behind her.  She also
knew that it would not be to her advantage to
correct the assumption.  She even deemed it wise to
stimulate his imagination.  It was easy to do that
with a mysterious smile and a knowing shake of
the head.

"It's a bit of a State secret," she said with just
the right amount of hesitation.  "I oughtn't to
say anything about it.  I—I've never seen his
Roy—him, I mean."

De Freyne pricked up his ears.

"But you know who he is?  Some foreigner,
I suppose?"

"Oh, there wouldn't be any need for secrecy
about a foreigner," protested Maggy with wicked
plausibility.

He put a few more questions but she refused
to be drawn.

De Freyne was anything but gullible, but
Maggy's artfulness quite took him in.  Her
hesitation alone was convincing proof that she knew
more than she would tell.  She gleefully retailed
the conversation to Woolf later in the day.

"Mischievous little devil!" he grinned, amused
by her audacity.  "What does your precious
Lexie say?"

"She doesn't say anything because I shan't tell
her.  She'd probably go straight to De Freyne
and blab out the truth, which wouldn't do her any
good.  He'll think more of her now.  At any
rate he won't bother her with men."

Woolf grunted.  He could never understand
why Maggy was always suggesting that though a
thing might be adequate to herself it was not of
necessity good enough for her friend.

Maggy was not far wrong about De Freyne's
subsequent attitude toward Alexandra.  Nothing
was said, but all the same she began to receive
more consideration.  De Freyne kept an open
eye on the stalls and boxes for any distinguished
personage who might be there on her account.  On
two nights in succession one such happened to be
among the audience.  This lent color to Maggy's
powers of invention.  Alexandra was at once
promoted to the front row.  When, a week later, a
young American Croesus made advances to De
Freyne for an introduction to the "tall, dark girl
on the extreme right," he was put off with airy
nonchalance.

"Not the least use, my dear sir," said De
Freyne.  "Between you and me, a certain royal
personage is in the way there.  But have a look
at the filly next to her, to-night.  She's only sixteen."

De Freyne would not have felt flattered had he
been told that his methods differed little from
those of the astute tradesman who, not having a
particular article in stock, never hesitates to try
and palm off the nearest equivalent on his
customer.  Meanwhile he was debating whether it
would not be wise to interpolate a small part for
Alexandra.  The upshot was that he sent for her
and heard her sing.  The quality of her voice
surprised him.

"Damn it, you know how!" he observed.
"Why didn't you tell us you could sing?"

"I sang at the voice trial," she said.

"Oh, then!  You weren't sensible in those
days.  I must see what I can do for you."  He
turned to his stage-manager, who was present.
"'Phone Goss and Lander to come round.  I
want to talk over a new song to be put in for Miss
Hersey."

The sudden stroke of luck quite confounded
Alexandra.  Just as Maggy was unaware of the
far-reaching effects of her hints, so was she unable
to account for her preferment.  She hardly dared
to believe it would materialize.  But a couple of
days later her new song and the script of a few
lines of dialogue to introduce it were handed to
her.  She was to have a week in which to rehearse them.

De Freyne watched some of these rehearsals,
giving much mental consideration to the style of
costume best suited to the singer.  In the end he
thought out a design in sprigged muslin, looped
with turquoise ribbon.  It would have a refined
and childish effect.  Refinement, homeopathically
prescribed, would by its contrast look well on the
stage of the Pall Mall.

What De Freyne was not prepared for was an
expression of gratitude from Alexandra.  After
her first rehearsal she sought him in his office.
He assumed that, after the manner of her kind,
she had come to ask for an increase of salary.

"Well, aren't you satisfied?" he enquired,
hoping to put her off.

"I've come to thank you," was her shy answer.
"It's so kind of you, Mr. De Freyne.  I'm very
grateful."

He was so unaccustomed to being thanked by
the members of his chorus, and so seldom deserved
any, that for a moment he was taken aback.

"That's all right," he rejoined.  "All I want
is that you don't show any nervousness.  Audiences
only allow for nervousness on the first night
of a piece.  After that it fidgets them.  I'm going
to Lucille's for your dress.  It's to be *à la jeune
fille*.  No shocks to your modesty.  As for the
rest, well, I daresay you'll introduce me to
H.R.H. one of these days, eh?"

It was more a statement than a question, and
De Freyne did not wait for an answer.  When
they met after the performance that night
Alexandra, rather bewildered, told Maggy of her
good fortune and De Freyne's curious remark.
Maggy's delight was such that she jumped.

"Oh, my dear!" she cried.  "I'll tell you
now.  First it was your furs and then it was me.
We've done the trick between us.  But come away
from the theater or some one will hear me and then
all the fat will be in the fire!"

She dragged Alexandra away from the stage-door
and described her interview with De Freyne.
Alexandra listened petrified.

"Maggy, how could you?" she protested
piteously.  "I—I can't let him go on thinking
such a mad thing!  I shall have to tell him it isn't true."

"You mustn't, mustn't, mustn't!" commanded
Maggy vehemently.  "Don't you see it's good
for you?  If you do he'll take away your song
and put that Vandaleur man on your track.  He's
after little Graves now, but he let out to her that
he tried to get to know you, only De Freyne told
him he hadn't an earthly.  Graves told me that
herself.  And you don't want to get me the sack,
do you?  After all, Lexie dear," she wheedled,
"I made it a royalty, didn't I?  I didn't think
any one else good enough."

"I know you meant it for the best.  But—but
it's such a horrid idea and so—so far-fetched.
De Freyne is sure to find out sooner or later."

"So long as it's later it's all right.  You make
the most of it while he's dreaming of meeting
your prince and smoking a cigar with him in public,
and p'raps getting the order of the Boot in
diamonds to wear on his chest.  It'll do him good to
be disappointed."

Alexandra would not have been human had she
refused to listen to such reasoning.  She might
have argued that De Freyne had recognized her
talent.  But she very well knew that was not the
case.  It was quite evident to her that had she
been without talent or voice he would have
commissioned Goss and Lander to write her a song
on two notes all the same.

"I'll chance it, Maggy," she announced finally.

"That's right," said Maggy, greatly relieved,
and then became abstracted.  "You ought to have
some diamonds to wear on the night," she added
presently.  "I wish I knew an I.D.B."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XXX`:

.. class:: center large

   XXX

.. vspace:: 2

Diamonds for Alexandra had been no
random idea of Maggy's.  The question
of how to provide them, or at least some
jewelry for her to wear on the great occasion,
continued to exercise her mind.  She woke up full
of it the next morning.  If they were to be
obtained, though only for one night, De Freyne
would be wonderfully and awfully impressed.
And Maggy was right.  De Freyne's estimate of
a girl was largely influenced by the intrinsic value
of what she carried upon her person.

Woolf could be of no help in this matter.  He
very seldom cared to discuss Alexandra at all,
and considering that he had not shown any
inclination to supply Maggy herself with any jewelry
worth mentioning he was hardly likely to do more
for her friend.

Then a daring thought came into her head.
Alexandra had told her that Lord Chalfont was
back in London.  Couldn't he do something?
Ever a slave to the enthusiasm of the moment, she
looked up Chalfont's address in the telephone
index and then drove there.  Her heart went into
her mouth as she thought of what Woolf would
say if he knew where she was bound for.  But
that did not stop her.  She was one of Nature's
gamblers, and the element of danger in the
undertaking gave her a certain relish for it.

Chalfont was just going to sit down to his
breakfast—it was only half-past nine—when she was
announced.  The earliness of her visit surprised
him, but he was none the less pleased to see her.
Many times during his absence he had recalled her
pretty face, her extraordinary gift of honest
frankness, and above all the sympathetic womanliness
she had shown at their last meeting.

"I expect you think I'm mad coming to see you
so early in the morning," she began.

"I'm glad to see you at any time," he said.
"Have you had breakfast?"

"I snatched it.  I wanted to catch you in, and
I didn't want my Fred to know.  He wouldn't
like me to be here.  Of course, I shan't tell him,
because I've come in a good cause.  Can you lend
me some diamonds?"

He was a little staggered by the request.  He
would have been prepared to swear that Maggy
was not of the grasping sort, and yet here she was,
admittedly against the regulations, blandly asking
him for diamonds at half-past nine in the morning.
He laughed.

"Look here, I haven't had breakfast yet.  It's
ready.  Suppose you have it with me and tell me
why you want them."

"May I?  I should love it."

He rang the bell, and his man quickly laid
another place at the table.

"Sole, omelette, kidneys?" inquired Chalfont.
"You need not wait, Mitchell."

"Omelette, please," said Maggy, taking the
seat he offered her before the tea and coffee
equipage.  "Coffee for you?  And sugar?"

"Thanks."

He came back from the sideboard where he had
gone to the electrically-heated stand, smiled as he
served her, and took the cup she handed him.

"Do you know," he said, taking his seat, "I
seem to have the feeling that we've breakfasted before."

"So have I," she rejoined.  "I like it."

"Your hat spoils the illusion, though."

"How?"

"Of a woman in the house."

She unpinned it and tossed it on to a chair.
The reluctance that had made her retain it that
day so many months ago when she had lunched for
the first time with Woolf was quite absent now.

"Well, what about the diamonds?" asked Chalfont.

"They're not for me.  I want them for Lexie.
But it must be a secret.  She'd shake me if she
knew.  She's back again at the Pall Mall now."

"I wanted to ask you about her.  What is she
doing there?"

"I'll tell you all from the beginning," said
Maggy.  "This omelette's splendid.  It was
through her legacy.  The furs and the dresses
poor Mrs. Lambert left her."

Chalfont nodded.

"Well, Lexie had a hard time for weeks.  She
couldn't get an engagement anywhere.  So when
the furs came she togged herself out in them and
went and saw De Freyne.  He took her on again
because he thought she'd got rich quick, and that
there was a man in it.  He was awfully puzzled.
Instead of asking her he tried to pump me, and
I found myself telling stories."  Her face screwed
up funnily.  "Oh, I let him think!  He fancies
it's a royalty—a prince—who's running Lexie,
and he's given her a part and a song on the
strength of it.  It goes in three days from now.
It's an awfully big thing for her.  I've persuaded
her not to split—not to let on that her prince is
all a fairy story.  As I put it to her: she can't
come to much harm with an *imaginary* man.
Now, on the night she'll look so bare."

"Bare?" echoed Chalfont.

"Bare of jewelry, I mean."

"Oh, I see!"

"Her dress is white and pink and turquoise, a
duck of a thing.  But she won't have a single
ornament to wear; so if De Freyne is to go on
believing what I told him about the prince she ought
to have some.  Diamonds for choice.  It doesn't
matter about afterwards.  He'll have seen them
once and think she's put them away for safety.
Now that's where you can help.  If you'll lend
them I'll make her wear them.  You *have* got
some diamonds, haven't you?" she asked anxiously.

"Yes, in the bank.  Of course I'll lend you
some," said Chalfont readily.  "I'll telephone
through if you like and tell the bank to send them
along.  How will that do?"

"Splendid!  That is good of you."

"Not at all.  I'm very glad to be able to help
Miss Hersey.  Besides, I wouldn't for worlds
spoil the practical joke you've played on De
Freyne."  He laughed.  "It's one of the best
things I ever heard of."

"And you won't let on to Lexie?"

"Not a word.  It shall be our secret."

"I *knew* I could count on you," said Maggy
confidently.

Chalfont looked at his watch.  It was ten now,
and the bank would be open, so he went to the
telephone and gave the necessary instructions.

"Where have you been all this while?" Maggy
asked him when he came back to his seat.  "I
wondered whether you would take my advice and
plump for some wild place."

"As it happens it's just as well I didn't.  You
wouldn't be pouring out coffee for me if I had
gone to the Rockies or Central Africa," he smiled.
"I went for a commonplace cruise to Madeira and
back instead."

"I'm glad you didn't, now....  Do you feel
better—about things?"

He knew she was thinking of Mrs. Lambert,
and liked her all the better for her indefiniteness.
It showed delicacy.

"I think so," he answered.  "I have often
recalled something you said when we stood at the
window of the little house in Albert Place: 'Life
goes on,' were the words.  I'm going on with
mine.  I'm trying to make the best of it."

"I like to hear that.  Love isn't meant to
mope over.  It's the sort of thing to remember
with praise and thanksgiving when it's gone.
When the loved one's gone, I mean.  When you
come to think of it love's a curious thing.  It's
like a very sharp two-edged sword.  You handle
it so carelessly that it gives you scratches and cuts
and wounds that are so deep that even when they
heal they throb for years afterwards.  I wonder
how I should feel—if my love stopped.  I think
my life would stop too.  I shouldn't be brave
enough to go on with things....  That doesn't
fit in very well with what I said just now about not
moping, does it?"

Chalfont answered her with a question of his own.

"What is love like to you?"

"To me?  A burning, fiery furnace.  All great
waves beating on me and smashing me about."

"Isn't that passion?"

"I don't know.  If it is it's like that stuff
everybody's talking about—radium.  It gives off heat
and loses none."  She remained lost in thought
for a while.  "Perhaps I should feel different if
I were—married....  I dream of it sometimes."

She was dreaming then.  Chalfont saw it in her
eyes.  Her artlessness seemed a wonderful thing
to him.

"The odd thing is," she went on, "when I'm
imagining that I forget all about the man.  It's
like having a sort of marriage service all to yourself."

"Tell me."

"Oh, it's silly....  I think of it to make me
go to sleep instead of counting silly sheep.  It
makes me float off as if I were on a lovely cloud.
First I hear the church bells ringing—quite loud,
pealing; and my heart goes thumpetty-thump
because I'm going to be married, which I shall never
be in my life.  It seems so important and grand.
And then I dress.  That doesn't interest me very
much; but I like the look of my face through the
white veil.  It's misty, like a summer
morning....  Then I'm in church—a great church,
perhaps a cathedral, and as I go up the aisle it's
as if God is playing the organ, and I'm walking on
all His stars."

There was quite a wonderful look in her
beautiful face.  She seemed to have forgotten
Chalfont.  He kept quite still waiting for her to go on.

"And then the service begins.  I read it once.
Parts of it I shall never forget.  In the church
there are stacks of white flowers and lilies.  It's
all so quiet and awful—only the clergyman's
voice....  I feel choking and I can't see because
my eyes are full of tears....  There *must* be
sacred love.  I feel it all through me....  And
when it's over I'm crying.  Sometimes if I'm not
asleep I go on with the honeymoon.  I see fields
and blue sky and a homey-looking house—soft
red brick—with a green lawn and cedar trees on
it.  Their branches stretch out to me like loving
arms.  I see flowers everywhere.  I think it's a
sort of farm, because there are cows and
wondering-eyed calves with soft slobbery noses and curly,
wet, rough tongues; and lambs with baby faces to
make pets of; and clucking chickens and stupid
broody hens.  I'd be so kind to them...."  She
drew a long breath.  The dream was broken.
"Fred would say I'm dotty," she finished apologetically.

"Do you know," said Chalfont, "your thoughts
are like dainty butterflies."

"There's a maggot in my brain, I expect," was
her dry rejoinder, dispelling her romantic mood.

Mitchell came in to say that a messenger had
arrived from the bank.  Chalfont excused himself
and left the room.  A minute or two later he came
back and took Maggy into another room.  On
one of its tables stood two mahogany boxes.
Unlocking them he lifted the lids and moved aside
for her to see.

"I think you'll find what you want here," he said.

The top tray of one of the boxes was studded
with fine rings; the other held necklaces and
bracelets—diamonds, rubies, emeralds and pearls.
Underneath, when he removed the trays, Maggy's
eyes opened wide at a magnificent tiara and other
gemmed ornaments.

"Do they *all* belong to you?" she gasped.

"Yes, in a sense.  They were my mother's.
They have belonged to many a Lady Chalfont in
the past."

"Then if you marry they will belong to your wife?"

"If I marry."

A mischievous look came into Maggy's face.

"I don't suppose the future Lady Chalfont
would like to see Miss Maggy Delamere taking
her pick," she said.  She became serious again.
"I shan't sleep comfortably while I have them."

"I shall," smiled Chalfont.  "Will you choose
what you want?"

Maggy made a discreet choice, avoiding the
tiara and the more splendid objects much as she
would have liked to see them on Alexandra.
Chalfont put the jewels into a smaller case for
her.  When he had done that he handed her a
little pendant, a dainty thing of small diamonds
with a ruby center.

"How do you like that?" he asked.

"It's sweet," said Maggy, holding it up for inspection.

"I would like you to keep it."

"I would like to keep it, too.  But"—she
handed it back—"I can't take it."

"My dear child, why not?  It's only a little thing."

She shook her head.

"Fred wouldn't like it.  He wouldn't like my
coming here either.  I did it because it was for
somebody else.  Thank you ever so much though.
I do think you're kind."  She gave his hand a
hearty grip.

Chalfont saw her to the door.

"Lexie appears on Thursday night.  Don't
forget.  Come and clap," were her farewell words.

She hailed a passing taxi.  Chalfont helped her
in.  As it drove off she waved to him, smiling.
To Chalfont it seemed that her smile lit the street.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XXXI`:

.. class:: center large

   XXXI

.. vspace:: 2

The transfer of the borrowed diamonds to
Alexandra was a troublesome job.  For
once Maggy was reticent.  In effect she
said, "Ask no questions and you will be told no
lies."  Hers was the stronger will and in the end
it prevailed.  Alexandra wore them and De
Freyne saw them.  His shrewd eyes did not
mistake them for stage jewelry.  He saw they were
real and was rather flabbergasted by their value.
Maggy hoped and prayed he would not interrogate
her again and that he would refrain from
putting awkward questions to Alexandra.  He
did neither.  He was much too satisfied with
Alexandra's opulent appearance to ask questions.
Moreover, he thought he could have provided
answers to them himself.

Alexandra had had her baptism of stage-fright
on tour.  Curiously enough, when it came to walking
into the limelight of the stage of the Pall Mall
she was hardly nervous at all.  She did not know
it, but the loss of her old enthusiasm for the stage
made her indifferent.  Her sensations were
deadened.  De Freyne noticed her calmness and put
it down to self-confidence, the same confidence that
had procured her the attentions of her august
"friend."

She did not leap into fame that night.  She
attracted notice.  The audience thought her pretty
and dainty.  They found her refinement rather
in the nature of a *sorbet* between coarser fare.
They were not quite sure that they appreciated her
air of unconcern but it impressed them.  So did
her diamonds.

De Freyne was very pleased with her and himself
as well.  A good many of his friends, several
newspaper critics, and others who had a financial
interest in the Pall Mall, felicitated him in the
foyer on his discernment in recognizing talent
among the members of his chorus and incidentally
from among the choruses of lesser managers upon
whose folds he and his emissaries were always
watching and making raids.  He went round to
the wings to congratulate Alexandra.

"I've only one fault to find," he said.  "You
coughed twice."

"I've had a cold for some time," was her excuse.

"You ought to take something.  See a doctor."

"I will, if it doesn't get better."

"That's right."

Alexandra had on the white wrap which all
ladies of the company were expected to wear over
their costumes when not on the stage.  He drew
it slightly aside, exposing her neck.

"Damn fine diamonds, those, my dear.  They
ought to keep colds away."

He nodded amiably and moved off.  Maggy,
minus her wrap, rushing toward Alexandra,
collided with him.

"Where's your dust-cloak?" he demanded.

"Oh, who can think of dust-cloaks when they're
excited!" she exclaimed, and flung her arms round
Alexandra.  "You *were* a go, Lexie!"

"That's the third time this week I've seen you
without it," said De Freyne testily.

"One and six more for the share-holders.  Oh,
don't grumble, Mr. De Freyne, or else I shall kiss
you, too.  I don't know what I'm doing!"

She put her arm in Alexandra's and dragged
her off to her dressing-room.  De Freyne's eyes
followed the former.

"Deep little devil, that," he observed to his
stage-manager, who had been looking on.
"Clever too."

"They're all devils," rejoined that experienced
person, wearily.  "But it's a change when they're
clever.  Talking of cleverness, her friend's worth
watching.  She's very raw material, but—"

"You mean young Delamere?  Clever?"

"Clever as paint!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XXXII`:

.. class:: center large

   XXXII

.. vspace:: 2

Maggy had a pleasant surprise in store
for Woolf.  She meant to spring it on
him that night after supper; but before
the opportunity arose for doing so she herself
was to suffer anything but a pleasant one from him.

Although he was not in the habit of lavishing
valuable presents on her she spent a good deal
of her pocket money on him.  He was not always
grateful for these little attentions.  He regarded
her gifts as superfluous expressions of affection,
especially as he paid for both.  At one time and
another she had given him a gold cigarette-case,
pocket-books, silver pencils, photograph frames,
smoking requisites.  On one occasion, to his
amusement, she had presented him with a
crocheted pajama bag with his initials carried out in
the design.  This labor of love was the product
of her period of convalescence.

But now, perhaps to clear her conscience of her
innocent traffic with Chalfont, she had launched
with extravagance on his account.  It took the
form of the gift of a diamond ring.  She had paid
for it with all her savings, and she hoped it was
a good stone, because Woolf had the trait which
the proverb warns us against: he liked to look a
gift-horse in the mouth.  She was on the point of
making her presentation when he said:

"By the way, you're going to be a grass-widow
for three weeks."

"Oh, Fred!" she exclaimed, her face falling.

"I've got to go abroad."

"Where?"

"South of France."

"When?"

"To-morrow."

That he should leave her at all was utterly
unexpected: the immediateness of his departure was
so overwhelming.  She sat for a while in startled
silence.  Suddenly she got up and threw her arms
round him.

"Oh, Fred, take me with you," she coaxed.
"It's summer there, isn't it?  I've never been
abroad."

Woolf avoided her eyes.

"And I've not been well.  It would do me
good.  I'd *love* to travel with you, Fred.  I'd
have some new trunks with your initials on them,
and I'd look so married and good.  Really!"

"Not possible, my dear," said Woolf.  "De
Freyne wouldn't let you off."

"Yes, he would.  He did before.  You
arranged that, so you can again."

"I'll take you abroad some day," he temporized.
"I really can't this time, Maggy.  I shall
be traveling from place to place.  I've arranged
dates with a man, and I can't put him off.  It's
business.  Don't plague me about it."

She saw it was no use arguing with him.

"I suppose I may write?  What are the
places?" she inquired disconsolately.

"Nice, Mentone, Cannes.  Nice to start with
at any rate.  I'm not quite sure of my movements,
but I'll let you know.  You'd better address me
Poste Restante."

"Honeymoon places!"  There was a note of
longing in her voice.  "Well, I suppose I've had
mine."  She thought of the ring, forgot her
chagrin and went on mischievously: "As you're
going on your honeymoon I may as well give you
your wedding present.  Here it is."

She put it in his hand and hung back to watch
the effect it should have on him.  He looked
pleased, but to her surprise seemed reluctant to
accept it.  She broke in on his muttered excuses.

"Tommy rot!  I saw by your face that you
liked it.  Hold out your finger."  She kissed the
ring and also kissed his finger.  "How does it
go? ... With this ring I thee wed, with this
body I thee worship....  There now.  It's on.
We're as good as—no, worse than married!
Kiss me, you dear King.  I don't mind your going
so very much so long as you'll be glad to come
back."  Her lips quivered.  "We've never been
parted before."

"What's three weeks?" said Woolf lightly.

"I shall be a gray-haired old woman by the
time you come back."

"Good Heavens!  You're crying!"

"No, I'm not," she denied, hiding her face.

"Silly Maggy."  He took her in his arms.
"Cry afterwards.  I'm not gone yet."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XXXIII`:

.. class:: center large

   XXXIII

.. vspace:: 2

"I've brought them back."

Maggy had come to restore the
borrowed jewels to Chalfont.  It was late
afternoon of the following day.  She was dressed
in gray with touches of black, and her face wore a
subdued expression.  Woolf had left for the
Continent by the morning boat train.

"You were a brick to lend them," she proceeded.
"Didn't you think Lexie was awfully good?"

"Very good indeed," he said.

"She isn't a bit excited.  Funny, isn't it?  She
used to be so keen once.  Now I don't think she'd
mind a bit if she left the stage."

"Would you?"

"I?  I can't imagine myself anywhere else.
This time twenty years, if Maggy Delamere's still
alive, she'll be capering about in the chorus
somewhere, I expect.  I hope I shall be dead though,"
she added pessimistically.

"What is the matter with you to-day?" asked Chalfont.

"Blue devils.  Mr. Woolf's away.  He won't
be back for three weeks.  He's on his honeymoon."

Chalfont stared at her.  For a moment he
thought she was speaking seriously.  He could not
understand her calm acceptance of such a fact.
Then Maggy laughed.

"He's gone to honeymoon places, I mean.  On
business.  He couldn't take me."  She changed
the subject quickly.  "Have you ever been to see
Lexie?"

"No," he replied.  "I wasn't sure she would
like me to."

"Perhaps she wouldn't.  It's not much of a
place where she lives."

"But I want you to give her a message, if you will."

"Of course.  What is it?"

"An invitation.  It's for you too, if you will
accept it.  But perhaps you've made arrangements
already—for Christmas, I mean."

Maggy shook her head.  Her Christmas would
have to be spent alone in her flat.  It did not occur
to her that Chalfont was making her an alternative
proposition.

"In that case I shall be very glad if you and
Miss Hersey will spend it with me at Purton Towers."

Maggy started.  Lexie and she and he all
together at Christmas time!  At Purton Towers!

"Is that your country-house?" she faltered.

"Yes.  You'll come?  We should be rather
quiet because—"

"Because of poor Mrs. Lambert," she
interjected with quick understanding.  "Was—was
she there with you last year?"

"No, she would never come."

Maggy was thinking.

"I expect Lexie would love to go," she
cogitated.  "And so should I.  But I ought to stop
at the flat....  Would it be very wrong if I
didn't?  He—Fred—is very strict about me.
I wish I'd asked him...."

Chalfont did not attempt persuasion.

"All right," she said suddenly.  "I'll come.
It would be a shame to prevent Lexie having a
good time.  She wouldn't come without me.  It
will be simply lovely!"

"I'll motor you both down on Christmas Eve
and bring you back in time for the theater on
Boxing night.  I think you'll like the old place."

"Shall I?  What makes you think so?"

"For one thing because of the cedars on the lawn."

"Like in my dream?  Oh, ripping!"

"And there is the home-farm.  You like animals."

Maggy's face lighted up.  "Will there be
lambs and calves and fat squealy little pigs?"

"Hardly at this time of year," answered Chalfont,
amused.  "You'll have to come in the spring
again to see them."

"I don't think I could resist it, if you invited
us.  May I ask you something?"

"Anything you like.  Fire away."

"It's this," she said with considerable
hesitation.  "I would love to spend a *real* Christmas
Day.  Would you mind?  One goes to church,
doesn't one?  And I would like people not to
know we were actresses.  I would like—if you
could manage it—to have a Christmas tree.
Couldn't you ask some village children—a lot of
them?  Children are always in season even when
lambs and calves aren't.  That's one blessing."

"I think that could be managed.  Do you like
children?" he asked, surprised at her earnestness.

"Like them?  It's the one part of Heaven that
sounds most attractive.  You know where it says
in the Bible: 'Suffer little children ... and of
such is the Kingdom of Heaven,' and then a lot
more toward the end about gold and jasper and
glassy seas and streets of gold.  I expect there
must be a nursery for the children who died young.
I'd like to squeeze in with the little angels!"

"You funny child!"

"I'm not a child.  It's only my silly way of
talking.  I'm a woman.  Why, this"—she held
up her little finger—"this knows more about love
and pain and everything else than—Lexie's whole
body.  Now I must be off.  I do talk to you.
What makes me?  I only meant to stop a minute."  She
was wrought up at the prospect of spending
Christmas—a real country Christmas—under
such delightful conditions as she had outlined and
Chalfont had tacitly acquiesced in.  Too impatient
to wait until evening to impart the joyful news to
Alexandra she made for Sidey Street as fast as a
taxicab could take her.  There, breathlessly she
told her news.

"How nice of him!" declared Alexandra.
"Did you meet him accidentally, or how?"

"How," answered Maggy, and colored violently
under Alexandra's clear and searching eyes.
"I had to go to his house—on business," she
floundered, giving herself away.

Alexandra could not help laughing.

"Oh, Maggy!  Then the diamonds I wore last
night were his!"

"Nothing wrong with them, was there?"

"No, but—but you must be very friendly with
him.  Have you seen him a lot since he came back?"

"When I went to borrow them and again
to-day when I took them back," replied Maggy,
regaining her self-possession.

"I wonder what he thinks of you!"

"Oh, just mad," said Maggy.

.. vspace:: 2

In a week's time it would be Christmas.  The
joys of anticipation helped her to endure Woolf's
absence.  She knew that her visit to Purton
Towers would incense him, but she did not intend
going it on that account.  She would not be doing
Woolf or herself any wrong in going.  When he
returned she would be quite honest and tell him
all about it.  Meanwhile she wrote to Chalfont.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent

   "*Dear Lord Chalfont:*

.. vspace:: 1

"Lexie will love to come.  Me too.  But
would you mind very much if I brought
Mrs. Slightly and Mr. Onions?

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   "Yours sincerely,
         "MAGGY DELAMERE."

.. vspace:: 2

Her large and sprawly handwriting covered the
sheet.  Had it not been for the afterthought in
the form of a postscript which she added overleaf,
Chalfont might have remained in ignorance of the
identity of the two additional guests.  It ran thus:

.. vspace:: 2

"I forgot you don't know them.  Mrs. Slightly
could sleep anywhere, being a cat.  Mr. Onions
is my dog and has a basket in my room.
At any other time of the year I would not mind
leaving them in charge of the porter at the flats
but at Christmas everybody loses their heads and
they might not get fed.  They are not well bred
but they have good manners."

.. vspace:: 2

Chalfont did not mind in the least.  If Maggy
had wanted in addition to bring a tame goat he
would have welcomed it.  All her eccentricities
amused him.  Her solicitude for her two pets
showed her thoughtfulness and goodness of heart.
So, when the day arrived, Mrs. Slightly traveled to
Purton Towers in a well-ventilated hat box, while
Onions, wildly excited but restrained by a
brand-new leather leash, sat between Maggy and
Alexandra in the back of the car.

It was a brilliant day, one of those sunny,
windless days that belies the time of year.  The air
was crisp rather than cold, and the two girls,
wrapped in their furs and a capacious rug, reveled
in the swift rush of the open car infinitely more
than if they had been driving in a closed one.
Maggy was in prodigious spirits.  Chalfont,
driving with his man beside him, turned occasionally
to watch her, regretting that he was unable to
catch a word of her animated talk.

"Isn't life a funny thing, Onions dear," she was
bubbling rather than saying.  "Six months ago
you were a gagaboo little horror eating your
namesakes out of a dustbin, and here you are being
driven by a real live lord.  The beauty of it is
you don't know it and wouldn't care if you did.
That's one of the reasons why I love you, Onions.
You don't mind me being an abandoned female.
You don't even know that I am one.  That's why
King Edward was so fond of his Cæsar.  Cæsar
didn't love him because he was a king but because
he was a man.  He might have been a coal-heaver
for all Cæsar cared.  You little wog-wogs don't
know anything about titles or the marriage service,
but you can love, honor and obey better than we
can, till death makes us howl and bury you."

Onions, straining at his lead, leapt up and tried
to snatch a mouthful of her motor-veil.

"Onions, if I were rich I would try to make a
heaven on earth for all the doggies in the world.
I'd look for all the hungry ones and all the ugly
ones and the beaten ones and the ones whose
mothers sat on them and made them funny shapes.
You should all have lovely patent kennels full of
the best quality straw—heaps of it to wiggle
around in; and exciting food, bones and the
horrible things from insides that you like so much, and
sulphur when you weren't looking, to keep you
well and make your coats shine.  And you should
all run about wherever you pleased, chasing
bunny-rabbits and mice and the other sniffy things that
make dogs so excited.  And there should be a
special place all wired round for the slow doggies, all
full of rabbits so that they couldn't get away.  It
wouldn't be cruel, because after a time you'd make
friends with the bunnies and play hide and seek
with them.  Oh, what a lovely world we could
make it if we had it all to ourselves.  Lexie, do
look at Onion's face.  He's *laughing*!"

Alexandra laughed too.

"How you do lose your head and your heart to
anything you love, Maggy," she said.

Maggy gave her one of her odd looks.

"Isn't it a way women have?" she retorted.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XXXIV`:

.. class:: center large

   XXXIV

.. vspace:: 2

The room, of regal dimensions, was
paneled in linenfold, and hung with old
tapestry.  Giant specimens of William
and Mary furniture did not crowd it; nor did the
big canopied four-poster on its dais much curtail
the floor-space.  In the wide, open fireplace logs
glowed warmly.  A dozen candles shed a soft
light on Alexandra as she sat in a tall carved
armchair by the hearth, plaiting her hair.  Maggy
on the bed in her nightgown with her hands clasped
round her knees was lost in the shadow of its
brocaded curtains.

"Pinch me, Lexie, or I shall believe it's all a
dream and wake up," she said.  "Fancy, a king
slept here once.  I wonder what he'd have said
if he'd been told that hundreds of years
afterwards a chorus girl was coming into his bed—"  A
shy gurgle brought her to a stop as she realized
the doubtful meaning she had given to the last
part of the sentence.  "Lexie, how quiet you are."

"I'm reveling in it too," said Alexandra with
a contented sigh.

"Oh, you're a lady by birth.  It's natural to you."

"Indeed it isn't.  I've never been in such a
lovely place in my life."

"Footmen with powdered legs!" mused Maggy absently.

Alexandra laughed softly.

"Hair, I mean.  Same thing....  And the
dinner served like machinery and yet so quietly.
None of the waiters—servants—in a hurry,
and everything so natural and perfect.  I thought
I should feel like walking on new-laid eggs, but
I didn't at all.  Oh, if you lived in a place like
this all your life you couldn't help growing noble
and behaving beautifully.  I don't feel properly
vulgar here."

"But you're not vulgar."

"Well, perhaps not properly....  Isn't
Mrs. Pardiston a dear?  She's 'the Honorable,' isn't
she?  I think 'the Honorable' sounds more splendid
than 'Lady' or even 'Duchess.'  'Honorable!'  It
means so much.  The others are tides,
but 'the Honorable' is an—an—"

"Attribute?" supplied Alexandra.

"Yes, that's the word.  Isn't it nice of him
asking her—his own aunt—to meet us?  Oh, Lord!"

"What's the matter?"

"I asked Lord Chalfont not to tell any one
we were on the stage.  Mrs. Pardiston can't
know.  She ought to.  She's been so sweet to me.
Perhaps she wouldn't have been if she'd known.
I think I ought to tell her before I go to sleep."

"Why not wait till the morning?" suggested
Alexandra.

"I'm sure to forget in the morning.  I'm going
to get up at seven to see the cows milked.  You
mustn't, Lexie, because you've got a cold.  And
then there'll be church, and after that the Christmas
tree to do things to, and—I shan't *remember*
I'm on the stage to-morrow.  Oh, are you going?"

"My dear, it's past twelve."  Alexandra's
bedroom was opposite Maggy's.  "I wish we had
been together," she said.

"So do I.  But I suppose in the state of life
unto which it has pleased God to call the
aristocracy they never do sleep together.  Good night,
darling."

Left alone, Maggy remained as she was,
hugging her knees and thinking.  The soft, warm
silence wrapped her round.  Her excited mind
was full of the eventful day: the long motor run
ending with her first close acquaintance with a
noble old edifice such as she had only previously
seen in pictures and photographs.  Her first view
of it had made her feel as if she could have knelt
down and worshiped it.  It was all so grand
and so very, very good.  Her tiny flat, which had
hitherto seemed such a palace in her eyes,
receded to its proper unimposing proportions.  She
saw the insignificance of her little white "bedroom
suite" beside the stately furniture that surrounded
her.  She thought of the dignity, the age and the
atmosphere of peace into which, as on a magic
carpet, she had been suddenly transported, and
compared it with the fret and turmoil and passion of
her own life.  She had been timorous at first of
Mrs. Pardiston with her air of high breeding,
and then fallen completely under the spell of her
charm.  It had shown itself so gently maternal
toward her and Alexandra, so unquestioning.

But Mrs. Pardiston probably assumed her to
be a lady.  It seemed absurd, in spite of her
having striven hard to appear as to the manner
born.  Indeed, she had succeeded in behaving
charmingly.  Only her modesty prevented her
being assured of it.  Even supposing she had
satisfied Lord Chalfont's aunt in that respect, she still
felt she was imposing on the dear old lady by
not having disclosed her want of social standing.
With that doubt on her mind she got into bed, the
enormous bed that enveloped her like a warm,
embracing sea.  It kept her awake.  Not more
than an hour since, Mrs. Pardiston bidding her
good-night had said, "Come to me if you want
anything, my dears.  You know where my room is."

Recollection of those words sent her flying out
of bed.  She felt she must go and make confession.
Out in the wide corridor she was directed by a
stream of light that came from under her
hostess's door.  She knocked at it ever so gently, and
was bidden to enter.  She opened it and stood on
the threshhold, hesitating.

Mrs. Pardiston was sitting up in bed, reading.
Maggy's subsequent impression of her was always
that of a white-haired Madonna crowned with
folds of soft lace.

"May I come in?  Am—am I disturbing
you?" she asked timidly.

"No, my dear.  I never get to sleep for hours.
But what is it?"

Maggy closed the door.  Barefooted, in her
nightgown, with her hair ruffled, she looked and
felt like a child caught in some reprehensible act.

"I didn't know whether you knew we—I—I'm
a chorus-girl," she stammered.

Mrs. Pardiston shut her book.  She had been
reading the story of the birth of Jesus.  That
lonely vigil of Mary and her outcast Son, the
friendlessness and loneliness of it, had its special
appeal on this the dawn of its anniversary.  Her
heart was touched.  For some unknown reason
also it went out to the girl so wistfully standing by
her bed.

"Are you, dear?" she said tenderly.  "Wrap
yourself in the eider-down and tell me all about it."

Tell her all about it!  Maggy was quite unprepared
for the calm and friendly overture.

"Would you mind if I didn't?" she faltered.
"It would take so long.  I dance and sing for
my living, that's all.  There's nothing interesting
about it.  But I thought you ought to know, else
you might have—"

Mrs. Pardiston smiled reassuringly.

"I should never think ill of a person because
they worked for their living.  It was nice of you
to want to trust me."

"I did.  You've been so kind....  But I'm
interrupting you.  You were reading."

"You can read to me, if you will."  Mrs. Pardiston
took off her spectacles and handed Maggy
the book, indicating the place.  "Are you quite
warm?  But perhaps you would rather go to bed?"

"I'll read a little first, please."

Not till then did Maggy observe that the book
she held was the Bible.  A solemn look came
into her face.  Her voice was a little unsteady as
she began to read.

"'Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of
Judea in the days of Herod the King, behold,
there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,

"'Saying, Where is he that is born King of
the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east,
and are come to worship him....'"

Chalfont, passing the room on his way to bed,
heard Maggy's voice, and paused to listen.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XXXV`:

.. class:: center large

   XXXV

.. vspace:: 2

To get up of a winter's morning to see his
cows milked was not a usual diversion
with Chalfont, but to please Maggy he
turned out at seven and took her to the home farm
to witness that process.  She was absorbed by it.
She had never before been nearer to a cow than
the average hedge permits of; and to see them, as
she did now, in the family circle, so to speak, was
a delightful novelty to her.  Her love of animals
was very real.  She went into raptures over
Chalfont's velvety-nosed prize Jerseys.

In her hurry to get up she had neglected to use
any of the creams and unguents which she deemed
necessary for the adornment of her face.  It had
been too dark for Chalfont to notice this
omission at first, but on their way back he became
aware of it, and also of the flawlessness of her
complexion.  Without stopping to think, he said:

"What have you done to yourself?"

"You mean, what have I not done?" she
laughed.  "I've forgotten my face.  Left it out."

He was on the point of apologizing for his
blunder, but said instead: "I like you much
better as you are."

"That's what Lexie's always saying.  But it's
habit.  When a girl makes-up year in and year
out she feels undressed without it.  Savages have
that feeling, I suppose," she added comically.  "I
haven't wished you a happy Christmas yet.  I do
hope you will be very happy—later on."

"Thank you.  And I hope you will be happy always."

"I'm happy now, at any rate.  I believe this
is going to be the most heavenly day of my life.  I
feel it in my bones."

A few moments later she burst into Alexandra's
bedroom.

"Oh, Lexie dear, happy Christmas!  I've been
saying it to the cows and the horses and the
lodge-keeper's children ever since seven.  Give me a
hug.  I haven't got your Christmas present with
me, because it's an eider-down quilt.  You'll find
it on your bed when you get back.  Don't
let's think of getting back though.  It's so perfect
here.  What time will church be?  I suppose I
mustn't take Onions to church?  He chased the
fowls all over the farmyard this morning.  Lord
Chalfont says I can leave him here if I like.  It
would be nice for Onions, but not for the fowls.
There's a bell!  It must be for breakfast.  Come
along; I'm famished."

Church followed on the heels of breakfast.
Maggy had never been to a Christmas service
before.  She was tremendously impressed by it.
The maternal instinct, always very strong in her,
tugged at her heart strings.  Once, as she knelt,
Alexandra noticed that she was quietly crying.
So did Chalfont.

Mrs. Pardiston and Alexandra stopped for
Communion.  Leaving the motor for them, the
other two walked back.  Maggy was very quiet.
With the latent understanding that made Chalfont
attune himself to her mood he too refrained
from speech.  Presently she burst out:

"Why does the world only appreciate people
after they're dead?  What is the good of
birthdays when you're not alive?  That poor little
baby!  If He came down from Heaven again
they'd let Him be born in a manger just the same.
Only children ought to go to church on Christmas
day.  They're good enough.  We're not.  Do
you know, I wondered I wasn't struck dumb for
being anywhere near to God.  God was in church
this morning.  I felt Him.  I'm not religious, but
I believe in God now.  Oh, I wish I was good, like
Lexie.  I wish I didn't know what love is.  I
wish I'd never been wicked!"

She was wrought-up.  She had forgotten the
necessity for reticence.  Her confession had to
come.  The restraint of sex was forgotten.  If
she thought of Chalfont at all at that moment, it
was as a brother rather than a man.

"Hush," he said.  "You're not wicked."

"I am, I am," she reiterated.  "*I* ought to
have had a baby....  People must have thought
the usual things of Mary because of hers....
But she had Him."

"You poor little woman," he said unsteadily.

That he should express compassion where most
men would have shown despisement filled her with
almost dog-like gratitude.

"I *do* like you," she said with sudden
vehemence.  "If I had been dear Mrs. Lambert I
would have loved you."

"Thank you," he said very seriously.

Like a passing cloud, the strange emotional
mood soon left her.  Her volatile spirits rose
again.  By the time she had taken Onions for a
scamper in the grounds she was quite her old self.
Chalfont, watching her flitting here and there,
thought only of her rapturous enjoyment of
innocent pleasures, and succeeded for a little while
in forgetting that such a person as Woolf with
his sullying associations was in existence.

The day passed with dream-like swiftness for
the two girls.  They snatched at its fleeting
pleasures according to their temperaments.  To
Alexandra it was a delightful break in a life which she
was beginning to loathe, one for which she could
not be too grateful.  Its very evanescence caused
her to enjoy it with temperate zest.  Maggy's
livelier feelings made her grasp at all it brought
forth with both hands.  To her it was a glimpse
into fairyland, or at least a world in which she
classed herself a complete outsider.

Chalfont had not forgotten her desire for a
Christmas tree and the presence of children to
enjoy it.  All the youngsters on the estate had
been bidden to the treat.  There were small boys,
rosy of cheek, in their best; small girls,
eager-eyed, in the whitest of pinafores.  Maggy, at
Mrs. Pardiston's request, presided over the feast
arranged for them.  She it was who afterwards
distributed the gifts from the loaded Christmas
tree.  Within five minutes the children were under
her spell; in ten she seemed to know all their names
and a great deal about each of them.  When at
last the tree was stripped of all but its candles
she started games and joined in them.  She
romped.  She was a child among children.

When they had all gone, Chalfont suggested
that before dressing for dinner the two girls should
inspect the picture-gallery, which they had not yet
seen, and as soon as it was lighted up he led the
way there.  Maggy's interest at once centered in
the many portraits that lined the walls.  The
landscapes and genre pictures that interspersed them
she passed by.  Individualities only concerned
her, and to these, in the canvasses of dead and
gone Chalfonts she gave a rapt attention, stopping
at each that appealed to her and asking for its
history.  One portrait in particular, that of a very
beautiful girl, she looked at for a long time.

"Who was she?" she inquired.

"My grandmother," replied Chalfont.  "It
was painted just after her marriage.  She was
only nineteen when she died, a year later."

"Oh, what a pity!  Why?"

Chalfont passed to the next portrait.

"Her son," he said.  "My father."

Maggy understood.  She glanced back sadly at
the youthful face of the mother.

Chalfonts in armor, in uniform, in silk and
velvet and in lace, confronted her everywhere.  She
flitted from one to the other, admiring, impressed.

"How proud of them all you must be," she said
finally.  "Fancy having—ancestors!"

As she spoke she paused before the portrait of
a woman, perceiving in it something different
from the rest.  The face was handsome, yet
lacked a high-bred look.

"Another ancestress," said Chalfont.  "An
actress, a contemporary of Mrs. Siddons."

"How did she come here?" wondered Maggy,
almost jealous for the honor of his house.

"She married the fourth Viscount."

"Married him!"  She stared at the painted
lady.  "It was a mistake," she said, as though
to herself, and in so odd a tone that the others
laughed.

.. vspace:: 2

When Chalfont set the two girls down at the
stage-door on Boxing night Maggy pressed a note
into his hand.  He read it at his club, where he
went to dine before returning to the theater.

.. vspace:: 1

"'Thank you very much' sounds so beastly
ordinary in words, so I must write it, because I
want you to know that I am ever so grateful for
the way you have treated me.  It's proper for
a darling saint like Lexie to be asked to stay at
Purton Towers.  But me—that's another thing.
I shall get into hot water with Mr. Woolf for
coming, and I don't suppose he'll allow it again
if you ask me, or even let me see you.  But don't
ever think that I can forget your kindness.
Although you know what I am you have had me down
to your beautiful home, with your sweet honorable
aunt just as if I wasn't a common girl, which
I am.  The only thing I can say is that perhaps
if I had been properly brought up and had a name
to be proud of I shouldn't have dragged it in the
mud like I have my own silly name which can't
belong to me because it's the classy kind actresses
make up.  Don't laugh.  I'm not often serious,
but I do say God bless you and I mean it.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent

   "MAGGY."

.. vspace:: 2

The overture was coming to an end when Chalfont
took his seat in the stalls.  As the curtain
swished up his eyes went to Maggy, scantily clad
in diaphanous chiffon.  He was thinking of the
golden heart of the girl, not at all of her
compulsorily over-exposed beauty.

But Maggy was blushing beneath her grease
paint.  A sudden access of modesty had come
over her.  It was as baffling to herself as was the
remark she flung to the girl dancing beside
her—one, two, three and a kick.

"What wouldn't I give for a blanket!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XXXVI`:

.. class:: center large

   XXXVI

.. vspace:: 2

One evening, a few days after Christmas,
De Freyne waylaid Alexandra as she was
coming from her dressing-room.

"Your cough doesn't seem to go," he said.
"People in the stalls don't want to be reminded
of graveyards.  It's rather suggestive.  You
ought to see a doctor."

"I'll find out who my panel doctor is," she said.

"I should prefer you to go to Bernard Meer.
Son of the late Sir Morton Meer, you know.  Like
his father, he's a throat specialist, and not given
to charging fees to members of the profession.
Say you're at the Pall Mall and mention my name
when you see him."

She was reluctant to do as De Freyne wished,
but he was insistent, and she promised to call at
the Wimpole Street address which he gave her.
It seemed rather absurd to go to a specialist for
a bottle of cough mixture.  She took her slight
throat affection as a matter-of-course, a cold
induced by the draughts on the stage and the change
of temperature to which she was exposed after
leaving the theater at night.

When, therefore, she presented herself next
morning in Wimpole Street she was in a very
apologetic frame of mind.  A full waiting-room,
testifying to the doctor's importance, did not help
to restore her confidence.  She was the last to
arrive and had a long time to wait.  When her
turn came to enter the consulting room she was
more nervous than she had been when making her
first appearance on the stage.  She had pictured
Dr. Meer as an elderly man, and her discomfiture
was all the greater when she found him to be a
young one, not over thirty.  It may have been
prudish—in some respects she was apt to suffer
from excess of delicacy—but she had a maidenly
dread of the physical examination which she knew
she would have to undergo.  Hardly had the door
closed behind her when she felt that the specialist's
keen gray eyes had X-rayed through her sable
coat and made a mental photograph of her slightly
protruding collarbones.

Schooled to read faces, he saw how nervous she
was and wondered at it.  Nervousness in De
Freyne's young ladies was something of an
anachronism.

"Well, what's wrong?" he asked cheerfully.

"Only a cold," she replied.  "It seems
ridiculous to bother you."

He smiled.  For so young a man and an
unmarried one his manner was reassuringly paternal.
It was not artificial pretentiousness, but genuine
and natural to him.

"You ought not to be in the habit of catching
cold in such a gorgeous fur coat.  We'll have it
off, please."

Bereft of the garment, her fragility was
evident enough.  Bernard Meer admired slight
women; but this girl's physique struck him as too
delicate for stage-work.  He thought, too, that
he detected signs of privation in her face.  Why
that should be when apparently she could afford
to dress so expensively was a puzzle to him.  He
sounded her carefully.

"There's nothing much the matter, is there?"
she asked, when he had done.

"Not at present.  But you're too thin.  You
want looking after, coddling.  Are you very keen
on the stage?"

"I don't find it altogether alluring," she made
answer a little reluctantly; "but I can't afford to
give it up."

"That isn't absolutely necessary.  Only—well,
the luxuries that the average woman can
easily do without are essential to you.  Get the
person who gave you those furs to treat you to
a few guinea jars of turtle soup and—"

Alexandra's flaming face made him stop.

"The lady who gave them to me is dead," she
said quietly.

A little while ago she would have resented
Meer's words as an intentional insult.  Now she
knew that her connection with the stage had
suggested them to him.  Probably he meant
nothing offensive.  As a matter of fact he did not.
Still, for some reason which she could not define,
she felt hurt that he should have thought it
necessary to convey what he did.

She felt, too, that his scrutiny was not entirely
that of the physician.  She sensed the man in it.
Had she also been aware that he was admiring
her—a circumstance of which his impassive face
gave no indication—and that he was pleasantly
surprised to find her free from a weakness common
to the general run of De Freyne's beauties, her
perturbation would have been greater than it was.

"The trouble with you," he said with friendly
intent, "is mainly want of proper nourishment.
Please forgive the question, but—are you hard up?"

"No, not at present.  At least, not very.  I
was rather, before I went back to the Pall Mall."

"Back?  You were there before?"

"Yes."

He seemed to be thinking.

"Are you in the chorus?"

"I used to be.  Now I have a small part."

"But not much in the way of salary?"

"Thirty-five shillings a week.  But I have
forty pounds a year of my own besides.  I should
be quite reasonably well off if it were not for the
many little things I have to find for the theater.
I ought not to complain.  There are thousands of
girls far worse off than I am."

"And you live—where?"

He made a note of the address.

"Your appetite?" was the next question.
"For instance, what did you have for breakfast
this morning?"

"Tea, and bread and butter ... and there
was an egg."

"The usual sort of egg?" he augmented cynically.

"A little more than usual," she replied with a
faint smile.

"I see.  And I suppose you will have lunch
at a bunshop?"

"Yes.  Please don't look so prejudiced.  Some
bunshops are quite satisfying places.  One sees
plenty of men there as well as women."

"That's so.  Anæmic clerks who should be
eating a good midday meal to make up for an
indifferent supper at night, and girls who need
meat contenting themselves with coffee and a roll,
or perhaps pastry!  Now I'm going to write you
a prescription.  Mind you get it made up and
take it.  Let me see you again three days from
now.  If you don't come I shall visit you.
Seriously, you need to take care of yourself."

He stopped the protest that rose to her lips,
gave her the prescription, and, again impressing
on her the necessity of coming to report progress,
let her go.  Why he, who had never previously
felt any hankering after an actress, should want
to see more of a stray girl, and one of De Freyne's
at that, was more than he could explain to himself.

Alexandra kept the appointment and several
others after it.  Her first shyness vanished.
Meer disguised his personal interest in her
because he wanted to benefit her professionally.
Not until he had practically cured her throat trouble
did he give her any indication of his real feelings.

"I think you'll be all right now if you take care
of yourself," he told her one morning.

"I've given you a lot of trouble," she rejoined
gratefully.

She placed two guineas on a side table.  He
picked up the coins and handed them back to her.

"Certainly not."

"But—please?  You can't do it for nothing."

"I haven't done it for nothing.  If you want
to recompense me, you can quite easily.  I should
be honored if you will lunch with me.  Will you?"

"But," she hesitated, "I don't go out to lunch
with anybody—ever."

"That's why I said I should be honored if you
would.  Come, we're quite friends.  I've seen
you four times for ten minutes!"

She wanted to accept.  After all, as she had
expressed it to Maggy when Woolf had asked her
out, there was no harm in lunching with a man.
She was reminded of that opinion, now that it
applied to herself.  She wanted to accept Meer's
invitation, but was held back by a suspicion of
what these lunches, suppers and dinners were
meant to lead to.  Men seemed to think that a
girl on the stage could be bought for the price
of a dinner!  And then, in her indecision, she
looked at Meer, saw the friendly eagerness in his
face, and let reason give way to inclination.

"I don't want to refuse," she said.

Five minutes later they were on their way to
the Carlton.  Meer would have preferred enjoying
her society in a less popular place, but there
was a matinée that day and the Pall Mall was so
close to the great restaurant.

When Alexandra knew where they were bound
for diffidence seized on her.  Maggy might be
there.  If she were, and saw her with a man, what
would she think?  Alexandra felt that there could
be no two answers to that question.  She entered
the big, rose-colored room in fear and trembling.

Maggy, however, was not lunching at the
Carlton that day.  But Lander, the composer of
Alexandra's new song, saw her and carried the
news to De Freyne.

"Who do you think was lunching with Bernard
Meer at the Carlton to-day?" he began.

"No woman," answered De Freyne.  "He
hates 'em.  Thinks they've got fluff in their heads
instead of brains, and that's why they're so
light-headed.  Told me so himself."

"It was a woman for all that.  Nobody less
than little Hersey!  And, by Jove, it was quite
fascinating to watch her.  At first she hardly
spoke a word; but before long she might have been
alone with him in the restaurant.  She seemed to
have clean forgotten everybody else in the place.
And he was just as taken up with her.  They
couldn't take their eyes off one another.  Wonder
what it means?"

"Oh, nothing.  You've got hold of the wrong
end of the stick, my dear chap.  Why, she only
met the fellow a fortnight ago.  I sent her to him.
Meer wouldn't look at one of my lot, except professionally."

However, when he saw Alexandra that evening
he chaffed her.

"I hear you were lunching with Meer to-day,"
he said.  "Was that part of his prescription?"  Something
in her face so entirely pure and at the
same time so piteous, made him refrain from
saying more.  He had once seen much the same
expression in his own daughter's face when she had
shyly told him that some one had proposed to her
and was coming for his consent.  "Damn it all,"
he reflected.  "She's going to fall in love like any
ordinary girl!"  Aloud he said, "Meer isn't a
marrying sort, you know."

Alexandra bent her head as she passed him.

Bernard Meer was in the stalls that night.  She
saw him looking at her.  Once he smiled, and,
trembling, she smiled back, and despised herself
for smiling, since now like nearly all the others
she had "a friend" in the house.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XXXVII`:

.. class:: center large

   XXXVII

.. vspace:: 2

Prince's was filling up for supper.  The
diapason of many voices, the tinkle of
silver and glass, merged pleasantly with
the music of the band; the sound was like a pæan
of praise to Amphitryon.

Maggy and Woolf occupied a table at the end
of the room opposite the balcony.  The latter
had been back about ten days, and Maggy was
happy again.  She lived so entirely in the present
that she had actually and honestly forgotten to
tell him about her visit to Purton Towers.  Of
Chalfont she had seen nothing more.  Woolf so
filled her thoughts that, for once, she was even
out of touch with Alexandra.  A minute or two
at night between entrances and exits was all they
were able to give to one another.  Then Maggy's
one subject was "her Fred," and Alexandra's
reserve kept her silent about Bernard Meer.

"Look over there," said Woolf rather suddenly.
His straying eyes, ever in search of youth
and beauty, had lit on a face he knew.

"Where?" asked Maggy, gazing about at random.

"On your left.  Four tables away."

Maggy gave a start of astonishment when at
last she discerned Alexandra with a man, a
highly-presentable man, rather stern of face, good-looking
and comparatively young.  Her Lexie with a
man!  She stared, tongue-tied.

"See her?" asked Woolf, and broke the spell
of silence that held her.

Maggy in her excitement half rose from her
chair and called a greeting to Alexandra.  Until
then, the latter, though fully prepared to see
Maggy in such a place, had been unaware of her
presence.  At the sound of her voice she looked
up, nodded and smiled.  Meer, turning to see
who had attracted her attention, gave Maggy a
glance full of interest.  It was evident to him
that she and Alexandra were something more than
mere acquaintances.

"What a striking-looking girl," he said.
"Who is she?"

"Her name is Maggy Delamere," replied Alexandra.
"We used to live together at Sidey Street."

"And now?"

"She has a flat," she said with a little constraint.

"Is she on the stage?"

"Yes.  At the Pall Mall.  Haven't you noticed
her?  She's in the front row."

"I didn't know De Freyne had any married
women in his chorus," said Meer thoughtfully.

"But Maggy isn't married," began Alexandra,
and then stopped in confusion, suspecting that he
must have seen the conspicuously broad wedding
ring on Maggy's left hand, just as she herself could
see it.  She crumbled her bread nervously.

"Are you in favor of that sort of thing?"
Meer asked abruptly, showing that he had been
following her line of thought.

"It's very usual—on the stage," she answered
evasively.

"You don't condemn it."

"I don't condemn my friend, if that's what you mean."

"But do you condone it?" he persisted.

"Oh, how can I tell you?  It's a question of
what one feels individually," she countered
desperately.  "With a woman it doesn't necessarily
mean that she has chosen that way....  Sometimes
she has no alternative."

"You mean that your friend would rather be
married?"

"Much rather."

After a pause he said: "Then what is your
opinion of a man who only offers a woman love
without marriage?"

"Not a very high one.  I couldn't respect
him," she replied, greatly embarrassed.  "It
seems such an unfair advantage to take of a girl
who has more than enough of unfair things to
contend with already.  I—I would rather not
talk about it, if you don't mind."

It seemed to her that he was deliberately
sounding her code of morality before making the
proposition which she felt was imminent if she continued
to see him.  She could no longer disguise from
herself that he wanted her, and that her own
instinct was not one of flight.  Had she met him
before she had gone on the stage she would have
estimated his feelings toward her correctly, seen
that he was honorably attracted to her.  But her
recent experiences had distorted her views about
courtship.  Her heart would have beaten to a
different tune had she known that his motive
in questioning her about Maggy was merely to
ascertain her opinion on a matter which,
owing to her connection with the stage, must be
familiar to her.  After her expressed desire to
avoid it he let it drop, and turned to another, more
vital to himself and her, on which he had made
up his mind to speak to her that evening.

"How long must you and I go on like this?" he
asked in an undertone, full of suppressed feeling.

Her heart thumped in her throat so that she
could not answer.

"I mean," he said, "that it's not very satisfying
seeing you so occasionally.  It's true we
haven't known one another very long as time goes,
but it has been long enough for me to realize my
own feelings.  I want you.  Those three words
mean everything that a man can say to a woman.
What is your answer?"

The surge of feeling, the thrill she experienced
as he said "I want you," left her in no doubt as
to her own emotions.  She not only loved, she
loved without reservation, with a magnitude so
huge that it seemed as though a transport of
yearning were being pumped into her by some external
Titanic force.  And it came from him, the man
facing, close to her.  She heard the clarion cry of
sex for the first time in a crowded restaurant,
where she could not even cover her face with her
hands and so hide her besieged virginity from the
sight of men.  She could only sit still and feel her
shame creeping into her face.  Maggy, glancing
her way every now and then, saw the agitation
that was moving her and thought she was going
to faint.

"Lexie's ill!" she whispered anxiously, and
was about to get up and go to her.

Woolf's hand detained her.  He had been
watching Meer, and also seen Alexandra's face.

"Sit still," he commanded.

"But she's going to faint!"

"Not she!"

"Then—what's the matter with her?"

"*Can't you see?*" he chuckled.

Maggy gasped.  Lexie, of all people—at last!
It was as if she saw a huge warm wave gathering,
gaining speed, advancing on the game little
swimmer and bearing her off captive.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XXXVIII`:

.. class:: center large

   XXXVIII

.. vspace:: 2

Alexandra sat on the edge of her bed.
In the little room with the cistern the
temperature was bitterly cold, but she was
insensible to it.

He had said wonderful things.  He had said
she was beautiful....  By the light of the candle
she peered into the glass, trying to see her face
as he had seen it.  Perhaps it was the effect of
the two great plaits of dark hair that hung framing
it, or of a certain new softness in her eyes, of
something knowledgeable that she had not seen
there before, but she felt that she was looking at
herself for the first time unveiled.

Her hands went to her nightgown, holding it to
her; then, as involuntarily, they loosened.

Shyly, as though she were not alone, she gazed
back at the dim reflection in the mirror and knew
that girlhood was behind her, that she was no
longer, as Kipling's little maid,

   |  "A field unfilled, a web unwove,
   |    A bud withheld from sun or bee,
   |  An alien in the courts of Love,
   |    And priestess of his shrine is she."
   |

All rosy, she blew out the light.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XXXIX`:

.. class:: center large

   XXXIX

.. vspace:: 2

Next morning Maggy was round at Sidey
Street.  She felt that confidences were in
the air.  If Alexandra was not dying to
impart them she at least was "all of a twitter" to
hear them.

"Lexie," she cried, bursting in, "don't have
any secrets from me.  Who is he?"

Alexandra was in the act of writing a letter.
She looked up apathetically.

"You mean the man I was with last night?"
she said.  "I'm not going to see him any more,
so we won't talk about him."

"Oh, yes, we will!  Why, I do believe you're
writing to him now!"

"You can read what I've written."

Thus invited, Maggy looked over her shoulder.
Alexandra had begun a stilted little note to
Bernard Meer in which she briefly refused to meet
him any more.

"I don't think you'll post it," said Maggy
shrewdly.  "It doesn't ring true.  Besides, what
do you want to run away from him for?  He
looked just the sort of man one could trust, not
a bit like the stage-door pest kind."

She cross-examined Alexandra, dragged from
her the few bald details of her half-dozen
meetings with Meer.

"Of course you're in love with him," she
declared.  "I saw it in your face.  If I hadn't
been so taken up with Fred I should have found
out things before last night.  Lexie, what's going
to happen?"

The tone in which Maggy asked the question
showed that she expected a particular answer, that
she would be surprised if it were not the one which
followed the line of least resistance.  It set
Alexandra wavering.

"Oh, Maggy," she said desperately, "if any
one had told me a few months ago that I should
ever have had to fight against that sort of
temptation I should have died of shame!  All last night
I lay awake hating and despising myself, and all
the time I was trying to find excuses for myself.
I never thought love would come like this, taking
one unawares, giving one no time to prepare for
it.  If I ever let myself think of it at all it was
as of some fragrant and beautiful little plant that
one could watch shoot and grow and bud—"

"Instead of that it's gone and done a kind of
Mango trick like I saw at St. George's Hall
once—sprouted up into a full-grown tree while you
waited, or rather while you didn't wait.  I
daresay love might have come as you picture it, Lexie,
if you'd stayed at home.  Plants grow faster in a
forcing-house; and the stage is, well—a hot-bed.
If you're really in love you might as well try and
get away from it as from an express train when
it's bowled you over.  After all, there's just a
chance you won't get scrunched to pieces if you take
it lying down."

For the hundredth time in the last twelve hours
Alexandra found herself wondering whether she
dared follow Maggy's example, and give herself
to the man she loved.  If she did, what would
be the outcome of it?  How long would such an
affection, at least on the man's part, last?
Always those old set views of hers about life and
morality rose up to haunt her indecision.  Was
she, after all, to recant, give up the fight, own
herself beaten?

"Poor old Lexie," murmured Maggy, taking
her hand after a long silence.

"Maggy,"—Alexandra held her eyes questioningly—"tell
me honestly: do you in any way regret
what you did?  You know why I want to know."

Maggy looked within herself.

"No," she answered thoughtfully, "I don't.  I
do admit there's one thing that spoils it, makes it
different to being married.  You often wonder
at night, or first thing in the morning, sometimes
even in daytime, whether it's one day nearer the
end or how far off the end is.  I'm prepared for
Fred to get tired of me one day, though I hope it
won't come for years and years.  But so long as
he's straight over it I'll meet him half way.  I'll
go to my own funeral, and not sniffle.  It wouldn't
be reasonable to refuse to take the consequences.
You've got to choose for yourself.  I believe it's
the only way for us girls on the stage.  With most
of us marriage is an accident.  Only go into it
with your eyes open.  Leave out the fairy-tale
notion that 'they lived happily ever afterwards,'
or at least half of it.  Thank goodness for the
'happily,' and be satisfied with it."

"If only I could get right away," murmured
Alexandra.  "Here I feel hunted down.  I sit
and think and think and get weaker and weaker.
And this room and the street simply shriek to me
to leave them."

"I know all the symptoms, dear.  They're new
to you, but I've had them over and over again.
The funny part is, Lexie, now it's come to the
point I feel different about you.  Although I was
always telling you to climb over the garden wall
to the little boy next door, now that you're half
way up I'm afraid to give you a push.  You might
drop into something you didn't expect....  Oh,
Lexie, pet, in my mind's eye I only see you dressed
in white and orange blossoms.  It's a damned
shame you shouldn't have them....  And yet, if
you don't, it may be worse later on, because you
know as well as I do that you can't do any good
on the stage all by yourself, and it's better to have
the man you'd have married if you'd been given
the chance than one you don't care a rap about
except for what he can give you.  It all sounds
so muddley when I try and put things into words,
but I know what I mean myself."

She stayed a little longer, but, after this, they
both instinctively kept to the shallows of
conversation, avoiding the depths.  When she had gone,
Alexandra, as Maggy had prophesied, tore up
her letter.  She took a fresh sheet and without
hesitating wrote, "Just when you wish—Alexandra."

Then she went out and posted it, and, having
betrayed herself, came home and wept bitterly.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XL`:

.. class:: center large

   XL

.. vspace:: 2

The crisis of surrender once passed
Alexandra shed no more tears.  Not that she
ceased to feel.  Indeed, her sensibilities
were all on edge and remained so.  But other
feminine instincts soon asserted themselves.  One
was the blessed refuge of clothes.  Tragedy
notwithstanding, she must make herself presentable.
She thought it would distract her.  At first it did
because she had to scheme to make the most of
her dwindling store of wearing apparel.  All that
she was rich in were those outer garments
bequeathed to her by Mrs. Lambert.  For hours
she adapted this and repaired that, improvising a
pretense at a trousseau.  That it was only
pretense burnt itself into her brain.  Every ribbon
she threaded through slotted embroidery was not
unlike a tug at her heart strings.  All her things
had been marked with her name in full by the
hands of the loved mother who had put every
stitch into them.  Well, there would be no change
of name.  She tried not to think what the dead
mother, who had treasured her and taught her to
pray, would feel if she could know of the step her
only daughter was about to take.  And though
God now seemed to have turned His face from
her, or she hers from God, she thanked Him for
the dead's sake that avowal of it could not be
made.  Her mood was one of thankfulness for
small mercies.  She no longer rebelled against the
laxity of stage morals.  She was going to conform
to them.  The stage had deadened her susceptibilities
to right and wrong.  She was of it.  She
had elected to go the way it pointed.  She had
let down the drawbridge of her maidenhood for
the besieging host to walk over as an invited guest.

In the midst of her needlework and her bitter
thoughts there came the sound of feet mounting
the stairs.  Mrs. Bell opened the door and
announced "The doctor to see you, Miss Hersey,"
in a tone that clearly proclaimed that his visit
provided her with a touch of the same kind of
excitement which she derived from a funeral.
Alexandra was on her feet by this time, painfully
conscious of the litter of garments that lay around
her.  Coloring, she gathered them all up in a
heap, and turned to face her lover.  He stood
still, impatiently waiting for Mrs. Bell to depart,
and only spoke when the sound of her descending
footsteps had died away.  Then he took Alexandra
in his arms and kissed her.

"I got your note a quarter of an hour ago,"
he said.  "I couldn't wait.  I want to know about
this wretched stage business.  How soon can you
get out of it?"

The question took her aback.  She could not
understand why he should wish her to leave the
stage.  She assumed that her connection with it
had been the spur to his desire of her.

"But—" she faltered, "do you want me to leave it?"

"Don't *you* want to?"

"I—I don't think I ought to, now that I've
made a start—"

"But, my dear child," he interrupted, "you
won't want to work for your living when you're my
wife!"

She almost doubted the evidence of her ears.

"What did you say?" she managed to ask.

"I said: When you're my wife.  What else
could you be?  You didn't propose to be a sister
to me, did you?  I'm impatient, dear.  In your
letter you wrote: 'Just when you wish.'  Didn't
you mean it?"

She hid her burning face on his shoulder as she
thought of what she had meant.  And all the
while his one idea had been marriage!  His wife!
Wife!  Surely no word ever spoken could be so
full of hallowed significance! ... What would
he think of her if he knew what she had really
meant?  Ought she to tell him?  Maidenly
modesty counseled reserve, to take what the gods had
given her.  But would that be honest?  Maggy,
in her position, would have blurted out the truth
at once in her downright way: "Married and
respectable!  Oh, my dear, I didn't think you
meant to include that in the program!" or some
such easy phrase.  But she was not Maggy, and
words would not come.  She heard Meer asking
her how soon she could marry him; heard him
outline a honeymoon in places that would cure her
cough.  And all the while she could say nothing.
Meer, as happy as a schoolboy, was making an
inspection of the room.  Love lent a glamour to
its cramped proportions and mean appurtenances.
His eyes went to the small bed, resplendent now
by reason of Maggy's eiderdown; an exasperating
little bed nevertheless because it made nearly as
many sleep-dispelling noises as the too obtrusive
cistern.

"And that's where you sleep!" he said softly.
The lacy pillow-case with her monogram on it,
another of Maggy's gifts, lay uppermost.  He
bent and kissed it, then laughed diffidently and
moved toward her.  She shrank back a step,
making a gesture with her hands that was almost
supplicatory.

"There's something I must say.  I owe it to
you," she said with quick breaths.  "You may
not want to marry me when you know."

He saw that she was nerving herself to make
some confession.  Her connection with the stage
and his own intimate knowledge of it, gained
through professional attendance on many of its
members, brought the disquieting thought that it
might have to do with that ethical laxity that
pervades its atmosphere.  But none-the-less his arms
went round her.

"I know the stage is a dashed hard place for a
girl," he said gruffly.  "So if it's anything that's
finished and done with don't tell me."

She shook her head.  "It's to do with me ... now."

"Not some other man?"

"No.  Only you; you are the only one there
ever has been, or ever will be."

"Then what in the world is wrong?"

Alexandra's words came tumbling out as though
she feared her courage would evaporate before
she could speak them.

"You said the stage was a hard place for girls.
It is.  It's all so wrong everywhere that the idea
of a man proposing marriage is—is a surprise....
Oh, won't you understand?"  She clasped
her hands tensely.  "You need not marry me—unless
you want to, because I—didn't expect it."

She buried her head for very shame.  Her last
words were barely audible.  She longed to look
at him to learn what was in his face, but did not dare.

Meer did not leave her long in doubt.

"My dear," he said, moved to the very heart
of him.  "That is between you and me—and God."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XLI`:

.. class:: center large

   XLI

.. vspace:: 2

After leaving Alexandra that morning
Maggy had driven to Woolf's club.
They had arranged to lunch together at
some restaurant, but instead he bore her off to her
flat, scarcely vouchsafing a word to her on the way.
That he was in a towering rage she could see
plainly enough.  The reason for it she could not
guess.  He was apt to lose his temper.  At such
times she would tactfully wait until he had calmed
down.  Now, however, she was hungry and
wanted her lunch, so she naturally asked for it.

"Where did you think of going for lunch?"

To her surprise he burst out violently: "Lunch
be damned!  You'll have lunch by yourself in
future."

"What's the matter?  What have I done?"
she asked, placably enough.

"I've found you out, that's all."

Not another word could she extract from him
until they were in the flat.  Coaxing and
gentleness only made him more morose.  She began to
feel afraid.  What she could not see, because
she did not know that the stage had lost quite a
convincingly bombastic actor in Woolf, was that
much of his anger was assumed; nor did she know
that he was spoiling for a quarrel and that he had
found a very good handle upon which to hang one.
So blinded was she by her devotion that, except for
the fact that since his return she had seen less
of him than usual, she had not observed a certain
weariness in his manner toward her.  She did not
at all know what he meant by saying he had found
her out.  Hoping to placate him by a show of
affection she made an attempt to kiss him.  But
he repulsed her.

"I've had enough of that," he scowled.  "It's
all shammed, and it comes easy to you, my girl.  I
was up here half-an-hour ago and I saw your
dressing-case."

"Well," she rejoined, "you've seen it before,
haven't you?"

"Not with a sheet of headed notepaper sticking
out of it—Purton Towers, that swine Chalfont's place!"

Maggy's face cleared.  She thought she knew
now what the storm portended and how to weather it.

"Oh, is that all?" she said lightly.  "I took
it to wrap my toothbrush in, you goose!  I was
going to tell you about it all, but I forgot because
I was so happy at having you back."

"A likely story!  You expect me to believe
you forgot to admit you've been carrying on with
Chalfont!"

"Oh, Fred!" she cried, horrified at the allegation.

"Well, let's have your expurgated version of it."

"I went there for Christmas with Lexie.  And
the Honorable Mrs. Pardiston, his aunt, was there
too.  We went to church, and there was a Christmas
tree and a children's party.  It was all quite
proper and perfectly glorious.  Lord Chalfont
wouldn't do anything that was underhand."

"Of course you're bound to say that for your
own sake.  Look here, Maggy, you needn't tell
me lies.  I won't swallow them.  You know
perfectly well that if I'd known he'd asked you down
to his rotten place I'd have stopped your going."

"I did think of that, Fred," she admitted; "but
then I knew there was no harm in it, and if I
hadn't gone Lexie wouldn't have been able to,
either; and I wasn't looking forward to spending
Christmas alone here.  No flesh and blood girl
could resist a square invitation like that.  Why
didn't you take me abroad with you if you couldn't
trust me?  I haven't asked you questions about
where you've been or what you did while you were
away.  Besides, if it comes to that, husbands and
wives often pay visits apart."

"Do you consider yourself particularly qualified
to give an opinion about the habits of married
people?" he sneered.

"That's a caddish thing to fling in my face,"
she cried indignantly.

Woolf flinched a little under her flashing eyes.

"This quarrel's getting vulgar," he retorted uneasily.

"It's of your making.  Look me in the face,
Fred, and you'll see I couldn't tell you a lie.  Look
at me, please."

He did so reluctantly.

"On my solemnest word of honor, on my awful
love for you," she said with terrible earnestness,
"I swear to you, Fred, that never once have I been
unfaithful to you, even in thought."

"Never seen Chalfont in town, I suppose?"  It
was a chance shot, but Woolf saw that it had
struck home.  "Oh, so you have!" he followed
up quickly.  "Well—upon my word!  That
means, before I went away."

"Yes.  You shan't say I'm deceiving you.  I
went to him to borrow some diamonds for Lexie."

The astonishing avowal staggered him.

"That's a pretty admission!" he laughed satirically.
"Gentlemen are not in the habit of lending
girls diamonds for nothing!"

"Oh, what do you know what *gentlemen* do?"
she retorted, losing control of her temper.

Had she deliberately tried to wound his
self-esteem she could have chosen no better way.
Inadvertently she had touched on the raw.  Woolf
would not have admitted it for the world, but deep
down in his consciousness he knew that he was not
a gentleman and had no pretensions to be called
one.  What galled him more than all was that
Maggy, whose status would have been considered
a grade lower than his own, must have detected
the social difference between himself and a man
like Chalfont.  Accidentally she found the
vulnerable chink in his armor of swagger and
carefully acquired polish.

"That will do," he said, getting up and flushing
darkly.  "It's a bit too thick when a girl of your
class sets up to criticise a man of mine.  I'm not
a gentleman?  Very well, that ends it between you
and me."

The stark finality of his words and manner made
her tremble all over.

"You mean—Oh, my God, Fred, you can't
mean you're done with me?"

"That's about it....  You've got nothing to
complain of.  You'll be better off with Chalfont."

She ran to him and held him.

"You can't believe there's anything like that,"
she cried piteously.  "Why, he wouldn't look at
me—not in that way.  He knows I belong to you.
If he thinks of me at all it's as he would of the
little East-end children that people take down into
the country for a day.  He's a lord and I'm just
common Maggy, and he condescended to be kind
to me.  Believe me, Fred, believe me, or I—I
shall die.  I can't live without you.  You know I
can't!"

Woolf did believe her.  Although he hated
Chalfont and his exclusiveness, which had once
been the means of humbling him, he knew well
enough that because of that very exclusiveness he
would be punctilious in his attitude toward
Maggy.  He did not make the mistake of
comparing Maggy's position with that of Mrs. Lambert.
The latter was a woman of some social
standing, separated from her husband.  What did
genuinely enrage Woolf was that Chalfont should
be so contemptuous of his, Woolf's, relations with
Maggy that he could be friendly with her in spite
of them.  It meant that he was ignored.  It was
inconceivable to him that Chalfont's attitude
toward her was largely dictated by a touching respect
for her personality, and pity that she should be
associated with such a man as himself.

"Don't make a scene," was his unmoved rejoinder.
"We can settle things quite quietly if
you'll be sensible."

Maggy felt a fierce desire to scream and laugh
and cry and so break her nightmare by noise.  The
cataclysm had come upon her so suddenly; the
break seemed so imminent; her hold over Woolf so
frail.  She seemed to have held him by a thread
and that thread had now snapped.  Her
sensation was one of absolute shipwreck.  She
experienced the very paralysis of actual drowning,
the throbbing of pulses in her head, the suffocation
in her throat, the sense of being entirely
submerged.  And just as the drowning person is said
to survey the past with startling clearness so she
now had a rapid mental vista of her brief season
of love and the desolation that would follow it if
Woolf meant what he said.

"I'm *not* sensible," she pleaded.  "You can't
give me up for such a little thing as that.  Oh,
you're cruel, cruel!"

"If you're going to be hysterical I shan't stop."

His unrelenting manner had a steadying effect
on her.  Tortured, but silent, she stared at him.
Could this be the man whom she had been able to
soften and cajole with a mere pose of her body;
the man who had taken possession of her with
such controlling ardor that she was oblivious of
the very details of her capitulation; the man whom
she had loved with such devastating vehemence?
She could see by the utterly unmoved expression
of his face that it was impossible to stir his pity.
There might be a bare chance of exciting his
passion, but a new-born delicacy of feeling in her
prevented an appeal to that side of his nature.  She
made a strong effort to keep a hold on herself.

"I won't be hysterical," she said.  "But—I
can't understand why you're going on like this.
You loved me before you went abroad.  What has
happened since?"

His eyes shifted from her face.

"What has happened since?" she repeated.

Woolf would not answer her.  He got up and
went to her little inlaid bureau, picked up a pen,
squared his elbows and began writing something.
Quivering with emotion, her breast heaving, her
breath coming in gasping sobs, she stood where
she was, incurious as to what he was doing.
Presently he turned, and placed a piece of paper on the
table.

"You can stay on here till the end of the quarter,"
he said.  "After that I shall sublet it.  And
here"—he pushed the paper toward her—"is a
little present for you."

She took a stumbling step toward him, arms
outstretched, her poor face working.

"Fred!  Don't go!" she shrieked.

But he had got to the door.  He would go.
Nothing she could say or do would stop him.  She
had just enough presence of mind left not to
follow him.  Even in that moment of distress she
had the sublime unselfishness to refrain from
making a scene beyond the privacy of the flat—on his
account.

She tottered back to the table, clutching at it
for support, stared down at the slip of paper he
had left there—paper with a pretty lacy pattern,
and read:

"*Pay to* Miss Delamere ... *or order* Twenty-five pounds."

The words danced before her eyes like little
black mocking devils....  *Twenty-five pounds*!
The price which Woolf thought sufficient to buy
her off!

Mad now, she scrawled her name on the back
of the cheque, caught up her hat and ran
downstairs into the street.  At the corner there
generally stood a miserable woman with a baby,
selling flowers.  She was there now.  Maggy was a
regular customer of hers.  She thrust the cheque
upon her.

"It's signed on the back.  Take it—oh,
take it!" she said wildly, closed the dumfounded
woman's fingers on the cheque, and sped on.

She went fast, walking aimlessly, conscious of
nothing but the desire for movement.  She wanted
to lose herself, to forget herself.  Of the things
around her she saw nothing, heard nothing.  Her
processes of thought seemed to be exhausted.
Her brain was a mere reservoir of utter hopelessness.

Yet, all the while, it was insensibly driving her
in a given direction.  In a dull way she realized
this when she found herself in the street where
Woolf lived.  She had never been there since the
day of that eventful lunch with him, seven months
ago.  The memory of it had a clarifying effect
on her troubled mind.  It calmed her frenzy.
She asked herself what she meant to do, but could
find no answer.  She had not consciously intended
going to his house.  All motive for doing so was
absent.  Yet she could not pass it.

She rang the bell, and when the door was opened
enquired for Woolf.

"Mr. Woolf is not in, miss," said the servant;
"but Lady Susan is, if you would like to see her."

Maggy, still mentally benumbed, entered and
followed her.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XLII`:

.. class:: center large

   XLII

.. vspace:: 2

The room Maggy was shown into was
occupied by a woman of about twenty-seven,
busy at the telephone.  She looked
up casually, keeping the receiver at her ear.

"Take a pew," she said, and addressed herself
to the instrument again, continuing a momentarily
interrupted conversation.

It was spirited, and apparently had to do with a
bookmaker, for it involved a "pony" on this and
a "pony" on that and a "tenner both ways" on
something else.  Several sporting papers, one of
them *The Jockey's Weekly* owned by Woolf, lay
on the table at her elbow, with "Weatherby's"
to keep them company.

Maggy did not sit down as invited.  There was
something about the woman at the telephone that
gave her a mental stimulus, almost put her on the
defensive.  All her torpidity left her.  The other
went on speaking into the instrument, interspersing
her instructions with slang and stable-talk.
She was untidily dressed in clothes of an accentuated
sporting cut.  Maggy, catching sight of herself
in a mirror, twitched her hat straight, turned
her back and powdered her nose.  Then she stood
still, waiting for eventualities.

With an "All right, see you on Thursday.
Cheer-O," the woman rang off and swung round
in her chair, bestowing on Maggy a hard-eyed
scrutiny.

"Don't think I know you, do I?" she asked.
"And that half-baked woman of mine didn't
announce your name."

"Come to think of it I don't know yours,"
returned Maggy, instinctively full of a sense of
antagonism.  "She said something about Mr. Woolf
being out and Lady Susan in."

"That's right.  My name's Susan....  Have
a drink?"

Maggy, flabbergasted, said, "No, thank you."  She
was puzzling her mind to account for this
young woman's presence in Woolf's house when it
suddenly occurred to her that there could only
be one explanation of it.  "You seem to be at
home here," she remarked.

"That's rather cool," the other laughed.  "I
*am* at home.  Who the deuce d'you think I am?"

"I haven't an idea.  All I know is, you said
your name was Susan, and the maid said you were
a lady."

This rather wicked thrust only called forth
another laugh, curiously unresentful.

"Oh, well, if you want the whole of it, I'm
Lady Susan Woolf, sister of the Earl of
Cantire."  Without a trace of *mauvaise honte* the speaker
went on, "You've heard of us, I should think:
the hottest lot in the peerage."

Maggy's blank look showed that she was still at
fault.

"But what relation—" she began.

"I'm Mr. Woolf's wife," cut in that lady.
"Are you—the other woman?"

A quiver, not unlike that which vibrates through
a ship when it runs on a sunken rock, convulsed
Maggy.  Like a stricken ship she seemed to hear
the waters of desolation rushing through her vitals.
But she kept her nerve.  She would go down, if
she had to, with band playing and flags flying, so
to speak.  Not to this woman, who was regarding
her with lazy indifference, would she show the
white feather, admit defeat or desertion.  But
Fred secretly married! ... He had lied to get
away on his honeymoon ... and then come back
to her after it! ... The rank infidelity of it
... to two women at once.  All Maggy's womanhood
was up in arms, outraged.

"You use rather odd language," she said with
dreadful calm.  "I think I must have come to the
wrong house."

"Well, if you came to see Fred Woolf he lives
here—when he's in."  Again the low, lazy laugh
accompanied the rejoinder.

"Do I amuse you?" asked Maggy.

"No, not you personally.  You look too dashed
serious.  Drawing room melodrama sort of
expression.  The situation's a bit quaint.  Not
many wives would take it calmly when their
husband's pasts come knocking at their front door and
walking in without being asked.  *I* don't care.
Daresay some of my old flames will flicker up now
and then.  I'm easy-going because it pays.  But,
honestly, I hope Fred hasn't left you on the mat?"

The question was quite devoid of offense.

"I said I must have come to the wrong house,"
reiterated Maggy.  "I've only been in this street
once before, and I wasn't sure of the number."

"This photograph tell you anything?" Lady
Susan passed one across.  "It's Fred's.  I think
I hear his gentle footfall in the hall, so you'll know
how things are in a minute."

Maggy braced herself to look at the silver-framed
portrait.  She had a facsimile of it at the
flat on the side-table by her bed, signed "Your
warm friend."  This one was similarly inscribed.
Evidently Woolf followed a routine in
such matters.

She heard his step outside and his voice calling
"Susan, where are you?" but she did not look up
when he opened the door.  Only Lady Susan saw
his startled glance of recognition.  It confirmed
what she had already guessed.  She watched the
two of them with the zest she would have given
to a prize fight.

Maggy took her eyes from the photograph and
set it down on the table so that from where he
stood Woolf could see that it was his.

"No.  I don't know that—gentleman," she
said with calm incisiveness.  And then, as if she
had only just become aware of his presence, looked
straight at him.  The absence of all recognition
in that look was quite perfectly done.  With her
eyes still on him she moved to the door and paused
there.

And then she addressed him in the tone one
adopts toward a person who exhibits a lack of
ordinary manners.

"Will you please open the door?"

She passed out, band playing, flags flying.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XLIII`:

.. class:: center large

   XLIII

.. vspace:: 2

Somewhere about three o'clock Maggy
got back to her flat.  She was as calm as
death, and knew exactly what she had to do.
In her nature there were few complexities:
intuition guided her most of the time.  Now she simply
did not want to live.  She was not only heart-broken
because of Woolf's desertion but utterly
crushed in spirit at having discovered that every
foolish ideal with which she had endowed him
had had no existence except in her imagination.
That reflection made her despise herself as much
as she despised him.  If the breach could have
occurred without such callous perfidy on his part,
she might still have retained her self-respect.
How much more preferable that would have been,
even though it meant she might have gone on loving him.

How she had loved him!  She had poured out
to him all the passionate first-love of an
exceedingly ardent nature; she had gloried in him,
suffered for him.  She had been content with an illicit
position, even to the extent of refraining from
urging him to legitimize their union when there was
a reason for it—one that would have stirred the
compassion of any other man.  She had not
thought herself good enough to be his wife,
because, in effect if not in direct words, he had told
her so.  She saw him now as he really was, an
unutterable cad, despicable, utterly snobbish.  He
had married with the sole object of associating
himself with a titled family.  That it was in bad
odor made no difference to him.  To hear the
announcement or to read in print of "Mr. Woolf
and the Lady Susan Woolf" had no doubt been
the prevailing factor with him.  It was clear
enough to Maggy.  He had not considered her a
fit wife for himself because she was a chorus-girl,
yet he had married a woman infinitely more
common in the slangy sister of a decadent peer.

And all the time he had been contemplating this
marriage she had made a jest of it, teasing him
about a honeymoon abroad, unwittingly joking
about the terrible truth!  To think of it was gall
and wormwood.  She had trusted the man.  Her
own honesty had made her assume that he was
incapable of deception.  Conformity with the easy
code of honor which men generally adhere to, even
in an irregular union, was all she had expected.
It had been denied her.

She was filled with a distaste for life.  It could
be so simply ended.  There was a bottle of
laudanum in the cupboard over her washstand.
Without any hesitation she poured its contents into a
tumbler and drank it off.  It tasted so nasty that
she ate a chocolate afterwards.  Then she locked
her door and lay down on her bed.  Nothing in
the world mattered now, not even Alexandra.
She was too weary to think of her, even to analyze
what she believed to be her own last sensations.
Mentally exhausted she fell asleep.

She slept from half-past three until half-past
nine, woke up suddenly and felt horribly ill.  Her
memory was quite clear.  She remembered
everything that had happened that day and what she
had done, and wondered whether she was dead.
A dreadful nausea and discomfort left her in
doubt.  Presently she decided she was not dead
but wished she were.  She dragged herself to her
feet and, obeying instinct, made herself an emetic.
Though she did not wish to live she wanted to put
an end to her appalling sensations.  Later on, she
drank two cups of strong black coffee, and soon
after knew she was recovering.  She must have
taken either too little or too much of the horrid
stuff.

She lay back, waiting for its nauseating effect
to wear off.  Half-an-hour passed inertly.  Then
abruptly her mind went to Alexandra, and she sat
up.  Lexie was on the verge of taking the reckless
step which she, Maggy, had so long been advising,
and Lexie must be stopped.  She gave a hurried
look at the clock.  Nearly eleven!  She might
just catch her at the theater.  She flew downstairs,
found a taxi and drove there, just too late.  Lexie
had left a few minutes ago.  On her way out again
she ran up against the stage-manager.

"Hullo, Miss Delamere," he began; "what do
you mean by turning up after the show?  You
seem quite indifferent to fines."  Then he
observed her livid face and the dark circles round her
eyes.  "Why, you look like death!  What's the
matter?"

"Nothing....  Let me go, Mr. Powell.  I'll
be all right soon.  I want to find Miss Hersey."

She tore away, jumped into another cab and
drove to Sidey Street.

Alexandra was luxuriating in the unwonted
extravagance of a fire.  That and the song she was
humming were evidence of a new serenity of mind
that had come to her.  She was leisurely undressing,
thinking of her impending marriage, when
Maggy burst into the room, a Maggy whom she
scarcely recognized.  She had not been much
concerned at her absence from the theater that night.
She so often played truant.

Maggy reeled toward her.  Alexandra caught
her in her arms.

"Darling, what is it?" she cried in alarm.

Maggy clung to her like a terrified child.

"Lexie," she gasped, "am I too late?  Am I
too late?  You haven't—Oh, my God!
Lexie, it isn't worth it.  Men—"

And then she fainted.  Alexandra got her on
to the bed, loosened her things, and called for
Mrs. Bell.  Together they managed to get a little
brandy between her lips.  The landlady dabbed
her face with a wet towel; Alexandra held smelling
salts to her nose, and presently she drew the
reluctant breath of returning consciousness.

"Please go now," Alexandra requested Mrs. Bell.
"I'll look after her.  She shall stay with
me to-night."

Mrs. Bell protested that she wanted to stop.
Her *penchant* for any form of illness enchained
her.  She argued that she might be needed, and
only reluctantly left the room when Maggy opened
her eyes and murmured a request to be alone with
her friend.  She lay with her face against
Alexandra's shoulder, and then began to cry, weakly
but uncontrollably.

"Lexie, I've been through Hell since I left
you," she sobbed.  "Suddenly I remembered you
and rushed to the theater and then on here.  You
mustn't!  Promise me you won't!"

"Never mind me, dear.  Something has upset
you.  Won't you tell me?  I shall understand
better then."

"Fred's left me," said Maggy in a cracked
voice.  "He's married! ... Never trust a man,
Lexie!  Never trust a man!  Keep straight if you
starve for it.  Promise me you won't go off like
I did.  I've come to *make* you promise."

Pity kept Alexandra silent.  To make that
promise would involve an avowal of her own
happiness.  How could she do that in face of the
misery in which her poor friend was sunk?

Maggy clutched at her hand.

"A ring!" she cried, fearfully.  "On that finger—!"

"Oh, hush, dear!  I—I'm quite safe.  Believe
me, Maggy."

"But what does it mean?  You wouldn't wear
a ring on that finger if—"

"Maggy, darling, it means that I'm going to be
married."

Maggy sat up the better to look at her.  One
glance at Alexandra's clear, illumined face told
her that in some wondrously blest way her future
had been happily arranged.  All thought of her
own disaster temporarily vanished in the joy she
felt for the safety of her friend.

"That's all right," she said with a sigh of
relief.  "Lexie ... have you got anything to eat?"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XLIV`:

.. class:: center large

   XLIV

.. vspace:: 2

Although she had eaten nothing since
breakfast that morning, a few biscuits and
the remainder of Mrs. Bell's brandy
sufficed Maggy.

"Now I'll go," she said, getting up.  "I was
in a fearful state about you, but now that
everything has turned out so splendidly I feel quite
all right again.  Bless your sweet face, Lexie.
I'd like to kiss you only I'm such a bad
creature."  Her lips trembled.

"Nonsense!  Then I'll kiss you."  Alexandra
did so.  "You're not going to-night, Maggy.
You've got to stay here with me.  We'll tuck in
together.  Here's a nightie."

"Tuck in—with you!" Maggy repeated.
"But, Lexie—I'm not—like you."

"Nothing that's happened can make any
difference between us, Maggy.  Try and forget you
ever left me.  Get undressed, dear."

Very soon they were lying together in the little
bed in the darkness.  Alexandra did not talk.
She wanted Maggy to get to sleep.  It was so
evident that she needed it.  Half-an-hour passed in
silence.  A whisper from Maggy broke it.

"Asleep, Lexie?"

"No, dear."

"Have you enough room?"

"Heaps."

"May I have your hand to hold, Lexie?  I feel
so lonely."

"You poor pet!"  Alexandra's hand sought hers.

"Lexie ... may I tell you things?"

"Yes, if it helps."

"I don't think anything ever will help.  I'm
done for, Lexie."

"You won't always feel like that," was the
consoling rejoinder.

Maggy sat up in bed.

"I tried to kill myself to-day," she said
abruptly.  "But the stuff only made me sick.
That's why I wasn't at the theater.  I should be
dead by now if it had worked properly."

"Maggy!"

"Yes, I did.  How could I go on living?  It's
not worth it.  Alone again: a room like this
without even you to make it bearable ... or men.
I won't do that.  I went to the bad for love.  I
won't do it out of habit."

"Don't be so despondent.  You won't have to
live alone, dear.  You shall leave the stage and be
with me."

"Is it likely?" asked Maggy, with a touch of
her old independence.  "I wouldn't tell anybody
but you, but I gave Fred more than he gave me.
It's the meanness of it all that hurts so.  There
was the flat, I know, and the car; but they were
only mine so long as he wanted me.  And I paid
for the meals I had in the place out of my salary.
He gave me money for dresses because he liked
me showy, but I went to sales and bought bargains,
and what I saved that way I spent on him.  And
all the time I gave love, love, love!  Oceans of it!
Let me go on.  Then, just before you went on
tour I knew I was going to have a baby.  Lexie,
I longed for it!  I think I'm the sort of woman
that's meant to have babies without much pain or
trouble, just for the sheer joy of mothering them
and kissing their dear, pink, crumply palms.  But
Fred was annoyed about it.  I told him he could
put me in a laborer's cottage in the country and
I'd live on ten shillings a week if only he would let
me be a mother.  Mrs. Lambert knew.  I told
her....  I had to go to a dreadful place in
Bayswater until—until it was over....  Fred
arranged everything.  He seemed to know all about
it.  And I wasn't even a mother, Lexie.  I nearly
died.  I wish I had.  And when I was back again
with Fred, instead of hating him it somehow made
me feel more than ever bound up with him in my
heart, because of having gone through so much
for him.  He was quite kind to me afterwards,
almost tender for him.  He used to bring me
flowers.  I wonder why.  He couldn't have loved
me....  But now it's all over...."

Alexandra put her arms round the shaking girl.

"Lie still," she said.

She held Maggy to her as she would have held
a child, and kissed her and cried over her in sheer
pity, so stirred was she by the heartrending story.
Presently Maggy lay very still, breathing evenly,
asleep in Alexandra's arms.  But Alexandra lay
awake for a long time, trying to find a reason for
the discrepancies of life.  Why, for her, should
there be provided a haven of safety, and for
Maggy nothing but a desolate sea with breakers ahead?

Mutely, she prayed to the Providence that had
tided her over so many storms to safeguard
Maggy until she, too, made harbor in calm and
peaceful waters.  Praying, she feel asleep and did
not stir when, some hours later, Maggy awoke
and gently disengaged herself from the encircling arm.

Maggy sat up.  By the light of the street lamps
she could just make out Alexandra's peaceful face.
She looked so happy and innocent.  Maggy
watched her for a long time very fondly.  It was
the only way in which she could bid her farewell,
a long and final one.  For Maggy intended
making no mistake this time.  She had dreamt of what
she meant to do.  The dream had been inspired
by the noises in the street, and it still obsessed her.
The thunder of heavy wheels resounded in her
ears....  She was going to employ a monster
crushing power to blot herself out.

Very quietly and silently she got out of bed and
groped for her clothes.  Dressed, she hovered
for a moment over Alexandra's sleeping form,
bent and touched her forehead with her lips
... and crept out in search of her Juggernaut car.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XLV`:

.. class:: center large

   XLV

.. vspace:: 2

Maggy intended making for Covent
Garden.  She had once seen it in the early
hours after a fancy-dress ball to which
Woolf had taken her, and she had marked the
leviathan motor-lorries, freighted with perishable
produce, converging on it.  She meant to end her
troubles under the wheels of one of these.  The
drug had failed her because of her ignorance of
the fatal dose.  This would be a sure and decisive
way.  In her dream it had seemed so feasible.

There would be something fitting in such an end.
The very monstrousness of the ponderous vehicle
was symbolical of the violence of the feeling that
she had had for Woolf, the strength of passion
that had drawn her to him.  Her spirit had
succumbed to strength and violence: strength and
violence should annihilate her body.

The deserted streets were very silent.  Maggy
wandered along them, insensibly diverging from
her route.  She was thinking dully of a scene that
long ago had made a dreadful impression on her
mind.  It had been a disconnected incident at the
time: now its significance was almost personal.
She had once seen a number of dogs pursuing a
small mongrel, typical of the ownerless cur that
gets its living in the streets.  It was looking over
its shoulder, heedless of the traffic.  A motor-lorry
came along at top speed.  The mongrel made an
unexpected dart across its track.  There was an
agonizing yelp, suddenly cut short; and though
Maggy had quickly averted her eyes she had not
been able to avoid witnessing the canine tragedy.

A shudder went through her at the recollection
of it, a shudder of pity for the dog, not of
apprehension for herself.  She was too wretched to feel
fear; but she was very weary and to some extent
stupefied.  When, therefore, she found herself in
Portland Place instead of Covent Garden she was
indifferent at having wandered in the wrong
direction.  She hardly met a soul.  It was too late for
night-prowlers and still too early for those who
steal a march upon the day's work.  An occasional
policeman was all she came across.  One flashed
his lantern in her face, but satisfied by the serious
look on it and her appearance generally, took no
further notice of her.

It seemed to her that she had been walking
interminably before the silence of the streets was
broken by any sound of traffic.  She had crossed
the top of Regent Street, gone on due west by
Cavendish Square and Wigmore Street, and was
now in one of the turnings that give on Great
Cumberland Place.  At the corner a lighted
doorway and an awning over the pavement told of a
dance in progress.  One or two carriages and a
motor car were drawn up before the house.  She
did not look up as she passed it, but she slackened
her pace when it was behind her, for she had heard
the sound of a heavy vehicle.  A slowly-moving
van drawn by horses lumbered across the top of
the turning.  There surely she would find her
*coup de grâce*!

She stood in Great Cumberland Place, listening.
The faint rumble of the morning traffic coming
along Edgware and Bayswater Roads was audible
now.  Presently it was silenced by a nearer sound,
the reverberation of machinery.  It was coming
at last.  She kept on the edge of the pavement
waiting and listening, trying to discern the
advancing monster.  The clank and rattle of it filled
the wide street with stridulous echoes.  She moved
into the roadway, telling herself that she must
make no mistake, give it no chance of avoiding her.
She stood still, nerving herself for the moment of
impact.  It was very close now; its noise deafened
her; a breath of hot metal filled her nostrils....

*Now!*

She stood poised, her body bent forward ready
for the spring; and at that moment a heavy hand
fell on her, jerked her roughly back and held her
while the motor-lorry thundered by.

"Let me go!" she muttered thickly, pulling
ineffectually against a uniformed arm.

"No, that I shan't," was the firm rejoinder.
"Trying to do for yourself, eh?"

"I was crossing the road," she gasped, maddened
by this second defeat.

The stars in their courses seemed to be fighting
against her.  Why should they prevent her taking
her worthless life?  And now, to add to her
inflictions, she was in the grip of a policeman.  She
would be charged, cautioned, watched, so that
another attempt would be well-nigh impossible.
Besides, she wanted to make it now, while the
madness was upon her.

"Crossing the road," she repeated.  "Here
comes a gentleman.  He must have seen me.
He'll believe me, if you won't."

She said it to gain time, in the hope that the
policeman would relax his hold, so that she might
run away.  But though he took her suggestion, he
gave her no chance of escaping.

"Beg pardon, sir, did you witness this young
lady step off the pavement sudden-like in front of
that there lorry?" he inquired.

The pedestrian, thus addressed, came to a stop.
Maggy stared at him.  The street lamp at the
corner was behind him.  But while she stared a
motor car slipped past, the beam of its headlights
full on his face, and she caught her breath as their
eyes met—hers and Chalfont's.  He was clearly
too astonished to speak.

"He—the constable—thinks I was going to
commit suicide, I believe," said Maggy, conjuring
up a laugh that made Chalfont shiver.  "It's
fortunate you came along, Lord Chalfont.  Please
assure him I'm much too level-headed to do
anything like that.  I—I'm on my way home."

No part of her statement convinced him, but he
took care that neither she nor the policeman should
see that.

"So am I," he said in the most ordinary tone.
"This lady is a friend of mine, constable.  Here's
my card.  You've erred a little on the side of
discretion, but that's excusable considering how dark
it is.  I'll see her home myself.  Good morning."

The policeman looked at the card and then
touched his hat.

"Very well, m'lord.  I apologize to the young
lady for the mistake.  At this hour of the night if
we're not very careful—"

"That's all right," said Chalfont.

He took Maggy's arm, holding it almost as
tightly as the policeman had done, and walked her
on in the direction of the Marble Arch.

"Thank you," she said in a subdued tone when
they had gone a dozen paces.  "Now I can
manage to—to go on by myself."

"I don't think so," he rejoined sternly.
"What are you doing, wandering about at this
time of night?"

"I—I might as well ask you the same question."

"I can answer it.  I have just left a friend's
house—a late affair—fortunately for you."

"Why fortunately for me?" she asked, trying
to assume an air of innocent resentment.
"You're making too much fuss about a mistake
in crossing the street."

He stopped, still holding her, compelling her to
look at him.

"Maggy, are you going to tell me lies?"

"No," she choked, lowering her head.

"Then—"  Chalfont did not proceed with
what he was about to say.  A taxi was passing and
he hailed it.  "I'll take you to your flat," he said.

"No, not there!  I'm never going there
again!" she cried, drawing back.

That she had some potent reason for that
decision was evident to him.  He did not ask her
what it was.  He guessed it.

"In that case," he said, "you must come to
my house.  I'm not going to leave you."

His determined tone put a stop to her spirit of
rebelliousness.  Passively she got into the cab and
sat silent in its obscurity.  When it stopped
Chalfont opened his door with a latchkey.  His
servants had gone to bed, but in the room where
Maggy had breakfasted with him there were
sandwiches and consommé.  He helped her to some
of this, and she, beyond resistance now, took it.
Then she shrank into the depths of the big chair
which he had drawn up to the fire for her.  She
was unconscious of the tears of weakness that were
welling from her eyes.  Her hair had come down
and was tumbled over her shoulders.  Emotion
had played havoc with her face.

Chalfont, watching her, was stirred by feelings
that had their birth in pity.  If they were
gathering force, changing into others more personal,
more tender, there was nothing of disloyalty to the
memory of the dead woman on whom he had once
lavished great affection.

"Maggy," he said quietly, "he has left you."

She lifted heavy eyes.

"How—how did you know?"

"I thought it would come."

A dry sob broke from her.  Then she said:
"He really was on his honeymoon....  Did you
know?"

"No.  But a few days ago I heard something....
I knew he was very thick with Cantire.
I saw it coming."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"How could I?"

"No; I see....  I had to find out for myself....
Well, it's finished now."  She stared
blankly in front of her.

"Do you care so terribly?" he asked, after a pause.

She shook her head.  "That's dead, I think.
Everything's dead except myself, and I want to be.
I can't stand it: the hardness—and the loneliness."

"I thought you were brave."

"Not when I don't want to be."

"I'm lonely too," he said; "but I haven't
turned my back on life, partly because your advice
helped me when I was feeling very down.  Don't
you think suicide is rather a craven thing?"

"Perhaps....  I shall have to go on living
now, I suppose," she admitted dully.  "Oh, damn
that policeman!  I should have been pulp by this
time!  That's the second failure.  I took
laudanum this afternoon, and was only sick."

Chalfont went over to her chair, sat on its
arm-rest and took one of her hands.

"Don't you think we have something in common?"
he said, and waited for a reply that should
warrant him speaking more definitely.

She rested her head against his shoulder like
one who is spent.

"You make me feel peaceful," she murmured.
"I wish you would give me some poison and let
me die while you held me."

"You tragic person!"  He tried to speak
lightly.  "You'll laugh at yourself, later on....
I want you to live."

"I'll live," she consented.  "It's only a
matter of breathing."

"You must promise me that—and something else."

"All right.  What's the else?"  Her voice
was unutterably tired.

"Everything, in effect.  I'm not good at
explaining, but, first of all, I want you to understand
that I honor you."

Maggy sat bolt upright.  Two fierce spots of
color came into her cheeks.

"Also," he continued, "that from the beginning,
ever since I first met you, even when you
made that admission about—him, I always
thought of you apart from him, as Maggy—the
nice girl."

"Maggy—the nice girl!" she echoed in wonder.

"When you came down to Purton Towers I
seemed to see you as belonging there.  Even after
you had gone I felt that."

"But—how could I belong to Purton
Towers?" she asked in a wondering voice.

"By marrying me," he said very deliberately.

She looked at him blankly for a few seconds.

"Marry you!" she faltered.  "*Me*—marry you?"

"Suppose," he went on, "suppose I said I
needed you?  I do say it.  I believe that we can
bring something into each other's lives that at
present is missing, and perhaps always has been.
We should, at any rate, be very perfect friends.
That would be something."

All her face lit up.  Her lips quivered.

"What an idea!  Me and you!  At breakfast,
at dinner—always....  Purton Towers, and
me—your wife!  Oh, you dear, I do believe you
mean it!  As if I could!  But I tell you what:
let me live in a little cottage in the grounds and
sell eggs!"

"Oh, Maggy, you child!" he said tenderly.

Her eyes brimmed over.  She took his hand
and kissed it.

"Thank you so much," she said.  "But it's—it's
not in the picture.  What sort of a wife
should I make?  No, it wouldn't do....  And
there are other reasons."

"Ada Lambert?" he asked gently.  "Is that
one of them?  I loved her as a young man loves
the first good woman who comes into his life.  I
don't think I do her any disloyalty."

"No, it's not that.  What difference could that
make?  If I could I would make you happy
because you lost her.  It's me.  I don't come from
a good man.  I wouldn't let any one say that
except myself.  I loathe what he's done to me and
the way he's treated me.  But I've loved him.
There's something I gave him I can never get
back.  It's strange: though I never want to hear
of him or see him again, I don't want anything
bad to happen to him.  I should be sorry."

"I understand," nodded Chalfont.  "But it
need not stand between you and me, Maggy.  We
should start fair."

The ghost of a smile flickered on her lips.

"Think of the racket there would be in the
papers about us!  You would be ashamed.  And
I'm not worth it, really.  'Another peer weds
actress.  Romance of the stage.  The third this
season.  Below we append other instances of
brilliant marriages of stage beauties.'  Think of it!"

"I fancy we could keep it out of the papers,"
he said.  "We would be married in the country—in
church."

"In church!"  Her eyes grew misty.  "You
would—go to church with me?  Oh, my dear,
that would be more of my dream coming true, like
the cedar trees and the cows!"

"It's going to come true," declared Chalfont.

She held him away from her.

"Don't tempt me.  It's not the title.  That's
only—funny.  Me, my lady!  What tempts me
is the thought of being with you in that place where
my heart is."

"My home?"

She nodded, appeared to be considering.

"There is this," she said.  "If I married you
I would do my best to try and be a lady—not
vulgar.  I think, after a little, it would come
easy....  You said we should be perfect friends;
but suppose—suppose I couldn't help loving you?"

"I was asking myself if that would come about—hoping
it.  In my case it is an eventuality not
very remote."

His very quietness impressed her.  She knew
he was not demonstrative, yet behind every word
he spoke the intensity of his feelings was manifest
to her.  She had to fight hard to keep in check the
ferment of emotion he had stirred in her.  She
picked up her hat from the chair where she had
been sitting on it.

"It might have been more crushed," she said
quaintly, but with a meaning that had a hint of
tragedy averted in it.  She went to a mirror and
began arranging her tumbled hair.  "I must go
back to Lexie.  I stole out while she was asleep.
Perhaps I shall get there before she wakes up."

"I'll take you," he said.  "Only—aren't you
going to give me an answer first, Maggy?"

She made a last desperate and unsuccessful effort
at calmness.

"Yes—but I'm not worth having," she sobbed
and collapsed in a crumpled heap at his feet.
"Don't stop me!" she gasped, waving him away.
"Let me—*burst*!"

And Chalfont stood where he was, waiting
while her pent-up feelings exhausted themselves
in a flood of choking tears, until she should be
ready for him.  Presently her sobs ceased.  She
struggled to her knees; her hands were clasped;
her face, with a faint presage of happiness upon
it, was turned to the window where the dawn of
a new morning glimmered.  Her lips moved.
She was murmuring something beneath her breath.
"What are you saying, dear?" he asked gently.
"I—I think I'm saying my prayers," she
answered huskily.

There, on her knees, with her hair still hanging
in disorder, the tears drying on her face, thanksgiving
and humility in her heart, she repeated the
words of her rhymed creed, with a reverence that
surely gave it the consecration of a prayer.

   |  "All's well with the world, my friend,
   |    And there isn't an ache that lasts;
   |  All troubles will have an end,
   |    And the rain and the bitter blasts.
   |  There is sleep when the evil is done,
   |    There's substance beneath the foam;
   |  And the bully old yellow sun will shine
   |    Till the cows come home!"
   |

She held out her arms to Chalfont.

"Lift me up," she whispered.

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