Twopence Coloured (12 page)

And “Now then, you’re going to Shake Somebody’s Hand, aren’t you?” persuaded Miss “Lovey” Shiel.

“What those two girls ought to do,” said Mr. Wicks, “is to Shake Hands.”

But neither of the girls would commit themselves to this symbol, and the argument proceeded for four days and nights, no possible solution to the situation being found until
Thursday
night, when Miss Pinkie Dove gallantly conceded that if Miss Royal Fayre would only apologize to
her
, she would be the
first
to apologize to Miss Royal Fayre, and Miss Royal Fayre gallantly conceded that if Miss Pinkie Dove would only apologize to
her
, she would be the first to apologize to Miss Pinkie Dove. Which was no solution at all, but a
complete
dead-lock, and very abstruse. The only escape on such lines, indeed, would have been to have had some kind of Simultaneous Apology, in which some one held a watch and a pistol, and it was “One-to-be-ready, two-to-be-steady,
three-to
-be — BANG!
Apology!
” — and all honour satisfied in a fair start. But this was not suggested, and the final solution was at last afforded on Friday night by Miss Pinkie Dove, who, in a moment of tenderness (not impossibly traceable to the receipt of her salary envelope), Took Back the Name. Which withdrawal was instantly communicated to Miss Royal Fayre, who allowed that she herself, anyway, Kind of
Reckoned
she had Forgot herself. If she had merely confessed to having forgotten herself, this concession would have lost much of its power; but to have Kind of Reckoned she had
forgotten herself introduced, by some magic verbal process, the orthodox flavour of diffident repentance, and there
remained
nothing but the actual meeting and reconciliation. This took place in the interval, under the auspices of Mr. Wicks (who had little trouble in making his arrests), and was carried through with simplicity, but not without sentiment, and consisted solely of Royal taking Pinkie’s hand with “Sorry, Pinkie,” and Pinkie taking Royal’s hand with “Sorry, Royal,” and nothing more. Which was deemed impressive. Any superfluous Reckoning was left to Mr. Wicks, and he Reckoned it had all been about nothing. The matter was closed.

On Thursday of this week Jackie received an invitation, along with the majority of her companions, to a supper given by Mr. Ronaldon to the company. This took place, after the show, at one of the largest hotels in the place, two high spacious chambers of which were hired for the purpose.

All but the entire company was present, as well as various gentlemen on the business side (little seen hitherto) and one or two of the backers — pale, stumpy, shrewd, moustached little gentlemen from the north, much given to cigars — which cigars were possibly giving them very little pleasure, but which were stoutly persisted in, it being manifestly
impossible
to Back without cigars. There was also much
champagne
, which induced an early state of that blurred
fatuousness
essential to the making and hearing of speeches, which were, from first to last, great successes — each orator sitting down to enormous applause and with a highly satisfied grin — which grin would grow broader and broader but sicklier and sicklier as the evening wore on, and everybody else made much better speeches, and you had to show how free from jealousy you were…. But every one had to have their say, and, indeed, it was not until a whole row of green grins lit the long table with their garish light that this torture ceased. The last speech was made (on behalf of the chorus)
by Miss Hazel Parry, who had a great reputation for
Cleverness
(not to say scholarship), and it was rated, though in a rather patronizing way, as successful as any. After which there was some dancing, and manifestations of drunkenness — a strong tendency to Chase arising in the less important males, and a corresponding willingness to Flee betraying itself in the nymphs — the whole being carried through in the
highest
spirit of the Classics, and culminating in the breaking of a chair. Also in one of the more breathless Daphnes slipping up and straining her ankle, for which she received the most ardent consolation from her humorous oppressors, and
massaging
of a sentimental and lingering nature.

While these exciting pleasures were in progress among the sprightly, others, of a more deliberate nature, were already indulging in what Jackie described to herself as Corners. One of the rooms had been partially darkened for this.

As for Jackie, who was unfitted for both Chasing and
Corners
alike, she stood against a wall in all the misery of one friendless in public (which is so much a sharper misery than the same thing in private), and it is impossible to say what would have happened to Jackie, had she not at last been spoken to by Mr. Merril Marsden.

Mr. Merril Marsden was connected with the business side of “Little Girl,” and Jackie had had a few words with him before now. Mr. Marsden was a pasty gentleman of about forty-five, with a slight (and possibly affected) stoop of the shoulders, jaded features, thin greying hair smarmed
backwards
, a black bow-tie which went twice around his collar, and an irritable monocle under the supervision of a black ribbon. He had fights with his monocle the whole day long — the poor round thing having from the beginning decided to stay Out of his eye, and the harassed gentleman having from the beginning decided to have it In. It was plain that the spirit of neither would ever be permanently broken; but, for all that, it served Mr. Marsden well in the battle of
existence
, enabling him to assume a detachment with respect to human emotions denied to most of us. In that, whatever the quandary that faced him, he had but to hunch his
shoul
ders
and lift the thing slowly to his eye, to give out an air of impersonal and purely scientific research upon the matter in hand, but no committal of himself to either side. Where others had to attack life direct, he was privileged permanently to spy upon it from behind his monocle. Otherwise he was not a distinguished man — but credited himself with being so. He came from Caius College, Cambridge, and had
translated
, and had seen performed in London, a not very
suggestive
French play dealing with the unfaithfulness of a wife. He was also a producer and an actor — for both of which activities the monocle again came in useful. But he did not confess to being an actor, alluding solely, and stiffly, to the Theatre, which, he confessed, at weak moments, was his God. And there is a great difference between an actor and a
disinterested
gentleman whose God is the Theatre. On the same principle he alluded to his fellow-actors as Actor
Fellows
. To emphasize these distinctions he played Cricket and he played Golf, very badly, but very hard, and he dressed for dinner very hard, and he had a Man. Most particularly did Mr. Marsden excel in his Man. This Man was in reality replacing, in Mr. Marsden’s unpretentious flat, Mr. Marsden’s ordinary servants, but Mr. Marsden’s large and feudal
references
to his Man presupposed Cook and an entire ménage and Mr. Marsden’s status was elevated.

He spoke to Jackie this evening partially because he had heard that she was the daughter of Gerald Mortimer, whom he had met some years ago, and partially because he was intoxicated. Jackie did not respond favourably to Mr.
Marsden’s
character, but she was glad of any attention at the moment, and they entered into a long discussion which Mr. Marsden afterwards described as a discussion on Art — a discussion on Art consisting of rather maliciously throwing at each other’s heads as many names of popular and bygone painters as could be thrown in the time — which was about half a dozen a minute.

At the end of the bombardment he bore her no ill-will, however, and on their being joined by a third party, also drunk, he introduced her (you will be happy to hear) as the
First
Intellectual Chorus Girl — presumably of his
acquaintance
, but possibly of Europe, so enthusiastically did he speak. He also asked her out to lunch to-morrow — which she
accepted
. And then she mentioned Mr. Gissing, of whom they spoke for some time, and whom he vaguely (Jackie found) disparaged.

“Something of an eccentric, really.” said Mr. Marsden.

Jackie agreed.

By this time the party was beginning to disperse, and Mr. Marsden, spying another friend, courteously took his leave.

Whereat the First Intellectual Chorus Girl fetched her cloak and, with a view to quiet departure, entered the lift. Which lift was a small and dark lift, and contained, besides the First Intellectual Chorus Girl, the attendant and a
departing
Backer. Which Backer, now divorced from his cigar, did, when the descent was but half accomplished, all at once plunge his bald and moustached head into the breast of the First Intellectual Chorus Girl, and commence a variety of snorting noises indicative of passion. Which behaviour the First Intellectual Chorus Girl was at first prompted to resent as abnormal, if not indecent behaviour. But it was all so quick, and she had had so many new experiences within the last few weeks, that she could not but feel that this was, in some obscure way, in order — that a Backer, in a lift of this kind, had natural privileges with his Backed — and that she should consider herself uninformed rather than outraged. So the First Intellectual Chorus Girl made no comment, and when, as they reached the ground floor, the gate was swung back and they emerged, each went their way with a quiet and pleasant sense of having capably fulfilled a minor item of daily routine.

But after this Thursday night Jackie began to feel a little more at home with the company of “Little Girl.” She had got the hang of it by now, and was beginning to find her own niche. And indeed Jackie did have a niche to herself, and
one recognized by the rest. And in this niche she existed, consciously, and at last conscientiously, as a “funny little thing.” And as a “funny little thing” she was treated with tolerance, if not, at times, a certain amount of awe. In fact:

“She’s the Little Lady of the company,” Mr. Wicks (a man of discrimination) had remarked, and the others felt that he had hit upon a truth.

Distinctions and classifications of this kind, indeed, were popular amongst the chorus — and just as Hazel Parry was ungrudgingly allowed to be the Clever Girl, and Biddy
Maxwell
held to be the Funny one, and Janie Dunstan the Cheeky one, and Lalla True unanimously voted the Tease — so Jackie Mortimer was honoured as the Little Lady of the company. For in this hard and coarse-mouthed society there was a substratum of the utmost simplicity and sincere
ingenuousness
. Indeed the transitions between that coarseness and that ingenuousness were at times baffling to Jackie. It seemed as though, in their vitality, they knew no mean between the two.

And just as Jackie was beginning to feel more at home with the company, so the company was beginning to feel more at home with itself. It had resolved itself into its final social attitudes, and Jackie was able to review it as a whole — from Miss Beryl Joy, the star of stars and comic genius of the show, down to the palest and least emphasized of the chorus men. And the various contacts in progress between these two extremes Jackie was able to observe. There was the contact between Miss Beryl Joy and her immediate male supporters, upon whose knees she sat facetiously during rehearsals, with threats of smackings; there was the contact between Miss Beryl Joy and the smaller parts, which was one of light patronage on the one hand, and adulation on the other; there was the contact between Miss Beryl Joy and the two comedians, which was one of camaraderie. There was the contact between the smaller parts and the two
comedians
, which was one of adulation on the one hand, and barely concealed scorn and loftiness on the other. There was the contact between the first comedian and the second, which was one of open nonchalance and secret backbiting. There
was the contact between Miss Beryl Joy and her chorus, which was one of aloof disregard tempered by an occasional chat with a favourite. There was the contact between the smaller parts and the chorus, which was one of humour and chaffing on the one hand, and sprightliness on the other. And there was, lastly, the contact between the two comedians and the chorus, which was the most interesting and
well-defined
contact of all. And this contact was neither a
furtive
contact, nor yet quite an open-handed one, and consisted of diverse fawn-like encounters (on the stage behind the set, or in public passages) between Mr. Jack Laddon, or Mr. Lew Craik, and any member or members of the chorus who desired such things — encounters which were subsequently related in detail in the girls’ dressing-rooms, where there was much laughter, and where Mr. Jack Laddon and Mr. Lew Craik were revealed (not unaffectionately) as Awful…. And it appeared, from these narrations, that in these encounters Jack and Lew manifested their high spirits in all manner of ways, but perhaps most particularly in the matter of lingerie, concerning which (it seemed) they feigned a pure, scholastic, and disinterested curiosity, inquiring, and even suggesting, the names, colours, trimmings, and various unfathomable feminine uses of same in the most exquisitely tickling (though of course outrageous) manner. Indeed, kind of serials used to take place in this connection (as far as Jackie could see) — the irresponsible and Rabelaisian pupils coming up every night to inquire what variations had taken place since the night before, and leaving with the presumption that this
all-absorbing
topic would be resumed in a next instalment. And all this was the cause of deep amusement, as were also the occasional very much more audacious insolences on the part of the libertine pair.

Such were the different contacts and relationships, as Jackie saw them, after the first week of the show’s run. And all the time she had been a little puzzled as to what exact relationship those surrendered creatures, the chorus men, bore to all this. From the first they did not seem to fit, and she at last had to decide that they bore no relationship. They
formed, rather, a gaunt background of pallid, weakly
parasitic
, and insecurely sexed strugglers — a netherworld of the defeated. They seemed seldom in evidence, and an air of quiet hung about their dressing-rooms, where, doubtless, some kind of life of their own was in progress — whence, even, the sound of half-hearted cheer or laughter might occasionally emerge — whence glimpses of yellow drinks in dirty
tumblers
might be obtained — when some white and stricken
individual
might at any time come forth into the passage, and giving you an inoffensive time of day, pass vaguely on — but for the rest they seemed an unsheltered lot, incapable of creating any atmosphere of their own wherewith to defend themselves.