Paul Kelver Part 44

"How do you like my costume?" asked the thin lady with the golden hair.

"I think you--" We were standing apart behind a piece of projecting scenery. She laid her hand upon my mouth, laughing.

"How old are you?" she asked me.

"Isn't that a rude question?" I answered. "I don't ask your age.

"Mine," she replied, "ent.i.tles me to talk to you as I should to a boy of my own--I had one once. Get out of this life if you can. It's bad for a woman; it's worse still for a man. To you especially it will be harmful."

"Why to me in particular?"

"Because you are an exceedingly foolish little boy," she answered, with another laugh, "and are rather nice."

She slipped away and joined the others. The chorus was now entirely a.s.sembled on the stage. The sound of the rapidly-filling house reached us, softened through the thick baize curtain, a dull, continuous droning, as of water pouring into some huge cistern. Suddenly there fell upon our ears a startling crash; the overture had commenced. The stage manager--more suggestive of a sheep-dog than ever, but lacking the calm dignity, the self-possession born of conscious capability distinctive of his prototype; a fussy, argumentative sheep-dog--rushed into the midst of us and worried us into our positions, where the more experienced continued to converse in whispers, the rest of us waiting nervously, trying to remember our words. The chorus master, taking his stand with his back to the proscenium, held his white-gloved hand in readiness. The curtain rushed up, the house, a nightmare of white faces, appearing to run towards us. The chorus-master's white-gloved hand flung upward. A roar of voices struck upon my ear, but whether my own were of them I could not say; if I were singing at all it was unconsciously, mechanically. Later, I found myself standing in the wings beside the thin lady; the stage was in the occupation of the princ.i.p.als. On my next entrance my senses were more with me; I was able to look about me. Here and there a strongly-marked face among the audience stood out, but the majority were as indistinguishable as so many blades of gra.s.s. Looked at from the stage, the house seemed no more real than from the front do the painted faces upon a black cloth.

The curtain fell amid the usual applause, sounding to us behind it like the rattle of tiny stones against a window-pane. Three times it rose and fell, like the opening and shutting of a door; and then followed a scamper for the dressing-rooms, the long corridors being filled with the rustling of skirts and the scurrying of feet.

It was in the second act that the fishy-eyed young gentleman came into his own. The chorus had lingered till it was quite apparent that the tenor and the leading lady were in love with each other; then, with the exquisite delicacy so characteristic of a chorus, foreseeing that its further presence might be embarra.s.sing, it turned to go, half to the east, the other half to the west. The fishy-eyed young man, starting from the centre, was the last to leave the stage. In another moment he would have disappeared from view. There came a voice from the gallery, clear, distinct, pathetic with entreaty:

"Don't go. Get behind a tree."

The request was instantly seconded by a roar of applause from every part of the house, followed by laughter. From that point onward the house was chiefly concerned with the fortunes of the fishy-eyed young gentleman.

At his next entrance, disguised as a conspirator, he was welcomed with enthusiasm, his pa.s.sing away regretted loudly. At the fall of the curtain, the tenor, furious, rushed up to him, and, shaking a fist in his face, demanded what he meant by it.

"I wasn't doing anything," explained the fishy-eyed young man.

"You went off sideways!" roared the tenor.

"Well, you told me not to look at you," explained meekly the fishy-eyed young gentleman. "I must go off somehow. I regard you as a very difficult man to please."

At the final fall of the curtain the house appeared divided as regarded the merits of the opera; but for "Goggles" there was a unanimous and enthusiastic call, and the while we were dressing a message came for "Goggles" that Mr. Hodgson wished to see him in his private room.

"He can make a funny face, no doubt about it," commented one gentleman, as "Goggles" left the room.

"I defy him to make a funnier one than G.o.d Almighty's made for him,"

responded the ma.s.sive gentleman.

"There's a deal in luck," observed, with a sigh, another, a tall, handsome young gentleman possessed of a rich ba.s.s voice.

Leaving the stage door, I encountered a group of gentlemen waiting upon the pavement outside. Not interested in them myself, I was hurrying past, when one laid a hand upon my shoulder. I turned. He was a big, broad-shouldered fellow, with a dark Vand.y.k.e beard and soft, dreamy eyes.

"Dan!" I cried.

"I thought it was you, young 'un, in the first act," he answered. "In the second, when you came on without a moustache, I knew it. Are you in a hurry?"

"Not at all," I answered. "Are you?"

"No," he replied; "we don't go to press till Thursday, so I can write my notice to-morrow. Come and have supper with me at the Albion and we will talk. You look tired, young 'un."

"No," I a.s.sured him, "only excited--partly at meeting you."

He laughed, and drew my arm through his.

CHAPTER V.

HOW ON A SWEET GREY MORNING THE FUTURE CAME TO PAUL.

Over our supper Dan and I exchanged histories. They revealed points of similarity. Leaving school some considerable time earlier than myself, Dan had gone to Cambridge; but two years later, in consequence of the death of his father, of a wound contracted in the Indian Mutiny and never cured, had been compelled to bring his college career to an untimely termination.

"You might not have expected that to grieve me," said Dan, with a smile, "but, as a matter of fact, it was a severe blow to me. At Cambridge I discovered that I was by temperament a scholar. The reason why at school I took no interest in learning was because learning was, of set purpose, made as uninteresting as possible. Like a Cook's tourist party through a picture gallery, we were rushed through education; the object being not that we should see and understand, but that we should be able to say that we had done it. At college I chose my own subjects, studied them in my own way. I fed on knowledge, was not stuffed with it like a Stra.s.sburg goose."

Returning to London, he had taken a situation in a bank, the chairman of which had been an old friend of his father. The advantage was that while earning a small income he had time to continue his studies; but the deadly monotony of the work had appalled him, and upon the death of his mother he had shaken the cloying dust of the City from his brain and joined a small "fit-up" theatrical company. On the stage he had remained for another eighteen months; had played all roles, from "Romeo" to "Paul Pry," had helped to paint the scenery, had a.s.sisted in the bill-posting.

The latter, so he told me, he had found one of the most difficult of accomplishments, the paste-laden poster having an innate tendency to recoil upon the amateur's own head, and to stick there. Wearying of the stage proper, he had joined a circus company, had been "Signor Ricardo, the daring bare-back rider," also one of the "Brothers Roscius in their marvellous trapeze act;" inclining again towards respectability, had been a waiter for three months at Ostend; from that, a footman.

"One never knows," remarked Dan. "I may come to be a society novelist; if so, inside knowledge of the aristocracy will give me decided advantage over the majority of my compet.i.tors."

Other callings he had sampled: had tramped through Ireland with a fiddle; through Scotland with a lecture on Palestine, a.s.sisted by dissolving views; had been a billiard-marker; next a schoolmaster. For the last three months he had been a journalist, dramatic and musical critic to a Sunday newspaper. Often had I dreamt of such a position for myself.

"How did you obtain it?" I asked.

"The idea occurred to me," replied Dan, "late one afternoon, sauntering down the Strand, wondering what I should do next. I was on my beam ends, with only a few s.h.i.+llings in my pocket; but luck has always been with me. I entered the first newspaper office I came to, walked upstairs to the first floor, and opening the first door without knocking, pa.s.sed through a small, empty room into a larger one, littered with books and papers. It was growing dark. A gentleman of extremely youthful figure was running round and round, cursing to himself because of three things: he had upset the ink, could not find the matches, and had broken the bell-pull. In the gloom, a.s.suming him to be the office boy, I thought it would be fun to mistake him for the editor. As a matter of fact, he turned out to be the editor. I lit the gas for him, and found him another ink-pot. He was a slim young man with the voice and manner of a schoolboy. I don't suppose he is any more than five or six-and-twenty.

He owes his position to the fact of his aunt's being the proprietress.

He asked me if he knew me. Before I could tell him that he didn't, he went on talking. He appeared to be labouring under a general sense of injury.

"'People come into this office,' he said; 'they seem to look upon it as a shelter from the rain--people I don't know from Adam. And that d.a.m.ned fool downstairs lets them march straight up--anybody, men with articles on safety valves, people who have merely come to kick up a row about something or another. Half my work I have to do on the stairs.

"I recommended to him that he should insist upon strangers writing their business upon a slip of paper. He thought it a good idea.

"'For the last three-quarters of an hour,' he said, 'have I been trying to finish this one column, and four times have I been interrupted.'

"At that precise moment there came another knock at the door.

"'I won't see him!' he cried. 'I don't care who he is; I won't see him.

Send him away! Send everybody away!'

"I went to the door. He was an elderly gentleman. He made to sweep by me; but I barred his way, and closed the editorial door behind me. He seemed surprised; but I told him it was impossible for him to see the editor that afternoon, and suggested his writing his business on a sheet of paper, which I handed to him for the purpose. I remained in that ante-room for half an hour, and during that time I suppose I must have sent away about ten or a dozen people. I don't think their business could have been important, or I should have heard about it afterwards.

The last to come was a tired-looking gentleman, smoking a cigarette. I asked him his name.

"He looked at me in surprise, and then answered, 'Idiot!'

"I remained firm, however, and refused to let him pa.s.s.

"'It's a bit awkward,' he retorted. 'Don't you think you could make an exception in favour of the sub-editor on press night?'

"I replied that such would be contrary to my instructions.

"'Oh, all right,' he answered. 'I'd like to know who's going to the Royalty to-night, that's all. It's seven o'clock already.'