Twopence Coloured (9 page)

Over the ravings of this infantile troupe, the
actor-manager
, Mr. Stephen Linell — a slim, dark man of about forty, with longish hair, a bow-tie, and features which seemed to be yearning languorously for a medallion wherewith they might be perpetuated — ruled with the suavity of a head master taking a lower form. A lower form wherein his birch was needless as a weapon of coercion (his mere person and presence being enough), and wherein he could, therefore,
indulge
an easy urbanity, or, at moments, a delicate
whimsicality
even, without fear of accident.

His ushers, of which there was one other beside the one who had spoken to Jackie, were, as ushers ever have been, in greater fear of the great man than his pupils, but at the same time upborne by the grave bliss of office. To these Mr. Linell occasionally deferred, lowering his ear, with a munificent soft drooping of his own grandeur, to their opinions or remarks, and never failing to agree with them. For disagreement would have implied equality on common ground, and the mere prospect of argument would have been fatal to the medallion.

To his pupils themselves, though, he employed a different mode of self-protection. Here his urbanity was even more extreme, however much it might have been a sheep’s-clothing over the wolf of his wisdom and authority. Hence it was that his suggestions seemed to come less as commands than as reminders of divine and immutable laws. “No, I think we do it this way, don’t we?” Mr. Linell would ask, coming forward to demonstrate, or “Yes, but it’d be better like this, I think, wouldn’t it?” or, “Yes, but that’s not how we want it, is it?” There was but one absolute way of doing the thing, and that was Mr. Linell’s way, and Mr. Linell had merely to appeal to reason. And even if his pupils dared take inward exception to any of his. dictums, they
would hardly have dared acknowledge it, even to themselves. For (Jackie noticed) there was an uncanny smell of
Premiums
impressing itself elusively, faintly, and yet withal sensibly upon this atmosphere, and a disagreement with Mr. Linell’s technique might have been the confession of a bad bargain….

Not that Mr. Linell could keep his temper at all times. Indeed towards the end of this rehearsal he very nearly lost it. This was occasioned, or rather forced upon him, by the slow coming into being of certain soft, but irritating
whisperings
, not to say
sotto
voce
arguments, not to say audacious conversations on the part of those not at the moment
rehearsing
: which sounds, increasing in volume, and being taken up all round the room in defiance of the mild slushings of the ushers (which but served to increase the din), at last infuriated an otherwise conciliatory actor-manager into a betrayal of feeling.

In fact, “Would you people mind keeping silence!” shouted Mr. Linell. “We’re not here for Pleasure, you know.” And with that stern negation of a conceivable fundamental and communal purpose at work in this room, Jackie threw over all hope of interpreting the ranting spectacle before her eyes. Pleasure, indeed — Pleasure of an original and very possibly misdirected kind — but Pleasure, of some sort, for all that — had been her final obscure hope of explanation, her one last resort in her analysis of the scene. With the denial of Pleasure the abyss opened, and she was face to face with Bedlam.

Shortly after this the rehearsal concluded, and Mr. Linell, after a short pause, and a state of dreamy expectancy all round, proceeded to set a kind of Thespian prep. He was tolerably contented, he said, with their general results so far as the work was concerned, but he could expand indefinitely upon their remissness with respect to These Words. Mr. Linell meant to
say
— really. He had
never.
He
had
never. Quite literally, he meant to say, never. They opened in a week’s time, and with the exception of Sir Toby, not
one
of them knew
one
single
thing about their lines. Now all this, he meant to say, had to be altered, and if they could not
come up on Thursday Word Perfect, he meant to say, they might as well not trouble to come up at all, and he might as well write and cancel the dates before it was too late.

Having said this, or at least having meant to say this, Mr. Linell paused heavily and said it all over again, in a different order. He then said that those whom it concerned should try to get down to Nathan’s before rehearsal this afternoon, which would begin at three,
Sharp
, and which would be devoted to the Dream. By which Mr. Linell meant “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by William Shakespeare.

He then dismissed the class, by turning away; and walked straight over to Jackie. He came over with the decisiveness of one who should have demolished her before this, and took her note in silence.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “Well, I’m glad you’ve come up, because you’re the sort of thing we’re wanting, really; even if it is too late this time. Let me see, now” — he turned to a lingering usher — “have we heard from Miss Simmons yet, Mr. Clodd?”

“No, Mr. Linell, but we ought to hear this evening.”

“Oh yes…. Well, I’m afraid I can’t say anything definite until we’ve heard from her. You see, I don’t know whether she’s joining us or not. But if you’ll give Mr. Clodd your address, we ought to be able to let you know in the morning. I should very much like to have you with us myself…. Yes…. Well — I must be going.” He smiled vaguely, shook hands, accepted her thanks, and went.

Her address was laboriously inscribed upon an usher’s private envelope, and she came out again into the air.

She was ten minutes late, and he was there at the corner. He guided her mechanically to an apparently agreed
destination
, and she told him her news. She said that she Liked Mr. Linell, and he said that he liked him, too. Indeed, added Mr. Gissing, but for Mr. Linell’s lately increasing, and, in his (Mr. Gissing’s) opinion, unjustifiable confusion of himself
with God Almighty, he knew few better than Mr. Linell in the profession. But the latter error made for a certain assurance, a certain self-esteem even, in the man, which might easily, at times, cause ranklings in the breasts of his more conscious inferiors. Such was the gist of Mr. Gissing’s opinion of Mr. Linell. Jackie asked if he knew him well. Yes, very well. They had been with Benson together, hundreds and hundreds of years ago.

At this they arrived at a small restaurant, named Line’s, which was in a side-street off the Strand, specialized in lobster, and exuded the rather oppressive, manager-pampered cosiness common to such resorts. They took a corner table on the ground floor, and here they were joined by Miss Marion Lealy.

She came up laughingly and quite suddenly — was
introduced
to Jackie; and the next minute was invited to lunch and sitting down and sipping a cock-tail and mocking at Mr. Gissing.

Miss Marion Lealy, whose fame as an actress had been in Jackie’s ears ever since she had left school, was at this time at the height of her success — or at least at one of the heights of notoriety to which she invariably leapt every other year or so — the popular and ineffable ballad, with the refrain ending:

having only lately (after igniting two continents), reached the barrel-organ and errand-boy stage wherein it would finally expire. She was an exceptionally beautiful young woman of about thirty, and, as a beauty, was known in roughly three capacities. There was Marion Lealy the
Scientist
: there was Marion Lealy the Philanthropist: and there was Marion Lealy the Actress. Under the first heading (that of Scientist) came her well-known exertions in the Press, wherein, from altruistic medical heights, she held out
unflinchingly
for a neat lemon before breakfast every morning,
water between (and not during) meals, and in general
discussed
, with sprightly scholarliness, the workings of both the exteriors and interiors of her readers — though insisting, all the time that the Primary Cause of ill health was Worry, which she alluded to as the Bane of Modern Life (and of which you were cured by her cunning expedient of Avoiding it). In her second capacity (that of Philanthropist) she was timidly but short-skirtedly and ravishingly present at the first phases of an infinite quantity of bazaars, dog-homes,
orphanages
or Association Football matches. And in her last
capacity
(that of Actress) she was to be seen for about nine months of every year playing Revue either at the Palace, or the Pavilion, or at any theatrical point in a Shaftesbury
Avenue
line drawn between those two foundations of gaiety. And indeed as an Actress (though she was of course a public character and Force for Good first, and only an actress second) she was very versatile and very bright.

She spoke with a strong Canadian accent, and on being introduced to Jackie, said, “Verrer pleased to meet you, Jackie,” and smiled charmingly upon her. She then entered upon a five minutes’ breathless narration of a minor brawl she had had with a taxi-man just before coming in here; and she took Jackie’s breath away as much by the aura of her fame as by the fact of her familiarity with Mr. Gissing. With Mr. Gissing, indeed, she was intensely familiar, and before the hors-d’œuvres were over, she was ruffling his hair and pulling out his tie, on the plea that she Jes’ Loved Rilin’ him (though Mr. Gissing, so far from appearing riled, was smoothing his hair and putting back his tie with the
equanimity
of one knowing these to be the common and inevitable features of discourse with her), and appealing to Jackie to support her in her mockery.

“Have you known him larng, Jackie, then?” she asked, with that glee inseparable from her hurrying voice and temperament.

No, Jackie hadn’t. Only a week, really.

“A
week!
My word! I’ve known little Dickie ever since he was a boy. D ’y’ know, I’se
so
in love with him at one
time! I was truly. You’d never believe it. I guess I’ve never been in love like that since. Isn’t that so, Dickie?”

“Certainly,” said Mr. Gissing.

“Say,” said Miss Lealy, changing the subject like
lightning
, after her habit. “I had a dose of
your
friends the other night.”

“My friends?”

“Your little Ox Ford and Cambridge boys. Say — that’s the last Boat Race night I stand for! Did you see the pictures of me rowin’ on those chairs?”

“Yes. I saw. But they’re not my friends.”

“Well, I hope not. D’ y’ know, I was
that
near walkin’ out on them all?” She turned her lovely, grave face towards Jackie. “I
was
,
y’ know.”

Jackie returned a serious glance.

“Well, Dickie,” said Miss Lealy, in a lighter tone. “How’s the books going?”

“Very well, thank you, Marion.”

“Did y’ know he writes books, Jackie?”

Jackie had heard that he did.

“Did y’ ever hear him lecture, too? I did, once. With a lot of old grey-beards all about, like Bernard Shaw.”

“Really?” said Jackie. “He never told me he lectured.”

“Ye-e-es!” Miss Lealy made another transition to gravity. “All about those factory people, in the old days, y’ know. You know, when they all worked in mills, and factories, and all that. The poor little kiddies, and all those, all havin’ to work sixteen hours a day. I jes’ can’t bear to think o’ those poor little kiddies.”

Jackie could not bear to think of them, either. 

*

In this manner the conversation proceeded throughout lunch. Miss Lealy did all the talking, and Jackie had no difficulty in discerning the secret of her success in life. There was a brimming mixture of simplicity, soft-heartedness, unscrupulousness, imbecility, joyous gravity, and, above all, assured and radiant vitality, which carried all before it. No one in the world could, or could wish to resist it. And
at any moment there would be a sudden lull, and she would be fixing her lovely eyes upon you, and speaking softly of “poor little kiddies.” Towards these transitions Mr. Gissing preserved one steady and non-committal attitude, but Jackie, of course, as a stranger, was compelled to follow breathlessly behind, and to mimic the emotion of each phase with the lightning rapidity of a reflection in a mirror.

Miss Lealy now went off into a panting description of her early school-days in Wilkesbarre (her Home Town), which lasted well into the entrée, and then into even earlier days in a convent, which brought her to the subject of religion. At this she at once accused Mr. Gissing of being Wicked, and an Atheist, and asked Jackie if she was a Catholic. On finding that she was not, she at once urged her to become one, without delay; because, after all, Martin Luther, who started all the trouble, only did it because he wanted to marry a silly old nun, didn’t he? To which summary theology Jackie could not but assent, with the nod of one convinced, and would clearly be in the confession-box before an hour was over. Whereat Mr. Gissing said that if Miss Marion Lealy wanted converts she shouldn’t be divorced so much (which was rather unfair, because she had only done it twice); and Miss Lealy, who took all remarks from him as coming from the promptings of the Foe, refuted him with the explanation that
she
was not a
Good
Catholic.

There was then a long pause, which Miss Lealy broke with a benign “Well,
you’re
a verrer pretty little girl, Jackie,” and by asking her if she was in her own profession. Jackie smiled, and Mr. Gissing answered for her.

“No,” he said. “But she’s trying to be.”

“Have you done anything, Jackie?”

“No. Nothing,” said Jackie, weakly.

“I guess you can dants, an’ sing, an’ all that?”

Jackie put forward her accomplishments in these directions.

“Why don’t you come out in ‘Little Girl’ with us, then, Jackie?” asked Miss Lealy.

This was a difficult question to answer. At a first glance it would have appeared that there were innumerable, and
even obvious, reasons why she should not join Miss Lealy in “Little Girl.”