Twopence Coloured

by Patrick Hamilton

  I

  IT was in the seventh week of her association with “Little Girl,” and when she was at Liverpool, and on her twentieth birthday, that Jackie had news of the death of Lady Perrin. She had been corresponding with the old lady a week before this, and it was a great blow, and sickened her very much.

  From Lady Perrin’s death she received the sum of seven hundred and eighty pounds; and she was, at first, delighted and intrigued by this amount, which she played about with mentally and brooded and speculated deliciously on every kind of imaginary expenditure. Ultimately, however, it was this bequest which brought her to an understanding of her true situation, and caused her to take stock of her affairs. For with the death of Lady Perrin her last ship had been burnt, and she had herself and her own exertions alone to rely upon. There was now no turning back. And in some measure she was scared by this, and in some measure she was braced.

  For although Jackie had undergone multitudinous and varying emotions since she had left Brighton, her primary ambition remained as clear as it ever had been. She still held that to endeavour to rise to the utmost heights of the profession she had chosen was a self-evidently noble and splendid aspiration: and she was still convinced of her talents and perfect capabilities in this direction. As for the vulgar and alien society in which she was now moving, and the slow grey depression of the northern towns through which she was now passing — she took them on sufferance, and regarded them as purely temporary inflictions. She would come properly into touch with her profession soon.

  And to all this there was one solution, she told herself. There was one clear, too simple solution. Too absurdly simple and too absurdly beautiful. And because it was that, by now she had begun to put it away from herself, half in fear. It was a thing beyond her, and no purpose could be served by contemplating it. “This has got to stop,” said Jackie, very firmly, one night in Newcastle; and she had succeeded since then in divorcing it from her (as it were) practical emotions. It lay somewhere apart, where it need no longer trouble her.

  II

  And yet when (and she was at Sheffield when this occurred) she had one night a wire from him saying that he was coming to spend the day with her, she might have known, from the pure glad gaiety and sudden unreasoning happiness that she took in the news, how far she had been deceiving herself in thinking that she could detach this thing from her existence.

  It was almost like a reprieve — the prospect of seeing him again. And even if the sentence were passed anew, when he had gone — she could not trouble to think about that….

  *

  It was a very pleasant meeting at the station — on a cold, biting, cloudy Sheffield afternoon. And from the first moment there was a kind of new intimacy established, a reasonless and champagne-like affability, such as had, inexplicably, never been before between them. And to Jackie, at least (though she felt somehow sure that it was the same with him), the lowering sky over this sombre city, in which the first evening lights were peeping out, was dashed with all the beauty, and all the mystery and romance, in the world. She could not think of the future. This was enough.

  And they walked round about for a long while, in no particular direction, until at last the sky had cleared to deep, bitter blue, and the stars had come out: and then they went into a quiet, rather deserted hotel, near the station, and had tea.

  And here they were all alone, in a high narrow room, with a single and attentive waiter, and a very old gentleman at another table (who made very unique grunting noises, but subsequently departed). And their cheeks were red from contact with the thin, cold air; and the fire near by was blazing red. And the night was falling, and the tea was more than gratifying. And they talked, in low tones, unceasingly — talked until they knew nothing but the tune of their own low voices along the high, narrow room.

  Until at last, the night outside looming more and more mysterious, and the red fire within blazing ever more ardently from the dark, and the waiter having deserted them, and left them altogether alone — a sudden feeling of oppression and nervousness seemed to steal upon them both, and they looked out of the window, and there was a long silence…. It was, indeed, for a moment, as though they were suddenly face to face with something, and had nothing to say. As though their talk and ebullience had been obviously leading up to something, and then fallen dead.

  And it was more than a sense of oppression with Jackie: it was a fear, almost — a fear of the night ahead and outside, of the theatre to which she must return, of the chillness of life itself — an aching longing for him to gladden and reassure her now, to say the word, and make her exalted. But he did not speak, and they looked out of the window, and were silent….

  “Then where have you come from to-day?” asked Jackie, at last. “You haven’t told me yet.”

  “Come from? London. Why?”

  “London?” said Jackie, in surprise.

  “Why — what’s the matter?”

  “Are you on business up here, then?” asked Jackie.

  “No. I came to see you.”

  “Me!” cried Jackie, smiling, and sitting up and pointing at her self.

  “Yes. What did you think?”

  “Good Lord,” said Jackie….

  And there was another very long and very heavy, and very complimentary and embarrassed silence….

  “And are you going to perform in anything again soon?” asked Jackie.

  “No. I’ve retired, I think. Anyway, I shan’t go back unless I have to. I’ve got this book on hand now, and I’ve got to concentrate on that for about six months.”

  “What book’s that?” asked Jackie.

  “Oh — the usual stuff….”

  And there was another pause.

  “Do you — sort of,” asked Jackie, “make money from that?”

  “No. Not a penny.” He was looking at her now. “And with a wife to support and one thing and another, that’s where I’m always getting into a mess. You see, I’d cut out this acting business altogether if I could only ——”

  “Oh, are you married, then?” said Jackie, suddenly, but she did not hear herself saying this. And she scarcely knew where she was or what she was doing. She only knew that she wanted to run away into the night, and cry, and forget — cry and forget. She could forget, she was sure, if you gave her the time. And she wanted to think. She wanted to think.

  And outside a large car, with two glaring headlights, like some irresistible monster, snarled slowly up to the door of the hotel. And she was watching this car, and thinking of nothing at all.

  He had replied that he was married.

  “I thought you must have been,” said Jackie. And he did not reply to this.

  And then the waiter came in and lit the gas.

  *

  And all at once there was no more night, and no more mystery, and sinister red fire, and trembling, romantic desolation. They were two rather wearied, and jaded, and commonplace earthlings, sitting opposite each other in the muddy gas-light of a hotel dining-room in Sheffield. And there was cigarette-ash sprinkled messily over the cups and table-cloth, and it was time to go to the theatre.

  “Oh, well,” he said, and clumsily affected a yawn, with his knuckle on his mouth.

  “Oh, well,” said Jackie, and sat straight up.

  “Will you have your bill, sir?”

  “Yes, please.”

  There was a scribbling silence.

  “The lady had two cakes, sir?”

  “Two cakes…. Did you have two cakes, Jackie?”

  “Two cakes? Let’s see, now. Yes. Two cakes. That’s right.”

  “Two cakes, sir? … Thankyousir…. Thankyousir….”

  “All right.”

  “Thankyouverymuchsir. Thankyousir.”

  He was helping her on with her coat.

  They were out in the cold night air.

  “Well, what happens now?” asked Jackie. “Are you going back, or what?”

  “Well, shall we go and look up the trains?”

&n
bsp; “Right you are…. Isn’t it cold?”

  “Yes. Foul up here.”

  The life had gone out of both of them.

  “Will you wait here?” he said. “And I’ll go and ask.”

  He was gone nearly five minutes, and she waited alone, tremblingly cold, amid the noise of engines and station cries. She might never see him again, she reflected, after this.

  “Well, there’s one in ten minutes, really,” he said, and stood above her, looking down on her.

  “Oh,” said Jackie, and looked about her.

  There was a pause. His face was strained. He also seemed to feel the cold.

  “Of course, I shall stay the night here in a minute….”

  She giggled feebly, as though that was a very idle thing to have suggested, and there was another pause.

  “Come on, Jackie.” He took her arm and began to lead her away. “I’ll stay here the night, and see you down to the theatre. I can’t face a journey now.”

  “But how can you? You haven’t got any things….”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’ll buy them.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly. How can you?”

  “Come along. We’ll buy them now. We’ve got three quarters of an hour before you need go in, and then I’ll meet you after the show, and we’ll have supper.”

  Supper…. It was not all over yet….

  And because of this sudden reprieve, the cloud and chill which had fallen upon them seemed suddenly and unreasoningly to be lifted. And he took her arm, and they walked snugly away into the cold wind as though there had been no interruption.

  But she forced herself to ask him, in a conversational way, some more about the subject which had so upset her. And it transpired that he was not living with her, and had not done so for four years. And he described it as having been a very foolish business altogether. And this, too, made her feel a little happier….

  And indeed a kind of sad gaiety, a mutual agreement to be gay, came upon them both. And the shopping that followed was a very delightful shopping — in which they were two humorous conspirators against the servile grandiosity of the shops. And in the Men’s Department of the big store they entered he was very amusing about his pyjamas, implacably insisting upon wide stripes, and vacillating, with great earnestness, and constant appeals to her, between mauves and reds. And it was even more fun in the chemist’s over the way, where he held out tenaciously for green as the sole decent shade in tooth-brushes, sneering at innumerable whites (as being full of integrity but without sensuous appeal), and at last coming round to Jackie’s notions, which had been from the beginning in favour of a mild pink. And when they came out of this there were the most delightful arguments on the subject of Carrying, in which she said she would not go any farther unless she did, and was at last granted the tooth-brush, which she bore with great courage and intrepidity from then on. And equally delightful was a subsequent debate upon Shaving, in which he wondered whether he could Go for a day, and submitted to her decision, while she, in an exquisite little surge of possessiveness, examined his face in the light of a shop-window, and at last, on her own responsibility, allowed that he might. And at last they came to the Stage Door, where it was arranged that she should keep the Pyjamas, as well as the Tooth-brush, because she easily could, and because he was meeting her after the show, and could give them to him then. And he was going in front, and would probably be round in the interval.

  *

  And in the interval there he was, with his hands in his pockets, and his hat and coat off, talking fluently yet languidly to Julius Cæsar, at the back of the stage. And he was talking thus to Julius Cæsar, but he had come up from London to see her. And he was excusing himself from Julius Caesar, with a polite smile, and coming over to her. And he was smiling at her, as only he could smile, and they were saying “Hullo” softly, and standing together without a word, but with perfect cognizance of mutual happiness and harmony in their silence. And they were joined by Miss Biddy Maxwell.

  “Hullo-o-o, Richard!” said Miss Maxwell. “What do you think you’re doing up here?”

  “Hullo, Miss Maxwell,” he replied, and they had a little conversation, and she passed on.

  Everybody seemed to know him, thought Jackie, and everybody seemed to love him, as she did. How unintelligent and irrational had she been in thinking she could have had this individual, this patently attractive and desirable and unique individual, to herself.

  “Hullo!” said Miss Cherry Lambert. “You here, Mr. Gissing?”

  “Rather.”

  This was getting too much for her.

  After a short conversation, including a hint that she should be entertained by him to-night (which was courteously rebuffed), Miss Lambert passed on.

  “You seem to know everybody,” said Jackie.

  “Yes,” he said. “I do seem to. Misspent youth, I suppose….”

  “Hullo, Gissing,” said Mr. Jack Laddon. “I heard you were in front to-night. How’s things?”

  “Very well, thanks, Mr. Laddon. And how are you?”

  “Oh, not so bad. What are we like from the front?”

  “Very good indeed.”

  “What are you up for, then?”

  “I came up to see Miss Mortimer.”

  “Oh,” said Mr. Laddon, glancing at Jackie, and rather at a loss. And “Ah-ha,” he added, encouragingly….

  There was something about Mr. Gissing which seemed to steal from Mr. Laddon his natural easy arrogance. “Well — so long.”

  “Good-bye.” There was a pause.

  “How do you get on with Mr. Laddon, Jackie?”

  “Well, I don’t see much of him. I don’t like him very much, though.”

  “Yes. Isn’t he foul?”

  And at this point Jackie herself had to go, and he returned to the front.

  *

  In the dressing-room, at the end of the show, Miss Maxwell, ruminatively cutting her toe-nails, brought the subject up.

  “Richard Gissing’s been in front to-night,” she said, to the room at large.

  “I know,” said Miss Lambert. “I spoke to him.”

  “So did I,” said Miss Maxwell, not without slight haughtiness. “I spoke to him a lot.”

  “He’s a Real Good Sort, is Dick Gissing,” said Miss Lambert, who was never above a little sentiment. “And I have Reason to Know.”

  “Oh yes,” said Miss Maxwell. “He’s a Terrible Gentleman.”

  By which Miss Maxwell meant, not that Mr. Gissing was a terrible gentleman, but that he was, to a very advanced degree, a gentleman.

  “He acts in Shaw a whole lot, doesn’t he?” asked Miss True.

  “Yes, that’s right,” said Miss Lambert. “I’ve seen him once. How’d you come to know him, Jackie?”

  “Oh, I just met him,” said Jackie….

  “It was from him, really,” added Jackie, softly, “that I got that book.”

  And a long and heavy silence fell over the whole dressing-room.

  “Well,” said Miss Lambert, at last. “I’m sure you couldn’t do much Better.”

  For Miss Lambert was in a moral mood to-night.

  III

  The rest of the evening passed off very simply and quietly.

  He met her, as arranged, in the front of the house, and they walked together, not speaking very much, through the deserted streets — where it was already snowing and the pavements wore a thin bright carpet of deadening white — straight to his hotel.

  Here he gave her a supper such as she had not had for a very long while, and which, after a long period in rooms, reminded her rather unpleasantly of the warmer things of life she had forsaken: and here he told her a lot about himself, and here she too described much of her early life, and her present circumstances and feelings.

  And they lingered a long while over their coffee, the room becoming more and more deserted, and themselves becoming more and more mute.

  And the hour grew very late, but they sat on….

  And then,
with extraordinary suddenness, he got up, and said that he must see her home. But because he had confessed, a little while before, to having a very bad sore throat, she said that she would not let him see her home, and that he must go straight to bed. And as she seemed to be in earnest, he sat down again, and there followed a rather sickening and dull argument about it, and it was at last decided that he should put her into a taxi.

  After some difficulty a taxi was found, and he came out with her into the snow, which was now about half an inch thick, to see her into it. (She was too tired and weak to protest against this.)

  And she took her place on a cold black leather seat, and he slammed the door on her, and gave inaudible instructions to the man in front. And “This is paid for!” he shouted through the window, and “Good-bye!” and “Good-bye,” said Jackie, and smiled and waved her hand. And he smiled and went inside.

  He was a long time starting, was this taxi-man, and wasn’t at all sure about his doors being fastened properly, and had to get out twice to wind himself up again. But he did get going at last, and the hotel swept slowly out of sight.

  And she was alone, with the glistening snow, and the taximan’s heavy back, and the snarl of changing gears, and the mystery and coldness of her own existence.

  CHAPTER IX

  LUNCHES

  THREE weeks later “Little Girl” came into Town. The first night passed off with Mafeking applause: the Press next morning was moderate in its acclamation: and it settled down immediately into a steady run.

  Jackie, of course, returned to West Kensington: but she did not spend all the time she had apart from the theatre in this district. On the contrary, being now, in a quiet way, enormously popular in the chorus, she was receiving constant nightly invitations on all sides. These were, of course, often of a rather wholesale nature — consignments of The Girls being requisitioned in a very callous if palatial manner by some flaunting Crœsus desirous of entertaining his friends; and at these Jackie’s pride naturally took offence. But there were others, including one or two suppers and dances on the stage, given by the management, and in the nature of command ceremonies, which she accepted.