She did not, however, do any better with the agents than she had done with the producers. She tried them all. From the lowest kind of agent, at whose offices she would be kept waiting in a sparsely furnished outer room with a mumbling crowd of defeated professionals who said that it really wasn’t worth their while, and of course they wouldn’t dream of doing it under Fifteen, and it Knocked them Flat (old boy) and poor old Johnnie was trying to Touch them for five bob again (just as though they were defeated professionals in rather bad fiction) — up to the highest and newest kind of agent, who made appointments with you, but could afford not to keep them. Also she visited various female and peculiar agents, who dwelt in Gloucester Road, or thereabouts, and asked you if you had Done Anything of This Sort Before.
She kept her patience very well. Only once, in an interview with the Mulligan agency, did she nearly give way. She was seen, not by Mr. Mulligan himself, but by an extremely pretty young chit of about seventeen years of age who dwelt in a middle room. This young chit was at the top of her profession, Mr. Mulligan being the best-known (theatrically) and most influential of agents at this time, and it being the business of this young chit to keep people at a distance from Mr. Mulligan.
She was discovered, by Jackie, seated at a desk, at the far end of the room. She did not get up when Jackie entered, but wheeled round, smiling majestically but forgivingly, and indicating a chair.
“And what can I do for you?” she asked, joining her middle fingers (like the rest of them), and looking with courteous interest at her visitor.
“Well, I’m just looking for work, really,” said Jackie.
“Oh, yes. Now, let me see. I’m sure I know your work….” She screwed up her eyes and looked at the ceiling. “What were you in last?”
“I’ve been with Robert Granger lately.”
“Oh, yes. But there was something before that…. Weren’t you in one of your husband’s plays?”
“I was in ‘The Knocking at the Gate’— yes.”
“Oh, yes.” She glanced at Jackie, held the arms of her chair, and gazed at her desk. “I thought so…. Well…. I don’t know at all….”
There was a long silence as the child gazed at her desk, not knowing at all….
“Been up to the Greshams,” she suggested at last.
“No. I was told they were full up.”
“Yes — but you never know what they may be doing…. Let me see, now…. I — don’t know…. You might try Strickland, of course, mightn’t you? Have you tried him?”
“No. I haven’t.”
“He might be worth trying.” She looked up, and her smile again forgave Jackie.
“I’ll go up there, then,” said Jackie.
“Yes. You might do worse than that…. Yes…. Well…. Well, that’s all I can really think of for the moment. Of course, we’ll put you down, and let you know if anything comes in.”
She switched a brief, more than usually tolerant, and utterly dismissing smile upon Jackie, and without another word, took up her pen, referred to a paper, and commenced to write. “Thank you,” she murmured….
The interview was closed.
An incredulous Jackie was therefore left to get up by herself and walk to the door.
“Good morning,” said Jackie, at the door.
But the interview being already closed, this was rather pointless, and the rejoinder came tartly.
“Good morning,” she said, and naturally did not turn round, or leave off writing.
III
It was shortly after this episode, and in the twelfth month of her new attack upon London, and in the small hours of the morning (a very cold and dark one) — that Jackie decided to plunge her little legacy from Lady Perrin, which she had kept intact all these years, into theatrical speculation.
This she did partially because she thrilled (in those small hours) to the gamble of it, partially because she had become twenty-eight one day, partially because her spirit could not sustain unemployment and rebuff any longer, but mostly because she would be able, with money behind her, to walk straight through, at a given time, into Mr. Mulligan’s office, give a light nod to the chit on the way in, and another light nod on the way out, having spent the meanwhile discussing high finance behind a closed door.
A closed door and portentous financial mumblings for the chit, and just a light nod….
CHAPTER III
LUNCHES
I
IT was at this period that she had a rather strained little passage with Charles. It took place at lunch. He very often came up from Southshore and took her out to lunch nowadays, and they were very friendly indeed with each other.
This particular lunch, however, was the last one she was to have with him before he went to Australia. He was going there to play cricket for his country. It was a very great delight to be seen in public with the brown marvel. She was conscious of participating in history.
“Are they engaged, then?” said Jackie, speaking of a couple they knew.
“Yes. Rather,” said Charles, and after a silence, he added:
“And are you ever thinking of being engaged, Jackie?”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, no,” said Jackie….
“I don’t think so,” added Jackie, and looked at the tablecloth, as he looked at her — mentally worked out the entire faint pattern of the table-cloth, as he looked at her….
“And when are you going to be engaged, Charles?”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, I’ll never be engaged.”
“Why not?”
He lit a cigarette. “Well, to tell you the truth, Jackie, I’m coming to the conclusion that nobody loves me.” He smiled. Jackie smiled too, and looked a fool.
“Don’t be a fool,” said Jackie….
II
Mr. Marsden, also, was still taking Jackie out to lunch. But they were not so affable with each other as they used to be.
It had been Mr. Marsden’s habit, since the disaster of Richard’s death, and when speaking on the subject to his friends, to state that he was Not the Sort of Person who Said he had Always Told you so. Which enabled Mr. Marsden, in a very clever manner, to say, without shame or stint, that he had always told you so. He had not always told you that Richard was going to die, of course, but he had always told you that nothing but catastrophe could result from an alliance with Richard.
Jackie was not unaware of Mr. Marsden’s back-biting, and perhaps she showed her awareness in her slightly cooler behaviour to him. At any rate, she sensed a difference in their relationship, which she was unable to describe otherwise than as….
This curious symbol had been brought into being by Mr. Marsden himself, who, taking advantage of an always extremely illegible handwriting, now concluded his letters to her no longer with
Yours ever
but with
Yours
which evasion, though it left Jackie in the dark as to the precise state of his emotions, she found quite extraordinarily expressive.
It was the most subtle thing. They looked at each other, during pauses, over the lunch-table, and perceived it. He was neither amicable nor hostile to her. Merely Their relationship was…. And would remain so.
CHAPTER IV
MANUSCRIPTS
I
THE uncanny but immediate galvanization of the theatrical profession on Jackie’s running up the little flag of her £700 legacy, had a slightly depressing effect upon her.
Indeed the comparison of herself to one who, in a beleaguered garrison several degrees beyond the boot stage, miraculously produces, and is observed to be blandly consuming, a handsome supply of roast beef and Christmas pudding (hot) — was the kind of comparison in which Jackie could have indulged more than once. Though it would have been, of course, an exaggerated kind of comparison. Actually, the eyes of the various gentlemen whom she visited with the news that she knew for certain Where (as it was put) she could Place her hands upo
n the Money, did not even light up. But the aforesaid gentlemen invariably said “Oh ——,” and paused in a curious manner by the mantelpiece, and rubbed their left ears contemplatively with their right forefingers and thumbs…. Also there was an immediate decline in hand-holding (though not a complete deletion thereof), and premature production became a thing unknown. Also her daily post became much less type-written, but much more cordial and illegible, and she had to be very clever at pretending that the author’s name on various manuscripts sent her, was not the pseudonym either of the gentleman who had sent it, or of the wife of that gentleman…. But it was, so often, that it became rather tedious to keep up the pretence….
It was an engaging game, for the time — this game of manuscripts — and Jackie had never realized before how many there were playing it. Jackie, of course (quite uncorrectably perverse and obtuse creature that she was) did not play it according to the best traditions. If she had done that, she would have leant back in wicker chairs at the Rockingham Hard Court Tennis Club, said “My dear, I’ve got Three Plays to read before to-morrow morning!” and lifted her eyes jadedly to the skies. And she would have pronounced “Three Plays” as a perfect spondee — (like “God’s Worst” or “Don’t Ask!” or “I Mean!” or other prevalent theatrical spondees — the profession, when emphatic, being very much addicted to this foot) — and she would have gone on to say that of course one |Can Not| Simply| Find a decent play these days, and that it was very dreadful altogether. But Jackie was no use at this sort of thing, and few would have guessed how many manuscripts she got through, with her chin in her hands over her gas-fire at West Kensington of a night, in the month or so that followed her decision to speculate.
Nearly every day she received another. And they were all bound in red, or brown, or (in extreme cases) yellow: and they were most perfectly typed, with the name of a superior typist in an addressed circle on the title-page verso, and they were rather cleaner than new pins. And their titles were imposing though vague — “Temptation”—“Error”— “Aggression” — “Vindication” — “Retribution” — “Abdication.” Though sometimes you came across a very stern title, such as “The Rupture.” Or even “The Thrashing”— which was sterner still.
Of course, what Jackie was looking for, and what Jackie had stipulated upon when asking for these plays, was a Part for herself. She found quite enough parts, and as many thwarted and articulate heroines to interpret as she might wish. Unhappily, though, she also found that the greater part of these heroines, while possibly preserving a quite natural and sober demeanour during the drama as a whole, at moments of crisis were the type of persons who “go off into a high hysterical laugh, lasting some moments, and then, suddenly reeling, fall upon the settee and commence a slow, regular sobbing, steadily increasing in power” Now from observations made, and information received, on the subject of life and manners, Jackie had little (or no) faith in the prevalence, or even existence, of this mode of self-expression. She had had some experience of affliction herself, yet she had difficulty in conceiving any set of circumstances which could compel her either to go off into a high hysterical laugh lasting some moments, or (suddenly reeling) to fall upon a settee and commence a slow, regular sobbing (steadily increasing in power). Or at least singly these two manifestations might have been credible, but both together they were inconceivable. She kept an open mind upon the matter: she knew it was only her point of view: but there it was.
And if this was her feeling, then if she undertook such parts, she would be giving an insincere, and therefore inartistic, performance. And Jackie did not want to give that….
II
It was at the end of about her fourth month of flirtation with manuscripts that Jackie discovered an old play of Richard’s (which he had never mentioned to her) entitled “World’s End.” This title, being comparatively flippant, immediately attracted her attention, and she sat down and read it all the morning. She arose with the intention to speculate upon “World’s End.”
This was an early play of Richard’s, and the part for herself was not very good. But she felt she could touch the manuscript up, and the play on the whole was far ahead of anything else she had yet read. Also the idea of putting her heart and soul into anything that Richard had done, however long ago, was an attractive and healing idea.
She did not play the part, however, in the long run. Her fellow-backer, Mr. Dyman Bryant (a gentleman of some wealth who spent the greater part of the year in a drunken state at Antibes, and who had been introduced to her by the Mulligan agency), was understood to be secretly demanding a Name in the part. A meeting was held (at Mr. Mulligan’s office) and Cards were lain upon the table. Jackie held out for a long while, and all at once gave in. There were two males against her, and there was no male to protect her.
And she was like that, these days. She had lost, for the most part, interest in life, and was continually being overtaken by a pernicious desire to slide….
Besides, a few sleepless and agonized nights, shortly after her bluff had been called and she had blundered into active commitments with respect to the money, soon reduced her to a more or less contented frame of mind in which she realized she had lost her little legacy for ever and for no conceivable purpose. And she might as well lose it one way as another.
The play went into rehearsal in the Autumn, and was produced by Mr. Gerald Gandon (a young man, who had lately produced a success) at the Empress Theatre, Charing Cross.
By the time the first night in London arrived, she had become quite excited again. At times she felt quite ill with excitement.
She was getting ill these days. Headaches, and giddiness, and a malaise after lunch. And one night the right side of her face was all swollen, and the right eye contracted. (It was better in the morning.)
CHAPTER V
EAVESDROPPING
I
IT is half-past five on a winter’s afternoon. Jackie is standing in the stalls of the Empress Theatre, and looking at the stage. To-night will be the first night of “World’s End,” and the four black hours have commenced.
The four black, uncanny hours, when the stage has been left for the last time, and the last actor has gone mumbling away from the last call….
A door upstairs in the gallery bangs in the draught…. The whole auditorium is in glowing darkness, and the set itself, with the curtain up, stands alert, silent, uncritical, in the grey drear illumination of the one dazzling pilot above….
Half-past five. And outside, dimly, she can hear the roar and explosion of London. London at tea. A brawling London at tea….
An unearthly interim — and no one in the theatre but herself to witness it…. The actors and actresses…. They, too, are having tea, and keeping up their spirits. Here is their stage. What do actors and actresses know about their stage? …
But she has an inkling now…. The door in the gallery bangs again: the flimsy flats give a sudden creak: she stands very still in the glowing darkness, and the Genius of the theatre creeps out, and whispers in her ear….
Then she goes and has some tea herself.
II
When Jackie, stepping out of a taxi from West Kensington, arrived at the foyer of the Empress, ten minutes or so before the show commenced, she did not know whether to be gratified by the courtesy, or angered by the insolence of those who had come to witness the spectacle she had brought into being. In either case she wanted to enlighten them.
It was their assumption of reality that startled her. “But really, you shouldn’t have bothered to dress, you know,” Jackie wanted to say, on the one hand. “Believe me, this is only one of Richard’s old plays, and it’s all my doing. This festive air, this smooth automobility, this shingledness, this dazzling green-cloakedness, this identifiable and traditional air of an occasion — I never dreamed you would take it as seriously as all that. You’re assuming that this is a genuine production, aren’t you? Well, it’s very good of you, and I suppose it is, if you say so. But why have you c
ome here? Surely you can’t think you’re going to enjoy yourselves. Surely you can’t think that that senseless welter of repetitions and mechanicalities which we have been grinding out for the last three weeks — is a thing to afford you pleasure. I’m afraid you’re being rather done.”
But there was the other feeling as well. She did not quite like the carriage of the heads, and the affronted shudder in the cloaks of the various ladies present. And there was a subtle air of tittering amusedness which she did not like. After all, thought Jackie, this was poor dead Richard’s play, wasn’t it?
And then, “I Beg your pardon,” said one extremely frilled gentleman, as he nearly bumped into her, going down to the stalls. Jackie had not expended seven hundred pounds to be rather facetiously bumped into by an extremely frilled gentleman….
It altered everything so much when you were responsible for the show yourself — when you were dependent upon the crowd. She experienced all the delights and fears, and inner thwarted ironies, of an unrecognized hostess…. Or an eavesdropper….
It wasn’t, however, until the first interval, when she came down from her box in the circle (which she was sharing with Mr. Bryant and his wife and friends), that she reacted fully to these things. Then she went home.
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