“You must have gone out of your mind, Miss Cassandra!” she said in horrified tones when the vendeuse had left the dressing room to fetch a seamstress to alter one of the gowns.
There was no doubt that the dress Cassandra was trying on was very different from the beautiful gowns she had previously worn.
They had been elaborate and many of them had had a decided Parisian chic about them.
But what she was wearing now was glitteringly spectacular and accentuated her flamboyant red hair and dark-fringed eyes. It was also very theatrical.
“For goodness sake, Miss Cassandra, why are you wastin’ your money on this trash?” Hannah asked.
“I have my reasons,” Cassandra answered enigmatically. “What do I look like, Hannah? Tell me the truth!”
“You look like somethin’ off the Music Hall and what your father would say about you dolled up like some fast hussy from behind the footlights, I don’t know.”
“Thank you Hannah, that is exactly what I wanted to hear,” Cassandra smiled.
She paid no attention to Hannah’s protests and went on ordering to the delight of the saleswoman.
“We made some really attractive gowns for Miss Sylvia Grey,” the woman volunteered.
“She is in Little Jack Shepherd at The Gaiety,” Cassandra remarked.
“Yes, and one of her gowns, not unlike the one you have on, madam, was written up in several of the newspapers. But it is Miss Nelly Farran who gets the applause. She really pays for dressing and she herself said she had never worn clothes that made her look better.”
The woman recommended a milliner who had provided the bonnets for the leading ladies of Little Jack Shepherd and Cassandra bought shoes and handbags to match each outfit.
Finally Hannah announced that it was long after her luncheon time.
“And you’ll be faintin’ on my hands if you don’t have somethin’ to eat soon. Miss Cassandra,” she said sternly. “Come along, now. You’ve wasted enough money and a real waste it is too! I can’t see you wearin’ one of those vulgar garments and that’s a fact.”
“You will be surprised, Hannah!” Cassandra remarked.
She took one of the gowns and an evening wrap with her and arranged for her other purchases to be delivered, if not that evening, first thing the following morning.
Then she stopped the carriage at a shop called Clarksons.
Hannah looked up in disgust and exclaimed,
“Theatrical wig-makers! You’re never goin’ to buy a wig, Miss Cassandra! If you do, I’ll go straight back to Yorkshire and you’ll not stop me.”
“No, I want something quite different,” Cassandra answered, “and you need not come in with me, Hannah. I can manage quite well by myself.”
She went into the shop and found just inside the door that there was a counter on which were displayed the grease-paint, lip-salves, powders and paints that were required by actors and actresses.
Such things were not obtainable in any of the shops she usually patronised.
She made several purchases and went back to the carriage.
“I want to know what’s goin’ on!” Hannah said. “If you want my help. Miss Cassandra, you’ll have to tell me the truth.”
Cassandra was as yet unwilling to reveal her secret plans even to Hannah.
She fobbed the maid off with excuses until finally they arrived back at Park Lane.
Lady Fladbury was not particularly interested in what her niece had been doing during the morning.
She had more bits of gossip she wished to relate to Cassandra and she chattered away all through luncheon hardly giving her time to comment.
“Are you never bored, Aunt Eleanor, living here alone most of the time?”
Cassandra could not help thinking that Lady Fladbury must be lonely, otherwise she would not be so vivaciously voluble when she had an audience.
“I have never been happier in my life!” her aunt replied with all sincerity. “The truth is, Cassandra, I have never in the past had a moment to think about myself. My husband was a very demanding man and my children, before they grew up and married, were always expecting me to do what they wanted, never what I wanted to do myself.”
She laughed.
“It’s the lot of all women! Sometimes I remember that someone once said, ‘the best thing in life is to be born a widow and an orphan’. I think they were right!”
She smiled and added,
“Of course they meant a wealthy widow and orphan!”
“So you are now in that position,” Cassandra remarked.
“I am not wealthy but, thanks to your father, I am comfortable. I have a great many friends in London and, as long as I can sit down at a bridge table, then there is no more contented woman than I am.”
“I am so glad, Aunt Eleanor.”
“I suppose if I was a good chaperone,” Lady Fladbury went on. “I should be making enquiries as to why you are so busy, but I am not going to ask any questions.”
“Thank you, Aunt Eleanor,” Cassandra smiled.
“All I ask is that you don’t get me into trouble with your father.”
“What the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve over,” Cassandra quoted.
Then she rose from the dining room table and kissed her aunt.
“You have always been very kind to me, Aunt Eleanor, and I am grateful.”
“You are up to something, I know that!” Lady Fladbury laughed. “Run along with you! Everyone likes to keep their own secrets. I have three friends waiting for me at a green baize table who will keep me occupied until it is dinner time.”
To Hannah’s mystification, Cassandra drove not to the shops but to a house agent’s just off St. James’s Street.
“What are we stopping here for?” the maid enquired.
“You wait in the carriage,” Cassandra said and disappeared before Hannah could say any more.
An agent in a smart frock coat was suitably impressed by Cassandra’s appearance and her expensive fur-trimmed jacket.
“I am looking for a flat or apartment for a friend of mine,” she explained. “She is on the stage.”
“On the stage, madam?” the agent exclaimed in astonishment.
Cassandra knew that he thought it almost inconceivable that someone who looked like her should be connected with a woman in such a disreputable profession.
“She is a leading lady,” Cassandra explained sweetly, “and the same type of person as Mrs. Langtry. She therefore wants to live somewhere in the West End so that she will be near the theatre, but it must not be, you understand, in a building with a bad reputation.”
“No, of course not!” the estate agent said in shocked tones. “But you’ll appreciate, madam, it’s not every landlord who’ll accept actors and actresses.”
“Presumably because they don’t always pay their bills,” Cassandra said with a little smile. “But let me set your mind at rest. My friend has asked me to put down two months’ rent in advance. That should annul any landlord’s fears that financially he might be out of pocket.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” the agent agreed. “It’ll make things very much easier.”
He opened a large ledger and looked through it with a little frown on his forehead.
Cassandra was quite certain that he was feeling embarrassed because he had so little to offer.
“You will understand,” he said after a moment, “that we don’t as a rule keep on our books the type of flat or lodgings that are patronised by your friend’s profession.”
“I understand,” Cassandra said quietly,’ “but I remember hearing that at one time Mrs. Langtry had a flat in the Albany. Is there nothing available there?”
“I’m afraid not,” the agent replied, “but there’s a flat in Bury Street. I don’t know whether it would be suitable. The first floor flat was at one time occupied by Miss Kate Vaughan before she married.”
“At least she is respectable now!” Cassandra exclaimed. “Her husband, I understand, is
the nephew of the Duke of Wellington.”
“Yes, madam,” the agent answered, “and even when she was on the stage, Miss Vaughan would have been acceptable to most landlords.”
“I am glad to hear that,” Cassandra said. “I would not like my friend to feel uncomfortable when she comes to London or believe that she is unwelcome.”
“I’m sure we will find her something that she’ll like,” the agent said. “What about this flat in Bury Street?”
“You have the particulars?”
He consulted his ledger.
“It has two bedrooms, a sitting room and a small kitchen.”
“That sounds as if it would do.”
“It also was occupied at one time by someone of importance in the theatrical world,” the agent revealed. “And so the furnishings should be to your friend’s taste.”
“I should like to see the flat,” Cassandra replied.
She and Hannah drove in the carriage to Bury Street while the agent hurried after them on foot.
It was only a short distance and Cassandra stared up at the high building. Then, having instructed Hannah to say nothing in front of the man, they climbed the staircase to the second floor.
Panting a little because he had been obliged to run in an effort to keep up with the horses, the agent opened the door and ushered them into the flat.
It was with difficulty that Cassandra prevented herself from laughing.
It was in fact gaudier and more theatrical than she could possibly have imagined.
The furniture was quite substantial but in poor taste. The sofas and chairs were upholstered in a vivid blue brocade and heaped with frilly pink cushions, most of them embroidered with beads or coloured silks.
Pictures of every sort and description smothered the walls, many of them cheap oleographs of Rome and Italy.
There were some photographs of actresses and a few actors. There were half a dozen framed posters and, as they all starred a certain well-known music hall personality, it was not difficult to guess the name of the flat’s previous occupant.
“Where is the owner?” Cassandra asked the estate agent.
“As a matter of fact, Madam, she is in Australia,” he replied. “She is on tour, it is her friend – ” he coughed apologetically, “who has asked me to find a tenant while she is away.”
The bedroom was even more fantastic than the sitting room.
Here the curtains were of sugar pink and held up at the comers of the pelmets with over-gilt angels.
The brass bedstead was draped with material of the same colour, hanging from a half-tester decorated with artificial flowers.
There were bows, frills, fringes and tassels everywhere one looked and the walls were almost completely covered with mirrors.
“The owner must be very fond of her own face,” Cassandra remarked innocently.
She did not see the glint of amusement in the agent’s eyes.
“I will take the flat,” Cassandra went on and tried not to laugh at Hannah’s horrified and disgusted expression.
She paid two months’ rent in advance as she had promised and, giving her friend’s name as ‘Miss Standish’, she took possession of the key.
A porter informed her that his wife would be willing to clean the flat on an hourly basis.
“She ’as to stay longer, ma’am, if the place be in a mess,” he said frankly.
“I understand,” Cassandra replied, “and my friend will be quite willing to pay by the hour.”
“Will your friend, madam, be moving in immediately?” the agent asked.
“She should be arriving from the North this evening,” Cassandra replied, “But if not, she will certainly be here tomorrow. I am so grateful to you for finding her somewhere to stay. She has a great dislike of hotels.”
“I quite understand that,” the agent said sympathetically.
He was delighted at having got the flat off his hands. He would never have sunk to putting anything so garish on his books, if the ‘friend’ of the lady who had lived there had not been of social importance.
Cassandra bade him goodbye and then drove back towards Park Lane listening to a storm of protest from Hannah’s lips.
“Now what’s all this about, Miss Cassandra? I’ve never seen such a horrible place! It’s not fit for someone like yourself even to enter, let alone to be livin’ in!”
“It’s for my theatrical friend,” Cassandra answered her.
“And who might she be?” Hannah asked. “You’ve never had any friends who are on the stage to my knowledge, and anyway the Master wouldn’t allow it. You know that as well as I do.”
“Her name is Sandra Standish,” Cassandra answered.
“Sandra?” Hannah repeated suspiciously. “That’s what the Master sometimes calls you.”
“Yes, I know,” Cassandra answered, “and that is why I have used it for my second self. It is difficult to answer to a Christian name you cannot remember.”
“What are you tryin’ to tell me?” Hannah enquired sternly.
“That I am going to act a part,” Cassandra answered. “Do not look so shocked, Hannah, I am not going on the stage. I shall play the part of a young and talented actress.”
“An actress!” Hannah exclaimed in tones of horror.
“I only hope I am good enough to get away with it,” Cassandra said.
“The only thing you’ll get yourself into is a lot of trouble,” Hannah said menacingly. “You’re not goin’ to stay in that ghastly place?”
“No, but I have to have an address,” Cassandra replied “and you are going to wait there for me, Hannah, in the evening. That is, if anyone takes me out.”
“I don’t know what’s goin’ on,” Hannah said angrily. “All I know, Miss Cassandra, is that you’re buyin’ yourself a heap of trouble and no good will come of it, you mark my words!”
“I am marking them,” Cassandra assured her.
At the same time she prayed that Hannah was wrong and that her plan would not fail.
*
The stage door keeper of The Prince’s Theatre looked up in surprise when, at half past seven, a lady dressed in what seemed to him to be the height of fashion appeared at the glass window he habitually sat behind.
“What d’you want?” he asked suspiciously.
He was an old man who had been at The Prince’s for over twenty-five years and was known amongst the cast as ‘Old Growler’.
“I would like to see Miss Langtry.”
“Well, you can’t,” he answered. “She sees no one until after the performance and then not many of ’em can get in.”
“I am sure she is very popular,” the lady replied, “and that is why I wish to see her now.”
“I told you. She don’t see no one at this time.”
Cassandra put the letter down in front of him and laid a sovereign on top of it.
“Will you tell Mrs. Langtry that I have something very valuable to give her,” she said, “and I cannot entrust it to anyone else, not even you.”
‘Old Growler’ stared at the sovereign. There was a greedy look in his eyes.
He was used to tips from the top-hatted gentlemen who called after the performance, but it was not often the feminine sex was so generous.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said at length grudgingly and pocketed the sovereign with a swiftness that came from long practice.
He picked up the note and Cassandra heard his footsteps echoing on the flagged floor as he went along a narrow passage and disappeared up a winding iron staircase.
She waited thinking that this was the first time she had ever been backstage and realised how unattractive it was. The walls had been written on in pencil and it must have been years since they had been painted.
There was the smell of dirt, dust and grease-paint and it was also extremely cold. Cassandra pulled her velvet wrap closer around her shoulders.
She wished that she could have worn one of her furs, but she felt it would have seemed too e
xtravagant for someone who was not a name in the theatre world.
She waited impatiently.
Supposing after all Mrs. Langtry would not see her?
She felt quite certain that what she had said about having something valuable to give her would have been repeated by the doorkeeper and would have made the lady curious.
After all, Sir James would undoubtedly have been very generous in the past. He always was.
She heard the footsteps of the doorkeeper returning long before she saw him and finally he appeared to say gruffly,
“Come this way.”
Cassandra, with a little throb of her heart, followed him down the passage.
The place seemed to become even dirtier as she progressed, but when they entered Mrs. Langtry’s brilliantly lit dressing room, it was to find it exactly as she had expected it would be.
She had read in one of the newspapers,
“Mrs. Langtry insists on having each dressing room, in whatever theatre she is appearing, arranged as to furniture, etc. as nearly alike as possible. This is one of the first things her stage-manager attends to on reaching a City. Most of the paraphernalia is carried with her when Mrs. Langtry is on tour.”
The dressing room, Cassandra saw, was not large and the most important piece of furniture was the dressing table, which was of white wood heavily enamelled in white.
It was elaborately ornamented with cupids and butterflies and festooned with old rose satin lined with muslin.
The mirror was electro-lighted and there was a tray on the table containing Mrs. Langtry’s toilet set. The brush, comb, scent bottle and powder-box were of gold, each engraved with her initials, the monograms being surrounded by a ring of turquoises.
Cassandra only had a quick look at the dressing table before she saw that there were baskets of flowers all round the walls and a cosy sofa decked with cushions of every sort of design.
Then from behind a high painted screen that was pulled across a corner of the room Mrs. Langtry appeared, wearing a blue silk negligée.
Cassandra had expected her to be beautiful, but her photographs and pictures certainly did not do her justice.
104. the Glittering Lights Page 6
