by Grant Allen
Mr. Weldon, who was a foxy man with thin upright red hair standing off from his forehead at an obtuse angle, did as he was bid and observed me. My devil was well in hand that morning. I put him through his paces, and he positively astonished me by the quickness and variety of his fantastic sallies. He gaped and grinned; he imitated to the life; he made foxy Mr. Weldon laugh aloud in spite of himself.
I grew wild with my own fun. I broke out in full flood like the Adda when it has burst its banks. I finished, flushed. “Whaur’s yer Wullie Shakespeare noo?” I cried out as I ended, striking an attitude of triumph based on a Highland fling.
The manager checked the silent twitching of his mouth. “Very excellent fooling,” he admitted in a tolerant tone.
“Which is the commodity you purvey,” I answered, beaming on him.
Then both principals drew aside for a moment and conferred. I could see Mr. Burminster was for offering me a very small salary to begin with, while Mr. Weldon was for securing me by a larger bribe.
At last, His Obesity came forward with an insinuating look. “These are funny sketches,” he admitted grudgingly. “Very funny. I believe you have talent for the music-hall stage. But in our profession it is impossible to judge beforehand how the public will take anything. You may be a dead loss. Will you go on and try — for six weeks — at five guineas?”
“Five guineas a week?” I asked in a tone of withering contempt.
“Five guineas a week; three turns at three of my halls each evening.”
“Six weeks? Why six weeks for trial? One would surely be enough. I will negotiate for one week. But if you want to bind me down in advance for six, that shows you must think there is something in me.”
He blinked uneasily, then glanced sideways with his crafty eyes at ferret-faced Weldon. “Knows a thing or two,” he muttered. “Innocence? — well, ahem, good imitation, I call it.”
“I am perfectly ready to treat with you,” I went on, in my most business-like voice, “upon the basis of a six weeks’ agreement, if that is what you would like. But I shall understand then that you consider me a sufficiently safe draw to be worth risking your money upon.” He opened the sleepy, shifty fat eyes wide. “What? never been on the stage before?” he cried. “Well, for a new hand, you seem to know a precious lot about it.”
“General knowledge,” I answered carelessly— “and business instinct.”
“You put a name to it. I should say so. Then we will make an agreement for six weeks at five guineas?”
“Oh dear no!” I answered, feeling sure from his manner I was worth more than that. “I said I would treat with you on the basis of a six weeks’ agreement. The term is now fixed. We have next to consider the amount of salary. I had thought twenty guineas.”
“Twenty guineas! An untried hand! Do you want to ruin me?”
I looked His Obesity straight in the unctuous face. “Mr. Burminster,” I said, “you are an old and tried caterer for the public taste. You and your partner have heard me for twenty minutes — more or less — and are anxious to engage me for six weeks certain. Now I am not a fool. I have held private audiences convulsed with laughter. I held your partner just now; I held yourself, though you laughed internally with your mouth hardly wrinkling. You wouldn’t want me so much unless there were money to be made of me. I propose to make some part of that money myself. You have capital and command of houses; I have not You pocket your share; I want mine. I ask twenty guineas. Take it, or leave it.”
He hesitated a moment “I leave it,” he answered.
“Thank you,” I said, rising to go. “That is clear and categorical. I will not detain you. I am sorry to have wasted two thousand pounds’ worth of your valuable time. Good morning!”
He rose hastily in turn and intercepted me with his huge girth on my way to the door. “Look here!” he cried with an amount of eagerness that betrayed him. “Where are you going?”
“To Kettlebury, of course!” He was the rival manager.
“To Kettlebury? That will never do. Stop, Miss! Wait a moment!”
“No, thank you,” I answered. “You were clear — and categorical.”
He blocked the doorway. “Oh, but I say, this is forcing a man’s hand. Not Kettlebury, if you please. Is Kettlebury the sort of person to whom a lady who respects herself—”
“Mr. Kettlebury saw me a year ago at a children’s entertainment in the East End got up by my aunt, and it was his encouragement—”
“What, Kettlebury has seen you?”
I bowed acquiescence.
“Just sit down there again! We will discuss this matter.”
“You let Cissie Lloyd slip through your fingers,” ferret-faced Mr. Weldon remarked aside, with a warning look, running one freckled hand through his foxy hair. “Don’t you do it again!” Cissie Lloyd was an ingénue who had burst like a meteor on the music-hall horizon, and blazed for a season — and Kettlebury had secured her.
The manager took up a pen. “What is your name, young lady? Oh, here, on your card. I didn’t even look at it. Lupari — Lupari? Any relation to the Lupari?”
“In a way. Her sister.”
“So ho! And the name ready made! — Weldon, how’s that? — Well, now let us be business-like—”
“I was business-like before.”
“Perhaps. But I wasn’t. We will be more explicit” He leaned back in his chair, and folded his fat hands, thumbs, and fingers together. “Young lady, you have talent.”
I dropped a saucy curtsey.
“Do that again,” he cried, starting. I did it again. He bit his pen and watched me.
“Talent. Yes, talent. I do not know its money value, trust me, believe me, I really do not But I think it may be great. In our profession that is the most one can ever say. It is wild to plunge. We depend upon the public. And the public is a Hass. That is the bane of music-hall managership.”
“The bane agrees with you,” I murmured. “You seem to thrive upon it I think you must have tastes in common with the public.” He eyed me craftily, sideways, like a parrot It was such an oblique compliment But after deliberation he decided to put the best construction upon it. “Yes, that is true,” he answered. “I have an eye, I admit it. You satisfy my eye. Therefore — it is possible you may satisfy the public.”
We discussed the case at some length — occupying I dare not say how many thousands of pounds’ worth of that priceless commodity, Mr. Burminster’s time; and in the end we arrived at a temporary agreement. Mr. Burminster, protesting much, and eager to escape ruin, contracted at last to engage me, if I chose to go on the stage, for six weeks certain, at a salary of twenty guineas a week—” though ‘t is gambling, gambling.” At the end of that six weeks, should the gamble succeed, he was to have an option of re-engaging me for another six weeks at a salary of fifty guineas. I insisted on the fifty; I believed I would be worth it He fought hard for thirty; I turned the Kettlebury screw once more: it succeeded. After that again he equally insisted on a clause that if any other manager made me an offer of a still higher salary, he was to have the option of equalling it and retaining my services. All this was conditional upon my going on the music-hall stage at all. And for this I had a reason. On my side, I bargained that if I went on the stage, it would be under Mr. Burminster’s management, and on these conditions. That was all we both wanted. Mr. Burminster desired to secure me against that man Kettlebury. I desired an agreement on paper guaranteeing me these terms — for a particular purpose.
Valuable consideration passed — a crisp five-pound note. I crumpled it in my hand as if it were waste-paper.
His Obesity went down to the door with me in person. He saw me out deferentially. “Shall I send for a hansom?” he asked, his fat fingers dwelling on the door-handle.
“Oh no, thank you,” I answered, with one of Mariana’s sweet smiles. “I’m not going far. Only to Somerset House.”
“Somerset House! What for?”
“Why, to get your agreement stamped, of course.
” And I gave him the confiding glance of a four-year-old child.
He opened the sleepy, shifty fat eyes as wide as possible. “Innocence! Innocence!” he murmured with bitter sarcasm. “And she looks as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth! A playful schoolgirl!— ‘Somerset House to get your agreement stamped’ — with a bland and childlike smile. Ought to bring the house down! Innocence, quotha, innocence!”
CHAPTER XXVI
I COME TO ANCHOR
I HAD got my agreement I proceeded to make use of it. I wanted it for its effect upon three people.
From Somerset House I drove straight (by omnibus) to Mariana’s.
Mariana, ever soft and peach-like, was seated in her snuggery, as she called it, her attention being entirely concentrated on certain alterations in a dainty flowery brocaded dressing-gown which her French maid was arranging for her. ‘T was a sweetly pretty brocade — sprays of pink roses on a delicate elusive honey-coloured ground; and Mariana, who loved the pomp of steward and seneschal, was justly proud of it. “Bravissima!” she cried. “C’est charmant!”
I burst in upon her, in a short serge skirt, big with my agreement, but anxious to look at first as if nothing out of the common had happened. Mariana, graciously smiling and extending one plump hand — Mariana’s white hands have inspired sonnets — languidly inquired how I did — and whether I had seen the criticism of Marguerite in last night’s St, James’s. I replied that I had not. She selected it out for me from a copious bundle of press cuttings on flimsy pink slips; there were at least a round dozen of them:—” Signora Lupari’s remarkable impersonation”; “Signora Lupari’s unequalled organ”; “her childish grace”; “her delicious singing”; “a Marguerite as guileless as Goethe drew her.” I ran my eye over it with a sense of sickening. “That must be the great pitfall of these press-cutting agencies,” I ventured to remark. “So bad for one’s vanity! A man — or a woman must see all that the newspapers are saying about herself, without equally seeing what the newspapers are saying about other people. Which, of course, must tend to give one a false impression of one’s own relative importance.”
“But the criticisms are so often hostile,” Mariana lisped out in her softly infantile voice — Mariana’s childishness was part of her stock-in-trade — a valuable element of her charm, most carefully cultivated. “The wretches say such vile things! Oh, sometimes they ‘re just horrid!” And she made a wry face, as if somebody had offered her a draught of nasty medicine.
“Still, the drawback to the actress’s or singer’s profession,” I mused on, in an abstract way—” viewed as a career, I mean — must be the effect it has on character.”
Mariana faisait la moue — I am afraid there is no English for it, nor indeed for most of Mariana’s face-play. “The effect it has on character! Oh, dear Rosalba, what on earth do you mean? Why, do you know you are talking exactly like that poor dear John of yours? It must be catching. Effect upon character! What a comical idea!” And she laughed her musical little laugh of disdain. “As if one went upon the stage for its effect upon character!”
“When I see the influence the stage has upon some actors and actresses,” I went on calmly, “it makes me almost decide for myself — to keep off it.”
“That’s easily done, dear. It’s one of the simplest professions to keep out of in the world. — Elise, mon enfant, would you make this bodice so that just a suspicion of a camisole — a dainty little coquette of a lace-edged camisole — should peep out at the neck? Cut low in a V. Comme ça — don’t you think so?”
“Then you seriously advise me to decline the stage?” I went on, fingering the brocade gingerly.
“To decline it? My dear girl, who invited you to go on it?”
“I have a tempting offer,” I answered.
Mariana let the V-shaped bodice drop from her caressing fingers, and uttered a sharp cry of startled surprise, which would have been worth money in Lucia. “You! An offer!” she almost shrieked. “Rosalba! How disgraceful! It is an infamy — an infamy! To trade upon my name and artistic reputation!”
“It is a very splendid offer for a beginner,” I continued, in a casual voice, holding the brocade to the light as if its texture interested me. “Twenty guineas a week; with a rise if I catch on. That’s not so bad, is it?”
Mariana gasped and stared. “Are you mad?” she said at last, with her full neck craned forward, “or has somebody been imposing upon you?”
“Neither,” I replied carelessly, examining the threads of the brocade and turning it over in the light “This is a bona fide offer.”
My sister clutched my arm. “My dear child,” she exclaimed, in a profoundly shocked undertone, “you have no idea what sort of men these theatrical agents are. Some of them are wretches — wretches. They will offer you anything till they get you in their clutches. Then, they take advantage of your guileless nature. You have allowed them to deceive you. ‘T is your innocence — your innocence!”
“That’s just what my manager said,” I replied, with an infantile smile like Mariana’s own. (After all, there is a wonderful underlying family likeness in sisters!)— “He said.”
— and I mimicked his cracked voice, bitter sarcasm and all—” ‘Innocence! Innocence! To get your agreement stamped at Somerset House! Innocence, quotha, innocence!’”
Mariana’s grip on my arm was like a steel vice. “Burminster!” she cried, in a voice of horror — for she recognised the squeaky unctuousness of the accent—” Burminster! You have seen him!”
“Yes, dear. No agents for me! Why pay ten per cent to somebody else for doing ill what you can do well yourself for nothing?
I have got Mr. Burminster’s agreement duly stamped in my pocket. John was always strong to you on the necessity for getting your agreements stamped. It is money out of hand, but it shows people you mean it.”
She drew back, incredulous. “Rosalba, you are jesting!”
“Never more serious in my life, dear. — What an exquisite colour! — Twenty guineas, and prospects.”
“But you are unknown — an amateur. And Burminster, who has the pick of the talent of London — in his own odious line! I refuse to believe it.”
“Behold this walrus tooth!” I answered, after King Alfred’s Olaf, producing the agreement, with its little red government mark in the corner. “‘Rosalba Lupari; — Henry Delamere Burminster; — mutually agreed; — twenty guineas weekly; — in witness whereof’; — all perfectly regular!”
She read it, and handed it back to me, as white as the sheet on which I now write these words. There is nothing the regular profession hates like music-halls. “This is abominable!” she cried; “disgraceful! My sister to tread those boards! You two have hatched a conspiracy against me. E iniquo, iniquo! I knew you were unprincipled, Rosalba! I knew you were wicked—”
“‘Your guileless nature! Your innocence! You have allowed them to deceive you!’” I murmured in Mariana’s own voice.
She took no notice, continuing her angry harangue. “But I never knew you would turn against me like this. Dio mio! It is positively shameful. I shall never speak to you again.”
“What? Neverer than before?” I murmured, for I knew that threat.
She went on, unheeding. “I shall apply for a mandamus or a habeas corpus or something to prevent you. An injunction, I think it is called. I know the judges can grant one.”
“Some loops of Honiton would look nice,” I interposed sweetly, handling the bodice; “don’t you think so?”
Mariana was the tragedy queen. “Here am!” — she rolled it out in her penetrating voice—” a singer on the highest operatic stage; by dint of hard work I have gained my position; and now Burminster comes to you — a creature in the music-hall line — a contractor for tight-rope dancers and performing dogs — and offers you a bribe to sell him your name — my name — to drag in the dirt on the floor of his vile places among the cigarette ends and the orange-peel. I shall protest against it, I will. It’s — it’s an abo
minable outrage!”
I do not care to bandy adjectives. So I let her go on for twenty minutes — I love Mariana as Constance in King John — then I pocketed my agreement, waved my hand to her, and left. But if you ask me why I got up this gratuitous little scene, I can only answer, ’twas my devil who suggested it.
It was rough on Mariana; I admitted it to myself as I went back to Auntie’s. Naturally, she objected to my taking to an inferior branch of the profession which she adorned, and so spoiling her artistic and social future. But I had my living to earn. And besides, I chose to give Mariana this fright, because I thought it might act as a moral shower-bath. Shower-baths are so good for one: the nervous shock and so forth! Mariana lives too much in cotton-wool — asparagus and chicken-cutlets; — occasional contact with the realities of life is a useful tonic.
The second was John. He had promised to come round to Auntie’s that afternoon, on a matter of business. I had begged him earnestly to give me a little note, as far as he could remember, of all the sums he had spent on my education and keep—” the ducats, John, the mere ducats” — and of course he had refused — for John is a gentleman. But when I pointed out to him that it would only save me labour, since otherwise I must go hunting up Miss Westmacott and calling at Peter Robinson’s to ask for details, he gave way at last with evident reluctance. “After all,” he said, “your estimate” — for I had jumped at one—” is ridiculously in excess. If you want to know the truth, you may as well know it;’ t is a question altogether removed from the sphere of practical politics. You can never pay the amount; so I will tell you if you insist upon it, as near as I can conjecture. But recollect, Rosalba, I do it under protest.” So he came in the afternoon and brought a rough draft of the calculation with him. “It has distressed me to put it down in black and white, my dear girl,” he said, wincing; “but since you demand it as a right, and choose to consider it as a debt, I have stretched a point to oblige you. Though I have been more than repaid already, Rosalba, by many pleasant hours spent in your charming company.”
